Jeff Bezos is looking to the stars, and he thinks millions of us will soon follow. Speaking at an Italian Tech Week event in Turin earlier this month, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder predicted that within two decades, "millions of people" will be living in space. Bezos is all-in on a future where advanced technology, especially AI and robotics, doesn't just make life easier on Earth, but turns space colonization into the new normal, Fortune reports.
The billionaire predicted that people will live in space because they want to, not because there is essential work for them to do there. "We don't need people to live in space," he said. "If you need to do some work on the surface of the moon or anywhere else, we will be able to send robots to do that work, and that will be much more cost-effective than sending humans." He also predicted that data centers would shift to space in the next 10 to 20 years. "We're going to start building these giant gigawatt data centers in space," he said, per GeekWire. "So, these giant training clusters, those will be better built in space, because we have solar power there, 24/7."
"There's never been a better time to be excited about the future," Bezos said, arguing that people should be optimistic about artificial intelligence. He said the "benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic," though he acknowledged that there is an "industrial bubble," CNBC reports. He said investors may have a hard time "distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas" but with industrial bubbles, "when the dust settles and you see who are the winners, societies benefit from those inventions."
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Bezos isn't the only tech leader eyeing a future in space. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said today's college grads might soon land well-paid gigs in orbit and Elon Musk is betting humans will be on Mars as soon as 2028. That timeline may be a little too optimistic: NASA has threatened to cancel SpaceX's moon contract, with Blue Origin as a potential replacement, because of delays to the Starship program.
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