Amazon’s Bezos: Millions Living in Space by 2045

M.A. Dworkin 

Our Solar System - While doomsayers warn that artificial intelligence (AI) will bring an end to civilization as we know it, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder, says the next 20 years will be the Golden Age - one in which humans will be happier, richer, working far fewer hours, and living beyond Earth in space. 

“I don’t see how anybody can be discouraged who is alive right now,” Mr. Bezos told a crowd at Italian Tech Week 2025. “Technology is about to rocket humanity into an era of civilizational abundance,” he said.

Bezos predicted that by 2045, robots will handle the grind of daily work and for many their office may be off-planet. 

“In the next couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space,” one of the richest men on Earth stated. “That’s how fast it’s going to accelerate.”  

He said work on the Moon and beyond will be carried out by machines. 

“We don’t need people to live in space,” he said. “They’ll be living there because they want to.” 

Mr. Bezos brushed off the gloom that’s surrounded AI since the rise of ChatGPT, saying history proves new inventions always make life better - not worse. 

“Civilizational abundance comes from our inventions,” he added. “So 10,000 years ago, or whenever it was, somebody invented the plough, and we all got richer…I’m talking about all of civilization - these tools increase our abundance, and that pattern will continue,” the retail internet genius explained. “So, if you need to do some work on the surface of the Moon or on another planet, we will be able to send robots to do that work and that will be much more cost effective than sending humans.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest man, whose rocket company SpaceX rivals Bezos' Blue Origin, believes humans could touch down on Mars by 2028, with unmanned rockets blasting off to the Red Planet as soon as next year. SpaceX has been working closely with NASA to make it happen. 

Mr. Musk believes that colonizing Mars is crucial for the long-term survival of humanity, viewing it as “life insurance” for the species. His plan involves establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars with up to one million inhabitants, using his SpaceX Starship rockets to transport people and millions of tons of supplies. 

After the initial human landings on Mars, Mr. Musk sees the building of infrastructure and the ability to use local resources like Martian ice and carbon dioxide to create fuel and breathable air. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose ChatGPT helped ignite the AI boom, says space careers will soon be the hottest jobs in the galaxy. He believes within a decade, college grads will be working “some completely new, exciting, super well-paid jobs in orbit.”

Meanwhile, Billionaire Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, is not so quick to adopt inter-planetary life as the wave of the future. He believes we would be better off fixing this planet before colonizing another. He has consistently argued that money spent on colonizing another planet is a poor use of resources compared to fixing the Earth. 

“Space? We have a lot to do here on Earth,” the influential global health philanthropist stated. “It is quite expensive to go to Mars, but you can buy measles vaccines and save lives for a thousand dollars per life saved.” 

But even Mr. Gates admits the rise of AI could give humanity a break - literally. He predicts machines will make workweeks so efficient that two-day schedules could become the norm. 

 “If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do your job,” he explains the advantages of what the new world of a machine-driven society could do for the human psyche.