Young people are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to the AI revolution—and there’s no sign of it slowing. A Stanford University study released earlier this month found AI is having a “significant and disproportionate impact” on entry-level workers in the U.S., raising fresh concerns about how the next generation will find its footing in the labor market.
But for those worried about what the future of work will look like, young professionals may need to look bigger—and even toward the sky. That’s because the same technology that may be disrupting traditional jobs could accelerate entirely new industries from space tourism to planet colonization.
It’s a future that many billionaires, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are not just embracing but also enabling through their innovation: The most secure—and lucrative—jobs of tomorrow may not be on Earth at all.
Sam Altman: The class of 2035 will be exploring the solar system
Sam Altman is known for being CEO of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT), but he’s also joining the growing list of billionaires who are bullish about life in space. In fact, he said he believes young people a decade from now may be leaving behind career prospects on Earth in favor of the broader solar system.
“In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” Altman said to video journalist Cleo Abram in August.
These jobs will not only enable Gen Alpha graduates to reel in sky-high salaries, but they’ll also be “feeling so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better.”
And while his predictions are bold, AI’s rapid development is multiplying innovation and will help solve some of society’s biggest problems, including, he implies, how to sustain life in space.
Elon Musk: Humans on Mars as soon as 2028
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and the richest man on the planet, has single-handedly been one of most influential leaders in pushing for 21st century space. After all, he’s the cofounder and CEO of $400 billion SpaceX, which has worked hand-in-hand with NASA to advance space exploration.
SpaceX has its fair share of setbacks, including just this week when a Mars test rocket was delayed. However, Musk is hopeful unmanned Mars rockets will commence as soon as next year, with the first crewed-flight in 2028.
“I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Musk said in 2013.
Jeff Bezos: Space will be bigger than packages
Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage as an idea for an online bookstore. Over three decades, he built it into an over $2.4 trillion ecommerce and data service empire—and it helped lead his net worth to about $250 billion.
However, he expects his space technology company, Blue Origin, to eventually make him even more.
“I think it’s going to be the best business that I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take a while,” he said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit late last year.
As a 61-year-old, that at least indicates space travel will be a mainstream reality in his lifetime. The company’s mission is focused on “a future where millions of people will live and work in space with a single-minded purpose: to restore and sustain Earth.”
The company is most known today for space tourism. Earlier this year, a Blue Origin rocket sent Bezos’s now-wife, Lauren Sanchez, as well as singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.
Bill Gates: I’m sticking to planet Earth
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has a starkly different view when it comes to investing in traveling to other planets.
“Space? We have a lot to do here on Earth,” he said in an interview with comedian James Corden in 2021.
When he was specifically asked about traveling to Earth’s neighbor, he said it might not be worth the money: “It’s actually quite expensive to go to Mars,” Gates told BBC in 2023.
Instead, he’d much rather spend his money on his philanthropic causes like improving global health.
“You can buy measles vaccines and save lives for a thousand dollars per life saved,” he said. “It just kind of grounds you. Don’t go to Mars.”
