Bezos predicts that millions will live in space in ‘couple of decades

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a rare public appearance at Italian Tech Week in Turin on Friday and used the opportunity to predict that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades,” according to the Financial Times.

Speaking with John Elkann, a member of Italy’s Agnelli family, Bezos — who also founded Blue Origin — said that people will live in space “mostly because they want to.” At the same time, robots will take over the hard labour, and massive AI data centres will operate in orbit.

The statement sounded like Bezos’ way of outshining his long-time space rival, Elon Musk, who has often predicted that humans will colonise Mars and that a million people could be living there by 2050. Whether both billionaires are out of touch with reality or have insights the rest of us don’t, remains open to debate.

Bezos was equally confident about other future technologies, defending the current AI investment surge as a “good” bubble — one that is industrial rather than financial in nature.

“There has never been a better time to be excited about the future,” Bezos reportedly said, as the audience at the Turin event exchanged curious glances.