As entry-level jobs disappear for Gen Z, the secret to finding an AI-proof profession may lie in space. Billionaires Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are betting that mass space travel is on the way — and that recent college graduates could be heading to Mars within the next decade.
In some respects, young people are losing out to the AI revolution, and there is no sign of slowing down. A Stanford University study released last year concluded that AI is having a “significant and disproportionate impact” on early-career workers in the United States, raising new concerns about how the next generation will find its place in the job market.
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But for those concerned about the future of work, young professionals may need to look further afield — and even skyward. That’s because the same technology that may be transforming traditional jobs can also accelerate entirely new industries, from space tourism to the colonization of other planets.
It’s a future that many billionaires, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, not only embrace, but also help make possible through their innovations: the safest — and most profitable — jobs of tomorrow may not even be on Earth.
Sam Altman: the class of 2035 will be exploring the Solar System
Sam Altman is known for being CEO of OpenAI (the company responsible for ChatGPT), but he is also part of the growing list of billionaires optimistic about life in space. In fact, he said he believes that young people ten years from now could leave behind career prospects on Earth in favor of opportunities spread across the Solar System.
“In 2035, that student graduating from college — if he still goes to college — could very well be embarking on a mission to explore the Solar System in a spacecraft, in a completely new, exciting, very well-paying, extremely interesting job,” Altman told video journalist Cleo Abram in 2025.
Not only will these jobs allow Gen Alpha graduates to earn sky-high salaries, but they will also make them “pity you and me for having to do this old, boring job, because everything will be better.”
And while his predictions are bold, the rapid development of AI is accelerating the pace of innovation and will help solve some of society’s biggest problems — including, he suggests, how to sustain life in space.
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Elon Musk: humans on Mars as early as 2028
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and the richest man on the planet, has been one of the most influential leaders in advocating space expansion in the 21st century. After all, he is the co-founder and CEO of SpaceX, a company that has worked closely with NASA to advance space exploration.
SpaceX has had its share of setbacks, including in August 2025 when a test rocket to Mars was delayed. Still, Musk is optimistic that unmanned rockets to Mars will begin launching as early as 2026, with the first manned flight expected in 2028.
“I would like to die on Mars, but not on impact,” Musk said in 2013.
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Jeff Bezos: space will be bigger than orders
Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage as an idea for an online bookstore. Over more than three decades, he built the business into an e-commerce and data services empire valued at more than $2.8 trillion, which helped raise his net worth to more than $250 billion.
However, he hopes that his space technology company, Blue Origin, will eventually earn him even more.
“I think it’s going to be the best deal I’ve ever been a part of, but it’s going to take time,” he said during the New York Times’ 2024 DealBook Summit.
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At 62, this at least indicates that he believes space travel will become a common reality within his lifetime. The company’s mission is focused on “a future in which millions of people will live and work in space with a singular purpose: to restore and sustain the Earth.”
Today, the company is best known for space tourism. In 2025, a Blue Origin rocket took Bezos’ current wife, Lauren Sanchez, as well as singer Katy Perry and journalist Gayle King to the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere.
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