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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 \u201cin the next couple of decades,\u201d the Financial Times reports<\/a>. <\/p>\n Speaking with John Elkann, a scion of Italy\u2019s Agnelli dynasty, Bezos, who also founded rocket company Blue Origin, insisted people will be living in space \u201cmostly because they want to,\u201d and that robots will handle the grunt work, while vast AI data centers float overhead.<\/p>\n The pronouncement sounds a little like Bezos trying to one-up his space rival. Elon Musk has spent years predicting humans will colonize Mars and suggested a million people could live there by 2050, which is right around the corner, basically. Maybe both gazillionaires are losing touch, or else they know something the rest of us refreshing Zillow do not.<\/p>\n Bezos was equally bullish on other fronts, defending the AI investment boom as a \u201cgood\u201d kind of bubble given that it\u2019s \u201cindustrial\u201d rather than \u201cfinancial.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThere has never been a better time to be excited about the future,\u201d he reportedly declared, as audience members (in our imagination) exchanged uncertain glances across the Turin auditorium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n