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While Gen Z faces continued career uncertainty, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has brought them some welcome good news, predicting unprecedented opportunities over the next decade, including missions to explore the solar system with six-figure paychecks.
“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.
Altman admits that AI will wipe out some jobs entirely, but insists it could also create “the most exciting time in history to start a career,” with young workers “feeling so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better.”
Space careers on the horizon
While it remains unclear how broadly space exploration will expand, aerospace engineers already outpace the national job growth average, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and currently earn more than $130,000 a year.
NASA says it aims to reach Mars in the 2030s, a target that could accelerate demand for talent in the sector. Altman says he envies those entering the workforce today: “If I were 22 right now and graduating college, I would feel like the luckiest kid in all of history.”
AI reshaping the workplace
Other technology leaders have made their predictions on how AI can transform work closer to home. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said recently that the technology could reduce the workweek dramatically, questioning whether people should “just work like two or three days a week.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI has already given his teams “superhuman” abilities. “I’m surrounded by superhuman people and super intelligence… they do what they do way better than I can do it. Yet it never one day caused me to think… I’m no longer necessary,” he said.
Altman also predicts AI could enable one-person companies to reach billion-dollar valuations, powered by tools “equivalent to a team of PhD-level experts” in a single device. “It is probably possible now to start a company… that will go on to be worth more than a billion dollars… and that is like a crazy thing,” he said.
Investor Mark Cuban suggested AI could create a trillionaire. “It could be just one dude in the basement. That’s how crazy it could be,” he told the High Performance podcast.
