The future of work may not reside here on Earth, but out among the stars instead.

That’s according to recent statements from some of this puny planet’s richest and most influential business leaders.

Tycoons like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have made no secret of their desire to expand man’s horizons by blasting off into the great beyond, waging their own private space race to ensure their name is forever etched in history first.

But there is more than just altruistic exploration at work here.

Musks’ SpaceX and Bezos’ BlueOrigins are businesses built in the same vein as their previous enterprises, not for the benefit of all but to achieve a specific vision and objective.

That means employees to help realize these ambitions and neither Amazon or Musk’s other companies Tesla and Twitter boast a squeaky clean history where it concerns positive employee experience. 

The thought of Amazon fulfillment centers orbiting the planet or Musk-founded colonies on Mars hardly fills me with optimism for this zero-gravity future of work, but they are by no means the only ones pushing this agenda.

T-Minus ten years to a new, space-based future

OpenAI boss Sam Altman is the latest to tout an extraterrestrial future of work for coming generations.

In a recent interview, Altman said that he believes graduates ten years from now may be “leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job”.

Addressing current predictions that AI will decimate entry level work in the near future, he posited that Gen Alpha graduates – if such a thing still exists in 2035 – will feel “so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better”.

On the one hand it is hardly surprising that the poster boy for enterprise AI is talking this way, that young people’s future is intrinsically tied to a technology that will open any and all possibilities to them – including living and working in outer space.

On the other, it’s hard to see how this proposed future of work is remotely plausible in just ten years.

Perhaps I’m taking these comments a bit too seriously, but when billionaires and those funded by billionaires start using this type of rhetoric to put a positive spin on change for the sake of change/diversified revenue streams, a little switch flicks on in my brain and I need to give it an outlet.

Because, while the surface-level philanthropy of ushering in a new age for mankind among the stars makes for good headlines, the buried lede of it all is that there’s not a lot left for us here on Earth going forward.

Let’s use AI to address existing problems first

The concern here is that Altman is essentially saying what many are now at best fearing and at worst already taking action to avoid: AI is going to end young people’s careers before they even begin.

From a cynical point of view, it’s a somewhat sneaky way to tell young people that existing career models or trajectories are as good as dead now that AI is here and that their best option is to start planning for jobs that don’t even exist yet.

And there is a growing acknowledgment that is simply going to be the future of work – there are few business leaders that I’ve seen willing to go against the AI tide and plant their flag in the dirt of entry level roles.

Just a few months ago I wrote about how the future of work relies on people and without the opportunity to nurture the next generation of talent, the very fabric of work will be undermined.

Now there may come a day where workers are preparing for roles beyond this planet and perhaps some of us will live to see it happen, but for now these statements can only really be treated as distractions from the very real tectonic shifts taking place in the structure of work.

AI can undoubtedly do some amazing things and there’s still huge potential to be achieved for making the future of work better for everyone – but for now it does remain potential for most.

I’m sure Musk, Bezos, Altman et al, will endeavor to reach for the stars as means to either secure more billions or cement a legacy for themselves as pioneers of humanity’s future…but wouldn’t it be better to get their (and, by extension, our) problems on Earth sorted out first?

HR have got it hard enough down here as it is, let alone extending their remit into the cosmos.