Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has expressed that people should be more excited about artificial intelligence (AI) instead of feeling discouraged. The 61-year-old Bezos stated during a panel discussion at the 2025 Italy Technology Week, “I don’t understand how people who are alive could be disheartened. (AI will improve the quality and productivity of every business) … every manufacturing company, every hotel, every consumer goods company… It’s hard to understand, but it’s true.” Bezos did not provide a timeline for AI adoption, noting that different industries may embrace the technology at varying speeds. He mentioned that AI is currently in an “industrial bubble,” where stock prices are inflated, and investors struggle to distinguish between “good ideas and bad ideas.” He added that, ultimately, the "winners" who successfully leverage this technology to advance research and development across any industry will bring “great” benefits to society. “Now is the best time to be excited about the future,” Bezos said. In contrast, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that many people do not entirely share Bezos’s viewpoint. In a global survey, 34% of adults told Pew they feel more worried than excited about the “rise of AI in everyday life.” Meanwhile, 42% expressed they are both worried and excited, and 16% indicated they feel more excited than worried. Concerns about AI are particularly pronounced in the U.S., where 50% of respondents said they are more worried than excited, while 38% said they feel both worried and excited. The Pew report did not discuss the reasons behind people’s worries or enthusiasm. Critics of the technology often cite the inaccuracies produced by AI chatbots and other large language models, commonly referred to as “hallucinations.” Other criticisms focus on AI media generators, which can create seemingly realistic fake videos and photos, as well as companies using the technology to freeze staff numbers or reduce hiring. At Amazon, where Bezos remains the executive chairman, AI is expected to reduce the company’s workforce in the “coming years,” as CEO Andy Jassy noted in a memo to employees in June. AI also has environmental implications. Researchers at MIT estimated in January that data centers require thousands of megawatts of energy to operate effectively, and the electricity needed to train and deploy generative AI models could power around 120 average American homes for a year. Bezos, who founded and owns the space technology company Blue Origin, proposed a potential solution to the environmental issues related to AI: relocating data centers to outer space. He stated, “One thing that’s going to happen — it’s hard to know exactly when, maybe more than a decade from now, but I would bet it won’t be more than 20 years — is that we’re going to start building these enormous gigawatt data centers in space. These massive training clusters are best built in space because we have solar power there.” He added, “In the coming decades, we will be able to undercut the costs of terrestrial data centers in space.”