Justin Trudeau warns AI boom could create hundreds of trillionaires—and it will mean there’s something ‘fundamentally wrong with the world’ |
Justin Trudeau warns AI boom could create hundreds of trillionaires—and it will mean there’s something ‘fundamentally wrong with the world’
For all the hype around artificial intelligence—from curing cancer to accelerating space travel—tech leaders have been quick to emphasize its upside. Some, such as Elon Musk, have even suggested it could one day make work optional and money irrelevant.
But there’s a darker scenario taking shape alongside that optimism. As AI increases efficiency and prosperity, the world will be in trouble if the top 1% continue to see rapid wealth acceleration, warned former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“We will probably in the coming years end up with a handful of trillionaires—that is OK in a sense that we need to aspire to something,” Trudeau told CNBC last week.
“But if we suddenly have 100 trillionaires or 1,000 trillionaires, something will be fundamentally wrong with the world—and everyone will be right in saying ‘This system doesn’t work.’”
His comments come as the number of billionaires hit a record high in 2025, reaching roughly 3,000 globally, with their combined wealth topping $2.5 trillion, according to Oxfam. It’s a level of wealth that now rivals that of the Gilded Age, when barons like J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller amassed then-unprecedented income levels through dominance in the finance, steel, and oil industries, respectively.
The salary difference today........