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, according to Oxfam. Their combined wealth grew by $2.5 trillion last year alone. 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 between top business executives, including CEOS, and everyday workers has become such a global issue that even the Pope is worried.
“CEOs that 60 years ago might have been making four to six times more than what the workers are receiving, the last figure I saw, it’s 600 times more than what average workers are receiving,” Pope Leo XIV told Catholic news site Crux last year. “The news that Elon Musk is going to be the first trillionaire in the world: What does that mean and what’s that about?”
He continued, “If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble.”
While Trudeau did not offer an immediate solution to today’s AI-driven wealth disparities beyond calling for better income distribution, his concerns about widening inequality long predate the current tech boom. As prime minister from 2015 to 2025, he frequently warned that the gap between rich and poor was eroding economic stability and social trust.
During his tenure, his government lowered poverty rates among families and expanded monthly child benefits to help offset the cost of raising children. But more sweeping efforts—like proposals in 2020 and 2024 to tax the wealthy to fund housing, health care, and education—failed to fully materialize.
His message was also complicated by his own background. The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, he was often criticized as being out of touch with working-class Canadians, a perception that contributed to mounting political pressure toward the end of his time in office.
Trudeau’s net worth is estimated at about $10 million. His girlfriend, singer Katy Perry, is one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world, with a net worth of about $400 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Musk, already the world’s richest person with $650 billion to his name, is likely to become the world’s first trillionaire. And the 54-year-old could reach the milestone as soon as this year thanks to his aerospace company SpaceX’s reported impending IPO.
At the same time, his electric vehicle company, Tesla, has further amplified his potential for wealth. Shareholders last year approved a massive compensation package that could award Musk stock worth close to $1 trillion over the next decade—if he hits a series of aggressive targets, including scaling Tesla’s valuation to $8.5 trillion, producing 20 million vehicles annually, and deploying 1 million humanoid robots.
But even with his massive wealth, Musk has said giving away money with an impact is not as easy as it seems.
“The biggest challenge I find with my foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people,” he told Nikhil Kamath on the WTF podcast last year. “It’s very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness. Very difficult.”
Other billionaires have taken a more aggressive approach to philanthropy. MacKenzie Scott, for example, donated $7.2 billion in 2025 alone—surpassing what many of the world’s richest individuals have given over their lifetimes, including her ex-husband, Jeff Bezos.
Musk, for his part, has questioned how relevant money will be in the long run. He has repeatedly argued that advances in AI and robotics could make goods and services so abundant that wealth itself becomes less meaningful.
“It’s kind of strange, but in a future where anyone can have anything, you no longer need money as a database for labor allocation,” Musk added. “If AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer necessary. Its relevance declines dramatically.”
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