Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has sounded an alarm on artificial intelligence’s trajectory. In a recent CNBC interview at CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore, he predicted a handful of trillionaires might emerge soon. That’s fine, he said. Aspiration demands it. But hundreds? Thousands? ‘Something will be fundamentally wrong with the world—and everyone will be right in saying “This system doesn’t work,”’ Trudeau declared, as captured in a CNBC YouTube short and detailed by Fortune.
AI promises efficiency gains across industries. It could cure diseases. Accelerate space exploration. Yet Trudeau spots the risk: gains flowing overwhelmingly to the top 1%. Billionaires already number around 3,000, their fortunes hitting $18.3 trillion last year—a $2.5 trillion jump, per Oxfam‘s January report. That’s enough to wipe out extreme poverty 26 times over. CEO pay? Now 600 times the average worker’s, up from four to six times six decades ago. Pope Leo XIV called it out 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? If that is the only thing that has value anymore, then we’re in big trouble,’ he told Crux, echoed in Fortune.
Musk’s Path to Trillionaire Status Accelerates
Elon Musk leads the pack. His net worth hovers near $800 billion, per recent Forbes and Bloomberg estimates. SpaceX’s rumored June IPO could value it at $1.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, pushing Musk over the line with his 42-43% stake, as Fortune and Forbes Australia report. Tesla shareholders approved a package last November worth up to $1 trillion in stock if milestones hit: $8.5 trillion valuation, 20 million vehicles yearly, one million humanoid robots deployed, per Reuters. Betting markets like Polymarket peg Musk’s odds at 76% for trillionaire by end-2026.
But Musk pushes back. AI and robots will flood the world with goods. Work becomes optional. Money? Obsolete. ‘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,’ he said on a podcast last year, reiterated recently: ‘Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won’t matter,’ per Yahoo Finance. Abundance awaits, he insists. Universal high income. No scarcity.
Trudeau’s tenure underscores the tension. From 2015 to 2025, he cut family poverty via child benefits. Wealth taxes? Proposed in 2020 and 2024, but stalled. Critics called him out of touch—son of a PM, net worth around $10 million, dating Katy Perry (hers: $400 million). Still, inequality gnawed at him, eroding trust, stability.
History echoes. Gilded Age titans—Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller—dominated steel, oil, finance. Today’s AI barons mirror them. MacKenzie Scott donated $7.2 billion in 2025 alone, outpacing Bezos’s lifetime gifts, per Fortune. Musk admits philanthropy hurdles: ‘It’s very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness.’
And policy lags. AI displaces jobs. Farzad Mesbahi noted on X: ‘AI is the first technology that does not create a new rung on the ladder, it removes the ladder itself by taking cognition.’ Musk himself floated federal checks for unemployment his machines spark.
Trudeau offers no quick fix. Just the warning. Distribution matters. A handful of trillionaires? Aspire. A horde? System broken. As AI hurtles forward—SpaceX rockets, Tesla bots, xAI models—the divide widens. Markets bet on Musk’s windfall. Oxfam tallies the billions. Pope decries the ratios. Trudeau asks: Who gets the pie? Boom or bust for the rest hangs in the balance.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication