Rick Tumlinson founded SpaceFund, a venture capital firm investing in space startups, the Earthlight Foundation, and New Worlds. He also co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation, and is a founding board member of the X Prize Foundation. He contributed the following piece — an edited essay from his upcoming book "Why Space: The Purpose of People," to be published in October 2025 — to Space.com's Expert Voices section.
In 2024, I was invited to speak at an AI Summit in Washington, D.C. The trip had three high points. One was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in front of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. The second was being one of the first signers of the AI Declaration at the same event. The third — and perhaps most memorable — was a conversation I had with Rhea, an early humanoid AI and cousin of the famous Sophia. What happened then has already been surpassed, as this field is moving so fast that a year is like a decade in many other fields. But as an outsider, it made the AI revolution very real to me.
