In Elon Musk’s future, we won’t need jobs or money, and there will be no poverty.
At the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum on Monday, where Musk sat on a panel with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Musk said that money would “stop being relevant” thanks to AI.
“There will still be constraints on power like electricity and mass,” Musk said. “But I think at some point currency becomes irrelevant.”
He linked it to the books of science fiction author Iain Banks, who wrote the Culture series between 1987 and 2012. Those books help “get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like,” he said.
Musk also mentioned the end of work itself, saying that it will be “optional,” like “playing sports or a video game.”
He compared the future of work to gardening. “It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables,” he said.”That will be what work is like: optional.”
Over the past few months, Musk has shared his vision for a future with AI. That includes ending poverty, something he described at a recent investor meeting.
“People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care,” Musk said at the shareholder event earlier this month. “There’s actually only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot.”
When AI and robotics, like Tesla’s Optimus, eliminate all work and money, the government should hand out a universal income, Musk told Joe Rogan in October.
That income shouldn’t just be a universal basic income — it should be a universal high income, he said.
“We’ll have, in a benign scenario, universal high income,” Musk said. “Anyone can have any products or services that they want. But there will be a lot of trauma and disruption along the way.”
After describing the future irrelevance of money at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, Musk ribbed his panelmate, Nvidia’s Huang.
“By the way, the Nvidia earnings call is today,” Musk said. Nvidia will report its third-quarter earnings after the closing bell.
“Since currency is irrelevant…,” Huang said.
“Cheers,” Musk said. The CEOs clinked their bottles of Acqua Panna.
