So you’ve climbed the ladder to a comfortable six-figure salary. Or maybe you’ve got hundreds of thousands in cash in the bank — or invested in stocks and retirement accounts. According to Elon Musk, none of this might matter for very long.
The richest person in the world believes that money itself is on borrowed time. In a future workforce dominated by artificial intelligence and robotics, Musk says wages will become non-existent and thus cash will become irrelevant.
“I think money is going away as a concept, frankly,” the SpaceX and Tesla founder said in an episode of People from WTF podcast.
“It’s kind of weird, but in a future where anyone can have anything, you no longer need money as a database for labor allocation. If AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer needed. Its relevance drops dramatically.”
Essentially, if robots can build houses, grow food, manufacture goods, and even provide services like health care and education at near-zero cost, then wages are no longer the mechanism that determines who gets what.
Musk pointed Culture series by Iain M. Banks as his best “imagining” of this world. Science fiction novels describe a utopian future where citizens can have virtually anything they want thanks to artificial intelligence – making money obsolete and leaving citizens free to spend their time doing whatever they like.
It’s a future Musk has repeatedly returned to. Even two years ago, when ChatGPT was relatively new, he was telling former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that “AI will be able to do everything” and that work will effectively become “like a hobby.”
But Musk’s vision leaves unanswered questions that go beyond science fiction. If money disappears, what decides who has access to scarce resources – for example, the bigger house in the better location?
Also, the billionaire did not set an exact time frame When society will no longer need cash to buy food, real estate, and other basic necessities. But his bold claims about when the work will be done suggest that such a shift could take place within the next decade.
“In less than 20 years, but maybe even 10 or 15 years, advances in AI and robotics will get us to the point where work is optional,” Musk said.
Technologies such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini have already alleviated the burden of time-consuming work such as data cleansing, summarizing and other administrative tasks. By 2029, a survey last year found that AI will save workers up to 12 hours a week. Still, workers have heard such promises before.