Elon Musk predicts work will be ‘optional,’ money ‘irrelevant’ due to AI

Dubai: Tech billionaire Elon Musk predicted that within the next 10 to 20 years, advances in artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics will make human work "optional" and render currency "irrelevant" at a panel discussion.

Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and Space X, offered the bold forecast on Monday while speaking at the US-Saudi Investment Forum, arguing that AI and robots like the developing Tesla Optimus will be the key to eliminating poverty worldwide.

"My prediction is that work will be optional," Musk stated during the panel, which also included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The billionaire clarified that the transition would take "a lot of work to get to that point," but suggested that eventually, working would be comparable to a hobby.

He explained the concept with a simple analogy, noting that future work would be "like playing sports or a video game or something like that." He added: "If you want to work in the same way, like you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you could grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables."

Musk, who has consistently championed the potential of his company's Optimus robots to solve global poverty, further suggested that money itself would eventually be phased out.

"My guess is, if you go out long enough, assuming there's a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, then money will stop being relevant at some point in the future," he said. The constraints would shift from capital to fundamental physics, such as "power, electricity and mass."

The tech magnate pointed to the work of science fiction author Iain Banks, specifically his Culture series, as a reference for what a "probable positive AI future is like." For Musk, the end result of these technological advancements is a world where currency becomes insignificant.