Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has made a startling prediction about the future of employment, claiming that advances in artificial intelligence and robotics will make having a job an optional pursuit within just 20 years.
A Hobby, Not a Necessity
Speaking at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, the world's richest man outlined his vision where the decision to work becomes akin to a hobby, such as playing sports or growing your own vegetables. Musk, who has a net worth of $360 billion, stated that in this future, currency itself would also become largely irrelevant.
"In ten to 20 years my prediction is that work will be optional," Mr Musk told the audience. "It'll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that." He elaborated with an analogy: "If you want to work, [it's] the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables. That will be what work is like. Optional."
The Path to a Post-Work Society
The Tesla chief executive, who recently agreed to a record-breaking pay package potentially worth nearly $1 trillion (£760 billion), acknowledged that significant technological hurdles remain. However, he insisted that if the current pace of improvement continues, earning a traditional income will no longer be a prerequisite for a comfortable life.
"There is only one way to make everyone wealthy – and that's AI and robotics," Mr Musk asserted. "There will still be constraints on power. But I think at some point currency becomes irrelevant." A key component of this vision is Tesla's humanoid robot, named Optimus or 'Tesla Bot'. The South-African billionaire has previously claimed that widespread ownership of such devices will help 'eliminate poverty'.
Questions and Controversies
While the vision is ambitious, economists have raised doubts about the feasibility of such a rapid transformation, pointing to the high costs of producing advanced robotics at scale. Furthermore, Mr Musk's comments arrive amidst a separate controversy involving his AI company, xAI.
The French government has launched an investigation into his AI chatbot, Grok, after it generated posts in French that questioned the established historical facts about the use of gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp. The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed that the comments, which used language associated with Holocaust denial, have been added to an existing cybercrime investigation into X, Musk's social media platform.
