David Bridges
Key Highlights
- Future work: Elon Musk predicts that in 10-20 years, work will be optional due to advancements in AI and robotics.
- Poverty elimination: Musk asserts that AI and humanoid robots will eliminate poverty and make money irrelevant.
- Contrasting views: Jensen Huang believes AI will make people busier rather than eliminate jobs.
- Economic implications: Musk’s vision raises questions about who would support individuals in a society without traditional jobs.
Elon Musk made some wild claims at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, insisting that his Optimus robot would fix poverty, people wouldn’t have to work in the future, and money would eventually become irrelevant. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, was also on stage and joked that he’d like Musk to give him a heads up just before currency no longer becomes a thing.
“AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty,” Musk claimed on Wednesday. “And Tesla won’t be the only one that makes them. I think Tesla will pioneer this, but there will be many other companies that make humanoid robots. But there is only basically one way to make everyone wealthy, and that is AI and robotics.”
The Tesla CEO has frequently insisted in recent months that his robots will deliver a kind of post-scarcity future where nobody has to work. The billionaire said it explicitly on Wednesday when asked about what he thinks the future holds for those who are concerned about AI and robots replacing jobs.
“My prediction is that work will be optional,” Musk said, noting that he was talking about 10-20 years from now.
The billionaire went on to take his now-common prediction even further, claiming that in such a world where robots are doing all the labor, money won’t exist anymore.
“I’d always recommend people read Iain Banks’ Culture books to get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like. And interestingly, in those books, money is no longer… doesn’t exist. It’s kind of interesting,” Musk said.
“My guess is, if you go out long enough, assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, the money will stop being relevant at some point in the future,” Musk continued.
The moderator of the discussion asked, “Jensen, any thoughts?” as the crowd laughed. “By the way, the Nvidia earnings call is later today,” Musk said, joining the laughter.
Huang shifted uncomfortably in his seat and laughed to himself with a kind of bewildered look. “And by the way, since currency is irrelevant…” Huang joked, trailing off. “Elon just wants to share with you breaking news.”
After a good laugh, Huang got serious again and sort of hedged on what Musk was saying. Huang has previously taken the opposite view of the crowd that insists there won’t be any work in the future. Back in August, Huang said that AI and automation will actually make everyone busier. Huang acknowledged that things would be different, including things like how students learn and how people do their work. But he stuck to his guns in predicting that people will actually just be busier because they can accomplish more of their goals.
“It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI. I’m gonna be busier as a result of AI,” said Huang. “And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we wanna pursue, so many things that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue. If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster, and so in the near term, I would say that there’s every evidence that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas.”
Huang then joked that since he texts with Musk often, he hopes the Tesla CEO will give him a heads up before currency is no longer relevant. Musk said, “You’ll see it coming.”
Musk is constantly talking about how the robots he’s developing at Tesla, known as Optimus, are the key to eliminating poverty. But, as we’ve written before, this is probably his most ridiculous lie. Improving efficiency doesn’t redistribute wealth. Musk never addresses who will be paying Americans to just sit around and do nothing while billions of robots actually perform the labor. Is it the government? Because that would require a massive change in political and economic structures.
And why should we believe Musk, of all people, wants to pay people for sitting around? This is the man who stormed into the federal government earlier this year with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and decided that too many people were taking advantage of government benefits. He’s also the guy who has called the word homeless a “propaganda word” for “violent drug addicts.”
Musk frequently tries to suggest that people experiencing homelessness don’t have jobs, even though somewhere between 40 and 60% of people who don’t have housing are employed, according to government estimates. He does not give a fuck about poverty. He cares about making more money and is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. And he never talks about the mechanism by which his utopian idea for a leisure society would actually work.
The ideas Musk promotes were extremely common in 20th-century futurism. And it’s clear that’s where he’s drawing his inspiration, even citing Iain Banks and his utopian Culture series of books on Wednesday. But none of it makes sense unless you establish some kind of radical socialist or communist entity at the heart of this vision to distribute the necessities to live.
Musk wants to sell you his robots, and that makes sense in our current economic system. But after he sells you a robot, it doesn’t follow that the person who owns that robot would no longer have to work. It’s a bit like imagining that all of the appliances in your home right now are somehow paying for themselves. They’re not. They may improve your life, but they don’t institute a political or economic system whereby people no longer have to work. If all wealth is derived from robots in this imaginary system Musk creates, he would have to be the one redistributing his wealth to pay for everyone else not working.
The end of the discussion with Musk and Huang was a good reminder of where we’re actually situated here in 2025. The Saudi moderator said “my boss and your bosses is going to talk next,” referring to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and President Donald Trump. The two tech executives didn’t vocally object to Donald Trump being called their “boss.” But it stripped away the fantasy Musk seemed to be engaged in about robotics and AI delivering utopia anytime soon.
Trump and MBS have no plans to let people sit around and get paid for doing nothing. And they’re building a future where that could never conceivably happen.
