In Future, Working Will Be Optional: Elon Musk On AI
People may instead be provided with a financial safety net, which he called 'Universal High Income'.
Billionaire Elon Musk believes that artificial intelligence would render working an "optional activity" for humans
"In the future, it won't be the case that you might be in a city to get a job. My prediction is that in the future, working will be optional," the tech entrepreneur told Nikhil Kamath in the latest episode of the Zerodha co-founder's WTF podcast. "I say that in less than 10 years, working at all will be optional."
Musk stated that some people might still want to be around a lot of people and choose to stay or move to a village, while others might not, predicting that it may be a matter of personal choice, instead of a financial decision.
Musk said that this would be similar to choosing between obtaining food through farming or through supermarkets.
"In 10 or 15 years, the advancements in AI and robotics will make working optional, like you can grow your own vegetables in the garden, or go to the store to buy them," he said.
Musk stated that people may instead be provided with a financial safety net, which he called 'Universal High Income', stating that due to the abundance of goods and services, that governments could afford to distribute high levels of income, in lieu of jobs.
"If everybody gets UHI, and everybody has enough. We're really headed into the singularity," Musk said.
The term 'singularity" is used to describe the hypothetical point in the future when AI growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in changes to human society that people can't predict.
"At a certain point, AI will saturate what humans can think of," he said. "AI and robotics will start doing things for AI and robotics because they've already done things to make people happy."
Musk also spoke about automative advancements in his ventures, especially about the self-driving feature in Tesla. "Tesla is the world leader in real-world AI, I would say."
He also said that he would also be starting production on the helper Android, 'Optimus', in the coming year. He compared it to droids R2D2 and C3PO from the space fantasy franchise 'Star Wars'.
