Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, said money will become largely irrelevant within a decade as artificial intelligence and robotics generate a surplus of goods and services beyond what humans can consume.
“Money won’t matter in 2036,” Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, told The Economist in an interview.
Musk said the shift would be driven by machines producing far more than people need. “What do you want money for? You want money for goods and services, right?
If robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for in that case?” he said.
He argued that mass automation would not necessarily cause economic hardship, predicting instead what he called a “universal high income” as AI systems take over tasks currently performed by human workers.
Musk also said China could become a dominant force in artificial intelligence, citing the country’s expanding computing capacity and progress by Chinese technology firms despite comparatively limited computing resources.
Musk separately addressed his role in U.S. politics, saying he became “a little too involved in politics” after backing President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Trump named Musk senior adviser and co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting body that ceased operations earlier this month.
Musk said the department was created to curb wasteful and fraudulent government spending, adding, “I got a lot of flak from this.”
Responding to accusations that he holds racist views, Musk said his partner is half Indian and that the couple have four children together, one of them named after an Indian physicist. He said his companies have “senior executives of all races.”
Asked about accusations that he holds anti-Muslim views, Musk said his objection was to people who bring “antithetical views” to Western societies.
“I’m against rape and murder, I’m against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve come to accept in the West,” he said.
Musk said he was unconcerned by public criticism.
“Maybe some people do loathe me, and that’s probably true, I don’t care,” he said, adding that his roughly 250 million followers on X suggested “a lot more people actually like me than don’t.”
