Elon Musk has rolled out another bold prediction: within the next two decades, he believes most people will treat work as an option rather than a necessity, as advances in artificial intelligence and robotics take over productive labor, pushing money into the background and putting energy at the center of how we measure value.

Whenever Elon Musk speaks, things tend to get complicated fast. The South African-born billionaire is involved in numerous technology sectors, and his involvement has not only made him the richest person on the planet, but his comments alone are enough to grab headlines and dominate front pages around the world. Now that artificial intelligence is rapidly spreading across multiple industries, Musk has taken it upon himself to outline what he sees as humanity’s future, and for him, it all points in the same direction: in his words, “work will be optional.”

According to Musk, within the next twenty years, having a job will be more of a personal choice than an economic obligation. He argues that the combined progress of AI and robotics will cover almost any productive task people perform today. In his view, this is not just about shorter workweeks, but about a fundamental shift in how we relate to work itself: people will no longer need to earn a living in the traditional sense to survive, and employment will move much closer to being a lifestyle decision than a basic requirement.

Elon Musk, The Age Of Abundance And The Power Of Energy

For Musk, AI and humanoid robots will usher in an “era of abundance,” a time when people can access virtually any product or service they desire. As he puts it, “if you can imagine it, you can have it”, a phrase that nods to visionaries like Walt Disney or Enzo Ferrari. That is why he is less interested in classic universal basic income schemes and more focused on what he calls “universal high income,” a scenario in which living standards soar without being tied to conventional employment in the way we know it today.

Looking further ahead, Musk goes so far as to suggest that money itself could “disappear as a concept.” If AI is capable of satisfying almost all human needs, he argues, there is no longer any need for money to function as the database that allocates human labor. Instead, he believes the real unit of value in the future will be energy, pointing out that you cannot legislate or decree energy into existence. In his view, the true measure of a civilization is how much energy it can capture and use effectively.

Musk describes this horizon as a kind of singularity, a point at which technological change produces outcomes that are nearly impossible to predict, leaving us unsure about what comes next. During the interview, he repeatedly cites technologies developed by his own companies as the engines of that future society: Tesla’s self-driving vehicles, xAI’s artificial intelligence work, and the Optimus humanoid robot. He claims these technologies are likely to become commonplace if they ever reach large-scale production, but he also admits that his ideal of a low-workload future depends on enormous effort and investment in the present.

At the same time, Musk’s vision comes with a caveat he openly acknowledges. He admits he does not know what people will do with themselves once mandatory work disappears and the traditional structure of daily life breaks apart. Despite that uncertainty, he remains convinced that the convergence of SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI toward “solar-powered AI satellites” and maximal use of the sun’s energy is the logical next step. In a twist that may surprise some, the world’s richest man is no longer talking primarily about money, but about how much energy we can generate and harness.

Source: 3djuegos