



Crystal ball: Musk’s forecast of nobody needing to work looks flaky but Keynes' life of leisure doesn’t
Elon Musk has predicted that in 10 to 20 years, work will become optional. He has done this umpteen times—in response to a New York Times article about Amazon, at a US-Saudi investment forum, in a conversation with Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath, at Viva Technology 2024 in Paris and the 2023 AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park.
“It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” Musk said. He also likened having a job to the more time-consuming task of farming a vegetable garden instead of going grocery shopping.
Musk believes that robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will deliver any goods and services you desire. In his view, humanoid robots like Tesla’s Optimus may grow to be the biggest industry.
According to Musk, AI and robotics could usher in an era in which all people are “far wealthier than the richest person on Earth.” Additionally, Musk has stated, “We probably won’t have money, and probably we will just have energy [and] power generation as de facto currency.” Musk, however, admitted that we must ensure that AI has a strong concern for truth and beauty.The English economist John Maynard Keynes made some daring and fascinating predictions in his 1930 article, ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’. Keynes foresaw a huge increase in earnings over the course of the following century as well as an unparalleled period of leisure brought about by improved standards of living during which people would “do more things for ourselves...
only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines.”“Three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!” Keynes remarked. But Musk now predicts a workless old Adam! A future without jobs would be more dystopian than utopian; as one
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