Sorry six-figure earners: Elon Musk says money will ‘disappear’ in the future as AI makes work (and salaries) irrelevant
According to Elon Musk, six-figure earners may soon find their money becoming obsolete. The world’s richest person believes that in a future workforce dominated by artificial intelligence and robotics, salaries will become nonexistent, and therefore, cash will fade into irrelevance.
Meanwhile, Musk pointed to The Culture series by Iain M. Banks as his best “imagining” of this world. The science fiction novels depict a utopian future where citizens can have virtually anything they want thanks to AI—making money obsolete and leaving citizens free to spend their time doing whatever they love.
However, Musk’s vision leaves unanswered questions that go beyond science fiction. If money disappears, what decides who gets access to scarce resources—for example, the larger home in the better location?
The key to unlocking Musk’s utopian vision sits in the hands of the government
Technologies such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini have already alleviated the burden of some time-consuming work, such as data cleaning, summarization, and other administrative tasks. By 2029, one survey last year found that AI will save workers up to 12 hours per week.
Consequently, workers have heard such promises before. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would allow people to work just 15 hours a week by 2030. Productivity did soar. Leisure time did not.
Moreover, what makes this moment different is the rate of change that’s happening right now. AI isn’t a distant theory or a piece of science fiction—it’s here, and it’s moving at a pace that worries even Bill Gates and the man behind ChatGPT, Sam Altman.
Will we see a future where work is optional?
According to Musk, in less than 20 years—but maybe even as little as 10 or 15 years—the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional. But with the “right policies” in place, workers could enjoy life like the upper echelons of society: materially secure, largely unemployed, and free to fill their days with pursuits beyond paid labor.
In addition, Vinod Khosla, the billionaire cofounder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in companies like Amazon, Google, and OpenAI, echoed that the key to unlocking Musk’s utopian future sits in the hands of governments. He wrote that AI will outperform humans at most jobs, faster and cheaper, reducing the need for human labor altogether.
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