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Elon Musk has always had ambitious thoughts about the future, with some of those ideas bordering on the fantastical. In a recent chat at the US-Saudi Investment Forum, he once again shared his thoughts about the speculative possibilities opened by AI and robotics about a world where money, work, and poverty might no longer exist.
While sitting next to the CEO of NVIDIA, Musk stated, "money will no longer matter", and that the only limits to "progress" would be constraints on physical resources like material and energy. He went so far as to say, "money" would no longer have meaning. His ideas seem ripped from the pages of science fiction, especially those of Iain Banks' Culture novels, which Musk describes as "one plausible vision of a positive future scenes led by artificial intelligence".
He imagines a scenario where there is no survival mechanism which could be better described as "work". Instead, he believes there will be other pursuits people do for enjoyment, gardening and sports. He even goes along to speculate that AI will not only create jobs from existing labor, but it will make poverty obsolete and also create "health care for everyone" and "a reasonable standard of living of everyone".
However, not everyone believes Musk’s ambitions for the future will become reality. Critics claim Musk’s utopia assumes technology will solve profound social inequity issue, and Musk’s emphasis on utilizing robots, like Tesla’s Optimus, is misplaced focus on the real challenges we’re facing now.
Therefore, while we may see a Musk future unfold, the larger question is: is it a real vision for the future or simply a dream for the ultra wealthy?