Elon Musk, photographed on May 21, 2025 at the White House, on one of his last days in the administration of President Donald Trump, PHOTO: Jim LoScalzo, Pool via CNP / The Mega Agency / Profimedia
In 10-20 years, people will no longer need to work, but some will choose to do it as a hobby. After all, no one will care about money anymore. This is how the CEO of Tesla and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, describes the not-so-distant future.
“My prediction is that work will be optional. It will be like playing sports or video games or something like that,” Musk said at the US-Arab Investment Forum in Washington, according to Fortune. “If you want to work, it will be the same as today you can go to the supermarket and just buy vegetables, but you can also grow vegetables in your home garden. It's much harder to grow vegetables, and some people still do it because they like it.”
This future of voluntary work will be the result of millions of robots being used in the workforce, bringing a wave of productivity, Musk explained.
In the future he envisions, money won't be a problem. Musk is adopting Scottish author Iain M. Banks' idea from his science fiction series “Culture” about an artificially intelligent world without traditional work. “In those books, money doesn't exist. It's pretty interesting. And I think over time — if there's a steady improvement in artificial intelligence and robotics, which is likely — money will stop being an issue.”
In 2024, Musk had talked about a “high universal income” that would support a world where work would no longer be necessary. A universal basic income, with regular payments to people given unconditionally by governments, was also discussed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“There will be no shortage of goods or services,” Musk explains.
He also aims to transform Tesla from a carmaker into a company that better fits his vision of a robotic future, one that will come with the help of artificial intelligence. He aims for 80% of the company's value to come from the Optimus robots it is developing, even as Tesla faces constant delays in the production of its humanoid robots.
According to Musk, the advance of automation will also have other benefits. In a recent interview on Peter Diamandis' podcast, the Tesla CEO estimated that within a decade there will be more robots in the medical sector than surgeons, and the level of medical services provided will be higher than that enjoyed by the President of the United States today.
After all, in the future that Musk envisions, people will need medical care for longer because, as he estimated, the issue of human lifespan is simply a matter of programming, meaning that artificial intelligence could allow humans to achieve immortality.
“You're programmed to die. But if you change the schedule, you'll live longer,” Musk said.
