Musk says AI could make money less important by 2036

🔍 WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
Elon Musk’s post-scarcity prediction goes far beyond cheaper AI. For Europeans, the real questions concern jobs, ownership, energy, infrastructure and who benefits if automation delivers extraordinary productivity.

KEY TAKEAWAYS...

● Musk argues AI and robots could make money largely irrelevant by 2036.

● Cheaper production would not necessarily eliminate scarcity in housing, energy, land or infrastructure.

● Europe is already committing enormous capital to the physical systems required for advanced AI.

● Ownership and distribution may matter as much as technological capability during any transition towards greater abundance.

E lon Musk has put a remarkably short deadline on one of technology’s oldest utopian ideas.

“Money won’t matter in 2036,” he told Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, while describing a future in which artificial intelligence and robots produce goods and services on such a scale that conventional economic scarcity begins to disappear.

The proposition goes far beyond predicting that AI will make companies more productive. Musk is arguing that automation could eventually undermine the reason people need money at all.

“What do you want money for?” Musk asked Beddoes. His argument is that people need it to obtain food, housing, transport, entertainment and other goods and services. If robots and AI eventually provide more than humans could consume, he asks, why would money retain its present importance?

That reasoning also leads Musk towards an unusual prediction about prices. He argues that sufficiently rapid growth in goods and services could outstrip growth in the money supply, creating deflationary rather than inflationary pressure.

When Beddoes challenged him over how people would survive if machines displaced their jobs, Musk suggested that governments could simply issue payments.