Musk Predicts AI Will Lead to Abundance When AGI Arrives

Elon Musk says AI will eventually become so advanced that it will lead to worldwide abundance.

The multibillionaire businessman made these remarks last week on the podcast Moonshots With Peter Diamandis, saying that artificial intelligence’s (AI) advancements will bring about a world in which people no longer need to save for retirement.

“Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won’t matter,” Musk said, arguing that AI will bring about people having a “universal you-can-have-whatever-you-want income.”

“My best guess for how this will manifest is that prices will…drop. So as the efficiency of production or the provision of services drops, prices will drop,” the Tesla chief added.

“I mean prices in dollar terms are the ratio between the output of goods and services and the money supply. So if your output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation, or vice versa,” added Musk, whose other companies include the AI startup xAI.

In addition, Musk predicted the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that can perform at or above the level of humans.

“I think we’ll hit AGI next year in ‘26,” he said. “I’m confident by 2030, AI will exceed the intelligence of all humans combined.”

As PYMNTS wrote last year, fear of a day in which AI overtakes humanity in terms of intelligence is at the root of Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI.

“It all started, according to the 2024 suit, in 2012 when Musk was giving Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, an AI research lab, a tour of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California, facility. They discussed the greatest threats facing society,” the report said.

Hassabis listed AI advancements among those threats, the complaint says. Computing circles have long theorized about an event known as the “singularity,” in which technology substantially surpasses human intelligence, with unclear outcomes for humanity.

“Following this conversation with Mr. Hassabis, Mr. Musk became increasingly concerned about the potential of AI to become super-intelligent, surpass human intelligence, and threaten humanity,” the complaint reads.

These concerns, the suit says, led Musk to Sam Altman and the founding of OpenAI. The basis for the suit is Musk’s claim that Altman has diverged from the company’s initial non-profit mission. A judge ruled last week that the suit can proceed to trial. OpenAI has called Musk’s suit “baseless” and part of a “campaign of harassment.”