Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma seems to be backing Elon Musk's recent backing of artificial intelligence (AI), where he has been saying that AI would eliminate poverty.
He first made the comments at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, where US President Donald Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Associated Press reported.
“I see poverty as more of an engineering problem than an unsolvable social issue. With Grok and Optimus, we could solve the labor shortage, drive costs to near zero, and create a future where poverty is statistically irrelevant,” he said at the forum.
“The scale of what's coming over the next decade is really easy to underestimate,” he said.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who quoted one of Elon Musk's posts on X, said: ‘AI for poverty elimination!’
His comments ignited an intense social media discussion.
“He is saying replace all corrupt minds with AI. world will heal,” a person commented.
“AI will only increases the gap between poor and rich,” another argued.
Elon Musk's take on AI and poverty
Elon Musk, who was himself commenting on an X post backing him, reiterated poverty will be eliminated.
“There are two kinds of poverty: absolute and relative. Elon is right that we can solve absolute poverty. In fact, we largely already have, especially in the developed world. Relative poverty is about envy. It’s a spiritual rather than economic problem and will always be with us,” the post said.
“Poverty can and will be eliminated, but envy is eternal,” Musk said.
Speaking at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, Elon Musk said AI can be used to eradicate poverty.
He said currency will become “irrelevant” and jobs will be “optional” because AI and humanoid robots will become massively productive.
“Currency becomes irrelevant. There will still be constraints like electricity and mass, but money will stop being relevant,” the xAI chief said.
Musk predicted that the transformation will get well into work within the next two decades.
“I don't know what long-term is, maybe it's 10, 20 years or something like that. My prediction is that work will be optional,” he added.
With robots doing the bulk of labour, “work will be optional like growing your own food instead of buying it” and people will take up jobs based on passion and not for the need of money, Musk said.
“It will be like playing sports or a video game or something like that. If you want to work in the same way, you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you could grow vegetables in your backyard. It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables,” he said.