Billionaire technocrat Elon Musk believes that 10 to 20 years in the future, if the advances he envisions through artificial intelligence and robotics fructify, you don't need to save for retirement as all healthcare, housing and income needs will be met by an abundant society.
“One like side recommendation I have is, don't worry about squirreling money away for retirement. In 10 or 20 years, you won't need to save for retirement. If any of the things that we've said are true, saving for a retirement will be irrelevant,” he added.
Speaking on the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast, Elon Musk was optimistic that the future is going to be amazing with AI and robots enabling sustainable abundance.
WATCH: ‘Won’t need to save for retirement', says Elon Musk
On universal high-income future…
When asked about the rationale for optimism when people are concerned about jobs, healthcare, and cost-of-living, Elon Musk predicted that the future would have universal high income and social unrest because when people get all they want. He called himself “optimistic”.
“I think we're going to end up beyond abundance — beyond what people possibly could think of as abundance. AI and robots will saturate all human desire,” he added.
He also feels that in 10-20 years, AI will surpass human intelligence combined and take up more than half of today's jobs. But framed it as an optimistic future, where robots doing work increases productivity and reduced prices.
The advances could lead to such big productivity increases, he said, that they will surpass “what people possibly could think of as abundance.”
“We're talking about an abundant world, massive amounts of compute, universal high income. Like universal — you can have whatever you want — income. That's really what it amounts to,” he added.
‘Working will be optional, Goods free’: Elon Musk
Earlier in October, Elon Musk in a social media post said AI and robots will replace all the jobs in the world as humanity moves towards working on an optional basis. “AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store,” said Musk in his response to a social media post.
Prior to that, in an interview with United States Senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, he said that the goods and services available in the future of mankind will be almost free of cost. “Goods and services will become close to free. It's not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services. You have tens of billions of robots that will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing,” said Musk in the interview.
“It's not that people will have a lower standard of living, they'll actually have a much higher standard of living. The challenge will be fulfilment. How do you derive fulfilment and meaning in life?” Elon Musk told Ted Cruz.