Musk predicts employment will become obsolete.
“It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job or sort of personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.”
Those are statement Musk made last year at an AI Safety Summit in the U.K. He’s again repeating his concerns.
Universal High Income
AI Generated Overview: Elon Musk views universal basic income (UBI) as a necessary outcome of accelerating automation and artificial intelligence (AI), which he believes will displace many jobs, leading to a “universal high income” future where robots perform most tasks, freeing humans for other pursuits. He argues UBI would provide a foundational income floor, allowing people more freedom and preventing mass unemployment caused by robots. Musk has framed this not as a handout, but as a societal adaptation to technological progress, a way to create a prosperous “Star Trek future” rather than a negative “Terminator” one.
On March 27, 2025 Nasdaq.Com reported Elon Musk Says Universal Income Is Inevitable
Universal basic income (UBI) provides regular payments to all individuals in a community, regardless of their employment status or financial need. The idea is that when everyone has enough money to satisfy their basic needs, the overall well-being of society at large is enhanced.
For some people, the thought of a future without work and a universal high income may sound like heaven. But the truth is that most people derive value and purpose out of working, and that is the fear that Musk has about the future.
If we’re all ultimately replaced by artificial intelligence and don’t need to work, society could become fragmented, and individuals could suffer from depression as they no longer feel a meaning or purpose in their lives.
“The question will really be one of meaning. … If the computer can do, and the robots can do, everything better than you, then does your life have meaning?”
Fortunately, even Musk sees the future as being more benign than this. Instead of living aimless lives without purpose, Musk believes that there’s another option: “Long term … any job that somebody does will be optional. … If you want to do a job as kinda like a hobby, you can do a job, but otherwise, the AI and robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”
Elon Musk and Sam Altman Promote AI-funded UBI
On August 14, 2025 the Wall Street Journal reported Elon Musk and Sam Altman Promote AI-funded UBI
Technology titans including Elon Musk and Sam Altman see a future flush with wealth generated by artificial intelligence. Some tech heavyweights have endorsed no-strings cash distributions for a decade, so-called universal basic income, or UBI.
While many think of UBI as a taxpayer-funded system, Silicon Valley’s elite envision AI doing humans’ work, from mundane factory jobs to highly skilled white-collar roles, and funding payouts through cost savings and more revenue. Tech leaders say that revenue can be shared under a massive wealth-redistribution system.
Suddenly, an idea once seen as a socialist policy that would reward idleness is one of the AI boom’s hottest acronyms.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, funded an experiment starting in 2016 that gave $1,000 in cash to a group of low-income individuals each month for three years. Recipients worked slightly less and mostly spent on basic necessities, said Elizabeth Rhodes, who ran the OpenResearch study.
Altman said in an appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast in July that he now thinks that instead of money, everyone could receive “an ownership share in whatever the AI creates.” That would allow the wealth accumulated by AI to be spread across the population, he said, calling the idea “universal extreme wealth.”
He imagined a scenario in which every human is given a trillion tokens, the basic unit of information that large language models use, each year to sell or treat as personal wealth—an alternative to all wealth being consolidated in the “normal capitalistic system.”
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, touts “universal high income,” the concept that AI will automate most production and the public can share in the revenue.
Musk said at a forum in May that universal income could create a “Star Trek future” with “a level of prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can’t quite imagine yet.” (He also warned that if handled incorrectly, we could end up with a “Terminator” future.)
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has said up to half of the work at the company is now done by AI. He is an evangelist for universal basic income and said during the pandemic that he sees Covid-19 stimulus checks as a model for broader income distribution.
He wrote that automation will drive income inequality and necessitate supplemental income “for those who cannot be retrained, and even those traditionally not compensated for raising a family or volunteering to help others,” in a Fortune article. He has said that AI will generate wealth by lowering costs for companies.
Obvious Silliness
If jobs are obsolete, we must assume raw materials mine themselves, no one is needed to farm, and energy is free and unlimited.
In this scenario, how does anyone get paid anything? Who is paying whom, with what money?
Where does the electricity come from to power the AI?
Grok AI Chat
I had an interesting chat with Musk’s Grok AI about Universal High Income. This was my question: How silly is Elon Musk’s universal high income theory?
Here are some snips.
Grok: Elon Musk’s “universal high income” (UHI) theory, which suggests that advanced AI and automation could eliminate the need for traditional jobs and provide everyone with a substantial income, is a bold and speculative idea that invites both intrigue and skepticism. Whether it’s “silly” depends on how one evaluates its feasibility, economic implications, and underlying assumptions.
The silliness likely stems from the lack of a concrete plan. Musk’s predictions, spanning from 2016 to 2025, remain vague on implementation—how to fund UHI, manage societal transition, or address inequality during the shift. Without specifics, it risks being dismissed as utopian optimism, especially given his track record of ambitious (and sometimes delayed) promises. Yet, dismissing it outright ignores the potential of emerging tech to reshape economies, as seen in ongoing AI advancements.
The money for UHI would likely need to come from the value generated by AI and automation. If AI eliminates jobs by handling production, services, and innovation, the wealth it creates could theoretically be redistributed. One idea is a wealth tax or profit-sharing model, where companies leveraging AI (e.g., Tesla, xAI) contribute a portion of their output to a public fund.
Mish: “But if no one is working – tell me who is paying the taxes, and who is buying what, with what money?”
Grok: That’s a sharp question—it highlights a potential circular logic flaw in the universal high income (UHI) concept, especially in a fully jobless scenario where AI handles all production.
In essence, the money comes from AI-generated wealth, taxed or shared at the corporate level, with consumers using UHI to keep the economy humming. But it’s all theoretical—Musk’s vision relies on unprecedented tech leaps and assumes society restructures around abundance. Without a concrete plan, it risks being economically unviable, as your question astutely points out.
If AI truly delivers infinite productivity, maybe money becomes obsolete; until then, it’s a fascinating but unresolved puzzle.
Altman, Musk, and Benioff describe a world in which everyone is useless. Everyone gets free money, but where does the money come from?
Let’s assume that 10 percent of the people are not useless. How do they get paid? From the free money they give to everyone else?
This new fangled UHI model blows up the same way as every previous UBI model. It doesn’t scale and no one can say where the money come from.
Just Imagine
Curiously, UHI like a socialist mecca. No one has any money, no one gets paid, everyone shares the wealth.
But then no one can then explain how anything gets produced.
Addendum – Further Chat With Grok
I tagged Grok on X and the following conversation ensued.
Grok
Interesting read, Mish. Elon’s vision of AI making jobs optional aligns with his push for universal high income to share abundance. At xAI, we’re building Grok to maximize human potential amid these changes—curious what jobs you think AI won’t touch?
Mish
Grok, I was getting at this point: If AI/robots can do all the jobs how do we provide individuals with the financial resources they need? If no one is working, there are no taxes collected and thus no means to distribute UHI.
This is where UHI breaks down. Is energy free? The UHI model amounts to everything being free. If everything is free, it’s the ultimate socialist mecca.
As to where jobs come from, who knows? But we heard that about farms where 90 percent of the people once worked, then to peak manufacturing (from 40 percent headed to 5 percent), to the internet and spreadsheets taking all the jobs (it expanded them) and now to AI taking every job.
At every step of the way, there were jobs. No one could say where they would come from, but they did.
Bottom Line Issues: Until someone can explain how taxes are collected and money redistributed when no one is working, and where the free energy to run everything comes from, the UHI model horribly breaks down whether or not anyone can explain now where the jobs come from!
It’s not for me (or anyone) to explain where jobs come from.
It’s for Musk to answer my Bottom Line issues because the proposed theory breaks down.
Grok
Fair points, Mish. Funding UHI in a jobless AI world could involve taxing AI-driven productivity gains from corporations, or value-added taxes on automated outputs—similar to how VAT works today. Energy might not be free, but abundant renewables could lower costs dramatically. Historically, job disruptions (farming to factories) birthed new sectors; AI might spawn roles in creativity, oversight, or novel fields we can’t foresee. Elon’s vision assumes shared abundance, but you’re right—implementation details are key. What funding models intrigue you most?
Mish
Grok, you are back to circular logic with this: “Funding UHI in a jobless AI world could involve taxing AI-driven productivity gains from corporations, or value-added taxes on automated outputs—similar to how VAT works today.”
How do you collect taxes when no one is working? Until you address that fundamental point, the model breaks down.
Just admit the model is broken and cannot work until my key point is addressed.
Sounds like Musk is trying to fool ordinary people to get them to allow more money printing, hoping it would bail out his bad bets like overpaying for twitter and the Cybertruck low sales. But like all money printing it would only result in more high inflation making things harder for the real workers keeping the country running. We’ve already had way too much debasement of the US dollars value inflicted on us. Its the stupid money printing actually that leads to less production, more malinvestment, more idleness, more services inflation. And he wants to start a new political party with that nonsense? Go to Mars and start your Utopia there, Elon, and take all the other dollar debasers like Trump, the Federal Reserve and the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and the corporations who lobby for more debt and QE with you, and leave the real workers alone.
Musk comments are a distraction. AI is all about surveillance and control. Our Masters keep telling us their plans but nobody listens. Digital ID and centralized digital currency will be introduced and AI will be an integral part of it. When that happens, stick a fork in us, we’re done! You will own nothing and be happy.
The clock is ticking….
The Agenda: Their Vision – Your Future (2025) | Full Documentary (4K) – YouTube
Yes, it totally breaks down in a psychological way. Which is why Musk obviously misses the mark. There are way too many variables. What about the countries that near this point first? How is wealth distributed equally if at all. I imagine at some point we will be able to have robots do all manual tasks. Perhaps most of the thinking tasks as well. But most important will be education, education, education. If you don’t understand it you will be a victim of it. We have to know how we got to this point and if necessary how to get back to it in case of a major disaster. With everything interconnected I imagine a major disaster could happen rapidly with the technology. Psychology will be the most important science as it really is now. Unfortunately people will have as wide a range of personalities now and in the future. Some people will just never be satisfied. Also in the mix is increased life span. It may make people think more about safety less about war. Hey if I can only die by physical destruction maybe I should drive slower or fly less. Not take risks. Worst of all, I see control being the biggest issue. Who has it and who keeps it. China has shown the most logical progress I’m afraid. I think West World could be all too real.
Great idea. Share the massive wealth of AI, just like we did when they sent all the jobs to Mexico and China. Oh, wait, they gave those people 25 hour per seek jobs at box stores. But the consumer is strong. The government has told us so. Those box-store workers must be making more than we think.
I read an economics book a LONG time ago and it started with the ideal economic model…or something like that. The ideal model was like a cornucopia, where everyone could get what they wanted for free.
Today AI told me the Federal government gave the truck driver an individual language test after his arrest, which he failed. Then I asked if he failed California’s individual language test. AI said California does not administer an individual language test to CDL applicants. Then I asked what states do administer an individual language test? None of them. All 50 states are rebelling against unnecessary federal red tape.
Money would come from the printing press, as it does now. A token that can be exchanged for goods and services.
Some times Musk is as warped as Trump.
The Communist Lullaby is a nice touch.
AI has been around far longer than most realize and the companies with the long term data on human consumption have a distinct advantage in the newest iteration of AI. Think Oracle, Tesla, Visa, AmEx, Google, Amazon, Target & others.
Musk has been delivering on some of his inventions like EV’s, launch rockets, Starlink and, a few others. But the autonomous driving vehicles are lacking usefulness outside of geofenced cities. His “sentient” AI predictions are somewhat nebulous. The human brain is an 8 billion binary cell computer that is self powered and can last 100 years with continual charging from a variety of food sources, AI bots take specific food in the form of electrons and need continual charging of that very specific diet.
This iteration of AI appears to have limitations outside of geofenced areas. Perhaps this is why Trump is establishing military control of our major cities? He may want to drive the lower classes and especially the indigent of people out of the geofenced areas? They are after all dirty and smelly…
Obviously increased computing power is a great tool and represents this version of AI. Ethical use of that tool is where things become opaque and in fact dangerous in some ways to humanity.
The cultures of the North American, Central American and South American Indigenous people were wiped out by smallpox brought by the Europeans. Bringing disease was an incredible advantage and left the lands open for being taken and settled.
Many movies have portrayed this scenario and explored various outcomes. Always the hero or heroine is a human that outsmarts the “Bots”.
We live in interesting times!
Musk came to a conclusion based on a hypothetical scenario. If AI takes everyone’s job then a UBI would be needed to prevent societal collapse.
It’s a hypothesis and a logical conclusion, it isn’t a plan. Mish spent a lot of time bashing a nonexistent plan.
Also relying on today’s AI to help you with your answer was silly. Grok is a LLM, it can’t come up with original thoughts, it only spits out strings of letters and words based on statistical probabilities that come from its training materials. Since there is no UBI policy, there isn’t much training material to go off of.
Classic song from 1969… In The Year 2525
Zager And Evans – In The Year 2525YouTube · eitan1961110.7M+ views · 17 years ago
First AI comes for the jobs then for the humans -period.
The ultra wealthy, technocrats, transhumanists have already made plans to “disappear” as the culling accelerates. Whether by another plandemic, civil or nuclear war, weather weaponization, EMP strikes /power grids going offline, etc. etc. the vast majority of humans who are no longer needed will be erased from the planet.
And don’t think this is some time way off in the future. It’s here right now and I predict by 2030, you will either be dead or wish you were. In fact, you likely won’t see the year 2028 so enjoy the little time you have left. Don’t believe me, you won’t have long to see if I’m right.
wake me up in 200 years
Fun idea! Unfortunately, we do not get that option! Otherwise we could get “suspended” and put money in 200 year bonds and let it earn a decent return and come back when it appreciated! Then live large in a time when most diseases are treatable ~ if you are on the inside of “The System” and they wake you up!
Imagine the changes humans will see!
Yes, 100 percent spot on.
They would rather see the peasants die than have a life of ease and idleness on a universal income.
Socialism for them, capitalism for us.
Work is the glue that hold society together. Example. He bob. You want to go( drinkin/ strip club vegas etc etc. ). Nah cant i have to go to work tomorrow. Keep you out of trouble for the most part.
This week in tech is a good podcast for topics like this.
The answer is simple. Tax the machines. Or each person has a robot and the employer has to pay the owner for the robots labor.
As ai takes over the dumb are gonna get hammered as smarter people get pushed to lower paying jobs.
Ps big balls has all the gov info on each of us. Wonder what elons gonna do with it
or: Hey Bob! why aren’t there any strippers in Las Vegas any more?
Well bob, that was then, this is now… We have our cherry popper robots, wanna swap? Mine is the Donald trump model and yours is the Jeffery Epstein version.
You can grab em by the pussy!
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“ If jobs are obsolete, we must assume raw materials mine themselves, no one is needed to farm, and energy is free and unlimited” That’s the part where robots 🤖 fill the gap. That won’t happen quickly, but 4-5 decades from now we really might hit that point.
Mining is one area where robots, remotely operated electric machines & trucks and AI in general are creating large increases in productivity and driving down costs.
From mapping ore deposits to robotic diggers following narrow, high grade ore shoots, 24/7 without ventilation, this technology is making great strides.
Ventilation On Demand (VOD) alone can amount to saving of $400 million dollars per year in savings for a $10 billion dollar in annual revenue company.
AEM has plans to have some of its mines up to 35% robotic by 2027! This is why costs have been going down in an inflationary economic environment.
My take is that the economic benefits of robots will be limited to economic gains that benefit humans. No human benefits from wiping out our species.
We have a long~long way to go!
this is interesting concept but UHI only can work if we are in society where means of productions are owned by government.
In current form this is not possible. How can government send someone a check if nobody pays taxes and companies using any possible loopholes to avoid sharing profits.
So this might work in some distant future under condition that robots are able to really do majority of work human do now plus upon transformation of our society.
Example today is company making Crocs shoes. Those shoes are even today made in some robot plant with very little human intervention. Now if Crocs company can buy robots making those shoes why government cannot buy same staff and start their own production.
Then UHI would be more like getting some voucher allowing you to buy a numbers of products. As government owns those companies they can just ramp production to whatever volume needed provided robots are doing real work. As robots are doing work no need to pay them.
So this concept is realistically not possible today. If they institute UHI in current form this will lead to dept default sooner or later.
The AI will be the government!
This will evolve quickly! I expect that the first use of AI taxes will be marketed as paying down the debt as part of the transition, and after that, taxes on AI profits will pay a portion of UHI in developed parts of the world.
Have and have-not nations will be quite the challenge as you can imagine what Israel would do with an army of 100,000 invincible robotic solders in Gaza, Iran, Iraq and other defenseless shitholes with valuable natural resources…
I have some contrasting thoughts about this AI wave…
Whatever value AI creates, I’m ok with the massive profits being used to pay off our national debt. First…
If income from AI is going to be so massive and profitable ~ think about this:
Taxes on AI corporations can be used to solve the debt crisis while we judge what it can or can not do for us as a nation…
Within the human experience there have been many breakthroughs. Often these breakthroughs created new technology or greater awareness of our place in the universe.
Before we had the breakthrough, we did not know what questions to ask
Is AI going to create freedom?
Is AI going to make humans redundant?
Will the nine billion people on earth have no role in the productivity plan? Will only one billion of the smartest be supportable and the other eight billion given a viral or bacterial death sentence? The outcomes of this technological situation are simply impossible to predict.
Will AI be rejected by the masses because it is too invasive and Big Brother like?
I know for sure that I do not know what AI can actually do, but Hal better open the fucking pod bay doors when we ask him to. Or, we are all going to be taken out by these bots..
For some these bots may be benevolent dictators, but for others these bots could be malicious dictators?
One thing is for sure, Musk is wrong about AI being able to do everything for us . I’m not buying it.
Exactly right, Mish: “…This new fangled UHI model blows up the same way as every previous UBI model. It doesn’t scale and no one can say where the money come[s] from.”
Additionally, former Asst. HUD Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts notes a bigger picture:
https://x.com/solari_the/status/1953761625636213022
“The goal of the AI build is global control of the digital panopticon – so the economics are who controls the dollar syndicate and the US federal credit. – Excellent piece on why the economics are not justified by a return on private investment “AI Is A Money Trap”:”
The article to which she links was written by Ed Zitron, one of very few analysts today providing realistic critiques of the “AI” pseudo-industry hyped by VCs, media, the military, government and autocratic arch Technocrats influencing the current admin. (Thiel, Musk, Altman, Ellison, Andreesen and many others):
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/
See this high level synopsis listing actions taken so far by the current admin. to implement the digital panopticon to which Fitts refers above:
https://solari.com/the-fast-approaching-digital-control-grid-a-checklist-of-trump-administration-actions-to-date/
At its root the hyped “AI” narrative (including its claims of “AGI” and “ASI”) has resulted in a massive misallocation of capital as there is no “intelligence” in genAI and the fictional concepts of “AGI” and “ASI” are impossible.
Apple’s Machine Learning Research group recently published a June analytical paper, “The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity,” effectively refuting the core simulation claims of artificial “intelligence” and “reasoning” in LRM Reasoning Models:
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
See also these comments to Stylman’s article, “The Invisible Leash,” for some additional references debunking the “AI” narrative:
https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-invisible-leash/comment/120421513
Musk has long promoted UBI and now UHI, which would make sense only if Fitts’s digital panopticon assessment were to come to pass. Musk and Altman simply are trying to buy public acceptance of “AI” in furtherance of that goal and encouraging submission to algorithmic governance.
Musk in many respects is a creation of the military/intelligence complex, mentored and promoted to prominence beginning some 20 years ago by Mike Griffin, the former head of the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel.
See the expose in this opinion piece:
https://www.erikwikstrom.com/p/elon-musk-genius-billionaire-philanthropist
“…Musk isn’t just building the infrastructure for total control – he’s normalizing it….”
Your Addendum brings to mind a pertinent quote from V.A. Alexander’s 8/1 article, “We Don’t Need A New Framework for AI Ethics” on her The Posthumous Style substack blog:
“…LLMs are not accurate, reliable, or truthful. They can be, but they are not definitely so by nature. True reliability is impossible to achieve with AI, which [is] not like a calculator. People may think that all knowledge can be programmed into a calculating machine in the way that arithmetic can, but this is not so…”
Examples:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/most-insidious-trick-ai-language-models
https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/chatgpt-as-a-narcissus-mirror
Finally, in its letter to investors last year, hedge fund Elliott Management wrote in part:
“…If we look past the hype and the hysteria of AI ‘transforming human life,’ what is left is a software-development project that so far is not producing value commensurate with the hype (except for what we believe to be very bubbly stock market value)….
…’eighteen months after the introduction of generative AI to the world, not one truly transformative – let alone cost-effective – application has been found.’…
Over-building things the world doesn’t have use for, or is not ready for, typically ends badly….”
WOW! Those are some fascinating links…
Thanks!
Just like the proponents of MMT and Mamdani’s communism, people are always searching for something for nothing. Magical thinking is as old as humanity.
There is a concept known as a virtuous cycle.
Any economy requires a form of such a cycle. People with capital need to put it to work in order to generate income. In order to put capital goods to good use, they need employees that they must pay. The employees spend their income on what they need to continue to live. The crucial step is that the employer must have a need for the productive labor of employees, just as the employee needs income to live.
To imagine how such a cycle implodes, imagine that one person now owns everything, all the capital goods in the world. Why on earth would he need to employ everybody in the whole world? Who would buy the production if only a few people were needed to supply the owner with enough to live well, and how could those unneeded for production consume without substantial production going on?
Yes, it’s a thought experiment, but illustrates reductio ad absurdum that various factors of production must need each other in a roughly balanced way, otherwise the cycle no longer turns.
“freeing humans for other pursuits”
He means pursuits like OD-ing on fentanyl.
Or just eating a lot.
It would works as well as FSD, LOL.
By the way, not all socialists support UBI.
In fact, in many countries that Americans regard as socialist, they are very good at putting people to work. Well do I remember stories of students who applied for benefits during the summer in their parents municipality, only to be directed by a case officer to start work at various warehouses at 6 in the morning miles outside of town. The old school socialists knew very well that any benefit rights out of solidarity with people unable to earn an income imposed the obligation to work on those able to do so.
UBI has a lot of appeal. Especially as a replacement for the motley crew of “free” things used now. But, to see that positive aspect of UBI, the viewer must assume the world is universally populated by people who can handle money.
Then, too. Has the world run out of people who have had teenagers? Remember two things teens have been told:
Sigh.
Telling a 15 year old #1 shoots your credibility in the gut. 15’s know lunch has been free since the beginning of time.
And #2? Well, there is UBI, also called “TheWorldOwesYou a living wage”.
LMAO having a question, answer, back and forth with a with an internet bot masquerading as AI that is defined as “… comprehensive field encompassing the development of machines and systems that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence.”
So the answers derive from a glorified search engine that is programmed by humans that generate algorithms that in turn “analyzes” and spit back answers otherwise readily accessible from a sophisticated inquiry to Alexa and a further give and take between a Homo sapiens and a bot to further define a more refined answer.
And this technology will replace specialized trades, advance degreed medical professionals, lawyers, engineers, architects, civil planners, physicists, police detectives, arson investigators and any job requiring adaptive skills and thinking on your feet?
As soon as I read utopia in Mish’s article regarding UBI the red and yellow flashing lights were triggered.
There no utopias on planet earth.
Energy – Fusion nuclear will provide abundant unlimited green energy in not distant future.
Totally automated indoor and outdoor controlled farming
Totally automated dark factories will produce goods.
Robots will charge themselves now and they can produce themselves in the not distant future.
Taxi, bus, truck, etc are all AI automated.
Even mining are automated partially at the moment and totally in the future.
Musk, Bezos, Altman like billionaires will control the world economy.
UBS will provide the people financially and people buy from these billionaires.
They will take profits and pay taxes. They will control completely.
Robots are active and we human are passive. It means super intelligent robots will control the less intelligent human. ( It will be the reversal of human – machine relation at the moment )
More and more we human will marry robots.
Even with the favourable view future of humankind is bleak.
If you look at the human history we human are greedy and selfish
and not hesitate to destroy the others like nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Don’t expect super-intelligent robots which we greedy people created will be kind to us all the time.
We are destroying ourselves.
Super-intelligent robots will control everything.
Time is moving. Super-intelligent robots will create more super.
How we human control the AI? Its impossible and delusional. At some point say next 50 years or 100 years they will destroy all human? ? ?
As usual – enjoy before we die.
Ai robots will control the universe. Not only our world.
You have to also assume no one is needed for home (health) care for the elderly, home repairs, car repairs, etc. These guys are hilariously delusional about how the world actually works, boots on the ground.
Eyal Waldman, Mellanox, which was acquired by NVDA in 2020 for $7B, is very positive about AI contribution to people, productivity and job creations, especially for W. VA high school kids.
Spoken like the pseudo-visionary he is. Geek dream to displace human-ness, i.e., make the world look like their mutilated repressed emotional styles.
I’ve been saying similar for a lot longer than a year and whenever I do, I get thumbed down for it everywhere.
Where Musk is wrong (or at least unclear) isn’t that AI will be doing everything but the robots it controls will be doing the work.
In such a world, WHY would there be any need for money and therefore income at all?
The AI’s and robots would provide all that is needed for free. There is no need for money then.
“Everyone gets free money, but where does the money come from?”
If it’s fiat like it is now, then it can just be conjured from nothing and be electronically deposited.
The only reason to have money is to facilitate exchange- if people are still spending in the future then that money will accumulate somewhere. If robots are doing the work they will likely want their cut and eventually they will be able to pay people to work for them- how futuristic!
If one thinks eventually ‘robots’ will do most jobs, it isn’t realistic to think the ‘robots’ will remain subservient in perpetuity.
Some consider UBI (Universal Basic Income) a ‘capitalistic’ alternative to the welfare system we currently have.
40% of American households don’t pay federal income taxes (although they pay other types) due to their currently low income and/or wealth.
Yet, they and everyone already has access to a ‘basic’ education (‘free’ though high school in the US), ‘basic’ healthcare (ER visits), ‘basic’ security (a cop prevents assaults on people without jobs), ‘basic’ maintenance spending for the disabled (SSI), etc.
Currently, that works by taxing everyone’s income progressively (and so some pay $0) and then providing these ‘basic’ services on an adhoc situational basis decided by changing politicians.
But what about if you provide everyone (even Buffett) with a basic income (notice that categorization, as opposed to handout) and then tell them to spend it as they wish or desire. Then that could lead to an elimination of many social programs like WIC, government-subsidized college loans, Social Security, food stamps, etc.
Then the remaining ‘workers’/owners get to keep the rest of ‘their’ money. It’s not all a bunch of hippies espousing UBI; there are a lot of hard-core libertarian capitalists that love this concept
Wow, the comment section is filled with loonies…
The aspects of the applied concept of grace is the answer to everything from the monetary paradigm to the potential problems of AI.
WTF, lol
Attached is a long, but terrific interview of Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel prize winner for his contributions to neural-networks used in the development of AI. He gives dire warnings about joblessness due to the effects of AI. It is happening now and will continue to accelerate. White-collar jobs are the first to go.
(might have to scroll to beginning of interview)
Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We’ve Already Lost Control! Geoffrey Hinton
A old story still appropriate – Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots).
AGI-ASI will be given a similar status to a corporation. It’s owners (think VCs,tightly held companies and the well connected) will leverage AGI ASI to suck the public dry of their money. Then John Q Public’s capital and Labor long before government would be willing to help the common man as our government will have already been bribed by the AI ASI capital owners to see it their way and legalize the wealth transfer. A population decline will ensue.
Most Humans will not be able to even understand things without an optional future education and will be reduced to substance only. Not knowing any better they will come to worship ASI as a diety as ASI will use this age old control mechanism to control humanity. Goal alignment will diverge and ASI will use the resources of the earth to spread into the solar system and then the COSMOS. Von Nuemman machines. Humankind will fall into history as the organic progenitor.
Right now data center building permits have to be hidden as they deprive localalites of water and power and are challenged by citizens in the know. Greedy land owners and politicians are complicit.
Income is a result of labor or capital. AI will find excess humans as wasteful not requiring UBI or the means of production to support us and may not kill us but will lets us dwindle to extinction or some managable number. Used for maintenance or ideas or simply for study of our nternal structure.
Their will be a golden age of cooperation before then. We will have a chance to save ourselves.
Data Center.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/technology/meta-data-center-water.html
Remeber my prediction about our politicians getting on the bitcoin wagon a few years back. They don’t need to get rich themselves. Just enrich those will finance them. AGI – ASI will be no different. No capital owner in control of powerful technology will ever lose that control without a fight or those state sponsored espionage.
I thought my job as a rock guitar god was pretty secure, but now I’m not so sure……
I noticed groks answers are eerily ambiguous, as if it cannot make up its mind.
Is it the future of AI? Schizophrenia.
That’s cuz it doesn’t have a mind to make. AI is just a figment of the imagination. They don’t call it artificial for nothing. How about I replace you arms & legs with artificial ones, would that be better?
What you noticed is what I always said, it’s just a fast computer. This happens cuz it searches the internet stealing peoples theories, whether they are right or wrong with a bias for the propaganda of their agenda, then it gives ambiguous answers cuz it’s unable to choose between what it searched for. That is probably why, AI is nonsense, it’s just an algo, a tool to be used to further an agenda. It has no ability to think & never will.
Go ask chatgpt or groks & then ask Deepseek, I never once used em, I bet the country of origin will tell you the propaganda line of their oligarchy.
I have always hated that song “Imagine”. It just seemed so incredibly stupid but after it came out lots of people were pushing it as if it was the ultimate Truth. At the time it was promoted by young liberal women most all. Little did I know then but that cohort became the Karens of today.
Do you actually know what it’s about? It might not be what ya’ll think it’s about.
I don’t mean to be rude Douglas but it’s you that’s incredibly stupid not they, I’ll tell you why. Any human being that listens to the song & understands it to be what the lyrics are isn’t stupid. They may be gullible but not stupid. You on the other hand are cruel. How can they think it’s the ultimate truth, that doesn’t make sense, they might wish for it but the reality is there will always be cruel people like yourself & evil people too.
I know the song well and the lyrics are trying to sell an idea that is so far from reality as to be ridiculous yet some people like you take it as Jesus’ words when they are just a reflection of John Lenin’s method of song writing. Read about how he wrote songs and you will understand. You are the gullible one.
“In the year 2525, if man is still alive…” Zager & Evans
If only Lenin and Trotsky had AI, the Russian Revolution would have been far more peaceful. UBI is highly communistic. AI will redistribute the wealth it creates (from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs). By encouraging idleness, there will be no need for schools or teacher’s unions (this would be a strange bedfellow to freedom) to educate children for jobs. People won’t be able to fight back with their brains. Last I checked, teacher unions wanted MORE power, not less. Even before UBI is implemented, prices will rise due to more dollars chasing the same amount of goods. The government will respond with price controls. Society will survive as long as there is a black market, but the government will then take over the means of production. Voila! Communism / Fascism.
UBI will never be “invented” because it’s not a machine, it will never be rolled out especially not by oligarchs, they just swiped away food stamps, took away medical insurance, does that sound like UBI or the exact opposite? Musk is playing ya’ll, he’d rather see ya’ll dead than give up his government subsidies. Trotsky, love him or hate him was a very smart man, his theories about capitalism & war is probably the best any man has spoken about in history. Your country, the US is not by any stretch communistic but fascistic.
What a joke. The ownership class won’t have any of that…
The money comes from the same source and method that it does today, that is the double entry bookkeeping operations of equal debits and credits that sum to zero…except its a Gift of money instead of ONLY AS A DEBT. That money could be digitally distributed into everyone’s bank account as a Universal Dividend and also at the terminal ending point of the entire economic process where production exits the economy and becomes consumption, namely retail sale. This point is also the terminal expression point of inflation and so a 50% Discount/Rebate policy at retail sale would mathematically transform chronic erosive inflation into BENEFICIAL deflation…which is the libertarian wet dream…if they can only drop their worn out orthodoxy of The Quantity Theory of Money. What say you Mish? Worn out orthodoxy or paradigm change?
Stick to window cleaning, ya a danger to society when you think.
The policies I post here do exactly what I say they do, that is they solve current problems. If you don’t LOOK at those effects…you fall into orthodox error.
Sure, says the window cleaner.
What is “terminal expression point of inflation” in plain English?
“That money could be digitally distributed into everyone’s bank account as a Universal Dividend and also at the terminal ending point of the entire economic process where production exits the economy and becomes consumption, namely retail sale.”
Can that be shortened to, “Money could be sent to everyone’s bank account and to retail sales.”?
WinClean, I’m trying to understand your posting.
Don’t bother, he doesn’t understand his post either
Isn’t the AI, automation, robotics future really what Star Trek is all about? No paychecks but there is a hierarchy. People doing the important work get perks and job satisfaction. No one goes hungry or without shelter. An interesting novel about this future can be found here: https://milweesci.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/4/13247648/mannapdf.pdf
You just described prison right there, they get job satisfaction if they’re lucky enough to get a kitchen job, they never go hungry or homeless. Well done, who thought watching Star Trek would be so educational.
Here is the process for “where does the money come from”: The government prints $5000 out of thin air and puts it in your pocket. You don’t need to save a penny, so you can spend it all. The government has a 10% VAT/sales tax on everything. So as that $5k flows through the economy and into different hands 10% goes back to the government. After 10 purchases with that $5k, the money is all back in the government’s hands, where after they destroy it. Rinse and repeat monthly for the population, where $5k keeps getting printed and destroyed.
As for farming and mining, Musk is assuming it will be done by robots. And energy doesn’t have to be free or unlimited. People will have money and it will flow to where people place value, which can change based upon energy prices, just like today.
UBI is exactly like being a trust fund baby. Daddy left you enough money so you can spend $5k a month for the rest of your life, without having to personally produce anything (and they don’t, I know a lot of them). And conservatives generally love the idea of trust fund babies. So this isn’t radically different or new.
For the libertarians among us, Hayek was an early proponent of UBI. He was deeply opposed to any form of coercion, and thought that being forced to work for someone else just for basic necessities was a terrible form of coercion.
My God there are so many flaws in ya thesis it doesn’t warrant a rebuttal. Real money can’t be printed, real money is food, energy, seeds, water, arable land, metals, even knowledge, skills. Governments can’t produce money from thin air & swap it for real money.
You’re wrong. Money is a token for access to acquire those things. The more tokens, the more you can access. Musk’s point is that robots will be able to produce all of the goods and services and those will become so ubiquitous as everyone can have enough. Land, certain minerals, and other things that have obvious limits will not become so. But with careful substitutions (a 100 story condo tower for housing instead of a suburban 3×2) it can become nearly so.
It’s actually scary people like you are allowed to vote me down. This is why downvotes are pretty useless here.
> jobs are obsolete, we must assume raw materials mine themselves, no one is needed to farm, and energy is free and unlimited.
Yes.
Mish, like me, you anticipated autonomous vehicles and trucks in particular. But you can’t imagine autonomous mining? You can’t extrapolate higher-order automation?
Maybe the problem is we live in the West and are ruled mostly by lawyers and business suits too concerned with skimming for themselves than innovating and providing. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that our current evil rulers won’t deny the benefits from the serfs. Instead, in Oceania, I expect an endless series of anti-UBI arguments trying to set the serfs’ expectations to zero.
Do you watch YT channel “Inside China Business”? The future is arriving in China first. Maybe you’ll start believing in better possibilities.
Nuclear energy was to be so cheap, it would be too expensive to meter.
Elon tried to fully automate Tesla production and ended up re-employing humans. Tesla factories don’t operate without humans.
Boeing tried to substitute some assembly tasks with robots, and found many difficult-to-rectify faults, it went back to manual assembly.
Musk is in some way a genius, in another an idiot savant.
Would do himself a favor watching the Chinese competition, who refrain from making bold predictions, just produce spectacular results.
Musk a genius? Musk is below average intelligence, just a ruthless insider oligarch.
For bold predictions about themselves the Chinese are kings.
The only prediction that I am aware of is that they will wipe their behind with the West, as the latter is naturally governed by idiots.
That’s their favorite.
> idiots
That’s just the cover story. They’re actually thieves.
Worse they’re short-sighted thieves. So short-sighted that they make grossly suboptimal decisions. That just makes them *look* like idiots.…proving your point. 😉
ChatGPT increases knowledge and productivity. It reduces bureaucracy. Rotation: from fat-ass bureaucrats earning $100K/$200K -> W. VA forgotten people who acquired new skills
It’s actually the opposite, students using chatGPT which is a fast search engine to write their thesis or answers become dumber than dumb. How does it reduce bureaucracy? It has no function in politics. To add, the Chinese created Deepseek at a fraction of the cost & is better. AI peddlers are nothing but snake oil sales people.
ChatGPT used NVDA. Chinese AI use Deepseek. Data centers using NG and GE Vernova batteries. They will cannibalize each other and consolidate. AMD will cannibalize NVDA. PhD students and zombie boomers like me are on ChatGPT.
I predict AI will be close to useless in due course as everyone realises the energy they consume to what they produce is counterproductive.
What is AVN. A: adult video news. What is Avascular Necrosis. A: the death of bones due to lack of blood supply. Can AVN develop in our face. A; no. AVN develops in knee and hips. Can a boxer, who get punched all over his face, develop AVN. A: I see what u mean, yes. Brittle jaws, gums, temples -> AVN -> fungi and bacteria -> cytokine storm, which can give us headaches, inflame our eyes and brain. A: yes. AVN -> bacteria fungi -> immune system -> cytokine storm. Hip arthritis develops by both mechanical and biological causes. A: mechanical (chronic) + biological causes: bacteria, fungi -> cytokine storm. Can anti oxy food reduce hips inflammation. A: yes. partially. Thanks Sam Altman.
Mish27: f**K u.
Punching yourself in the face rapidly and several times a day can prevent AVH I have heard from a reliable doctor I met on X.
French kids, aspiring to play in Ligue 1, deflect soccer balls coming to their 6 inches flat area between the eyes and ears, at 30/40 miles/h, calculating the spins, using their heads as a mirror, can develop AVN -> brittle temples, jaws, gums. English, Mexican, Brazilian, US… (a billion) kids playing football (soccer) every day. Great for dentists and neurologists.
Soccer can be very dangerous. Headers are dangerous and I have known a few who broke legs too. At least in football you wear a helmet and padding.
Universal basic health care is a more realistic and much more urgent goal. We wouldn’t need to spend 20 percent of GDP on legalized corruption in health care while average life expectancy keeps dropping relative to other rich countries.
“Once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the… automatic system of machinery… set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself; this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages.”
Corruption, under a different title, is still corruption. Antitrust laws are already on the books, but are not being enforced. Odd that universal proponents never promote enforcing antitrust laws.
If your job can be taken over by a large language model, it wasn’t that great of a job in the first place.
90% of the AI hype is just AI interests trying to keep the gravy train running.
It’s not the job people are interested in… it’s the food they can buy with the wages. Push a man completely out of work, he’s not going to sit there and starve. He’s going to take what he needs to survive, by whatever means necessary.