🎙 Elon Musk gave an interview to The Economist about what the world will look like by 2036, and the main thesis is that money will cease to matter.
The conversation with Zanny Minton Beddoes was recorded at the Texas Tesla gigafactory, and the interview lasted almost an hour and a half. Musk believes that AI will surpass the combined intelligence of all humanity in about five years, and by 2036, robots and AI will produce more goods and services than humans can consume. In such an economy, deflation becomes the problem, not inflation, and money loses its meaning because you can get everything you can think of.
Musk repeats his thesis about work: work will become optional. Today, growing your own vegetables is unnecessary—it's a hobby for those who enjoy it. The same will happen with work: some will continue to do things because they want to, but there will be no necessity.
Separately, Musk talks about code: AI already writes better than 90% of professional developers and is moving towards 99%. He calls the final point the "stockfish moment"—analogous to the chess engine that even Magnus Carlsen cannot beat. Even the best programmer in the world will not write code comparable in quality to AI-generated code.
Musk suggests distributing goods through a "universal high income"—higher than the living wage provided by universal basic income. Critics like Tyler Cowen argue that energy, land, and attention will remain scarce even in 2036, so their prices will not disappear. Musk jokes about his predictions, saying his "batting average" is surprisingly high for a human—it's just that the timing sometimes shifts by years.
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