Elon Musk says AI and robotics will make money 'irrelevant'

"At the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum on Monday, where Musk sat on a panel with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Musk said that money would "stop being relevant" thanks to AI. "There will still be constraints on power like electricity and mass," Musk said. "But I think at some point currency becomes irrelevant." He linked it to the books of science fiction author Iain Banks, who wrote the Culture series between 1987 and 2012. Those books help "get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like," he said."

"Musk also mentioned the end of work itself, saying that it will be "optional," like "playing sports or a video game." He compared the future of work to gardening. "It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables," he said."That will be what work is like: optional.""

""People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care," Musk said at the shareholder event earlier this month. "There's actually only one way to do that, and that's with the Optimus robot." When AI and robotics, like Tesla's Optimus, eliminate all work and money, the government should hand out a universal income, Musk told Joe Rogan in October. That income shouldn't just be a universal basic income - it should be a universal high income, he said."

AI and advanced robotics could transform economic systems by reducing the relevance of currency while physical limits like electricity and mass remain. Work may become optional and pursued for pleasure, similar to sports, video games, or gardening. Widespread automation could remove scarcity-driven poverty by producing goods and services without human labor. A transition to a universal income is proposed as a necessary policy response when productive automation replaces most jobs, with emphasis on providing a generous universal high income rather than minimal basic support. Positive outcomes depend on benign deployment and equitable distribution of automated production's benefits.

Read at Business Insider