Elon Musk expects AI will replace all human jobs,  lead to ‘universal high income’

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk reiterated his stance this week that artificial intelligence will eventually eliminate the need for humans to work, giving his vision for how the future will look as the technology continues to rapidly advance.

During his remote appearance at the Viva Technology conference in Paris on Thursday, Musk was asked whether he was concerned about losing his job to AI, and what he would do if that were to happen.

Musk holds several roles as the CEO of Tesla, and founder of xAI, SpaceX and Neuralink, as well as the owner of social media platform X.

“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job,” Musk replied. “There will be universal high income — and not universal basic income — universal high income. There’ll be no shortage of goods or services.”

The tech mogul said that in his opinion, there is an 80% chance that AI advances will result in such a situation where humans will not need a job and will have all they need. 

“The question will really be one of meaning, of how — if a computer can do, and the robots can do everything better than you … does your life have meaning?” Musk said. “That really will be the question in that benign scenario, and in the negative scenario, all bets are off where we’re in deep trouble.”

Musk has predicted before that AI will eventually become so advanced it will eliminate the need for humans to work.

“I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here,” Musk said of AI during a sit-down with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the inaugural AI Safety Summit in London last fall.

“It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed,” the tech billionaire said. “You can have a job if you want to have a job — sort of personal satisfaction — but the AI will be able to do everything.”