NEED TO KNOW
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Elon Musk has claimed that work will be “optional” and money will be “irrelevant” in the near future due to the growth of AI
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Musk suggested there is “a lot of work” left to be done, but suggested there is a “probably positive” future for AI in society
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Nvidia founder Jensen Huang claimed “everybody’s jobs will be different” in a future dominated by AI, but suggested not all jobs will go away
Elon Musk believes artificial intelligence will soon make work “optional” and money “irrelevant.”
The 54-year-old xAI founder made the bold claim during an appearance at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Nov. 19.
Speaking with Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s minister of communications and information technology, and Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, Musk predicted that “work will be optional” in about 10 or 20 years, receiving a round of applause from the crowd afterward.
“It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” he explained in a clip of the event, shared by Forbes. He then compared the situation to growing vegetables.
“It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard,” Musk said, “but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables. That will be what work is like, optional.”
The Tesla CEO suggested there is “a lot of work” left to be done before technology and society can reach that point, but suggested there is a “probably positive” future for AI, outlined in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. In that future scenario, Musk said, “money doesn’t exist.”
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty
Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s communications minister, from left, Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., and Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025.
“My guess is, if you go out long enough, assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, money will stop being relevant at some point in the future,” he remarked, later adding, “I think at some point, currency becomes irrelevant.”
Huang then chimed in, suggesting that “everybody’s jobs will be different” in a future dominated by AI, “because a lot of the things that we do mundanely or arduously or very difficultly, are going to be done very simply.”
But Huang argued that AI will help create jobs in some fields, such as radiology, which Huang said is now largely AI-driven. The trends, according to Huang, show “there are more radiologists being hired now as a result of AI” being integrated into the practice.
“The surprising thing is that the prediction that all radiologists would be the first jobs to go was exactly the opposite,” he explained. With AI, he said, “they can study more images, study more modalities [and] spend more time with patients,” allowing them to accept more patients and improve diagnoses.
“That’s kind of the near-term outcome of AI and productivity. We’ll see what happens long term,” Huang continued. He then turned to Musk and said, “When currency doesn’t matter anymore, just let me know right before!”
Musk has also recently discussed his vision for AI to not only improve healthcare, but even potentially end poverty with help from Tesla’s Optimus robot. He broached the concept at a shareholder event earlier this month, according to Business Insider.
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“People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care,” Musk said at the time. “There’s actually only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot.”
He then went on to suggest that Optimus could not only “eliminate poverty,” but could also have other potentially groundbreaking uses, such as altering the way incarceration operates by following people around to “stop you from doing crime.”
Read the original article on People
