Tesla CEO Elon Musk has predicted that technological advancements will make work optional and money irrelevant by 2035 or 2045.
Speaking at the United States-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., last week, Musk compared working in the future to choosing to grow vegetables in one’s backyard or playing sports or video games.
“My prediction is that work will be optional. It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” Musk said, according to Fortune. “If you want to work, [it’s] the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.”
Millions of robots, he predicted, will enter the workforce and drive productivity to a level that human labor will no longer be needed for economic output.
One of the greatest worries of today’s workforce has been how to acquire a job in a crowded market and huge layoffs. Per Forbes’ research, economic uncertainties have compelled many workers to adopt survival tactics, from quiet quitting to office frogging to job hugging.
But for Musk, these concerns will be no more in the years to come, adding that money will also not be an issue at all. He said the automated future will look like the post-scarcity world of Iain Banks’s science fiction novels, full of AI beings and a world in which money won’t matter.
“In those books, money doesn’t exist. It’s kind of interesting,” Musk said. “And 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.”
To the Tesla boss, a “universal high income” would support a work-optional world but did not specify how this would happen.
While some have doubted his predictions, others believe they are plausible. Ali Gohar, CHRO at Software Finder, told Forbes, “In 20 years, some high-skill knowledge workers will have the option to stop working thanks to automation and AI-driven software ecosystems. But millions will very likely still rely on work as a necessity. The biggest divide will almost certainly be drawn by those who can afford not to work.”
Gohar explained that many roles are becoming redundant as a result of improvements in low-code platforms, AI copilots and hyper-automated back-end systems.
“Software will offload the dull and repetitive, leaving humans to focus on creativity, strategy and empathy,” he suggested. “For some, that will feel optional. For others, especially those in physical or people-facing roles, technology may transfer the pressure ‘up’ as opposed to ‘off.’”
Musk is already worth an estimated $447 billion, per Bloomberg’s billionaire tracker, with much of his fortune coming from his holdings in Tesla and other companies he controls, including SpaceX and xAI.
Earlier this month, Tesla shareholders voted to support a pay package for Musk that paves the way for him to become the world’s first trillionaire.
At an annual shareholder meeting to approve the package, the South Africa-born billionaire mentioned robots more than his company’s cars, explaining to shareholders that he plans on ramping up production of Tesla’s Optimus robots “faster than anything’s ever been ramped up before in human history.”
Optimus is designed to be an “autonomous humanoid robot” performing “unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks.” Unveiled as a prototype by the company in 2022, it uses the same artificial intelligence (AI) systems as the ones powering Tesla vehicles. Musk has described the robot as significant to the future of his business.
