You’ve climbed to a comfortable six-figure income. Maybe you’ve built a sizable cash cushion—or accumulated a strong mix of stocks and retirement savings. Elon Musk argues that, in the long run, those markers of financial security may not matter as much as we assume.
Musk believes the concept of money itself could eventually lose its purpose. In a future shaped by advanced artificial intelligence and robotics, he says traditional salaries may disappear—and cash could become increasingly irrelevant.
“I think money disappears as a concept, honestly,” the SpaceX and Tesla founder said on an episode of the People by WTF podcast.
“It’s kind of strange, but in a future where anyone can have anything, you no longer need money as a database for labor allocation. If AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer necessary. Its relevance declines dramatically.”
Work—and wages—could become optional within two decades
Musk’s idea is straightforward: if robots can build homes, grow food, manufacture goods, and deliver services like health care and education at near-zero cost, then wages stop being the primary way society decides who gets what.
As a reference point, Musk pointed to Iain M. Banks’ The Culture series—science fiction novels that depict a society where AI can provide nearly anything on demand. In that world, money fades away, and people spend their time on whatever feels meaningful to them.
It’s a future Musk has returned to more than once. Even two years ago, when ChatGPT was still relatively new, he told former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that “AI will be able to do everything” and that work would become “like a hobby.”
Still, the vision raises difficult questions—especially around scarcity. If money no longer decides access, what does? For example, who gets the larger house in the better location?
Musk didn’t give a precise timeline for when cash would stop being needed for essentials like food and housing. But he has been more specific about when work itself could become optional.
“In less than 20 years—but maybe even as little as 10 or 15 years—the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional,” Musk said.
The policy question at the center of the scenario
Tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini are already reducing the time spent on certain tasks—data cleaning, summarization, and other administrative work. One survey last year suggested that by 2029, AI could save workers as much as 12 hours per week. But workers have heard similar promises before.
In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would eventually bring the workweek down to 15 hours by 2030. Productivity did rise dramatically—but leisure time didn’t follow at the scale he expected. In many workplaces, time saved has simply translated into higher expectations.
What may be different now, supporters argue, is the speed of change. AI is no longer a distant possibility; it’s already being deployed widely—and the pace has drawn concern even from figures like Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Anthropic’s chief of staff, Avital Balwit, has also warned that many jobs—including her own—could become obsolete within just a few years. She has even suggested that within a decade, as many as a million bipedal robots could be doing work currently performed by humans.
Balwit argues that with the “right policies,” a world with less work could still be a better one—materially secure, with more time for relationships, hobbies, and leisure instead of commutes and meetings.
“If we do manage to obtain a world where people have their material needs met but also have no need to work, aristocrats could be a relevant comparison,” Balwit concluded.
In a long blog post, billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla—cofounder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in companies including Amazon, Google, and OpenAI—similarly argued that government decisions may determine whether this future becomes broadly beneficial or deeply unequal.
Khosla wrote that AI could outperform humans at many jobs—faster and cheaper—reducing the need for human labor. But without deliberate intervention, he warned, the outcome could be an “economic dystopia,” with wealth concentrating further at the top while both intellectual and physical labor lose value.
“As AI reduces labor costs and increases productivity, the role of government regulation will be crucial in managing the distribution of wealth and maintaining social welfare,” he added.
Khosla’s proposed safeguard is universal basic income—designed to ensure people can live well even as jobs disappear. If implemented effectively, he argued, it could relieve the daily pressure to work for survival and push society to rethink what a meaningful life looks like beyond paid labor.
