Elon Musk imagines a world where having a job is a lifestyle choice rather than a financial necessity — and he compares it to tending a backyard vegetable patch.
Speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the Tesla CEO predicted that within the next 10 to 20 years, most work will be optional, more like a pastime than a requirement.
“My prediction is that work will be optional. It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that,” Musk said. “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.”
According to Musk, that future hinges on millions of robots entering the workforce and driving a huge surge in productivity. He has been pushing to transform Tesla from purely an electric-vehicle company into a broader AI and robotics powerhouse, consolidating his various ventures into a vision of an automated, AI-driven future. A key part of that plan is his Optimus humanoid robots, which he has said could eventually account for 80% of Tesla’s value, despite repeated production delays.
For many observers, however, a world of widespread automation looks less utopian. Early signs of AI replacing entry-level roles, and fears that it may be contributing to Gen Z’s employment struggles and stagnant income growth, make the prospect feel more like a threat than a dream.
In Musk’s version of the future, though, money itself becomes irrelevant. He has drawn inspiration from Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, a set of science-fiction novels that depict a post-scarcity society run by superintelligent AI where traditional jobs no longer exist.
“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.”
At Viva Technology 2024, Musk floated the idea of a “universal high income” that would support people in a world where work is no longer required, though he did not explain how such a system would actually operate. His thinking echoes that of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has championed universal basic income—no-strings-attached payments to individuals, typically funded by governments.
“There would be no shortage of goods or services,” Musk said at last year’s event.
Tesla did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Could a Work-Optional Economy Really Happen?
Economists say building the kind of world Musk describes will be extremely difficult. One major question is whether the technology needed to automate a broad range of jobs will be cheap and accessible within the next couple of decades.
While the cost of AI has been falling, robotics remains stubbornly expensive and hard to scale, notes Ioana Marinescu, an economist and associate professor of public policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She and colleague Konrad Kording recently published a working paper at the Brookings Institution examining the economics of automation. For instance, AI expense management platform Ramp noted in April that companies are now paying about $2.50 per 1 million tokens—the core unit powering AI models—down from $10 a year earlier.
“We’ve been at it making machines forever, since the industrial revolution, at scale,” Marinescu told Fortune. “We know from economics that … you often run—for these kinds of activities—into decreasing returns, as it gets harder in order to make progress in a line of technology that you’ve been at, in this case, for a couple of centuries.”
She said AI is advancing quickly, particularly large language models that can be applied to many white-collar jobs. But physical machines—crucial for automating manual labor—are not only more costly, they tend to be highly specialized, making it slower and more complicated to roll them out across workplaces.
Marinescu agrees that large-scale automation will eventually transform labor, but she is skeptical about Musk’s 10- to 20-year horizon. That skepticism stems both from the limits of robotics and from the pace at which companies are actually adopting AI. Despite headlines about tech-related layoffs and AI disruption, a Yale Budget Lab report from October found that since ChatGPT’s public debut in November 2022, the “broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption” from AI automation.
Then there’s the social and political fallout of a world with far fewer jobs. Even if universal basic income or some form of “universal high income” is economically justified, actually implementing it would demand enormous political will, said Samuel Solomon, an assistant professor of labor economics at Temple University. He told Fortune that the political framework guiding a transformed labor market will matter as much as the technology behind it.
“AI has already created so much wealth and will continue to,” Solomon said. “But I think one key question is: Is this going to be inclusive? Will it create inclusive prosperity? Will it create inclusive growth? Will everyone benefit?”
So far, the benefits from the AI boom have seemed to flow disproportionately to those at the top. Musk’s own $1 trillion pay package is one high-profile example. More broadly, the surge in AI-related stock valuations has highlighted widening class divides: earnings expectations have been revised upward for the so-called Magnificent Seven tech giants, while expectations for the rest of the S&P 493 have been revised downward, according to Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok. The result, he notes, is that:
“Spending by well-off Americans, driven by their surging stock portfolios, is the single most significant driver of growth,” Slok wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
What Happens to Meaning When Work Disappears?
Beyond the economic and technological challenges, there’s a deeper question: Is a world without work something people actually want?
“If the economic value of labor declines so that labor is just not very useful anymore, we’ll have to rethink how our society is structured,” said Anton Korinek, a professor and faculty director of the Economics of Transformative AI Initiative at the University of Virginia, in an interview with Fortune.
Korinek points to research, including a landmark 1938 Harvard University study, showing that humans draw much of their life satisfaction from meaningful relationships. Today, many of those relationships are formed and sustained through work. In a future where jobs are optional, society would need new ways to create meaning and social connection outside traditional employment.
Musk himself has framed the question in philosophical terms. Speaking at Viva Technology last year, he wondered what role humans would play in a world where machines surpass them at nearly everything.
“The question will really be one of meaning: If the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” he said. “I do think there’s perhaps still a role for humans in this—in that we may give AI meaning.”
