What will happen to human ambitions when everything is done better by machines? The question is one Elon Musk has been increasingly pressing and his latest forecast takes visionary insight into the future of the economy to a completely new level. Musk on his latest bout on X dismissed the need for any kind of savings schemes like Trump accounts announced for young Americans, calling for there to be no poverty. there to be universal high income in the not-so-distant future.
Musk’s belief is grounded by the rapidly impending power of artificial intelligence and robot technology. In giving a speech this year at the Viva Technology conference in Paris, he conjectured that there’s an 80% chance that AI will develop into ‘an intelligent system that probably none of us would have a job.’
It is not universal basic income, he reiterated, but something much more extreme: universal high income, through the entirely automated economy in which ‘there’s no shortage of goods and services.’ Rather, since ‘smart machines’ will make every single thing one could want, from food to shelter to transportation to health care, ‘people will only have to work if they want to kinda like a hobby.’
Already, however, the technology basis for a vision of this kind is evident. Development in humanoid robots, with their dexterous manipulation abilities and self-guiding capabilities, is converging with AI systems performing cognitive tasks ranging from law to medicine and through to creative sectors. With the maturing of generative AI, work automation of 60-70% of current work activities, particularly high-value knowledge work, has pushed the timeline for a massive displacement of labor by at least a decade.
Economic modeling also suggests the integration of AI in various sectors could potentially liberate $6.1 trillion to $7.9 trillion in increased productivity on an annual basis. Robotics with integrated predictive analytics based on AI can now outperform humans in the sectors of manufacturing, logistics, and the service industries on the fast-paced aforementioned scale, and conceivably satisfy all material requirements on the aforementioned fast scale with minimal human effort, dubbed sustainable abundance by Musk.
Still, as noted by several scholars as well as investment expert Ray Dalio, a sudden transition to a post-scarcity economy is a rather structural and problematic transition. For a few occupations, AI may boost the productivity levels of less-experienced individuals, whereas overall research on economic exposure suggests that AI would be beneficial for high-income computer-related occupations. Without any concrete strategies for a redistribution effect, any benefits derived from automation would accrue solely to a few people who possess this technology, and this would further exacerbate the problem of inequality before a world-wide high income can be attained. The problem is exacerbated by global inequalities, says Simon Taylor.
The wealthy countries are spending big on AI-research investment, $67.2 billion in the U.S. this year alone-and have the infrastructure in place to implement it on a large scale. Poorer countries, lacking access to high-speed bandwidth and adequate social safety nets, may find themselves shut out of AI-driven prosperity even as they find their jobs displaced by manufacturing and services providers in AI-driven supply chains, But Musk’s prediction also relates to a more fundamental question of society: what is the purpose of life in a workless society?
With the ongoing development of AI from a task automation system into a more agentic system that has the capability to solve complex, multi-step tasks autonomously, there is a danger that, rather like Classic Industrial Society, many people may find themselves no longer earning an income, also losing the identity within which they earn that income.
The AI Precariat may become a reality, with implications not only for people’s incomes, but also with regard to people’s mental, social, and political integrity too.
Indeed, there is also a danger that people may also increasingly disengage from politics, with implications across social, cultural, and political society too. There may, indeed, also be implications across the realms of social, cultural, and political democracy too, with the very foundations of democracy itself called into question, among other problems too. The challenge for AI engineers and politicians is one of system design, rather than one merely of computer circuitry and algorithms too.
For example, fully automated production chains would need energy infrastructure that is resilient enough to support data centers, with the demand for energy infrastructure due to overall AI demand likely to rise by no less than 160% by the year 2030. There also needs to be human-AI collaboration frameworks that ensure safety, transparency, and adaptability too. Finally, there also needs to be Economic frameworks that need to deal with the question of how to allocate value, namely, that most output is produced by capital, rather than labor too.
The so-called Universal High Income Project, proposed by Mr. Musk, is a very real possibility, rather than the stuff of which utopian dreams are made too. The ‘enabling technologies,’ which, of course, is ‘Foundation Model AI, Autonomous Robotics, & Global Production Networks,’ is all being pursued at very rapid world-changing pace/VM, too. But whether the technological utopian vision is achieved, rather like the ‘Frontiersman Programmer Video Game,-will depend, indeed, on best practices among enough people,
