So what happens to “saving for the future” if the future itself is re-engineered? When you have AI that’s much, much smarter than people, when you have humanoid robots that can do any human task, and when you have essentially unlimited clean energy, then retirement savings becomes as obsolete as the horse and buggy, said Elon Musk.
For example, in a podcast interview conducted last month, he mentioned a “supersonic tsunami” of technological advancements that would go beyond even the most optimistic projections. By 2030, he predicted, we’ll have AI that is smarter than all of us together. Humanoid robots will outnumber us. In fact, in his view of the future, most jobs will have been eliminated before most manual jobs are eliminated by computers becoming expert in both bits and atoms. The implication here is a universal high income not by redistributive policy but by minimizing production costs to nearly zero.
This is a vision which challenges the fundamental principles of market economies. As one scholar describes post-scarcity economics: ‘The current economy is based on the distribution of scarce resources. As scarcity becomes less significant, so does the significance of wages, savings, and even money.’ A post-scarcity economy will “enable people to do what they want,” says the CEO of Tesla Motor Company, because ‘meaning’ is no longer tied to ‘making a living.
For most people, it looks difficult to connect this vision taking into consideration the living realities that are currently in existence. According to Fed Reserve, only 55% of people in the US have enough money set aside in case of an emergency that can pay for three months of living costs. Fewer than half of these people would be in a position to pay an unexpected expense of $2,000. However, Musk is of the opinion that in ten years, AI medicine might offer a better solution than that offered by best practices in any corner of the world without charging anything. Within three to four years, he is of the opinion that humanoid robots such as Tesla’s Optimus might do better than the best surgeons in the world, with their knowledge accessible to millions of units.
However, the flip side of the paradigm change is the concept of energy. Musk’s aim is to increase the use of solar power on earth and in space to tap a small portion of the energy of the sun to fulfill the energy requirements for AI processing. Musk asserts, A millionth fraction of the energy of the sun is many times what is being produced in the world today. The energy stored in batteries will double the energy flow of a nation without shelling out a single penny for plants, simply because it will synchronize with the supply and demand patterns. Electricity and cooling will be the challenges for AI development, asserts Musk, and software and hardware will no longer be so.
One of the problems that have been generally attributed to the techno-utopians is the problem of historical analogy, because the fact that the increase in productivity following previous revolutions in industry has not, per se, led to a reduction in the working week or a wealthy population does not, in this instance, preclude such an outcome. Of course, as Musk predicts, this will be a “bumpy” ride where times of plenty will coexist with times of upheaval. Anything less than a commitment to AI/robotics, as he sees it, will mean economies stuck and unable to withstand the weight of national debt, and so forth, and thus will yield to the forces of decline.
However, aside from the economic revolutions, as outlined by Musk, there also exist cultural and existential revolutions. The educational system, for example, will be AI-driven and tailored for the individual. They will go beyond the constraints of the physical classroom setting. The world of work, as it were, will be comprised of a series of hobbies for those who choose to remain in the workforce. And, finally, for the world of medicine, there is the democratization of best practices. Best practices, as it were, will no longer be circumscribed by time and place considerations, and will instead be available as and when required.
The future, in this instance, will be revolutionary and reassuring in the knowledge that, come the future, the value of one’s wealth, as opposed to the amount in the account, will be determined by access, access to energy, access to processing, access to knowledge, access to care. “How much should I save?” might, in this instance, just possibly become “How will I spend my time when I can have everything?” if the vision of the future that Musk has outlined becomes a reality of the future.
