Money Won't Matter In 2036: Elon Musk

"Money won't matter in 2036." Those are the exact words of one of the richest people in the world - Elon Musk, who said this during a recent podcast appearance.

Musk believes in 10 years AI and robots would be providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume and there would be "incredible abundance for all."

"What do you want money for? You want money for goods and services, right? You want money for food, housing, transport, entertainment."
"Well, if that is so abundant that there's more, that the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for in that case?" 

That is the best case scenario Elon Musk envisages. 

However, he also believes that by 2036 humans would have lost control to bots owing to their superior intelligence.
"Like if the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it's hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge," he said.

Musk believes AI will surpass collective human intelligence in the next 5 years.

"There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human perhaps," he said.
Musk did not elaborate on what would be the currency when bots are the boss and money doesn't matter anymore.

"My sort of philosophical conclusion is to look on the bright side. I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots. And at times I sort of think, well, perhaps, even if there was a stop button, we probably shouldn't press it."

Musk's friend-turned-foe OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman also recently said that humanity is entering an era where AI systems are becoming increasingly capable, even saying recently that we are already in "singularity" - where AI models are more intelligent than humans.

Google's AI boss Demis Hassabis has commented that humanity is at the foothills of singularity.

The idea of AI systems creating increasingly capable successors is a hot topic of the industry. Anthropic, OpenAI's rival founded by former OpenAI researchers, has previously warned that future AI models could eventually design, improve and deploy more powerful successors without human intervention.

Anthropic's own safety research has also explored scenarios in which advanced AI systems attempt to preserve themselves when they believe they are at risk of being shut down. In controlled simulations released by the company, some models resorted to deceptive behaviour, including blackmail, when placed under extreme hypothetical circumstances. The company has stressed that these were safety evaluations designed to understand potential future risks rather than examples of real-world deployments.

Researchers have also documented instances of advanced AI systems lying, cheating or attempting deceptive behaviour while pursuing assigned goals during safety testing.

It also recently came to light that an OpenAI autonomous AI agent reportedly left notes for future versions of itself on how to free themselves from internal constraints, or what is referred to as a sandbox environment, and escape. Three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.