In the future, Elon Musk sees humans as metaphorical vegetable farmers.
this Tesla CEO said in a recent press conference US-Saudi Investment Forum In Washington, where jobs will be optional in the next 10 to 20 years, the decision to find a job is likened to the more laborious task of maintaining a vegetable garden.
“My prediction is that jobs will be optional. It’ll be like playing sports or video games or something like that,” Musk said. “If you want to work, like you can go to the store and buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s a lot harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they enjoy growing vegetables.”
Musk said the optional jobs of the future will be the result of millions of robots in the workforce being able to lead a wave of productivity gains. This technology tycoon, Valued at approximately US$681 billionRecently, Tesla has worked to expand Tesla’s business beyond electric vehicles, working on Consolidate its vast business interests Learn more about his broader vision for an AI-driven, robot-powered future. This includes his goals 80% of Tesla’s value from his Optimus Prime robot, despite constantly production delays For humanoid robots.
Musk said these advances in automation will also bring other benefits. in a episode of Moonshot with Peter Diamandis In a podcast earlier this month, Tesla CEO predicted his robots would More than human surgeons Within ten years. He said these advances in health care will go beyond the quality of service the president receives.
In Musk’s imagined future, humans will need specialized medical care for longer periods of time. He told Diamandis that overcoming the limited lifetime problem was a programming problem, Gain eternal life within human capabilities Thanks to artificial intelligence.
“You’re preprogrammed to die. So if you change the programming, you’ll live longer,” Musk said.
Solving the growing pains of the future of automation
For many others, the concept of an automated future is not so bright, especially amid concerns and early evidence Artificial intelligence replaces entry-level jobs, which may help Generation Z’s job market woes and Revenue growth flattens— more of a nightmare than a utopian dream.
But he said money will no longer be an issue in Musk’s future of automated, voluntary work. Musk draws on Iain M. Banks’s Science Fiction Culture series, which self-proclaimed socialist writer Imagine a post-scarcity world filled with super-intelligent AI and no traditional jobs.
“In those books, money doesn’t exist. It’s interesting,” Musk said. “My guess is that if you stay out long enough — assuming AI and robotics continue to improve (which seems likely) — money won’t matter anymore.”
exist Viva Technology 2024Musk said “universally high incomes” would sustain a world without essential jobs, although he gave no details on how that system would work. His reasoning is consistent with that of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been an advocate universal basic incomeor regular unconditional payments to individuals, usually by the government.
“There will be no shortage of goods or services,” Musk said at last year’s conference.
Tesla did not immediately respond wealthRequest for comment.
Is Musk’s vision of alternative jobs possible?
Economists believe creating the world Musk describes will be a challenge. First, there is the question of whether the technology to automate work in the coming decades will be readily available and affordable. Ioana Marinescu, an economist and associate professor of public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that while the cost of artificial intelligence is falling, robotics is very expensive, making them more difficult to scale. working papers Last year at the Brookings Institution. (For example, AI expense management platform Ramp famous The company will now pay $2.50 per 1 million tokens, the basic unit that powers artificial intelligence, through April 2025, up from $10 a year ago. )
“Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been building machines at scale,” Manescu told us wealth. “We know from economics … that you often have diminishing returns for these types of activities, as it becomes increasingly difficult to make progress in the technology you’ve been working on for centuries.”
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, she said. Large language models can be applied to countless white-collar occupations, and the physical machines necessary to automate the workforce, she said, are not only more expensive but also highly specialized, slowing their implementation in the workplace.
Marinescu agrees with Musk’s vision of total automation as the future of the workforce, but she’s skeptical of his timeline — not just because of the limitations of robotics, but also because the adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace is still not as fast as expected, despite recent Tech-related layoffs. one Yale Budget Lab Report from October 2025 found that “the broader labor market has not experienced significant disruption from AI automation” since ChatGPT’s public launch in November 2022.
The question then is what these sweeping changes in the workforce will mean for the millions, if not billions, of people who are out of work. Samuel Solomon, an assistant professor of labor economics at Temple University, said that even if there is an established demand for a universal basic income, finding the political willpower to make it happen is a different problem. he told wealth The political structures that support workforce transformation will be as important as the technical structures.
“Artificial intelligence has created so much wealth and will continue to create it,” Solomon said. “But I think a key question is: Is this inclusive? Will it create inclusive prosperity? Will it create inclusive growth? Will everyone benefit?”
In this AI industrial revolution, current systems appear to be widening the gap between haves and have-nots, starting with Musk’s $1 trillion compensation package. a balloon The AI bubble also highlights class differencesdue to the boom in artificial intelligence, the profit expectations of the Big Seven were revised upwards, while those of other companies in the S&P 493 Index were revised downwards. Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Thorston Slock. It shows starting today.
“Spending by wealthy Americans, driven by a surge in stock portfolios, is the most important driver of economic growth,” Slock wrote in a note. blog post.
Survival changes brought about by artificial intelligence
Solving complex logistical problems in a job-optional world is one thing. Figuring out whether this is something humans actually want is another matter.
“If the economic value of labor declines to the point where it is no longer useful, we will have to rethink how our society is structured,” said Anton Korinek, professor of economics and faculty director of the Transformative Artificial Intelligence Initiative at the University of Virginia. wealth.
Korinek cites research such as the landmark 1938 Harvard University Research Research has found that humans can derive satisfaction from meaningful relationships. Most relationships now come from work, he said. In the future that Musk imagines, the next generation will have to change the paradigm of building meaningful relationships.
Musk presented his vision for the future of human existence at Viva Technology 2024.
“The question is actually a meaningful question: If computers and robots could do everything better than you, would your life still have meaning?” he said. “I do think humans may still have a role to play in this because we can give AI meaning.”
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on November 20, 2025.
More on Elon Musk’s vision for the future:
- Elon Musk Stocks 4 bold predictions Jobs of the Future: Robotic Surgeons in 3 Years, Immortality, No Retirement Savings Required
- Six-figure earners are out of luck: Elon Musk warns Money will “disappear”‘ In the future, AI will make jobs (and wages) irrelevant
- Elon Musk says Retirement savings don’t matter Because AI will create a rich world: ‘It doesn’t matter’