Elon Musk says money will become irrelevant by 2036 as AI boosts productivity

On 23 July, Elon Musk met with The Economist editor‑in‑chief Zanny Minton Beddoes at a Tesla factory in Texas. During the hour‑and‑a‑half conversation Musk claimed that by 2036 money will cease to matter because robots and artificial intelligence will produce more goods and services than people can consume, turning money into a claim on a resource that will no longer be scarce. Beddoes countered that job destruction will arrive before abundance and that governments tend to protect displaced workers rather than accelerate change.

Musk pointed to current productivity gains: an analyst can complete a week’s work in a day, a lawyer can read contracts in a morning, and a non‑technical founder can launch software quickly. He cited historical parallels, noting Robert Solow’s observation that computers were visible but not reflected in productivity statistics until a decade later, and Paul David’s study of electric motors, where a forty‑year lag occurred before factories reorganised around individual motors. The article argues that, as with past technologies, the real breakthrough will come when firms redesign processes to fully exploit AI’s potential.