Elon Musk's age of abundance is an AI pipe dream soaked in snake oil, and
I've about had it

Date:
Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Description:
In a recent interview, Elon Musk promised AI that's smarter than us in 5 years, which helps introduce a money- and work-free utopian world in which everyone has enough of everything.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Lets get this straight. AI is a disruptor, not a savior. It is not a cure for the worlds ills. When I walk through the streets of New York, I see homeless people, and I know that they dont have enough. When I look at the statistics and I see 1/7 of the world is living in poverty, I know that theres no simple or easy solution. Unquestionably, AI is changing everyones lives, is changing the world, is changing industry and business. Heck, its changing my own work, but it does not have the power to transform how people get goods and services, and the fundamentals of resources and energy.

We do not have unlimited resources. We do not have an unlimited supply of energy. What were learning, instead, is that the world is a carpet, and AI is the vacuum, potentially sucking up vast quantities of electricity and water. What we're learning, instead, is that AI sucks an enormous amount of power
and resources from the world. Im sorry if I sound a little riled up. You can blame Elon Musk, who predicted a world of abundance within 10 years . We wont need money in 2036. AI will be smarter than us, and so it will usher in an
age of abundance. As for how it will do this, well, itll ignore the basic rules of economics, the basic rules of resources, and even physics, so somehow, well have unlimited energy. All this, in Musks vision, will be
thanks to AI and robotic automation, and, I guess, AIs ability to solve problems and magically produce or protect limited resources like water, energy, and precious metals. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: No, the robots won't save us Speaking of precious metals. You cant mine them without extreme resources, cost, and labor. Unless Musk believes that
the robots that haltingly try to empty a dishwasher and fold clothes will somehow be able to not just dig out the precious metals but properly sort them, and then Ill shuttle them all the way from mine to the factory and ultimately your phones.

Im not saying that world can never exist, but even if it does, even if robots are doing that level of work, the fundamentals of our global economy wont change that easily (if at all). None of this is going to drag people out of poverty and into a world of abundance; that simply is not going to happen thanks to AI. If anything, AIs rapid use of water and energy could make those resources scarce and more expensive, thereby pushing more people over the poverty line. You may like Googles AI chief warns of growing AGI risks Anthropic's bizarre call for everyone to slow down on AI is a pipe dream here's why that will never happen Chasing every model release is a fool's errand and a fast track to AI fatigue inside your organisation: GoodData.AI CTO says businesses should focus on automation use cases over every single
new release

Now I do have a thought in between all this. If occasional trillionaire Elon Musk wants to help people with resources and poverty, then maybe he could
take some of those billions that he has now and donate them. Musk already has a charitable foundation, but according to some reports, it has zero employees and, for the most part, donates funds to a narrow set of insiders . I'm not buying what he's selling So, what exactly is going on here? What is Elon Musk selling? Promising an age of abundance through AI and robots, of course, benefits him and his now publicly traded massive SpaceXAI company, which combines the space company with X and XAI, and Tesla, which is trying to
build all those bloodless humanoids . The more people believe that AI is the answer, that robotics is the solution, the more money he will make, and the bigger his company will grow, but scale does not equal a solution. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

Look, its clear that we are at a tipping point. No one really understands the true power and potential of AI, especially as it relates to what might happen with artificial general intelligence . I mean, we have hints, and theyre not the most positive ones.

Perhaps youve heard about OpenAI and Hugging Face and how, when OpenAI was testing a new powerful model, the model basically jumped the fence (it left the sandbox and went online) and went into the Hugging Face system because it knew that it could find the solution for its task there. Then Hugging Face didnt even have a good US model to combat it, so it used some open Chinese models. It was, to say the least, a terrifying mess.

My point is we expect change, and we expected it to be rapid. What happens next will be unpredictable and unsettling, but it is not going to eliminate the need for goods, services, hard work, creation, and the money to support billions of people in their daily lives with the proper resources like food, water, energy, and housing. What to read next The AI boom costs more than Apollo, ISS, and the Manhattan Project combined The more famous people tell
me to use AI, the less I want to The AI job apocalypse is a myth. We need
more human talent than ever before

The Age of Abundance is a fantasy sold by an AI charlatan, one who tells the best story to serve his own ends. The cost of labor and resources to build will not magically drop to zero. Water and food shortages wont suddenly, or even in a decades time, be solved. Musks vision wishes away the basic laws of commerce, physics, and human need to build an AI/robot utopia.

That world may be possible, but only if the AI and robots truly take over and eradicate us. I sure hope that isnt the world Musk is envisioning.
Postscript:

Without mentioning Elon's name, I asked Gemini whether AI and robots could possibly bring about a cash-free age of abundance. It shared my skepticism.

"When roughly 10% of the worlds population (over 800 million people) still lives in extreme poverty today, and real-world resources like water, arable land, and rare-earth metals are under intense strain, the concept of a moneyless, AI-driven utopia sounds less like an economic plan and more like a science-fiction fairy tale....The leap from 'AI can write essays' to 'AI can eliminate physical scarcity' ignores the fundamental laws of physics and
human nature." Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/elon-musks-age-of-abundance- is-an-ai-pipe-dream-soaked-in-snake-oil-and-ive-about-had-it


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