The future is almost here — and, surprise, it’s going to be very relaxing.
That’s according to Elon Musk, at least. In recent months, the tech tycoon has been pushing the idea of “sustainable abundance” — or, the more appealingly named, “amazing abundance.” He claims that with the rise of artificial intelligence, humans will be able to enjoy lives of leisure and a universal basic income while the bots do all the work. We’ll all be freed from the shackles of doing undesirable labor, which will seem as antiquated as traveling via a horse and buggy.
During a Tesla shareholder meeting in November, while speaking from the stage, he declared, “Sustainable abundance via AI and robotics. That’s the future we’re headed for.”
He was more emphatic in a post to X in December, writing, “The future is going to be AMAZING with AI and robots enabling sustainable ABUNDANCE for all!”
Then, this past January at the 2026 World Economic Forum, Musk stated, “Tesla is about sustainable technology. Now we have added a bigger goal: sustainable abundance.”
While speaking in Davos, he elaborated, “If you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it and ubiquitous robotics, you will have an explosion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.”
The concept of such abundance has been in the pop culture for years, in books like Iain M. Banks’ “Culture” series and and K. Eric Drexler’s “Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology” and even kids’ movies like “Wall-E.” Though it may not have always been worded in the exuberant style of Musk, there was the idea of robots doing the heavy lifting while humans benefited.
Appealing as it all may be, there are those who believe it sounds a bit too good to be true, especially coming from one of the richest men in the world — who just so happens to be developing humanoid robots with his Tesla Optimus.
“It’s a classic Musk pivot,” Faiz Siddiqui, author of “Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk,” told The Post. “You have a company [Tesla] that has established a foothold in the industry, it’s stock has out-performed expectations and it now faces short-term challenges with the backlash to Tesla. Now for it to pivot to humanoid robots is a big leap and a big gamble. Musk does a thing where he over promises and shoots for the moon. But, even if he misses, he might land among the stars.”
A Universal Basic Income (UBI) would be central to the conceit. While robots do all the work, humans would collect regular, unconditional cash payments from the government. Proponents like tech and longevity entrepreneur — and longtime Musk buddy — Peter Diamandis believe that companies will make such high profits from AI running the show — and save so much cash by using robot slaves instead of employing humans — that massive taxes will bankroll UBI. Everyone will be able live a basic but comfortable life without needing to work for it. Those who want more will have the option of monetizing their passions, pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors or putting time into creative gambits.
“Think of it as an expanded version of the Covid [stimulus] checks,” Diamandis, the co-author of “Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think” and host of the Abundance Summit, told The Post. “People will get some amount of capital and we’ll be likely to see a huge increase in the gross domestic product.”
And, not only will there be UBI, but us humans will need to pay for far fewer things when robots are doing everything. You won’t need to spring for Uber Eats for dinner if there are robots gardening and cooking for you.
“The best education will be free, the best healthcare will be free, access to all intelligence and information will be free. All these things will become effectively free,” Diamandis said. “If you have AI superintelligence and advanced humanoid robots, everything will be de-monetized to the cost of electricity and raw materials,”
That said, people will likely have to pay money for things like cars, and the robots themselves.
Alex Imas, who teaches at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, has expressed skepticism about how it will work.
“If we have the exact same policies, and production frontiers expand, we would no longer live in utopia,” he told the Times in February. “We would be in a dystopian hellhole where demand would collapse.”
Some might be fearful of robots doing jobs like heart surgery, but a tech world insider, who asked to be anonymous over concerns of a conflict with Musk, points out that people had similar issues when driverless taxis like Waymos first hit the road in California.
“It was weird as hell to see cars with nobody driving them,” they said. “Then you take a driverless taxi and realize that it’s awesome. You feel safer than you do with a human driver. They’re not distracted, they’re not talking on cell phones, they’re not speeding.”
Diamandis also notes that AI robots will actually have more expertise and experience than most humans.
“If, God forbid, you need surgery,” he said, “you want the person who has the most experience with your particular surgery. But every time a robot does the surgery, all the other robots get that knowledge. So, you have a network effect where a single humanoid robot has effectively done millions of surgeries.”
Still, not everyone is so enthusiastic about the potential future.
Gary Marcus, the emeritus professor of psychology and engineering at New York University, is skeptical that tech titans will really want to share their wealth and bankroll UBI.
“Elon Musk [has] hardly been generous to others in his charitable donations or in his leveraging of the works of artists and writers,” Marcus told The Post. “I am sure he aspires to be richer but not at all sure he or his fellow billionaires are prepared to share the wealth to any significant degree.”
Diamandis believes Musk is more altruistic than many realize.
“People underestimate Elon’s motivations,” he said. “His motivation is to solve problems, uplift humanity, make things more accessible.”
Patri Friedman, a tech investor and the grandson of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, has a measured view of the possibilities.
He can imagine a utopian future where robots are obedient servants. “That seems very plausible,” he told The Post. “Maybe there is a collaboration, a quality partnership in which they are below us or next to us.”
But he can also envision a more dystopian outcome. “[Robots] can become smarter than us and enslave us; that’s terrifying,” said Friedman. “The AI can create a super plague that will do us in, or else, the AI will change the oxygen or carbon dioxide level to be better for computers. It doesn’t have to be the AI acting against us or caring about us. It could just take over the world in order to benefit itself.”
There are those who believe that the Tesla founder’s timeline for all of this happening — two to three years — seems a little unrealistic.
Marcus doesn’t think “we’re anywhere near” this all happening.
Diamandis said he “been predicting this for a long time,” and that believes it could come to fruition as soon as 2030.
“The human race has already seen immense improvements in abundance,” he said, noting things free video calls to anywhere in the world and gratis AI on the internet. “There is plenty of room for more. There are no physical laws preventing this.”
Christine Peterson with the Foresight Institute, a non-profit focused on emerging technologies, agrees
“To make this real requires energy and materials, which are available both on this planet and in space, plus ingenuity and hard work,” she told The Post.
Quite simply, “Elon is a smart guy” and “AI is taking over,” Rand Simberg, a space-industry consultant who has witnessed the rise of Musk from early on, told The Post.
But, he notes that some people might be more suited to the future than others.
“Those who’ve been reading science fiction for a long time are better prepared for the world we’re living in,” he said. “Concepts we’ve been reading about for a long time are here. It’s finally starting to feel like the 21st century.”
