Musk Predicts That in 20 Years, Work Will Be Optional and Money Irrelevant

In the future, Elon Musk sees humans as metaphorical vegetable farmers.

The gap between the haves and have-nots during this AI industrial revolution has widened.

The Tesla CEO said at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that in the next 10 to 20 years, work will be optional, likening the decision to have a job to the more laborious upkeep of a vegetable garden, Sasha Rogelberg reported for Fortune.

The future of optional work will be the result of millions of robots in the workforce, able to usher in a wave of enhanced productivity, Musk theorized.

His goal is to have 80% of Tesla’s value come from its Optimus robots, despite continuous production delays for the humanoid bots, similar to his self-driving tech and his ambitions to colonize Mars.

Musk takes a page from Iain M. Banks’ Culture series of science fiction novels, in which the self-proclaimed socialist author conjures a post-scarcity world filled with superintelligent AI beings and no traditional jobs.

Ironing out the complicated logistics of a work-optional world is one thing; figuring out whether that is something humans really want is another.

“If the economic value of labor declines so that labor is just not very useful anymore, we’ll have to rethink how our society is structured,” Anton Korinek, professor and faculty director of the Economics of Transformative AI Initiative at the University of Virginia, told Fortune.

Korinek cited research such as the landmark 1938 Harvard University study that found humans derive satisfaction from meaningful relationships. Most of those relationships right now come from work, he said.

The gap between the haves and have-nots during this AI industrial revolution has widened, beginning with Musk’s $1 trillion pay package.

The AI bubble has also highlighted class differences, with earnings expectations being revised up for the Magnificent Seven while expectations for the rest of the S&P 493 are being revised down, according to Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok.