Elon Musk was perhaps the most optimistic about AI’s potential to reshape the world, predicting that work will eventually become optional and goods and services will be available in abundance Money could become irrelevant while the AI responds to a “universal high income.” But fellow billionaire Michael Saylor don’t quite buy it.
“Not everyone gets a Hampton’s home. Not everyone gets their own private jet. They don’t get their own private yacht,” Saylor said in an interview Diary of a CEO Interview published last week at the request of the host Steven Bartlett if he agrees with Musk’s AI predictions.
While Saylor – Founder of the software company Strategy that has made Bitcoin a central part of its business– The 61-year-old agreed that AI could make essentials significantly cheaper or even free, but argued that it will not completely eliminate the value of money.
When basic goods are plentiful, he said, people will simply shift spending to scarcer goods that confer wealth and status.
“If I give you universal health care, people want private health care. If I give everyone a house, someone will want a house twice as big,” said Saylor, who owns a house Net worth of $3.3 billion, said. “Everyone will always have a reason to want something more because we are status-oriented animals. That’s the cynical view.”
Saylor says technology has made royal luxuries commonplace – and AI could soon do so again
History, Saylor suggested, provides some evidence for his argument. Technological advances have made many essential goods significantly cheaper and more widely available. Clean water and advanced medicine, for example, are now commonplace across much of the developed world, although they were once luxuries that not even kings and queens could reliably access.
“Henry VII didn’t have dental crowns. He didn’t have X-rays,” Saylor said. “[We] receive modern medical care. The child mortality rate has fallen. Life is safer. Clean water, clean air, clean food – and technology has given them to us.”
But this abundance, he argued, does not eliminate the desire for something better, but rather increases the basis for what people consider luxury.
“What happened to the explosion of wealth? Huge utilitarian demands,” Saylor said. “Everyone gets a car, but how many get a Porsche? What happens to humanity is we always invent the luxury car – we invent the trophy object.”
Modern food consumption is also a good example of how abundance does not necessarily eliminate the desire for luxury.
“You see this everywhere in New York City – why do we go to restaurants and pay $300 to eat there when you can actually eat on three dollars a day?”
Silicon Valley executives agree with Musk and Saylor: AI is poised to unleash an era of abundance
While Musk and Saylor disagree on exactly how much AI will reach the world, they aren’t the only ones who believe the technology could radically change the way people live.
Dennis Hassabisthe one recently moved to chairman of Google Deepmind– has similarly predicted an AI-driven era of unprecedented abundance.
“In 10, 15 years we will be in some kind of new golden era of discovery [is] a kind of new renaissance,” Hassabis previously said Assetsis the Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast..
He said that future would see breakthroughs in medicine and energy – and eventually allow humanity to “travel the stars and… explore the galaxy.”
Billionaire and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has similarly argued that AI will usher in an era of abundance – but said the economic benefits will depend heavily on how governments respond to the resulting job shift.
“Productivity will support rising average incomes, but job displacement will have the opposite effect, even as goods and services produced increase dramatically,” Khosla said wrote in 2024.”Universal Basic income could be the best compensation. Our goal should be to ensure that the median income increases with the average income.”