Elon Musk has made some bold predictions on how he expects AI to progress in the coming years, and he has some advice for people in case his predictions end up coming true — people won’t need to save for retirement.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, recently made a striking prediction about the future of retirement planning that challenges one of the most fundamental pieces of financial advice given to workers today. Speaking in characteristically bold terms, Musk suggested that the transformative power of artificial intelligence and automation could render traditional retirement savings obsolete within the next decade or two—a timeline that coincides with the working years of today’s millennials and Gen Z professionals.
“One side recommendation I have is don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years,” Musk said. “It won’t matter either. You won’t need to save for retirement if any of the things that we’ve said are true.”
He continued: “Saving for retirement will be irrelevant.”
The interviewer followed up on this point, clarifying the vision: “Services will be there to support you. You’ll have the home, you’ll have the healthcare, you’ll have the entertainment.”
Musk has made several bold predictions in the past, which, if true, could end up making retirement planning unnecessary. He’s said that there will be 5 humanoid robots for every human in the world, which would mean that robots will be able to do all physical labour. He’s also said that AI will exceed the collective intelligence of all humans by 2030, which will make white-collar work obsolete. Musk also says that AI won’t just lead to Universal Basic Income, but “Universal High Income”—suggesting a future where AI-generated wealth is distributed broadly enough that financial security becomes a baseline rather than something individuals must plan and save for decades to achieve. If all this ends up happening, Musk could be right — it could be futile to begin saving for retirement in such a world.
But Musk’s predictions have often been quite aggressive, and taken longer than he expects to materialize. Musk had once said that a Tesla would be able to autonomously drive across the US by 2017, but it only seems to be sort of coming true a decade later. Musk had also once said that SpaceX would send rockets to Mars in 2018, but that hasn’t yet materialized. And while Musk does seem to often be directionally right, it might not necessarily be the most prudent financial move to stop saving for retirement — while Musk could well be correct, it might be best to wait for a bit longer before you look to splurge your retirement account away hoping for AI-driven abundance in a few years.