“In 10-20 years, working will be optional” Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s prediction

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, appeared on Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, where he predicted that working will be optional in 10 to 20 years due to various factors, including the development of AI. 

Elon Musk’s staggering prediction

• “WTF is” is a podcast hosted by Zerodha’s co-founder Nikhil Kamath, and prominent personalities like Bill Gates, Indian PM Narendra Modi, Sam Altman and A.R. Rahman have appeared on the show, one of the most resourceful podcasts on YouTube. 

"Working at all will be optional?"

That is nonsense. How will it be optional? So everyone just gets the same amount of UBI, will own nothing and be happy? pic.twitter.com/XWJS7abb1S

— Golden Phoenix (@Golden_Phoenix) December 1, 2025

• Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and CEO of multibillion-dollar companies such as Tesla and SpaceX, recently appeared on the “WTF is” podcast and gave insightful responses and interpretations on various previously explored topics, therefore, the title of the episodes says “Elon Musk: A different conversation”. The background in the video appears to be the office of SpaceX, as one of the mugs bears the logo of the company. 
• He delved in topics like H-1B visa, Artificial intelligence, tariffs, free markets, DOGE and much more. Nikhil Kamath posed an interesting question which was about the relevance of work put out by humans and the misuse of AI. He asked,  “With AI, if productivity were to go up, and I heard you speak about UHI instead of UBI, in a world like that, I wonder if people want to live in cities, which are always going to be polluted and not offer the quality of life that a rural environment might?”
• Elon Musk said “Well, i guess that, some people want to be around a lot of people and some people don’t, its going, maybe a matter of personal choice but in the future i think it won’t be the case that you have to be in a city for a job cause i think, my prediction is in the future working will be optional”.
• Musk believes AI will do most jobs and be productive. Companies will have more profits with fewer workers. When the government receives more money (corporate taxes), the money will be redistributed to the unemployed citizens to prevent social unrest. Universal Basic Income is where governments provide a fixed income to everyone, making working a choice and not a necessity.  

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