Elon Musk says AI will create such abundance that governments will provide for all, and work will become a choice. Michael Burry says it’ll be a rocky road to get there.
“AI+Robots will be able to do everything, resulting in universal high income,” Musk posted recently on X. “Work will be optional.”
“False,” Burry replied. “There will be revolution first.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, was responding to an essay published on X by a fellow tech billionaire, Chamath Palihapitiya. The piece, titled “The Great Descent,” said that the “cost of expertise is falling to zero” as AI models allow everyone to access intelligence.
The response by Burry  — the investor of “The Big Short” fame who has pivoted from running a hedge fund to writing on Substack — suggests he anticipates civil unrest if AI displaces human workers at scale.
Musk and Burry didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
Musk has repeatedly said that AI, robotics, and other tech will cut costs and boost efficiency so much that food, housing, utilities, healthcare, and other essentials will become much cheaper.
Governments could then easily afford to give citizens enough money to live comfortably, freeing people from having to work to support themselves, Musk has said.
Universal high income (UHI) goes beyond universal basic income (UBI), which only provides enough money to cover the basics such as gas, rent, and groceries.
“Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk said in an X post in April.
Musk has gone as far as saying that saving for retirement could be “irrelevant” in 20 years because there’ll be so much wealth for all that nobody will need a nest egg.
Burry, who said on Substack last week that he was shorting Tesla, wrote on X in late January that “Elon is an American treasure but also a desperately incentivized futurist even earlier than me.”
The investor was referring to his penchant for predicting crashes long before they happen, dating back to his premature but ultimately prescient bet against the mid-2000s housing bubble.
The AI jobs debate
Burry isn’t alone in predicting societal upheaval if masses of people suddenly lose their jobs to AI. Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, has warned that AI could exacerbate wealth inequality, increasing the risk of internal strife and even civil war.
Dalio told “The Diary of a CEO” podcast last fall that a redistribution policy in the AI era is a must, and it needs to redistribute more than money, as “uselessness and money may not be a great combination.”
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said that AI could eventually shorten the working week to 3.5 days, help people be healthier and live longer, and give them more time to hike and enjoy leisure activities.
But he’s also warned that AI could replace jobs so quickly that it sends shockwaves through labor markets and economies, and companies, governments, and other stakeholders need to work together to reskill people, move them to different roles, offer them early retirement, and provide other kinds of help and support when AI makes them redundant.
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