During the press conference, one of the questions millions of people actually want answered was asked: What happens to our jobs? The reporter pointed directly to Elon Musk and to his earlier talk of an “age of abundance.” What happens to the people sitting at their laptops today? What are the jobs of the future?

Musk answered unusually clearly. He said it was worth focusing on the positive effects of AI — or SI, super intelligence, as the term was used during the press conference. Then came the line:

“I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance.”

And then:

“We don't have just universal basic income, we have universal high income.”

This is far more radical than the usual discussion about Universal Basic Income. Musk is not primarily describing a society where people lose their jobs and then receive a minimum state payment to cover rent and food. He is describing a future in which the combination of AI, superintelligence and robotics produces so much economic value that human living standards as a whole could potentially rise.

That is a very different scenario.

From basic income to abundance

Universal Basic Income still operates within today’s economic logic. People work, companies produce, governments tax, and if enough jobs disappear society may need to create some kind of economic floor for people who can no longer support themselves through work.

Musk’s argument goes one step further. If AI can perform a large share of intellectual work, while robots perform a large share of physical work, productive capacity itself could increase enormously. The question may then no longer be: How do we finance unemployed people? It may become: How do we distribute the output of an economy that is no longer constrained by human labour?

This is where the idea of Universal High Income becomes interesting. It does not simply mean giving people money. It assumes a world in which the production of goods and services has become so efficient that a much higher material standard of living can become available to far more people. At least, that is the vision.

Musk gave a concrete example during the press conference: healthcare. When superintelligence is combined with advanced robotics, he said, everyone in the world could in principle gain access to better medical care than anyone in the room has today — including Musk himself.

That is an enormous idea. Not an AI assistant helping a doctor write notes. Not a chatbot giving general medical information. But a system in which advanced diagnostics, medical analysis, research, robotic surgery and treatment could potentially be scaled to billions of people.

If that becomes technically possible, the economics of healthcare changes fundamentally. The same could apply to education, legal advice, programming, design, financial analysis, research, administration, transportation, manufacturing, logistics and even construction.

“But not if they don’t have a job”

Perhaps the most interesting moment in the entire exchange comes directly after Musk’s vision of globally improved healthcare. A reporter interrupts: “Not if they haven't got a job.”

That single sentence almost perfectly summarises our current economic model. Today, access to almost everything depends on income from work. You can have the best hospitals in the world, the best education, the best technology and the best housing — but without money, you do not automatically gain access to any of it.

Musk replies that jobs will change, just as jobs have always changed. He uses a fascinating historical example. Once, “computer” was a job. Before digital computers existed, people sat in large offices performing calculations manually. Banks, the military, research institutions and large companies could employ entire departments of people whose job was simply to calculate. Then the computer arrived. The occupation disappeared. Musk points out that hardly anyone today longs to go back to sitting all day manually calculating interest rates and tables. His point is that technology continually changes the tasks human beings need to perform.

Historically, that is true as a principle. But today’s situation contains one crucial difference. When earlier technologies replaced certain tasks, new areas emerged where human intelligence was still needed. When the tractor replaced farm labour, people could move into factories. When factories automated, people could move into offices. When computers automated administration, new jobs appeared in IT, programming, marketing and services.

But what happens if technology begins to automate the very ability to learn new tasks?

That is what makes AGI and superintelligence fundamentally different.

The real change is intelligence

The steam engine automated muscle. Electricity made production more efficient. The combustion engine transformed transportation. The computer automated calculation. The internet made information global.

AI is trying to automate something much deeper: intelligence.

At the same time, robotics is trying to automate the body.

The combination could be historically unique. Imagine a future factory where AI designs the product, AI develops the production process, robots manufacture the components, robots assemble them, autonomous vehicles transport them, AI manages inventory, AI handles sales, AI runs customer service, AI analyses the market and AI develops the next generation of the product.

Where is the human being?

Perhaps as an owner. Perhaps as a creator. Perhaps as an entrepreneur. Perhaps as someone overseeing the process. But perhaps not at all within traditional production.

That changes the central constraint of the economy. Throughout industrial society, one of the main constraints has been the amount of human labour available. A person has 24 hours in a day. A doctor can only treat a certain number of patients. A teacher can only teach a certain number of students. A lawyer can only handle a certain number of cases. A programmer can only write a certain amount of code.

AI can change that logic.

An AI teacher could potentially teach a hundred million people at once. An AI lawyer could analyse millions of documents. An AI doctor could process billions of medical data points. An AI programmer could generate enormous quantities of code.

The marginal cost of intelligence could fall dramatically.

AI can create abundance — but it does not automatically distribute it

This is where the great weakness in the optimistic story appears. Technological abundance is not the same thing as economic abundance for everyone.

Suppose a robotic factory can produce one hundred times more than today’s factory. Who owns the factory? Suppose AI can provide the world’s best medical diagnostics almost for free. Who owns the model? Suppose robots can build homes quickly and cheaply. Who owns the land? Suppose autonomous energy systems can generate enormous amounts of electricity. Who owns the infrastructure?

It is entirely possible to create technological abundance while economic scarcity still exists for large parts of the population.

That is why the next great AI question may not primarily be about technology. It may be about ownership of the technology and how the output it produces is distributed.

In our current economic system, the relationship is relatively simple: work → wages → consumption. Human beings sell their time and expertise, receive money and then use that money to buy goods and services. Governments tax work and businesses and use that revenue to finance common systems.

But what happens if the amount of human labour the economy needs falls dramatically?

Then the entire chain begins to change.

This is where Musk’s Universal High Income becomes more than a new label for basic income. In theory, it is an attempt to imagine an economic system in which people gain access to the output of the AI economy even when their own labour is no longer its most important input.

AI may not take your job — but work may stop being the centre

After discussing the future of work, Musk returns to his main point. He says the most likely outcome, in his view, is “incredibly beneficial” and describes it as a future people would want if they could look ahead and see it today.

That matters. This is not simply a defensive position in which Musk argues that AI’s benefits outweigh its risks. He is actively describing a positive future scenario: a society in which AI and robotics can create more prosperity, better healthcare and higher living standards than today’s production systems are capable of delivering.

Of course, one does not have to share his optimism. There are enormous unanswered questions around safety, concentration of power, ownership, democracy, energy use, labour markets and political control.

But the shift in the discussion matters.

For years, the dominant question has been:

Will AI take my job?

Musk’s argument points toward another question:

What happens if people no longer need a traditional job in order to gain access to the output of civilisation?

That is much bigger than labour-market policy. It goes to the heart of how we think about the economy.

A society built around work

We often underestimate how deeply work is embedded in our identity. When we meet someone new, one of the first questions we ask is: What do you do?

We rarely ask: What do you create? What are you curious about? What do you want to learn? What matters to you? What do you contribute to the people around you?

Work has become an identity marker. It determines income, housing, pension, status, daily rhythm, social networks and self-esteem. Even holidays are defined as the time when we do not work.

But if work gradually loses its role as an economic necessity, a much larger philosophical question appears: What are human beings supposed to do with their time?

Create? Travel? Study? Care for others? Start companies because they enjoy it? Conduct research? Play music? Build communities? Grow food? Renovate an old house? Explore the world? Or consume endless streams of AI-generated entertainment?

This may become one of the most important dividing lines of the future. Not between people with jobs and people without jobs, but between people who can create meaning without work defining them — and people who cannot.

The White House makes the moment bigger

The context is also what makes Musk’s statement interesting. This was not said on a podcast, on X or at a technology conference. Musk was standing with the President of the United States and leaders from several of the world’s largest AI companies after a meeting about the relationship between the American state and the AI industry.

Trump described the technology as potentially bigger than the internet and spoke about it as one of the greatest industrial changes in history. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the development as the largest industrial revolution in history and the largest infrastructure buildout humanity has ever undertaken. OpenAI’s representative spoke about the potential to lift people up, create new small businesses and accelerate scientific discoveries.

That does not mean any of these predictions will automatically come true. But something is changing. AI is no longer being treated merely as another digital technology. It is increasingly being treated as infrastructure for the next economic system.

Data centres. Energy. Robotics. Chip manufacturing. Research. Capital. Politics.

Everything is beginning to connect.

And once that happens, the question of jobs becomes only one part of a much larger transformation.

From “AI takes your job” to “AI produces your prosperity”

For centuries, we have built societies around a very simple principle: first you work, then you receive money, then you can live.

The truly radical AI future may not be that machines take human jobs. It may be that the connection between work and the right to a good life begins to break.

That does not mean money disappears. It does not mean everyone becomes rich. It does not mean scarcity disappears. Land will still be limited. Attractive housing will still be limited. Natural resources will still be limited. Human attention will still be limited.

But the amount of producible intelligence and labour may become almost unlimited compared with today.

And then the playing field changes: the economy, education, retirement, entrepreneurship, working life, politics, our relationship with time, our definition of success and perhaps even our understanding of human value.

The most interesting part of Elon Musk’s argument outside the White House is therefore not that he says AI will not destroy the world. It is that he shifts the discussion from compensating people for lost jobs to participating in future abundance.

From:

“What happens when AI takes my job?”

to:

“What happens if AI and robots produce so much that my job no longer has to finance my entire life?”

That is a completely different vision of the future.

And it leads to a question that neither Musk, Trump nor the technology companies have yet fully answered:

If AI truly creates an age of abundance — who owns the abundance? And who gets to share in it?