In a new interview with The Economist, Elon Musk dropped a few bold predictions about what our world will look like by 2036 — a theme he's touched on before in his predictions for the next decade and his 2026 predictions. Spoiler: an age of absolute abundance awaits us — assuming we dodge a global war.
The singularity is already close
In just 5 years, AI's combined intelligence will surpass that of all of humanity [[01:10]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=70). The intelligence gap between AI and humans will be bigger than the gap between us and chimpanzees [[06:32]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=392).
Money won't be needed anymore
Finance as we know it will lose its meaning [[04:38]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=278). The economy of the future is a tandem of digital and physical intelligence, where millions of humanoid robots produce a "quasi-infinite" amount of goods [[03:39]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=219).
From fear to fatalism
Musk used to scare everyone with talk of a robot uprising — now his philosophy is "relax and enjoy the ride" [[09:13]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=553). After all, the end of the universe (its heat death) is already sealed by the laws of physics anyway, so it's the journey that counts [[10:02]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuoqKYxDHVc&t=602).
> The economy of the future defies metaphors. We're headed for a scale of change history has no precedent for.
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> — Elon Musk