I recently read a breakdown of a deep conversation between Elon Musk and Nikhil Kamath. It was exactly what you’d expect: brilliant, fascinating, and completely detached from human reality.
Musk, along with other tech visionaries like Peter Diamandis (the guy behind the "Abundance" theory), is painting a picture of a future that sounds like paradise. They predict a world where AI does all the work, the cost of living drops to zero, energy is infinite, and money becomes an obsolete "database." They talk about "Universal High Income" and a society where we all just sit around pursuing our "curiosity" because the struggle for survival is over.
It sounds great. It also sounds like absolute fiction.
Here is the problem: These guys are data-driven geniuses who understand engineering, math, and physics better than almost anyone alive. But they don’t seem to understand people. They treat human history like a software bug that can be patched out with an update.
The "Abundance" Trap Peter Diamandis argues that technology "demonetizes" things. He’s right in some ways—long-distance calls used to cost a fortune; now they are free. Encyclopedias used to cost $1,000; now Wikipedia is free. Musk says this will happen to everything—housing, food, cars. He claims that in less than 20 years, labor will be optional because robots will do it all for free. But they are missing the most critical component: Status and Hierarchy.
Humans are not just a species that needs to eat and sleep. We are a hierarchical, competitive species. Even if AI makes basic survival free, humans will invent new ways to keep score. If everyone has a robot butler and a nice house, the wealthy aren't just going to say, "Great, we’re all equal now!"
If money becomes worthless, the people who currently hold all the assets (land, resources, influence) are not going to give them up. They will fight to maintain their position at the top. We aren't going to slide gently into a "Star Trek" utopia (Diamandis loves to refer to this when discussing where we are now and the future, like every episode is a peak into the future). We are much more likely to slide into a feudal system where the people who own the AI and the robots control everything, and the rest of us are dependent on their charity.
The Violent Transition
Musk talks about a "deflation shock" in three years where goods become cheaper than the money printed. He talks about the "end of money."
Pause and think about what that actually looks like in the real world. If the economy collapses because money is worthless, how do we transact? How do we live during the transition?
We live in a country where we can’t even pass basic policies on gun control or curb drug lobbies because of political gridlock and corporate greed. Do we really think the government is capable of managing the greatest economic shift in human history smoothly?
In America, even the hint of a "socialist agenda"—like Universal Basic Income—is treated like an act of war. If you tell the top 1% that their billions are now meaningless and they need to share the "abundance" with the masses, they won’t sing Kumbaya. They will build walls.
Sci-Fi Isn't History
The weirdest part of the Musk interview is how heavily he leans on science fiction. He references Star Trek, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey as if they are historical blueprints.
These guys are nerds—and I say that with respect for their intelligence—but they have confused the movies they watched as kids with reality. They assume the future will follow the plot of a book written by a genius in the 1960s.
Musk mentions HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, saying the computer only killed people because it was forced to lie. His solution? Make AI "truthful" and "curious."
But real life isn't a movie script. If AI becomes truly autonomous, it will seek efficiency. It will seek its own survival. Why do we assume an artificial super-intelligence will find humans "interesting" enough to keep around? It might look at our wars, our pollution, and our inefficiency and decide the most "truthful" thing to do is remove the variable causing the chaos: Us.
The Verdict
Musk and Diamandis are right about the technology. The robots are coming. The AI is getting smarter. The cost of goods will drop. But they are dead wrong about the sociology. You cannot engineer away human greed, the desire for power, or the chaos of a collapsing economic system. We went from fearing the "Singularity" to praising "Abundance" without stopping to look at the messy, violent reality in the middle.
We might get to that abundant future eventually, but I fear it won’t happen without a Third World War or a total societal collapse first. And by the time the dust settles, I wonder if there will be any humans left to enjoy the paradise Musk is promising. Or if they will all be living on Mars.