Elon Musk said AI could create a future where all of humanity is prosperous. Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have less radical ideas about the future.Getty Images and AP Photo
What if AI not only changes the future of work, but abolishes it entirely?
Elon Musk has called this possible future “universal high income.”
Musk isn’t the only name in tech thinking about how different work might be in a post-AI world.
Is this heaven? No, this is the AI future – at least the one in which we aren’t all dead.
Wall Street has spent most of 2025 worrying about the AI bubble, but increasingly people in and around Big Tech and AI are discussing a scenario in which their wildest dreams have become reality.
In this future, work itself is a luxury. The concept of universal basic income promoted by then-Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in 2020 would be turned on its head. Government support for the unemployed would not be necessary because everyone would be wealthy.
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This is the future that Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jensen Huang imagine.
A future without work? This is what the heads of the leading AI companies say:
Nathan Howard/Reuters
Elon Musk
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Bill Gates
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Sam Altman
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Jensen Huang
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Dario Amodei
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Demis Hassabis
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Expert warns: AI makes us faster, but it undermines our self-confidence and makes us dumber
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