Artificial intelligence is ushering in an “age of abundance” — or are we heading for a digital apocalypse?

Whether people like it or not, one thing is obvious: the train called “artificial intelligence,” racing toward its final destination, can no longer be stopped. Giant data centers are being built, automation is gradually taking away jobs, and governments around the world have entered a race akin to the “Manhattan Project,” trying to be the first to create the ultimate holy grail — artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Huge changes are coming.

The only subject of debate today is the scale and speed of the coming economic shock, who exactly will lose their jobs, and whether what is happening should even be considered something positive at all (although in any case, no one is asking our opinion).

“The future will be radically different from the past. There is no analogy or metaphor capable of describing the scale of the changes we are about to face,” Elon Musk said.

In his first in-depth interview with The Economist following SpaceX’s triumphant IPO, the world’s first trillionaire laid out an extremely techno-optimistic vision of AI’s development.

Musk is convinced that in just a few years artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, up to a billion humanoid robots will appear in the world, and an AI-driven “era of abundance” will make cash meaningless.

“In essence, there will be nothing left that AI cannot do better than a human — except, perhaps, the very ability to be human,” he noted.

“I think AI will be able to surpass the combined intelligence of all humanity in about five years. The most likely scenario is the arrival of an age of incredible abundance, where everyone will be able to have whatever they want. That may sound absurd… Of course, there are things that could knock us off this path — for example, a large-scale global thermonuclear war… But if World War III does not happen, I am sure we are heading toward an era of astonishing abundance. So my message is full of optimism and anticipation for the future.”

Musk, whose car company Tesla is developing the general-purpose worker robot Optimus, believes that in as little as five years the world could see “at least 100 million, and maybe as many as a billion humanoid robots” that will completely replace manual labor.

“I would predict that the economy will grow to about twice its current size within five, at most six, years, because we will enter a phase in which economic output will double at insane speeds,” he shared with Forbes in May.

Earlier, the billionaire also said that putting money aside for retirement is now simply pointless.

“Don’t worry about saving money for old age 10 or 20 years in advance — it won’t matter at all,” he said in a January podcast. “You won’t need to save for retirement. If even part of what we are talking about is true, savings will lose all meaning.”

In this scenario of post-apocalyptic abundance (which, according to AI advocates, will inevitably lead to some form of universal basic income for people left without work), podcast co-host Peter Diamandis predicts: “There will be infrastructure to provide for you — you will have housing, healthcare, entertainment.”

AI entrepreneur Dave Blundin agreed, adding that “it is fundamentally impossible to predict exactly how events will unfold because of AI’s capacity for self-improvement and the accelerating pace of progress.”

“It’s not for nothing that they call it the ‘singularity,’” Musk concluded. “I don’t know what happens beyond the event horizon.”

The Tower of Babel of the 21st century

However, not everyone shares the confidence that AI is leading humanity toward a bright future.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is energy researcher Dr. Chris Martenson. Speaking this week on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, he compared the AI race to the Tower of Babel — the biblical parable about the catastrophic consequences of human pride.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” he said. “I sincerely believe that this whole AI story is our Tower of Babel. It is a tool with which we have convinced ourselves that we can finally take the coveted throne beside God, or even become His equal. We are now like gods ourselves… But this lack of humility, this pride and arrogance, has always turned against us.”

So what awaits us — flourishing or collapse?

Australian futurist Professor Rocky Scopelliti, author of Perceptive Machines, says he is more optimistic than many commentators. However, that optimism is possible only if we are ready to radically rethink our ideas about prosperity and work.

“The future of work is not a labor problem. It is becoming a governance and regulation problem,” he commented to news.com.au.

“The biggest shock will not be that robots take jobs. It will be the separation of income from the very fact of work itself. Automation can create colossal abundance, but it does not automatically create fairness. Ownership of assets will become far more important than technology.”

According to Professor Scopelliti, the main economic question of the future will not sound like “Will AI replace workers?”

“The main question is: ‘Who owns the robots, the data, and intelligence itself?’” he emphasizes. “Every industrial revolution changed HOW people work. AI may become the first one that changes WHY people work.”

Mass unemployment or an era of new opportunities?

According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), around 40% of jobs worldwide are at risk of transformation because of AI, and in developed countries that figure reaches 60%.

Goldman Sachs analysts say that 300 million full-time jobs around the world are under threat of automation.

For its part, the World Economic Forum (WEF) forecasts that by 2030 AI will create 170 million new jobs while eliminating 92 million, for a net gain of 78 million positions.

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” predicts mass unemployment.

“I think AI will simply completely take over routine intellectual labor,” Professor Hinton said on the Diary of a CEO podcast, referring to office workers, and questioned the idea that AI will create many new professions. “You would need exceptionally unique skills to do work that AI cannot handle.”

Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft AI, also leans toward a pessimistic scenario. In an interview with the Financial Times in May, he predicted that AI will reach “human-level productivity in most, if not all, professional tasks,” and that most professions involving “working at a computer” will be fully automated within the next 12 to 18 months.

Meanwhile, renowned Stanford economist Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson, together with 16 Nobel Prize laureates, issued a joint statement calling for urgent preparation for the economic consequences of deploying more powerful AI systems over the next 10 years.

“This could trigger an unprecedented transformation of our economy — larger in scale than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a much more compressed timeframe,” the statement says. “It carries enormous risks, including mass job losses, but also opportunities — such as a colossal rise in living standards.”

MIT economics professor David Autor is among those who believe AI is more likely to reshape the structure of professions than to “wipe entire industries off the face of the earth.”

“It will affect specific tasks, positions, and roles,” he explained to the Financial Times. “Because of how we use AI, many new jobs, opportunities, and forms of expertise will emerge. But at the same time… specific skills and individual roles will disappear forever.”

From generation to participation

Professor Scopelliti sums it up this way: the question of whether AI will surpass the human mind is no longer the most interesting one.

He argues that we are entering the so-called “age of AI participation.” If the past three years were devoted to AI generating content, then the next decade will be devoted to AI taking part in decision-making, running organizations, the economy, and our everyday lives.

According to Scopelliti, the key questions of the future will be how we regulate machine participation, how we distribute the wealth they create, how we ensure that technology strengthens society rather than destroys it — and how we preserve humanity’s right to make key decisions.

“We are moving from machines that answer questions to machines that participate in society,” the expert concludes. “And that is a far more fundamental shift than simply generative AI.”