In a recent Business Insider article, reporter Brent D. Griffiths discusses how some of the most prominent voices in tech and AI imagine a world after work. He describes a scenario increasingly discussed in Big Tech, where AI and robotics handle most production, paid work becomes optional, and familiar ideas like universal basic income are flipped.
In this version, government support for unemployment may no longer be necessary because widespread abundance makes most people wealthy. Griffiths notes the idea echoes Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential push for universal basic income, but reversed.
Below are key highlights from the article:
- Elon Musk: “universal high income.” Musk, CEO of Tesla and xAI, envisions a future where AI and robotics make everyone wealthy, a state he calls “universal high income,” Griffiths reports. He has said on X that poverty would disappear and saving money would become unnecessary. He also told Joe Rogan that people would have abundance, advanced healthcare, and access to most goods and services.
- Bill Gates: a shorter workweek. Gates suggests AI could push society to reconsider how long people need to work, opening up once-unthinkable options such as a two or three day week. He told Jimmy Fallon that making things, moving things, and growing food would over time become basically solved problems, though he expects humans to keep some tasks for themselves.
- Sam Altman: shared ownership in AI’s output. Altman wants a world of “universal extreme wealth,” but one where society shares the profits of AI rather than handing out plain cash, Griffiths writes. Altman reportedly told Theo Von that a simple AI dividend would not feel good, and floated a “universal basic wealth” system in which people hold an ownership share in what AI creates and can barter it. He acknowledged Von’s fear that depending on AI could hollow out human purpose, adding that he worries about it too, but takes some comfort that people will still cast themselves as the main characters of their own story.
- Jensen Huang: too many variables to call. Nvidia CEO Huang takes a more cautious stance, suggesting models like UBI and Musk’s “universal high income” may not align, according to Griffiths. He notes that wealth should not be defined only in monetary terms, pointing out that society is already “wealthy in information.” He adds that there are too many variables for firm predictions.
- Dario Amodei: meaning beyond economic survival. The Anthropic CEO said everyone will need to work out how to operate in a post-AGI age, and asked whether people could find their main source of meaning somewhere other than work, making it more about fulfillment than economic survival. He compared the idea to John Maynard Keynes, who once imagined his grandchildren working only 15 to 20 hours a week.
- Demis Hassabis: “radical abundance,” fairly shared. The Google DeepMind CEO foresees radical abundance but calls its fair distribution a political question, Griffiths reports. He told The Guardian that if it is sorted out well, humanity could reach a non-zero-sum world for perhaps the first time, even “travelling to the stars.” He added that how the wealth side gets shared, and what happens next, is one of the biggest things still to figure out.
Taken together, Griffiths’ roundup finds broad agreement that AI could bring abundance, but far less consensus on what follows. The leaders differ on the model, from Musk’s high income to Altman’s shared ownership and Gates’s shorter workweek. They also converge on a harder question, raised most sharply by Hassabis and Amodei: how that abundance would actually be distributed, and where people would find meaning when work is no longer required.
Acknowledgement: This summary was generated using AI writing tools as part of my AI Explorations process. For more, see the original article linked below.