Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla, predicted that in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), energy will serve as currency, and that AI and robotics technology will fundamentally disrupt the existing economic structure.

According to a video posted on Indian entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath's YouTube channel on December 2 (local time), CEO Musk said in a recent interview, "In the long run, the concept of money will disappear," adding, "If AI and robotics technology advance to the point where they can satisfy all human desires, the importance of money will rapidly decline." He continued, "Fundamental currencies based on physics will still exist. However, energy is the real currency," and explained, "That is why I said Bitcoin is based on energy, and energy cannot be regulated by law."

"Within 3 years, we will have large-scale AI and robots"

CEO Musk said, "Generating energy is very difficult," and added, "So perhaps we will have energy but no money, and power generation will effectively become currency." He also said, "As long as civilization continues to advance, we will have large-scale AI and robots, and that will be the only way to solve the US debt crisis." He further explained, "If you ask how long it will take to reach that stage, I think within about 3 years, the production of goods and services may exceed the growth rate of money supply, that is, the inflation rate, causing deflation, and then when interest rates drop to zero, the debt problem will be smaller than it is now."

When asked, "What would you buy for capitalist purposes based on today's value standards?" CEO Musk replied, "I don't look for stocks to buy or investment targets. I simply try to make or build something, and the stocks of the companies I create just follow." He added, "As AI and robotics become extremely important, I think Google will be quite valuable in the future. They have laid the foundation for tremendous value creation. Nvidia is clearly doing so at this point as well."

Regarding the issue of AI regulation, CEO Musk stated, "When creating powerful technology, there is a risk that it could potentially be destructive," and emphasized, "Truth, beauty, and curiosity-these three are the most important elements for AI." He added, "If AI adopts these as its core values, it will want to see humanity continue to exist, because it is far more interesting for humanity to exist than not to exist."