Elon Musk has once again placed artificial intelligence at the center of his vision for the future, in an interview with The Economist. The entrepreneur argues that AI will not simply be a more powerful tool to improve processes, automate tasks, or increase productivity, but a force capable of altering the relationship between humans, work, economy, and power in a much shorter timeframe than many governments assume.
Musk's thesis is that artificial intelligence will advance to surpass the sum of human intelligence in the coming years and that, within a horizon of about a decade, AI systems and humanoid robots will be the dominant phenomenon in the world. In his conversation with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor of The Economist, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI suggests that humanity is entering a stage in which a good part of the decisions, productive capabilities, and intellectual tasks could be performed better by machines than by people.
A self-regulation among competitors
One of the most relevant proposals from the interview is his defense of a system of review among competitors for the most advanced artificial intelligence models. Musk suggests that the major companies in the sector should meet periodically, share safety warnings, and allow their rivals to test cutting-edge models before their public launch, with the aim of detecting dangerous flaws before they reach millions of users.
His argument is practical: governments, according to Musk, usually lack the deep technical knowledge necessary to independently assess the risks of extremely advanced models, while competing companies do have the capacity to identify weaknesses, unexpected behaviors, or real threats. In his model, self-regulation would not completely replace the State, but would act as the first line of defense. If a company ignores the warnings of its rivals or launches a dangerous system, then governments should intervene.
The precedent of the film industry
Musk compares this formula with sector self-regulation schemes like that of the Motion Picture Association, which classifies movies by age and guides the public before the release. Applied to AI, the model would consist of an industrial review prior to the deployment of the most powerful systems, with cross-checks between companies that compete with each other but share a common interest: to avoid a large-scale technological accident.
The comparison has a clear intention. Musk does not trust that a classic regulation, drafted from the outside by politicians or officials, can keep pace with a technology that changes in a matter of months. That is why he proposes that those who are building AI participate directly in identifying risks, although this solution also raises an obvious question: to what extent can the oversight of such powerful technology be entrusted precisely to the companies that compete to dominate it.
China, electricity, and chips
The interview with The Economist also leaves a strategic reading on the competition between the United States and China. Musk acknowledges that Chinese artificial intelligence models are good and warns that China could become a leader in the sector if it manages to resolve its limitations in advanced semiconductors.
For the businessman, the AI race depends mainly on two material resources: chips and electricity. The United States and the rest of the West have more access to advanced chips, but they are beginning to clash with the energy bottleneck that comes with powering increasingly larger data centers. China, on the other hand, has a much greater electricity generation capacity, although it still suffers from technological restrictions in the manufacturing of cutting-edge chips.
The risk of Beijing taking the lead
Musk believes that if China solves its lithography problems and manages to manufacture advanced chips competitively, it could take the lead in the global race for artificial intelligence. His warning is not only technological but geopolitical: the power that dominates AI will have a decisive advantage in productivity, defense, industry, science, and global influence capacity.
For that reason, his security proposal is not limited to Silicon Valley. Musk argues that a serious frontier model review system should also include Chinese companies, because leaving out one of the major poles of AI development would turn any control mechanism into an incomplete solution. The difficulty, evidently, lies in how to build trust between companies and countries competing for a technology destined to redefine global power.
The era of abundance
Elon Musk combines his warnings with a deeply optimistic vision about the economic potential of artificial intelligence and robotics. As he explains in The Economist, if humanoid robots manage to produce goods and provide services on a large scale, humanity could enter an era of abundance in which the cost of many things falls radically and work ceases to be an obligation to become a choice.
In that vision, the current economy —based on scarcity, employment, and monetary exchange— could be transformed by an almost unlimited productive force. Musk goes so far as to suggest that money would lose part of its meaning if AI and robots are capable of manufacturing, transporting, repairing, building, and assisting in almost any task. Human work would not necessarily disappear as an activity, but its nature would change: many people could work out of interest, vocation, or status, not because their survival depended on it.
First, digital jobs will fall
The first impact, however, would not be on physical jobs, but on digital ones. Musk argues that AI is already capable of writing software better than a large part of engineers and that this advantage will continue to grow until it practically surpasses everyone. From there, the leap would affect any task that can be performed from a computer or a phone: programming, analysis, management, design, writing, customer service, administrative organization, or content production.
The next step would be the connection between that digital intelligence and humanoid robots. When AI can also act in the physical world, not just respond on a screen, the transformation will stop affecting only office jobs and will reach factories, warehouses, homes, hospitals, transportation, agriculture, construction, and personal services.
The existential risk and a fatalistic response
Musk does not deny the risk that artificial intelligence could end badly for humanity. When asked about his old estimates regarding the possibility that AI could end up destroying or displacing humans, he responds with a more fatalistic than alarmist tone. His approach is that history is already in motion and that the only reasonable thing is to try to minimize the negative effects, because completely stopping the advance of technology does not seem realistic.
This mix of optimism and resignation is one of the keys to the interview. Musk believes that the most likely scenario is extraordinary prosperity, but he accepts that there is a real possibility of a dangerous outcome. The question, for him, is not whether humanity can avoid AI, but whether it can build mechanisms fast enough to reduce the risk before the systems become too powerful.
The clash over Europe
The conversation becomes especially tense when The Economist takes Musk into political territory. The magazine's director asks him about his warnings regarding a possible civil war in the United Kingdom and about his vision of Europe, which Musk considers increasingly vulnerable due to the combination of immigration, insecurity, loss of institutional trust, and disconnection between elites and citizens.
Musk maintains that, if current trends do not change, the United Kingdom could face an internal conflict within a horizon of about twenty years. He does not present it as an immediate outbreak, but as a warning about dynamics that, in his opinion, could deteriorate if they continue to be ignored. The interviewer harshly counters him, reminding him that he does not live there and accusing him of offering his millions of followers a distorted image of European reality.
Musk rejects the caricature of his positions
One of the most relevant moments of the exchange comes when the interviewer attributes to him an extreme description of Europe as a territory taken over by Muslim immigrants, with rapes and destruction of civilization. Musk responds that he has not said that and refuses to discuss an amplified version of his own words.
This point summarizes a good part of the tension of the interview. Musk agrees to defend uncomfortable theses about Europe, immigration, security, or social polarization, but does not accept being made to respond to an ideological caricature of his position. For his critics, the problem is that his warnings fuel radical movements and simplify complex societies. For Musk, the problem is the opposite: traditional media would be refusing to look directly at tensions that many citizens already perceive in their daily lives.
Criticism of traditional media
Musk takes advantage of the interview to insist on a criticism he has been repeating for years: traditional media, in his opinion, have lost the ability to represent reality and tend to ignore or downplay problems that do not fit into their ideological frameworks. In the exchange with The Economist, that criticism takes on a particularly harsh tone because it occurs in front of one of the most influential publications in the Anglo-Saxon liberal world.
The businessman controls X and has a direct audience that far exceeds that of most international media. That position makes him something more than a tech entrepreneur: he is also a political and cultural actor capable of installing global debates without going through editorial filters. The interview precisely shows that new power relationship: a major magazine tries to subject him to a demanding conversation, while Musk accuses that same media ecosystem of not understanding the social discontent that runs through the West.
“My policies are very centrist”
In the face of accusations of supporting far-right forces or parties that are very skewed in Europe, Musk tries to present himself as a figure of centrist positions. His argument is that many ideas that today are labeled as radical would have been considered moderate just a few years ago, especially in matters of borders, security, public spending, freedom of expression, or criticism of irregular immigration.
This self-definition contrasts with the perception of a good part of his critics, who see in his political interventions a dangerous influence on already tense European democracies. The interview does not resolve that contradiction, but it does expose it clearly: Musk sees himself as someone who warns against destructive trends; his detractors see him as an amplifier of those same tensions.