Elon Musk’s reported prediction that money could become largely irrelevant by 2036 rests on a dramatic assumption: that artificial intelligence and robotics will become capable enough to produce goods and services at such scale that scarcity itself begins to fade.
In a conversation with The Economist Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Musk said that money’s value is ultimately determined by the availability of goods and services.
“You want money for goods and services…If robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for?”
It is an extraordinary claim, but the forces behind it are already visible. AI is spreading through businesses, automation is reshaping jobs and companies are investing heavily in technologies that can perform increasingly complex tasks.
Yet the data today point to a more complicated transition. AI exposure is rising, but so is the creation of new work. Corporate adoption is widespread, but measurable financial gains remain uneven.
Whether money eventually matters less will depend not simply on how capable machines become, but on who owns the technology and how its productivity gains are distributed.
AI Is Reshaping Human Work
The scale of potential disruption is already significant. The IMF estimated in 2024 that almost 40% of jobs globally are exposed to AI. In advanced economies, the share rises to around 60%, compared with approximately 40% in emerging markets and 26% in low-income countries.
But exposure is not synonymous with elimination. AI can replace some tasks while making workers more productive in others. The distinction is important because it challenges the idea that greater automation will automatically lead to a world without jobs.
For businesses, the immediate impact is therefore more likely to be a restructuring of work than its wholesale disappearance. Companies may need fewer people for certain repetitive or information-heavy tasks, while demand grows for workers who can manage AI systems, interpret their output and perform roles where human judgement remains important.
That makes Musk’s forecast less a prediction about the end of employment and more a hypothesis about what happens if machine productivity eventually outpaces the economy’s need for human labour.
Productivity Has Yet To Transform
Corporate adoption shows why that future remains uncertain. McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI research found that 88% of respondents said their organisations regularly use AI in at least one business function.
Yet only about one-third said their organisations had begun scaling AI across the enterprise. The survey also found that 39% reported an EBIT impact from AI at the enterprise level.
The numbers reveal a crucial gap between adoption and economic transformation.
Businesses are clearly experimenting with AI, but using a chatbot or deploying an AI tool is not the same as redesigning an organisation around automation. The largest productivity gains may require companies to rethink workflows, management structures and investment decisions rather than simply add AI to existing processes.
This distinction also matters at the macroeconomic level. Even if AI dramatically increases productivity, money does not automatically lose its value. Housing, land, energy, raw materials and infrastructure can remain scarce even when digital intelligence becomes abundant.
Jobs Will Not Disappear Overnight
The global employment outlook also complicates the idea of a sudden post-money economy. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects that 170 million jobs could be created globally by 2030, while 92 million could be displaced, producing a net increase of 78 million jobs.
These figures should not be treated as an AI-only forecast. The WEF attributes expected labour-market changes to a combination of technological developments, including AI and robotics, alongside the green transition, demographic shifts, economic uncertainty and other structural forces.
Still, the numbers illustrate an important point. The immediate future may be defined less by the disappearance of work than by a rapid reallocation of it.
That creates a major challenge for companies and governments. Workers displaced by automation may not automatically move into the new roles being created. Skills, geography and education can create barriers between jobs that disappear and jobs that emerge.
Abundance Depends On Ownership
This is where Musk’s prediction encounters its biggest economic question.
If AI and robots can eventually produce almost everything people need at extremely low cost, the importance of money could indeed decline. But that outcome depends on how the resulting abundance is distributed.
Technology can make production cheaper without making access equal. If ownership of AI models, robotics fleets, computing infrastructure and energy remains concentrated, the economic value generated by automation could also remain concentrated.
In that scenario, money might become more important for those who control scarce assets, even as the cost of some goods falls.
Conversely, if productivity gains translate into cheaper essentials, broader access to technology and higher living standards, money could play a smaller role in determining everyday quality of life.
The 2036 Question Remains Open
Musk’s 2036 prediction is therefore best viewed as a technological scenario rather than a consensus economic forecast. Current evidence confirms that AI is changing work and corporate decision-making, but it does not yet establish that the world is moving toward a moneyless economy.
The more immediate transformation is already underway. AI is altering which tasks humans perform, how businesses organise labour and where productivity gains may emerge.
The next decade will reveal whether those gains remain concentrated within a small group of companies and asset owners or become broad enough to change the economics of everyday life.
If Musk is right, money may eventually matter less because machines make abundance possible. But the harder question is one that technology alone cannot answer: who gets to share in that abundance?
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