It’s natural to be worried about the future amid the consequences of rapid AI development, but Elon Musk has offered his own bold prediction that would leave everyone on ‘high income’ as a consequence.

If you ask an AI expert what they envision in the near future then you’d probably find out that near enough everyone’s job is at risk, especially as technology rapidly approaches what’s commonly referred to as ‘artificial general intelligence’ (AGI) – signalling the point at which AI’s capabilities exceed that of humans.

Some have even gone as far to predict that it’ll accelerate the end of humanity and be intelligent enough to ‘seize control’ over us, yet Elon Musk has a more optimistic, almost utopian picture of the future.

Being in charge of an AI firm himself, it’s understandable that Musk would want to make the future of artificial intelligence as appealing as possible in the wake of fears surrounding significant wealth disparity, but if his bold prediction comes true then it really could lead to a period of significant prosperity for everyone.

Speaking at the recent Saudi-US Investment Forum, Musk outlined the benefits that AI advancements would bring to the economy as a whole:

“I also think it unlocks an immense amount of economic potential, because when you think about it, what is the output of an economy? It is productivity per capita times population or capita. Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It’s really unlimited,” Musk explains.

“Potentially we could have an economy 10 times the size of the current global economy, where no one wants for anything. Sometimes in AI they talk about universal basic income. I think it’s actually going to be universal high income, where anyone can have any goods or services that they want.”

Certain countries have already experimented with universal basic income programs, which give all citizens a standardized ‘wage’ of sorts for simply living, and that’s broadly seen as an optimistic way to mitigate the significant number of job losses that would come as a result of AI.

What Musk suggests though is a bolstered version of that where people wouldn’t just have enough money to survive, but would instead be afforded enough wealth to have a plentiful life.

Some might outline concerns with that approach, both from the perspective of whether a government (or corporations generating significant income) would be willing to give out such large sums of money, and the inflation-related consequences of a program like that, but on paper it’s definitely an appealing prospect.

As mentioned, at the heart of this shift is the mass production of humanoid robots, which Musk claims would act as everyone’s ‘personal C-3PO or R2D2’, and would likely be similar to what we’ve already seen deployed in some factories across the world.

Musk’s company Tesla is currently developing their own humanoid robot in the form of ‘Optimus’, which has already displayed eerily human-like behavior, and that could be the key to unlocking what the richest man in the world proposes.

Unexpectedly, someone that shares Musk’s optimism for the future of humanity in conjunction with AI is Bill Gates, who he’s had numerous spats with over the past few months.

Gates has been clear on his own optimistic approach for what AI will be able to provide for humanity, outlining his belief that the technology will significantly reduce the number of hours people have to work, and lead to a major information revolution.