Elon Musk has perhaps been the most bullish on AI’s potential to reshape the world, predicting that work will eventually become optional, goods and services will become abundant, and money could become irrelevant as AI drives toward a “universal high income.” But fellow billionaire Michael Saylor isn’t quite buying it.
“Everybody doesn’t get a Hampton’s house. Everybody doesn’t get their own private jet. They don’t get their own private yacht,” Saylor said in a Diary of a CEO interview published last week after being asked by host Steven Bartlett if he agreed with Musk’s AI predictions.
While Saylor—founder of software firm Strategy, which has made Bitcoin central to its business—agreed that AI could make life’s necessities dramatically cheaper, or even free, the 61-year-old argued it won’t eliminate money’s value altogether.
As basic goods become abundant, he said, people will simply shift their spending toward scarcer goods that confer wealth and status.
“If I give you universal healthcare, people want private healthcare. If I give everybody a house, someone’s going to want a house twice as big,” Saylor, who has a net worth of $3.3 billion, said. “Everybody’s always going to have a reason to want something more because we’re status-oriented animals. That’s the cynical way to look at it.”
Technology has made kings’ luxuries commonplace, according to Saylor—and AI could soon do the same again
History, Saylor suggested, offers some evidence to his argument. Technological advances have made many necessities dramatically cheaper and more widely available. Clean water and advanced medicine, for example, are now commonplace across much of the developed world despite once being a luxury even kings and queens couldn’t reliably access.
“Henry VII didn’t have dental crowns. He didn’t have X-rays,” Saylor said. “[We] get modern medical care. The infant mortality rate has plunged. Life is safer. Clean water, clean air, right, clean food—and technology gave them to us.”
But that abundance, he argued, doesn’t eliminate the desire for something for something better—rather, it raises the baseline for what people consider luxury.
“What happened with the explosion of affluence? Massive utilitarian entitlement,” Saylor said. “Everybody gets a car, but how many people get a Porsche? What happens with humanity is we always invent the luxury car—we come up with the trophy asset.”
Modern food consumption is also a good example of how abundance doesn’t necessarily eliminate the desire for luxury.
“In New York City, you can see that everywhere—why do we go to restaurants and pay $300 to eat at a restaurant because you can actually feed yourself on three bucks a day?”
Silicon Valley leaders agree with Musk and Saylor: AI is poised to unleash an era of abundance
While Musk and Saylor disagree over exactly how abundant AI will make the world, they’re not alone in believing the technology could radically reshape the way people live.
Dennis Hassabis, who recently transitioned to chairman of Google Deepmind—has similarly predicted an era of unprecedented abundance driven by AI.
“In 10, 15 years’ time, we’ll be in a kind of new golden era of discovery that [is] a kind of new renaissance,” Hassabis previously said on Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast.
In that future, he said breakthroughs will occur in medicine and energy—and eventually allow humanity to “travel the stars and … explore the galaxy.”
Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has similarly argued that AI will usher in an era of bountifulness—but said the economic benefits will depend heavily on how governments respond to the resulting job displacement.
“Productivity will favor increasing average incomes but job displacement will do the reverse even as the goods and services produced increases dramatically,” Khosla wrote in 2024. “Universal basic income may be the best equalizer. It should be our goal to ensure that median income rises along with average income.”