Elon Musk’s Most Ridiculous Lie

What happens when the world is filled with humanoid robots? If you believe Elon Musk, the answer is you get a technological utopia where humans no longer have to work and get paid to lounge around. And if you know anything about 20th-century futurism, you’ve probably heard that one before.

Musk has a long history of talking bullshit. The Tesla CEO makes lofty promises about the future that he can’t keep. And one of those promises is that sometime in the future, robots will be doing all your labor, freeing up humans to get handouts from the government.

The conversation started on Saturday, when an X user predicted that “By 2030, all jobs will be replaced by AI and robots. Easily.” The user insisted that since the U.S. has about 170 million workers, and 80 million of those jobs “include hands-on work,” the number of robots to replace all human workers was something close to “20 million autonomous systems – including autonomous vehicles, automated equipment, and robots.”

Musk replied that while he believed the calculations were correct, there would be a lot more robots than people in the future.

“Your estimates are about right. However, intelligent robots in humanoid form will far exceed the population of humans, as every person will want their own personal R2-D2 and C-3PO. And then there will be many robots in industry for every human to provide products & services,” Musk tweeted.

And then things got interesting. As well as ridiculous. Someone else replied to ask Musk, “When robots replace working people, how will those who become unemployed sustain their lives?”

The billionaire insisted everyone would benefit from getting free handouts without having to work. “There will be universal high income (not merely basic income). Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else,” Musk wrote.

His comments would be hilarious if they weren’t such a brazen lie. And one that some extremely gullible people probably believe.

Musk is the guy who took a chainsaw to the federal government in an effort to make sure supposedly “undeserving” people are unable to get any government benefits. There’s nothing worse in a given society than people who contribute nothing and get all of life’s necessities, according to the Musk worldview. Why on Earth would we believe that he wants everyone to get a guaranteed income for doing nothing while robots do all the real work? And who’s going to administer this system? How is it maintained and, perhaps most importantly, who owns the robots?

Tesla has a lot to gain from the idea that robots will be plentiful in the future. Musk makes the Optimus robot, a humanoid automaton that he says will be manufactured not just in the millions, but in the billions one day. Optimus is way behind competitors made by companies like Figure, but he insists that one day the Tesla bot will be babysitting your kids.

If you’re at all familiar with the promises of automation in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, the idea that robots would do all the work is very familiar. Some very smart people believed it was inevitable that automation would advance in such a way that a new leisure society would emerge. And while robots are certainly on the way and will be more common in the future, the promises for what that means for society have never panned out.

Walter Cronkite, a legendary journalist who was well-trusted by the American public, told CBS viewers in 1967 that robot housemaids and tremendous advances in automation were going to make life so much easier.

“Technology is opening a new world of leisure time,” Cronkite said. “One government report projects that by the year 2000, the United States will have a 30-hour work week and month-long vacations as the rule.” Cronkite was far from some radical socialist weirdo. But just about everyone took it for granted that things would only get better and everyone would work less, if at all.

And working less would cause its own problems. Parade magazine published an article in the January 4, 1959 issue titled, “Will Robots Make People Obsolete?” And it painted a very bleak future for humanity when robots were everywhere. Yes, all the work would be done for us, but humans wouldn’t find any purpose in life anymore:

Mankind’s major struggle will be against boredom, with the suicide rate zooming as people lose the race. Governments and family life will wither away. Public officials will be replaced by Board of Supervisors to “umpire” games, sports and recreation, and also administer competitive exams which would decide who could work at the few essential jobs left for human beings to do. Fantastic? Certainly, by our everyday standards of progress. But every one of these dizzying pictures of life in the future could conceivably become real – when and if man creates robots to do his work for him.

The idea is even older than the mid-20th century, even if that’s the era that gets the most attention thanks to popular media like The Jetsons TV show from the early 1960s. George Jetson worked a mere three hours each day and still enjoyed a life that humans of 2025 could only dream of.

There has also been the flip side of the argument, that robots would bring death and destruction. Back in the 1930s, with automation truly a threat during tough economic times, humanoid robots were depicted as incredibly scary. Not only would they be taking your job, they’d be boozing it up and assaulting women. But when times are better, which is to say not the Great Depression, technologists love to push robots as our saviors.

Musk is selling an idea that’s been around for a very long time. Robots doing all of our work has been a promise for generations at this point. But when Musk adds the promise of a universal income, he’s really doubling down on absurdity.