Elon Musk said artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to develop in ways that provide higher incomes and better medical services for everyone. He also forecast that as AI spreads, jobs will change into different forms rather than disappear.

On Sept. 30 local time, Business Insider reported that Musk, chief executive of Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, made the remarks after meeting reporters following a gathering of technology industry leaders at the White House on Sept. 29.

On AI's economic impact, Musk said, "The most likely outcome is an age of abundance." He said it would be possible to have "universal high income," not just universal basic income.

He argued that combining AI with robots and superintelligence would allow anyone in the world to enjoy top-level medical services. "If you have robots and superintelligence, everyone in the world can receive better medical care than anyone here, including me," Musk said, calling it "a remarkable thing."

On changes in the labour market, he placed more weight on structural change than job destruction. Asked whether AI could eliminate jobs, Musk said, "Jobs will change," adding that this is not a new phenomenon.

He referred to a time when being a computer was a job, and explained that digital computers now do the calculations instead. He said nobody would want to go back to doing calculations all day.

He also noted that AI has not yet led to a surge in unemployment. Musk said demand for people is "tremendous" right now, and said he expects AI to bring "tremendous benefits" to humanity and create a future that people "want."

The remarks came shortly after leaders of major AI companies jointly signed principles for safe AI development at the White House. Musk joined Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei in signing a "Joint Commitment to Frontier Responsibility."

With concerns rising about risks surrounding AI chatbots such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, they pledged to develop AI safely and responsibly. They said they would build strong internal control systems overseen by dedicated internal teams, and undergo independent external audits or evaluations as well as reviews by independent board committees.

Musk has repeatedly warned of AI risks. In a previous interview, he said the risk that AI and robots could malfunction in a fatal way is "not zero," and forecast that the process of shifting to a bright future "will not be smooth."

He also mentioned in April "universal high income" paid by the federal government as a way to respond to AI-driven unemployment. He also laid out an idea that new technology could sharply lower production costs, making goods and services effectively close to unlimited. He warned, however, that if what people do is no longer important, they could lose a sense of purpose in life.

His view on retirement preparation also differs from the conventional one. Musk has said that if the future he expects becomes reality, retirement savings for 10 or 20 years ahead would become "meaningless." He sees AI as potentially reshaping production, income, healthcare and the structure of labour together.