Elon Musk warns work could soon become ‘optional’ in age of AI

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has warned of the advent of a future where working may soon become optional and will be replaced by robotic workforce and tasks.

Taking to X, the SpaceX CEO wrote, “AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store.”

Musk has propagated the idea that in the near future artificial intelligence will either take over the human workforce or reshape the dynamics of the labor market.

Unfortunately, such a future is not distant. The tech investor Jason Calacanis said on a podcast that Amazon would replace warehouse workers with robots.

The job cut anxiety driven by artificial intelligence is also real. Amazon, this week, has begun the largest layoffs in the retail company’s history, cutting as many as 30,000 corporate jobs.

As reported by Reuters, this expense-cutting measure aims to rectify the overhiring during the pandemic-era.

Similarly, Meta is also cutting 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence unit, aiming to boost efficiency.

The Facebook parent company has further sacked more than 300 jobs, affecting staff at its Menlo Park headquarters.

"By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact," Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said.

Chegg, the online education firm, shed light on “new realities” of AI as it also announced a 45 percent job cut.

Similarly, Salesforce also cut 4000 customer service roles, replacing humans with AI agents.

According to Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University, “There is a real tendency, because everyone is so freaked out about the possible impact of AI on the labour market moving forward, to overreact to individual company announcements.”

As per a recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, there is a tangible correlation between AI and high prevalence of unemployment in 2022.

However, according to Morgan Frank, the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 only affected the office and administrative support sector.