Musk says AI and robotics are the only way to solve America’s $38 trillion debt crisis

Elon Musk said in a new interview that he thinks robotics powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which drives productivity gains and production, is the only way to tackle the nation’s more than $38 trillion debt.

Musk said in a podcast interview on “A Different Conversation with Nikhil Kamath” released Sunday that the widespread use of AI and robotics are the only ways to tackle the large and growing national debt.

“I think this is pretty much the only thing that’s going to solve the US debt crisis, because US debt is crazy high right now,” Musk said. “Interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States – just the interest payments, and they will continue to rise at least in the short term.”

“So I think AI and robotics are really the only thing that can solve the debt situation,” he added. “It would likely cause significant deflation, because deflation or inflation is really the ratio of the goods and services produced to the change in the money supply.”

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Musk said that because AI and robotics could lead to significant increases in production, it would likely lead to deflation – which opposite of inflation and results in a decrease in the price level.

“If you have AI and robotics, and a dramatic increase in the production of goods and services, you’re probably going to experience deflation. That seems likely. Because you’re simply not going to be able to increase the money supply as quickly as you can increase the production of goods and services,” he said.

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Musk said he thinks AI will push the growth of goods and services production above the growth of the money supply in the coming years. (Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)

The Tesla CEO was asked about the current level of inflation, which is still high relative to inflation The Federal Reserve’s 2% targetand said AI has not yet increased productivity enough to cause deflation.

“AI hasn’t yet had enough of an impact on productivity to cause goods and services to grow faster than the money supply. The US is expanding the money supply quite substantially with deficits on the order of $2 trillion, so you have to produce more goods and services than that to not have inflation,” he said.

“We’re not there yet, but when you say ‘how long would it take us to get there,’ I think it’s three years. Probably three years — in three years or less, I estimate that the growth of goods and services will exceed the growth of the money supply in about three years,” Musk added.

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Musk’s Tesla focuses on developing AI-powered humanoid robots. (Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The tech billionaire also said he thinks the proliferation of AI and robotics will reshape the economy and the monetary system in general.

‘I think at some point you break away from the kind of conventional economy when you let AI and robots produce chips and solar panels and mining raw materials to make chips and robots… You kind of complete that cycle, once that cycle is complete, I think that’s the point where you disconnect from the monetary system,” Musk said.

Musk was asked if this is the way forward for the US to tackle its national debt, and the Tesla CEO noted: “In this future that I’m talking about, the idea of ​​countries becomes kind of anachronistic.”

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“This is exactly what I think will happen based on what I see, as opposed to these are fundamentally good things, and I’m trying to make them happen,” he said. “I think this would happen without me, whether I like it or not. As long as civilization continues to develop, we will have AI and robotics on a very large scale.”