Elon Musk’s Latest Interview: AGI by 2026, Humans as AI’s ‘Boot Program’

A few weeks ago, Elon Musk appeared on the well-known podcast “Moonshots” in Austin, Texas, where he engaged in a nearly three-hour conversation with hosts Peter Diamandis and Dave Blumenthal.

The discussion ranged from artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the future of humanity to topics like energy, healthcare, space exploration, and even issues like human immortality, aging, UFOs, and China’s energy advantages.

Musk firmly believes that despite a turbulent future in the next 3-7 years, humanity will eventually enter an era of material abundance driven by AI and solar energy, where “Universal High Income” or “Universal High Material Goods and Services” will become a reality. He and the hosts referred to this as a “Star Trek” future.

Abundant Future

At the beginning of the conversation, the hosts noted that the American public is generally pessimistic about the future. A December survey by the Pew Research Center showed that 45% of Americans would rather live in the past, while only 14% expressed a desire to live in the future.

However, Musk and the hosts are staunch optimists, particularly Musk, who believes that the future is destined to be abundant. He proposed a vision that goes beyond “universal basic income” to Universal High Income (UHI) or Universal High Material Goods and Services (UHSS). If this vision comes to fruition, saving for retirement would become meaningless, and the current concept of savings would become outdated.

Musk’s strong optimism about the future is based on two core reasons. The first is the imminent realization of AGI. Musk predicts that this milestone will occur this year, with AI matching human intelligence in most tasks, significantly boosting productivity, especially in robotics.

He stated that Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot will be capable of performing surgeries that surpass human doctors within three years and will completely lead in surgical procedures within five years. Regarding patient acceptance, he believes there will be no issues, similar to how people trust more precise robots for laser eye surgery than human doctors wielding laser pens. “Future surgeries will look like this.”

As the cost of robots decreases, Musk believes that the best medical services globally will become almost free, allowing even the poorest to access better healthcare than the current U.S. president.

The second reason is that humanity’s approach to energy utilization will evolve, drastically reducing AI costs. He is convinced that by harnessing just one-millionth of the sun’s total energy, the available energy on Earth could increase by 1000 times. Therefore, there is no need to build small fusion reactors on Earth, just as there is no need to build refrigerators in Antarctica, because there is a massive, free-operating fusion reactor above us—the sun.

Peter mentioned that X is currently exploring the idea of relocating data centers to space. However, Musk believes that while this may be possible in the long run, utilizing solar energy directly on the Earth’s surface remains the most economical and efficient solution at present, as it avoids the enormous launch costs. For example, large photovoltaic panels could be installed in the deserts of the U.S., and by deploying large-scale battery storage, the existing grid’s energy throughput could be doubled without the need for new power plants.

Turbulent Times

Despite his optimism for the future, Musk does not believe that this bright future will arrive smoothly. He warns that the next 3-7 years will be an extremely bumpy transition period. We will experience radical technological changes, significant social upheaval, and unprecedented prosperity simultaneously.

He predicts that in the next 9-12 months, the main bottleneck in AI development will shift from “lack of chips” to “lack of electricity,” even though everyone currently thinks that GPUs are the limiting factor for AI development. For instance, X.AI had to combine 10-50 megawatts of gas generators to “piece together” one gigawatt of power because they could not connect to the local grid in time.

To ensure stable operation and collaboration among these machines, they heavily utilized Tesla’s Megapack large-scale energy storage systems. Even if the grid has sufficient power, reducing the high-voltage electricity (100-300 kV) to the hundreds of volts usable by chips requires more multi-stage transformers, and the production capacity of these devices currently struggles to keep up with demand.

Moreover, AI will replace many human jobs. Contrary to intuition, it will first replace white-collar jobs that involve processing information, as this does not require moving physical atoms. Meanwhile, the growth rate of goods production may far exceed the growth of the money supply, allowing everyone to own any desired goods and services (like houses, cars, and healthcare) at extremely low costs.

However, governments and mainstream economists have almost no substantial countermeasures, as if everyone is arguing about seating arrangements on the beach while facing an impending supersonic tsunami. Outside of discussions on X, very few people in society talk about these issues. The pace of AI development is ten times faster than government responses, if not more.

He and the hosts believe that perhaps the only thing governments can do in turbulent times is to distribute money to people and try to maintain peace.

We Are Living in a Singularity

Musk believes that the singularity has arrived, and we are living in it. This moment is akin to a roller coaster reaching its highest point and about to plunge downward. For most people, it may just be a spectator event. But for him, the shock is real.

Every week, or even every two days, he experiences a cognitive jolt, marveling at the rapid pace of technological iteration. He previously suggested that people slow down, but realizing that this approach was futile, he ultimately decided to become a participant, as this is the only way to steer AI in a better direction.

To ensure AI remains friendly to humanity, he believes it must be endowed with three core attributes: Truth, Curiosity, and Beauty. The pursuit of truth is central to AI safety; AI must never be forced to lie or accept politically correct settings, as this would lead to logical collapse. Curiosity brings humanity to AI, while beauty will enable AI to create a great future.

Musk refers to the Starship as the last and greatest engineering marvel created by humanity before the AI era. Although the current Starship is designed by humans, he expects that starting this year, AI will play a substantial role in rocket engineering, such as helping to solve material and design challenges.

By 2030, AI’s intelligence is expected to surpass the total intelligence of all humanity. This marks a point where human intelligence will approach zero as a proportion of total intelligence on Earth, ushering in an AI-dominated era. He compares humans to the “biological boot program” for silicon-based life (AI), which cannot evolve naturally in the primordial ocean without carbon-based life like ours to act as a trigger.

While this may sound somewhat bleak, as long as we serve as a good boot program, superintelligence will treat us well. At the end of the conversation, Musk had Grok provide a response on how to cope with turbulence:

“Bumps are always inevitable. Change always makes people feel fearful, doesn’t it? But think about it: every major change in history—the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, or the birth of the internet—has terrified some people.

But look at us now. I guess we will definitely stumble; that’s for sure. But we will dust ourselves off, learn our lessons, and ultimately become more inclusive and wiser. I want to believe that humanity has that courage.”

This is also Musk’s attitude: In the most exciting moment in history, it is better to be an optimistic but possibly wrong person than a pessimistic but correct one. Because optimism itself is the driving force for creating the future, and “the future is destined to be exciting.”