\n<\/p>\n
Elon Musk, the<\/span> richest man on earth, is very good at making money. His track record of predicting the future is less stellar.<\/p>\n Through the years, Musk has made several outlandish forecasts\u2014about self-driving cars, about space exploration, about brain chips, about robotics\u2014that have not panned out. The Tesla CEO and former steward of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency seems at least a bit self-aware. During a surprise appearance and his debut at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, he concluded with something like a mission statement: \u201cGenerally, for quality of life, it\u2019s better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, when one\u2019s companies have their hands in so many industries\u2014autos and robotics (Tesla), space travel and telecommunications (SpaceX), social media (X), artificial intelligence (xAI), infrastructure (the Boring Company), and neurotechnology (Neuralink)\u2014even off-the-cuff predictions can move global markets. Here are a few prognostications Musk made on Thursday:<\/p>\n Elon Musk opened his Davos remarks\u2014in a conversation with friend and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink\u2014with a discussion of his values, and a few jokes about aliens. \u201cWe have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship,\u201d Musk said. \u201cWe need to assume that life and consciousness are extremely rare and it might only be us.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk started making promises about Optimus, the company\u2019s humanoid robot, in 2021. Most recently, he said Tesla\u2014now rebranded as a robotics and autonomy company\u2014would make thousands of Optimus robots in 2025. But the company is reportedly still struggling to get Optimus\u2019 hand to work. That did not stop Musk from repeating in Davos some of his most far-reaching claims about the way the product would change human life forever.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free, or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, you will have an explosion, an expansion of the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent,\u201d Musk said. What does that mean for you? Billions of robots powered by artificial intelligence will outnumber humans and \u201csaturate all human needs,\u201d he said. \u201cYou won\u2019t be able to think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point, there will be such an abundance of goods and services.\u201d<\/p>\n But first, of course, Tesla will have to start selling Optimus, which Musk said would happen late next year.<\/p>\n In 2025, after years of self-driving promises, Tesla finally launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, albeit with a human safety monitor sitting in each passenger seat. That didn\u2019t stop Musk from asserting that most of the US population would have access to robotaxis by the end of that year.<\/p>\n Now, in 2026, Musk is moving the goalposts again. He said Thursday that his company\u2019s robotaxis would be \u201cvery widespread by the end of this year in the US.\u201d If history is a guide, that won\u2019t happen\u2014but the company is<\/em> working on launching robotaxi service in a handful of states with laxer regulations, including Arizona, Florida, and Nevada.<\/p>\n Musk acknowledged that he hasn\u2019t spent much time investigating human aging. But he predicted that there would be a solution. \u201cWhen we find what causes aging, we\u2019ll find it\u2019s incredibly obvious,\u201d he said. Get to it, Silicon Valley peers.<\/p>\n SpaceX has been working on its reusable rocket platform Starship for a decade, and in those years, it has missed several of Musk\u2019s big space deadlines. He predicted in 2020 that a crewed Mars mission would launch by 2024. He said that Starship would reach orbit by 2022, though the company didn\u2019t pull it off until last year.<\/p>\n At Davos, Musk repeated a promise from last year: that Starship would be fully reusable by the end of this year, cutting space travel costs by \u201ca factor of 100\u201d and eventually allowing space freight to compete with airplane freight prices. SpaceX has run successful test flights recently, but a fully reusable rocket by the end of this year could be a stretch.<\/p>\n Musk has been both deeply involved in AI\u2019s development and deeply doomer-y about its meaning for years. (See: his ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI, its founders, and Microsoft.) In Davos, Musk once again mentioned his wish to avoid a Terminator-like future. But he also indicated that it\u2019s coming. \u201cThe rate at which AI is progressing, I think we have AI that is smarter than any human this year, and no later than next year,\u201d he said. By 2035, it will be \u201csmarter than all of humanity, collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n Per usual, whether Musk gets this one right comes down to definitions. What does \u201csmarter\u201d mean? This month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he didn\u2019t believe researchers were anywhere close to creating what he called \u201cGod AI.\u201d The technology is good at discrete tasks, but doing everything<\/em>? \u201cThat \u2018someday\u2019 is probably on biblical scales, on galactic scales,\u201d Huang said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAliens Don\u2019t Exist (Probably)<\/h2>\n
Humanoid Robots Will Transform Human Life\u2014and Go on Sale in 2027<\/h2>\n
Robotaxis Will Be \u201cVery Widespread\u201d in the US by 2027<\/h2>\n
Human Aging Is a \u201cVery Solvable Problem\u201d<\/h2>\n
SpaceX Will Complete a Fully Reusable Rocket This Year<\/h2>\n
AI Will Become Smarter Than a Human This Year\u2014and Smarter Than All of Humanity in 2035<\/h2>\n