Elon Musk said money may lose its meaning in an economy flooded with robots, and that young people should study widely so they know what to ask those machines to do.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief made the comments in an exclusive interview with China Media Group, recorded at Tesla's engineering headquarters in California and released in late September 2026. The conversation covered China, AI models, humanoid robots and education. The education remarks have circulated as advice for Generation Z even though Musk framed them as a general recommendation.

"My prediction is that there will be effectively universal high income," Musk said. "In fact, it's not clear to me that money will even matter in the future." He argued that if robots and AI push the output of goods and services far beyond what people can consume, the result would be an "age of abundance" that is hard to picture because human history has been a story of scarcity.

He used a blunt illustration: "I think it's going to get pretty wild, like where if you want a castle, robots will build you a castle." In the same stretch he said robots would "saturate on human demand," doing more than people........

© International Business Times