Owner / Chairman & CTO of X Corp. (also CEO of parent SpaceX/xAI), X Corp. (formerly Twitter, Inc.)
Elon Musk on AI: humans will no longer be in control in ten years | The Economist
Elon Musk expects artificial intelligence to exceed the sum of human intelligence in about five years and thinks that humans will no longer be in control in ten years. In an interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, he predicts an “age of amazing abundance,” and sets out his proposal for how rival AI labs could review each other’s frontier models and explains why he believes the industry’s bosses can still work together.
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00:00 - Will AI be smarter than all humans in five years?
01:07 - Will humans be in control in ten years?...
About Elon Musk
Elon Musk said in a July 2026 interview with The Economist that he expects artificial intelligence to exceed the sum of human intelligence in roughly five years and that humans will likely no longer be in control in ten years. He described the most likely outcome as an "age of amazing abundance" but acknowledged potential derailments such as a global thermonuclear war. Musk also discussed his recommendation that leading AI companies meet every few weeks to discuss safety and security issues, and he expressed skepticism about the feasibility of regulating AI, stating that "all roads lead to acceleration of AI." In June and July 2026, Musk spoke at events surrounding SpaceX's initial public offering, which he described as the largest IPO ever. He said he initially gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding and that the company's goal is to "take the fiction out of science fiction" by making life multi-planetary. Musk outlined plans to increase mass to orbit from roughly 2,500 tons per year to millions of tons per year within about three years using Starship, and discussed building AI data centers in space powered by solar arrays. He also referenced the Kardashev scale as a metric for civilization's progress and said that reaching higher levels would require a mass driver on the Moon for local production of photovoltaics. Separately, Musk said he acquired Twitter because he believed the platform was at risk of being shut down under a Kamala Harris administration, and he described the Department of Justice as having attacked SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers, which he said is legal under International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Transcript (37 segments)
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Elon Musk0:00
I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about in around five years.
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Interviewer0:07
In five years.
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Elon Musk0:08
Roughly five years is my guess. So there really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans apart from being human perhaps.
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Interviewer0:20
On a more prosaic level, what will life be like?
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Elon Musk0:25
The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of. This may sound preposterous, but well, here we are in 2026. Let's see where we stand in 2036. Now, of course, there are things that could derail this, like a massive global thermonuclear war or something like that. But assuming that there's not World War Three, I think we're headed for an age of amazing abundance. So, this is a message of optimism and excitement about the future.
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Interviewer1:07
You're sure that humans will no longer be in control in 10 years' time?
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Elon Musk1:12
I think it is unlikely. In the same way that if you had a vastly more intelligent AI, the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it's hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge.
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Interviewer1:38
We are essentially an evolved form of chimpanzee. So it wasn't that long ago that we were swinging through the trees eating bananas in the jungle, and we still eat bananas.
You said there was a 10 to 20% chance of killer robots wiping out humanity. You sounded worried then. Now you seem very relaxed about it. Have you changed your view?
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Elon Musk2:03
I still think there's risk associated with AI and robots. It's not zero. I guess I've come to my philosophical conclusion to look on the bright side. I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots. And at times I think, well, perhaps even if there was a stop button, we probably shouldn't press it, because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all.
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Interviewer2:45
That's what I thought actually. It struck me that now you seem to have decided it's inevitable. Let's hope for the best and go for the ride.
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Elon Musk2:54
Yes, pretty much. Let's enjoy the ride is my philosophy at this point, because there seems to be just an inexorable progress in AI and in robots. But even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn't.
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Interviewer3:20
Do you think there's still a 10 to 20% chance that killer robots mean the end of humanity? That's a high P doom, as they say.
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Elon Musk3:30
Well, in the long run, we're all dead, of course. According to the standard model of physics, the end of the universe is a long, boring sort of thin gray soup of gradual cooling, the heat death of the universe. So if the heat death of the universe is in fact the outcome for our reality, then it really is all about the journey, because the destination is terrible.
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Interviewer4:07
But 10 years is not very long. I get that, but that could be a long way and you're basically very long way. If it's 10 to 20% in 10 years, would you go into one of your rockets if you thought there was a 10 to 20% chance of it blowing up and killing you?
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Elon Musk4:21
Yes, but you can't do anything about it.
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Interviewer4:27
I guess the only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of the bad outcome, but trying to stop the intelligence in robots... For the longest time, I declined to participate in AI, or created OpenAI as essentially a counterweight to Google, because at the time they had more or less a monopoly on AI. And creating OpenAI and then having Anthropic spin out of that, and now currently Anthropic is the leader in AI. These actions have actually resulted in knock-on effects that accelerated AI, which wasn't really my intention. So it just seems like all roads lead to acceleration of AI. So then I'm like, okay, well, you can just sort of be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.
Well, you've certainly joined the club.
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Elon Musk5:30
Yeah.
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Interviewer5:31
You definitely joined the club. If you can't beat them, join them.
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Elon Musk5:35
A number of the other leaders of model makers have been pushing for different ways to try and minimize the risks. Just last week, Demis came out with a proposal for a private public regulator. Do you think you guys should be working more actively to get something in place to control the risks, or do you think that's impossible too?
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Interviewer6:00
Yeah. My recommendation to Demis, because we talked for a few hours before he published his piece, was that the most immediate thing we could do is to have the leading AI companies at least just meet, or have some sort of call once every few weeks, and just discuss any safety and security issues.
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Elon Musk6:07
But why haven't you done that yet? You don't all like each other very much. Yeah, but you're also all competing, right? You all want to be first.
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Interviewer6:25
Yes. But that's where I think the competitors can keep each other honest. I think it's quite difficult for someone in the government who doesn't have a deep technical understanding and isn't driving the frontier of AI to know whether something should be released or not. However, the competitors, if given a week or two to review a new model, can highlight issues and have an incentive to keep the others honest.
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Elon Musk6:32
So you'd have a system where the model makers would check each other's work. If there was something that worried them, you'd tell the government.
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Interviewer7:09
Yeah. If there was something that was worrisome and that company was not doing anything to address that risk, then that would be the moment for government to step in and take action.
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Elon Musk7:17
When does all this have to happen?
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Interviewer7:28
Well, I think it would be good to do that immediately, really.
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Elon Musk7:32
Yeah, that's what people keep telling me. We have to get some kind of system in the next six months because of the pace at which the models are improving.
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Interviewer7:37
Yeah, six months is a long time.
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Elon Musk7:45
So you think shorter than that?
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Interviewer7:49
Well, there are so many AI breakthrough announcements, sometimes multiple per day. How many were there last week?
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Elon Musk8:00
A lot. I lost track.
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Interviewer8:02
Yeah, a lot. So whether it's Demis' proposal or others, you need to get together and get this set up kind of now, it sounds like you're telling me.
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Elon Musk8:14
Yeah. I would recommend that we at least have some sort of informal weekly or bi-weekly call, and that there's maybe a week or two weeks of early access by competitors. And this is why I think the incentives work: because competing companies I think are likely to understand if something is a security risk, and they're not going to be shy about highlighting that their competitor's models should be delayed in release.
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Interviewer8:52
You guys don't much like each other and you don't much trust each other. You're insulting each other on social media constantly. So do you think you can do that with people you dislike, where there seems to be such personal vitriol between some of these leaders?
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Elon Musk9:07
Yes. Well, I'm not a fan of Sam Altman because he started a nonprofit that was meant to be an open-source AI company owned by the world, and it somehow got turned into an $800 billion for-profit company with closed source. I think you'd be like, well, wait a second, that's the exact opposite of what I donated the money for. That's my issue. I think it's a legitimate one. And then Dario, I think also is not a fan of Sam Altman, because he felt, in fact the reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI is because they didn't trust Sam Altman. Otherwise, Anthropic wouldn't exist. They would still be at OpenAI. I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares about things a lot, cares about the future of the world. And everyone I've met at Anthropic so far, no one set off my evil detector. They always seem well-intentioned. The road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions. There are a few well-intentioned paving stones in there, so we don't want to be complacent. But at the end of the day, if we have to talk, we'll talk. Set aside our personal differences for the good of the world, type of thing.