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Elon Musk says there's only one solution to America's $38 trillion debt problem.
Economists, politicians and financial experts have proposed countless solutions over the years to the US debt issue. But none have addressed the crisis quite like the world's richest man.
During a podcast interview on 'A Different Conversation with Nikhil Kamath,' Elon Musk argued that AI-powered robotics driving massive productivity gains is the only realistic solution to tackle America's crushing debt burden.
“I think that’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to solve for the US debt crisis, because currently the US debt is insanely high,” Musk said. “The interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States – just the interest payments, and that’s at least in the short-term going to continue to increase.”
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The Tesla CEO added: “So I think actually the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is AI and robotics. It probably would cause significant deflation because deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the change in the money supply.”
Musk explained that AI and robotics could lead to a major increase in output and likely cause deflation, where prices decrease rather than increase.
“If you have AI and robotics, and a dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, probably you will have deflation. That seems likely. Because you simply won’t be able to increase the money supply as fast as you can increase the output of goods and services,” the SpaceX founder said.
When asked about current inflation levels, which remain above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, Musk acknowledged that AI hasn't yet boosted productivity enough to trigger deflation.
“AI has not yet made enough of an impact on productivity to increase the goods and services faster than the money supply. The US is increasing the money supply quite substantially with deficits that are on the order of $2 trillion, so you have to have goods and services output more than that in order to not have inflation,” he claimed.
“We’re not there yet, but if 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, my guess is goods and services growth will exceed money supply growth in about three years.”
The tech mogul also suggested that AI and robotics will essentially rebuild the current economic system.
“I think at a certain point you decouple from the sort of conventional economy if you have AI and robots producing chips and solar panels and mining resources in order to make chips and robots[…] You sort of complete that cycle. Once that cycle is complete, I think that’s the point at which you decouple from the monetary system,” Musk said.
He concluded: “These are just 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. I think this would happen without me, whether I like it or not. As long as civilisation keeps advancing, we will have AI and robotics at very large scale.”
