Elon Musk says humanity probably shouldn't hit the brakes on artificial intelligence — even if it could in an interview with The Economist, Business Insider reports.
In an interview with The Economist's editor in chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the world's richest man said the risk of AI and robots going catastrophically wrong is "not zero." He said he'd made peace with pressing ahead anyway.
"My sort of philosophical conclusion is to look on the bright side," Musk said. "I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots."
"At times I sort of 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," he said.
Musk predicted AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence "in about five years," leading to "an age of amazing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of," barring a derailment like "global thermonuclear war."
Musk has long paired warnings of AI catastrophe with predictions that have increasingly blended in more optimism.
He likened building AI to "summoning the demon" in 2014, told an SXSW audience in 2018 that "AI is far more dangerous than nukes," and, as recently as March 2025, put the odds of "killer robots annihilating humanity" at 10% to 20%.
However, his recent predictions have leaned more utopian. In January, he said that saving for retirement would be "irrelevant," and this month predicted that AI and robots will make work optional and fund "universal high income," a claim "The Big Short" investor Michael Burry called "false."
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