{"slug": "sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years", "title": "Sam Altman Rejects Elon Musk's AI Utopia: 'Money Will Still Matter' in 10 Years", "summary": "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejected Elon Musk's prediction that money will be irrelevant by 2036, arguing that AI is more likely to concentrate wealth than to spread it. Altman said, 'I think money will still matter in ten years,' citing concerns about the concentration of power and wealth. Musk, whose net worth surpassed $1.1 trillion, envisions an 'age of amazing abundance' where robots and AI eliminate scarcity, while Altman advocates for 'collective ownership' of AI-generated wealth.", "body_md": "# Sam Altman Rejects Elon Musk's AI Utopia: 'Money Will Still Matter' in 10 Years\n\n## OpenAI's CEO argues against Musk's prediction, highlighting concerns over wealth concentration\n\nSam Altman has pushed back on [Elon Musk's prediction](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bernie-sanders-elon-musk-ai-wealth-tax-debate-1811456) that artificial intelligence will soon make money irrelevant, warning that the technology is more likely to concentrate wealth than to spread it.\n\n'I think money will still matter in ten years,' the OpenAI chief executive said when asked about [Musk's forecast](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/elon-musk-ai-prediction-abundance-1810844). 'One of the greatest concerns I have with AI is the concentration of power and concentration of wealth.' SME Futures published his comments. He added: 'There are many reasons to think it won't just magically solve wealth inequality.'\n\nMusk had set out the opposing view in an interview with *The Economist*'s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes. 'Money won't matter in 2036,' the Tesla and SpaceX chief said. 'What do you want money for? For goods and services, food, housing, transport, entertainment.' He framed the shift as an 'age of amazing abundance' in which robots and AI produce more than people can consume, leaving currency without a role.\n\n## Why Sam Altman Thinks Money Will Still Matter\n\nThe two men agree on part of the picture. Both expect AI and robotics to raise productivity and cut the cost of making goods. They differ on what that does to the distribution of wealth.\n\nMusk's case rests on supply and demand. If machines produce goods and services at close to zero marginal cost, scarcity falls away, along with money's main function of rationing what is scarce. He has predicted the outcome would be deflation rather than inflation, as output outpaces the money supply.\n\nAltman's position is that lower costs do not guarantee a fairer spread. Ownership, property rights, and corporate control remain even when production gets cheaper, and whoever owns the machines captures the gains.\n\nIn a 2025 essay titled '[The Gentle Singularity](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sam-altman-ai-singularity-declaration-1810731)', he wrote that living standards could rise sharply as intelligence and energy grow cheaper, while cautioning that the benefits would have to be distributed deliberately.\n\n## What Elon Musk's 'Money Won't Matter' Vision Leaves Out\n\nMusk made a similar argument to entrepreneur Peter Diamandis before SpaceX's stock market flotation, the listing that lifted his net worth past $1.1T (£825B) and made him the world's first trillionaire on paper.\n\nDiamandis asked him: How could money be becoming worthless as Musk amassed a multi-trillion-dollar fortune? 'Yeah, pretty much,' Musk replied, accepting the paradox. He said the figure was ownership of companies, not cash, and was 'not, like, sitting in the bank account.'\n\nPressed on how people would live without wages, Musk suggested governments could issue payments directly, a form of universal high income funded by machine labour. He has said the idea draws on the post-scarcity novels of Iain M. Banks.\n\nAltman has taken a different route. He once backed [universal basic income](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nouriel-roubini-ai-workforce-universal-basic-income-1810964), funding a 2024 study that found $1,000 (£750) monthly payments to low-income Americans eased stress and food insecurity. He has since moved away from cash handouts, saying in April that he now favours 'collective ownership' of the wealth AI generates, rather than payments from the state.\n\n## How the AI Wealth Debate Reaches British Workers\n\nThe question of who gains is already live in Britain. The government is weighing a universal basic income to cushion workers whose jobs are displaced by AI, the investment minister, Lord Jason Stockwood, told the *Financial Times*.\n\n'Undoubtedly we're going to have to think really carefully about how we soft-land those industries that go away, so some sort of UBI, some sort of lifelong learning mechanism as well so people can retrain,' he said. Stockwood has also floated a levy on technology companies to help fund it.\n\nThe bill would be large. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that paying every working-age adult a basic income would cost more than £200B ($267B) a year, above the entire NHS budget. Whether AI gathers wealth among machine owners or spreads it more widely will affect wages, taxes, and household budgets long before Musk's 2036 date arrives.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sam-altman-challenges-elon-musk-ai-wealth-distribution-1812245", "published_at": "2026-08-04 09:07:19+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-04 09:12:06.795301+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Sam Altman", "OpenAI", "Elon Musk", "Tesla", "SpaceX", "The Economist", "Zanny Minton Beddoes", "Peter Diamandis"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/sam-altman-rejects-elon-musk-s-ai-utopia-money-will-still-matter-in-10-years.jsonld"}}