Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will surpass the combined intelligence of every human being within five years, placing the milestone around 2031.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive made the claim during a 90-minute interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, recorded at a Tesla factory in Texas where cars are assembled without human workers on the line. The interview was published Thursday as part of The Economist’s Insider series.
“There really won’t be anything that AI can’t do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps,” Musk told Minton Beddoes.
Musk went further, saying he doubts humans will retain meaningful control over AI systems within a decade. He described the idea of directing a superintelligent system as an “exercise in vanity,” and said the priority should instead be ensuring AI “has good values” and “wants us to be happy and prosper.”
He also raised the possibility of robots in the workplace producing what he called an era of “amazing abundance,” in which money loses much of its meaning. In a separate remark to Business Insider this month, he suggested AI and robots could fund a “universal high income,” a claim that investor Michael Burry, known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, called false.
Asked about the odds of AI causing catastrophic harm, Musk repeated a figure he gave in March 2025: a 10 to 20 percent chance of “killer robots annihilating humanity.” He said the number has not changed his view that progress should continue. “Let’s say you can’t do anything about it,” he said. “I guess the only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of the bad outcome.
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This is not his first attempt to forecast AI’s trajectory. In 2014, he compared building AI to “summoning the demon.” In 2018, he told an audience at SXSW that AI was “far more dangerous than nukes.” In August 2020, in a post on X, he wrote that the jump from the original GPT model to GPT-3 was significant enough that “GPT-5 or 6 could be indistinguishable from the smartest humans.”
His more recent statements have leaned toward optimism rather than alarm. In January, he said saving for retirement would become “irrelevant.”
Musk’s five-year window sits well ahead of estimates from other AI research surveys, which generally place human-level AI closer to 2047. Other industry figures, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have floated shorter timelines of their own, though not matching Musk’s.
The claim drew a mixed response on X within hours of publication. Several users said Musk often missed predictions. One wrote that his forecasts are “always incorrect,” questioning why they continue to draw attention. Others accused him of inconsistency, given his own AI product, Grok, is marketed as “truth-seeking.”
A smaller number of users were more receptive. One called the prediction “amazingly accurate,” citing Musk’s 2020 GPT-3 comment as evidence of a track record. Another said a five-year timeline “feels aggressive” but welcomed the potential gains in science and productivity, “as long as we keep humans in the loop.”
Some replies questioned the premise itself, arguing that human intelligence is too varied to be treated as a single measurable sum.
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