Elon Musk: humans may stop being the smartest thing on the blockchain by 2036 🤖

Elon Musk said artificial intelligence is on track to surpass the combined intelligence of humanity within roughly five years and warned that humans are unlikely to remain in control of the technology within a decade. Speaking on Thursday with The Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, the xAI founder predicted AI will outperform humans at nearly every intellectual task, adding, "There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps." He framed the likely outcome as "an age of amazing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of," noting, "This may sound preposterous, but here we are in 2026. Let's see where we stand in 2036."

Musk reiterated his long-standing view that advanced AI poses existential risks, but said he no longer sees a realistic path to slowing development. "I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots," he said, adding, "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." He proposed that the world's leading AI companies begin holding regular meetings to discuss safety and security concerns, and suggested giving competing AI labs limited early access to one another's frontier models so they can identify dangerous capabilities before public release. If a company failed to address serious risks, governments could then intervene, he said.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief also used the appearance to criticize OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, accusing him of converting a nonprofit open-source initiative into a closed-source business. "Well, I'm not a fan of Sam Altman because you 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," Musk said. In May, a California jury rejected Musk's $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI, Altman and co-founder Greg Brockman, finding the defendants not liable on claims they abandoned the organization's nonprofit mission by shifting toward a commercial structure.

Musk additionally suggested Anthropic exists because co-founder Dario Amodei and his team no longer trusted Altman, arguing they otherwise would have remained at OpenAI. "I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares about the future of the world, and I think everyone I've met at Anthropic so far has been well-intentioned. No one has set off my evil detector," he said, before adding, "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 disincentivize those." Musk did not announce new product or policy actions during the interview.