Gizmodo reports:

Elon Musk sat down with the editor-in-chief of the Economist for a taped interview that went live Thursday. The Tesla CEO has been avoiding normal journalists recently, even cancelling a planned interview with CNBC earlier this month. And it now seems pretty obvious why. Musk has a hard time answering normal questions about his often fascist and sometimes incoherent worldview.

The interview started cordially enough, with Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes asking Musk about his thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence. Musk said many things that he’s said before, including that AI will deliver an age of abundance, where “anyone can have anything they think of.”

Musk insisted that AI will exceed human intelligence in five years and that humans will no longer be in charge of the world in 10 years. Beddoes pressed Musk several times on what that means and how his companies will continue to exist. The billionaire rambled on and on in a way that didn’t really stand up to any scrutiny.

“If you have vast numbers of robots with vast amounts of digital intelligence, you have a sort of a quasi-infinite economy,” said Musk. “The future is going to be very, very different from the past. There’s no analogy or metaphor that I think illustrates the magnitude of change that we’re going to experience here.”

Musk was asked how his companies would make money in this version of the future, and he insisted that “money won’t matter in 2036.” He claimed that everyone would have a high income from doing nothing and that people might still perform some kind of labor as a hobby, much in the same way that people might grow their own tomatoes in a home garden. Musk insisted backyard tomatoes weren’t as good as those you can buy from the store, but people still do it anyway. That would be news to anyone who’s had a delicious backyard tomato, which frequently tastes much better.

Again, Musk has said this kind of thing before. Interviewers, especially podcasters who are just fans of Musk, won’t probe for specifics after he makes such bold statements. But Beddoes didn’t let him get away with the idea that everyone will just have a high income. She asked how this would be implemented.

“What do you want money for? You want money for goods and services, right? You want money for mostly food, housing, transport, entertainment,” said Musk. “Well, if that is so abundant that […] the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than you…than any human, could possibly consume, what do you need money for?”

From that point on, it was all downhill for Musk. He suggested that everyone read Iain Banks for a vision of the future, and Beddoes pointed out that Banks was a socialist. Musk insisted he wasn’t. Musk said he wanted a Star Trek version of the future, which is also a version of the future that is routinely referred to as “space communism.”

When Beddoes asked Musk about his time with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he got extremely defensive. She pointed out that people had suffered and died from the destruction of USAID as an agency. Not only did Musk insist that no one died, but he also said that USAID’s functions were transferred to the U.S. State Department and all he did was get rid of the fraud. In fact, there have been many deaths from the cuts to foreign aid. [Continue reading…]