Fact check: The post accurately reports that Elon Musk claimed money will not matter by 2036 due to AI and robots, and that he expe…

Verdict: mostly true — Trust Score 65/100

The post accurately reports that Elon Musk claimed money will not matter by 2036 due to AI and robots, and that he expects deflation, not inflation. This statement was made during an interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist's editor-in-chief, and was widely covered by 5 sources in late July 2026.

Platform
tiktok
Source author
theeconomist — see all fact-checks of this account
Original post
https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSq9j2s79/
Verified on
September 13, 2026
Verification ID
vU6e3I4Idng7fhfvpo_IKA

Original content reviewed

Platform: TIKTOK Author: @theeconomist --- Caption/Description --- “Money won't matter in 2036” claims Elon Musk on the latest Insider. He tells Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, how people will live when AI and robots can do every job and why he expects deflation, not inflation. Click the link to watch the full interview #ElonMusk #AI --- Audio Transcript (What was said) --- Money won't matter in 2036. I'm not sure that the people who bought your shares think that money won't matter in 2036. Well, what do you want money for? Are you, you want money for goods and services? Yep. Right. You want money for, obviously, food, housing, transport, entertainment. Um, well, if that is so abundant that, uh, there's more, that the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume, what do you need money for? In that case, let's agree that that could be where we end up. I'm, I'm concerned about the road. And we live, you know, we live in democracies and people are very worried about this. So I guess two questions. Firstly, do you have to have massive redistribution from people like you to the people who are losing their jobs? Do you need to pay more tax? Do you have much higher taxes on capital so that you fund some kind of universal income? Otherwise, what do people live off? I, I think that the, the Treasury should just simply issue people checks. But you're. So where's the revenue coming from? I mean, I'm enough of an economist. If you just issue cheques, you're gonna have inflation. It, it, you know, this is like, a lot of what we're trying to think about is these things were relevant in the past, they will not be relevant in the future. So, like, inflation is simply the ratio of Money to the. To. To goods and services. So if the goods and services output increases dramatically, if it increases, you know, 1,000%, you can increase the. You can literally print all these guys, change the database. No, no, no. Prin

Sources consulted (5)

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