The dangerous illusion of Elon Musk’s cashless AI Utopia 
In late July 2026, The Economist published an interview with American billionaire Elon Musk who boldly prophesied that artificial intelligence would surpass the sharpest human minds by 2036.
According to Musk, this technological milestone will usher in an era of absolute abundance, rendering human labor and traditional money completely obsolete. This provocative vision revives century-old illusions regarding the feasibility of a moneyless society, ideals famously championed by the Bolsheviks and various socialist factions during the 1917 Russian Revolution. It similarly echoes the 1930 predictions of British economist John Maynard Keynes, who posited that his grandchildren would work a mere 15 hours a week as machines absorbed routine human tasks.
However, contemporary realities consistently dismantle these techno-utopian forecasts. Data from the International Labor Organization reveals that the average global workweek has stabilized well above the 40-hour mark. This demonstrates that automation has not eliminated human labor; rather, industrial and digital ecosystems have deepened their reliance on human oversight and adaptation. Musk’s assertion that humanity will transcend the need for currency is fundamentally flawed and structurally illogical. Such a premise assumes that governments will seamlessly absorb the entire spectrum of social security and welfare, reducing citizens to passive dependents waiting on centralized monthly subsidies.
Crucially, this utopian narrative fails to address severe structural paradoxes. It glosses over whether future resource allocation will remain unequal, or if society will instead regress to a system reminiscent of Soviet ration cards — a rigid coupon-based economy where individuals dedicate their existence entirely to serving the state apparatus. Furthermore, it leaves vital geopolitical and institutional questions unanswered. Will hyper-wealthy tech elites continue to exist? How will internal governance be maintained within sovereign states? What becomes of ministers, diplomats and heads of government? Most importantly, who will represent sovereign nations in international bodies, artificial algorithms or human statesmen?
This discourse attempts to deconstruct the conventional economic paradigm founded on the explicit exchange of labor for wages. In many Western economies, particularly within the US and Germany, there are growing institutional calls to accelerate automation primarily to suppress wage growth and counter labor demands.
The macroeconomic implications are stark: A July 2023 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated that 27 percent of jobs were at high risk of automation by intelligent robotics. Compounding this, a November 2025 study by the McKinsey Global Institute projected that advanced AI systems could automate up to 57 percent of human working hours. This systemic shift threatens to decouple operational value from human performance, experience, and institutional tenure, replacing it with the raw productivity of corporate algorithms. This paradox is increasingly visible in rapidly transforming tech landscapes like Saudi Arabia. Under Vision 2030, the Kingdom has aggressively positioned itself as a global powerhouse, even designating 2026 as the “Year of AI”. Yet, as billions are channeled into intelligent systems, policymakers face the complex challenge of balancing this rapid automation with strict Saudization mandates, national policies expressly designed to protect local workforce localization and secure citizen employment. Consequently, unchecked automation risks creating an unstable labor environment that strips employees of basic job security and institutional safeguards without prior warning, consolidated entirely for the benefit of technology owners.
The sensation of being monitored in every movement by silent, unfeeling software, incapable of empathizing with personal or extenuating circumstances, erodes professional passion and institutional loyalty.
Dr. Badr bin Saud
Delegating absolute authority to closed-loop algorithmic systems to manage corporate facilities and issue organizational directives represents an acute institutional danger. When administrators outsource these responsibilities, they merge personal bureaucratic influence with automated authority, effectively using the machine to legitimize mass layoffs while evading the scrutiny of administrative oversight and labor inspection bodies.
Leadership is thus transformed from a public, accountable responsibility into an absolute, opaque and entirely insulated technocratic authority managed by software that lacks consciousness or any comprehension of human dignity. This risk is not hypothetical; in April 2019, Amazon delegated automated authority to algorithms that systematically terminated approximately 300 employees at a single facility within less than a year for failing to meet productivity metrics. This incident eventually forced the State of California to intervene legislatively, banning automated algorithmic screening processes that operate without mandatory human review.
Historically, this form of exclusionary socioeconomic engineering traces its roots back to the seventh century B.C. during the foundational organization of the Spartan state. The legendary lawgiver Lycurgus instituted the syssitia — a compulsory system of communal mess halls designed to strip citizens of financial independence. By replacing private autonomy with strictly rationed food allowances, the Spartan state transformed its population into a compliant collective whose survival depended entirely on the dictates of the ruling elite. Every citizen was legally obligated to contribute a fixed monthly quota of flour, wine, cheese and figs; those incapacitated by poverty automatically forfeited their citizenship rights. Modern sorting algorithms and workplace automation tools are essentially digital manifestations of these ancient exclusionary mechanisms, prioritizing rigid algorithmic compliance at the expense of fundamental human rights.
The unchecked integration of these algorithms into contemporary labor management has laid the groundwork for a distinct psychological crisis known as “algorithmic management stress.” A comprehensive study published in ScienceDirect in 2024 concluded that subjecting workforce personnel to continuous machine surveillance and metric-driven evaluations profoundly deteriorates psychological well-being, inducing chronic stress and systemic job dissatisfaction. The sensation of being monitored in every movement by silent, unfeeling software, incapable of empathizing with personal or extenuating circumstances, erodes professional passion and institutional loyalty. Workplaces are effectively converted into toxic, high-anxiety environments dominated by the perpetual fear of sudden, automated dismissal. In this manner, the imagined utopia of technological abundance transforms into a severe psychological and social liability.
Countering this algorithmic encroachment and preserving human agency requires decisive, structural institutional intervention that transcends mere rhetorical assurances.
Governments and regulatory bodies must establish strict technical regulations and robust legislation that explicitly prohibit machines from possessing the autonomous authority to terminate employment or freeze wages without human intervention.
Legal frameworks must mandate independent, transparent human review channels that remain directly answerable to official administrative oversight bodies. Furthermore, organizations must implement flexible systems that guarantee long-term job security, explicitly linking performance evaluations to verifiable productivity and cumulative years of professional experience.
Only through these concerted frameworks can humanity ensure that software remains a supportive tool rather than a sovereign master, preventing citizens from becoming redundant casualties within their own professional and social environments.
* Dr. Bader bin Saud is a columnist for Al-Riyadh newspaper, a researcher in media and knowledge management, a university professor, an expert in crowd management and strategic planning, and the former deputy commander of the Special Forces for Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia. X: @BaderbinSaud.
