2026-01-19T17:32:51.179Z
- Elon Musk said this month that the AI revolution will make retirement savings “irrelevant.”
- We asked if we agreed and it was a definite “no”.
- Retirement and AI experts have previously said it’s best to keep saving.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk suggested that people no longer need to hoard money in 401(k)s because AI will make scarcity a thing of the past.
“If any of what we’ve said is true, retirement savings will become meaningless,” Musk said in a recent podcast episode about the predicted AI revolution.
He speculated that AI could transform society, creating a wealth of resources that would allow everyone to have “universally high incomes” and “whatever they want.”
Our readers seem less convinced by that vision, which he characterized as a “good future.”
Business Insider Today’s Dan DeFrancesco asked his newsletter readers whether they trusted AI enough to stop saving, and the results were pretty emphatic.
Of the approximately 200 readers who responded, only 6% said they were not worried about their retirement and would leave their future to AI.
Meanwhile, about 94% said they would stick with their savings plans rather than bet their farm that the AI revolution would invalidate them.
That’s the smart choice in finance and technology. experts previously told Business Insider.
Seven retirement and AI experts we spoke to said Americans should spend more in retirement, not less.
“Most Americans should absolutely ignore these comments,” said Jeffrey Sanzenbacher, a researcher at Boston University’s Center for Retirement Research. “Mr. Musk’s speculation sends a dangerous and misleading message.”
Others said that technological revolutions have not so far increased wealth evenly across society, and that achieving universal basic income, as Mr. Musk has suggested, would require a concerted effort from governments rather than technology leaders.
“It’s not a technical problem; it’s a civilization-wide coordination problem,” says John Nosta, an innovation theorist and founder of Nostar Lab.
