It has been a month since Elon Musk and Joe Rogan spoke, but, as ‘Camus‘ pointed out this week, this seven-minute exchange, buried in the middle of a three hour conversation, could very well be one of the most important conversations of the decade.
Musk laid it out bluntly:
AI is a “supersonic tsunami” already erasing every purely digital job—coding, emails, spreadsheets, customer support—faster than any shift in history.
“I think there will be actually a high demand for jobs, but not necessarily the same jobs,” Musk told Rogan on the comedian’s podcast.
“So I mean this is actually, this process has been happening throughout modern history.”
The xAI CEO says AI is already replacing and will continue to replace desk jobs that are digitally centric, “at an accelerated rate.”
What survives longest?
Musk says
“Anything that’s physically moving atoms, like cooking food or farming, anything that’s physical, those jobs will exist for a much longer time,” he said.
“But anything that is digital, which is just someone at a computer doing something, AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning.”
Simply put, as ‘Camus‘ notes: hands-on stays human.
Musk is mostly bullish on the long-term benefits of artificial intelligence, provided a Terminator-esque scenario doesn’t come to fruition.
And it is with regard to this “more benign scenario” that Musk drops the most shocking line:
“In the best future, work becomes optional. We don’t get universal basic income… we get universal high income. Abundance so extreme that anything you want costs almost nothing and poverty effectively disappears.”
He compares it to the 1900s when entire skyscrapers were filled with human “computers” doing math by hand—then digital computers arrived and those jobs vanished overnight… while the world exploded with new opportunity.
This isn’t sci-fi, noted ‘Camus’, it’s the trajectory we’re already on.
Musk said that his ideal version of the future “kind of sounds like heaven.”
“Like I said, not every path is a good path,” Musk said.
“But I think if we push it in the direction of maximally truth-seeking and curious, then I think AI will want to take care of humanity and foster humanity because we’re interesting.”
Watch these 7 minutes… It’ll change how you see your career, money, and the next 20 years.
This 7-minute exchange between Elon Musk and Joe Rogan is quietly one of the most important conversations of the decade.
Elon lays it out plainly:
AI is a “supersonic tsunami” already erasing every purely digital job—coding, emails, spreadsheets, customer support—faster than any… pic.twitter.com/FA9U7z199z— Camus (@newstart_2024) December 11, 2025
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