According to Business Insider, Elon Musk recently claimed that saving for retirement could become “irrelevant” within a decade due to AI-driven resource abundance. In response, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in an essay this week that achieving that future will be a brutal “rite of passage.” Amodei stated that AI will likely surpass humans at “essentially everything” within a few years, creating an unprecedented short-term shock to the labor market. He expressed grave concern that this could create a massive, low-wage “underclass” and a level of wealth concentration that would “break society.” Amodei noted he and his co-founders have pledged to donate 80% of their wealth, with Anthropic matching staff donations worth billions. Meanwhile, seven AI and finance experts urged people to keep saving for retirement, arguing that ensuring everyone benefits from AI will require immense planning.
The Optimist’s Dream and the Realist’s Warning
So, Elon Musk is painting this picture of a post-scarcity utopia. Basically, AI does all the work, everything is super cheap, and the concept of saving for your golden years just… evaporates. It’s a seductive idea. But here’s the thing: Dario Amodei, who’s building some of the most advanced AI out there at Anthropic, isn’t disagreeing with the destination. He’s screaming from the rooftops about the nightmarish journey. He calls it a “rite of passage,” which is a polite way of saying the transition could be an absolute bloodbath for the global workforce. We’re talking about a shift more rapid and disruptive than the Industrial Revolution, compressed into maybe a decade. That’s not a smooth ride; that’s a cliff.
Who Gets Crushed on the Road to Utopia?
Amodei’s big fear is the formation of a permanent underclass. Think about it. If AI is better at “essentially everything” from writing legal briefs to diagnosing diseases to, I don’t know, running complex industrial systems, what’s left? The immediate financial gains from this productivity supernova won’t be evenly distributed. They’ll flow to the owners of the AI capital—the companies, the investors, a tiny sliver of ultra-skilled workers. Everyone else faces displacement or plummeting wages for the work humans still do. This isn’t just an economic problem; as Amodei bluntly puts it, this level of inequality “will break society.” It’s a political and social bomb waiting to go off.
So What’s The Plan?
Now, Amodei isn’t just doomsaying. He’s pointing the finger at who needs to fix it: AI companies (like his own), employers, governments, and philanthropists. All of them, together. His personal pledge and Anthropic’s donation-matching are a start, but they’re a drop in the bucket compared to the systemic change needed. The ideas on the table are huge—a large universal basic income, or a “capitalist economy of AI systems” that just cuts everyone a giant check from the gigantic economic pie. Sounds great, right? But as he admits, we’ll “likely have to fight to get a good outcome.” The path could just as easily veer into dystopia, where the benefits are hoarded and controlled. Who has the political will to architect a new economic system from the ground up? Look at our current politics. It’s hard to be optimistic.
The Very Practical Bottom Line
And this brings us back to the personal finance gurus Business Insider talked to. Their advice is painfully simple, and you should probably listen to it: keep saving for retirement. Treat Musk’s prediction as a hopeful “what if,” not a financial plan. Even if he’s miraculously right on the timeline, the chaos of getting there means you’ll want a buffer. More importantly, their warning mirrors Amodei’s: making sure this technology lifts everyone and doesn’t just create a new feudal lordship is the single biggest coordination problem humanity has ever faced. It requires planning we haven’t even begun to seriously attempt. So yeah, maybe one day your 401(k) will be a quaint relic. But until that day is guaranteed for everyone, not just the tech elite, it’s the only life raft we’ve got.
