Human consciousness has always dreamed of creating ease and freedoms for human beings. In The Republic by Plato, such a dream was also seen: that if poets and philosophers become rulers, societies could remain more peaceful. Utopia, the idea of the sixteenth-century thinker Thomas More, was also such an imaginary paradise in which human labor and hardship would be less and comfort and convenience would be greater.
In our era, when Asia and Europe are troubled by their respective wars and it is becoming difficult around the world to stabilize economies, poverty has become a permanent problem in third-world countries. This same issue has also gripped Pakistan in its claws. Yet, the billionaire industrialist and innovator sitting in America, Elon Musk, has predicted that the day is not far when the stage of Sustainable Abundance will begin for human beings. Elon Musk says that humans will not even need to work; wealth itself will have no importance or value in that society, and whatever a person desires will become available to him.
In the world’s religions, the concept of Paradise after the Hereafter, in simple terms, is that those who receive reward from God and succeed in the test of the world will be sent to Paradise, where there will be abundance of rivers of milk and honey and heavenly companions. According to Elon Musk, it is possible to give this religious concept of Paradise a practical form in this world. According to Musk, artificial intelligence and the human-like robots created from it will fulfill all human needs.
Interestingly, a few years ago Elon Musk, seeing the increasing trend of artificial intelligence, had said that it could destroy humanity; yet now he considers this same artificial intelligence to be the guarantor of humanity’s future development.
According to Elon Musk, the time is coming when the rate of development across the world will increase beyond 10 percent annually. Remember that in Pakistan this rate is about 2 to 3 percent. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Musk claimed that artificial intelligence and human-like robots will eliminate poverty across the world.
It should be remembered that stories of such a magical world are frequently found in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu literature, where supernatural jinn perform tasks that humans cannot accomplish. In many of those stories, certain humans “nail down” those jinn or enslave them to their commands so that they become ready to perform every task according to their master’s order. Elon Musk’s human-like robots will also be those magical jinn of enchanted stories who will do all the work in place of humans.
In the tales of One Thousand and One Nights and other magical stories, princes used to fly sitting on magic carpets. Now perhaps humans will not fly while sitting on carpets, but flying cars are being prepared; on the rooftops of several buildings in Dubai, stations for them are also being built.
Criticism of Elon Musk’s paradise of permanent abundance is also taking place around the world. Yet his own companies are preparing for settlement on Mars while efforts are also underway to grow oases on the Moon. Elon Musk created the first electric car Tesla electric car and caused a storm in the world of business and technology. Then he attempted space travel and tried to open the path for conquering worlds beyond Earth.
According to recent information, after the arrival of cheaper Chinese electric cars competing with Tesla, Elon Musk has created a humanoid robot called Optimus to operate Tesla vehicles. This robot will itself drive the car and it will be controlled from the air. Recently Optimus was presented for exhibition. Apparently it is still in an initial form and incapable of performing difficult tasks, but experts believe that after some time this robot will become so clever and intelligent that humans will not need to drive cars themselves.
Criticizing Elon Musk’s utopia, Professor Alex Amas wrote in The New York Times that the biggest beneficiaries of the imaginary paradise created by robots and artificial intelligence will be Elon Musk himself. However, he raised the question: how will the wealth created from abundance be distributed among human beings?
According to Professor Amas, when humans will not work, the system of demand and supply will itself collapse. As a result, humans will become dependent on artificial-intelligence companies. In other words, humans will be eligible to share in the abundance of wealth from the artificial-intelligence company, but their dependence will remain on the company: how large a share the company owners will take and how much the ordinary people will receive.
Explaining this, the chairperson of Tesla, Robin Denham, said that the company wants to create a world where there will be abundance of goods, services, and facilities.
The idea of abundance of resources and goods was not created by Elon Musk; in the nineteenth century Karl Marx also dreamed that the total capital in the capitalist system should become the collective capital of the people. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes had also said in 1930 that with the speed at which technology is advancing and financial profits are increasing, humans will only have to work 15 hours a week, and the remaining time will be free for them.
Elon Musk’s imaginary paradise resembles very much the magical world and the land of dreams. In one speech, Musk said that robots will create more robots. Just as in magical and fictional worlds whatever the master thinks, the servant jinn brings it immediately—whether it is an out-of-season fruit or a pinnacle of a throne—similarly Musk says that whatever a human thinks, the robot will bring it and present it.
Explaining his theory of sustainable abundance in an interview, Elon Musk said: “Progress is unlimited.” He then added that every human in the world will have the maximum possible income globally, and that income will be so high that humans will benefit not only from permanent abundance but also from magnificent and astonishing progress beyond it.
The dream of Elon Musk’s imaginary paradise is very beautiful, but the speed of technological and artificial-intelligence development is much slower than Musk’s wishes, and it will still take time for such a paradise to be formed.
That is why in The New York Times the American presidential candidate and left-wing intellectual leader, Senator Bernie Sanders, made an appropriate comment: Mr. Musk has not yet explained how his new society will function. If people will not work, then how will they pay taxes? And without taxes how will governments run? And the biggest question: how will wealth be distributed? What will Bernie Sanders receive, and what will Musk receive?
Countries suffering from permanent poverty will ask the same question: will the First World swallow the share of the Third World? What will Pakistan receive, and what share of the paradise of permanent abundance will America take?