Elon Musk Sure Made Lots of Predictions at Davos

Elon Musk, the the richest man in the world, is very good at making money. Its record in predicting the future is less stellar.

Over the years, Musk has made several wild predictions – about self-driving cars, about space exploration, about brain chips, about robotics – that have not come to fruition. The Tesla CEO and former head of the so-called Department of Government Effectiveness seems at least a little self-aware. In a surprise appearance and debut at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, he concluded with something akin to a mission statement: “In general, for quality of life, it is better to err on the side of optimism and error than on the side of pessimism and be right.” »

Yet when companies operate across so many industries – automotive and robotics (Tesla), space travel and telecommunications (SpaceX), social media (X), artificial intelligence (xAI), infrastructure (the Boring Company) and neurotechnology (Neuralink) – even off-the-cuff predictions can move global markets. Here are some predictions Musk made on Thursday:

Aliens don’t exist (probably)

Elon Musk opened his Davos speech – in conversation with his friend and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink – with a discussion of his values ​​and a few jokes about aliens. “We have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spacecraft,” Musk said. “We have to assume that life and consciousness are extremely rare and that it may just be us.”

Humanoid robots will transform human life and go on sale in 2027

Musk began making promises about Optimus, the company’s humanoid robot, in 2021. Most recently, he said Tesla, now renamed the robotics and autonomy company, would make thousands of Optimus robots in 2025. But the company would still struggle to make Optimus’ hand work. That didn’t stop Musk from repeating some of his most ambitious claims in Davos about how the product would change human life forever.

“If we have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free, or almost free, and ubiquitous robotics, you will see an explosion, an expansion of the global economy that is truly beyond any precedent,” Musk said. What does this mean to you? Billions of robots powered by artificial intelligence will outnumber humans and “saturate all human needs,” he said. “You won’t be able to think of something to ask the robot at any given time, there will be such an abundance of goods and services.”

But first, of course, Tesla will have to start selling Optimus, which Musk said would happen late next year.

Robotaxis will be ‘widespread’ in the United States by 2027

In 2025, after years of promises of autonomous driving, Tesla finally launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, but with a human safety monitor installed in each passenger seat. That didn’t stop Musk from claiming that most of the U.S. population would have access to robo-taxis by the end of the year.

Now, in 2026, Musk is moving the poles again. He said Thursday that his company’s robotaxis would be “widespread by the end of this year in the United States.” If history is any guide, this won’t happen, but the business East is working to launch robotaxi service in a handful of states with more lax regulations, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

Human aging is a “very solvable problem”

Musk acknowledged that he hasn’t spent much time investigating human aging. But he predicts there will be a solution. “When we discover the causes of aging, we will discover that it is incredibly obvious,” he said. Go ahead, Silicon Valley peers.

SpaceX will complete a fully reusable rocket this year

SpaceX has been working on its Starship reusable rocket platform for a decade, and in those years it has missed several of Musk’s big space deadlines. He predicted in 2020 that a crewed mission to Mars would launch by 2024. He said Starship would reach orbit by 2022, although the company only got there last year.

At Davos, Musk reiterated a promise from last year: that Starship would be fully reusable by the end of this year, reducing the costs of space travel by a “factor of 100” and eventually allowing space cargo to rival air freight prices. SpaceX has recently conducted successful test flights, but a fully reusable rocket by the end of this year could be a daunting task.

AI will become smarter than a human this year and smarter than all of humanity in 2035

Musk has been both deeply involved in the development of AI and deeply pessimistic about its meaning for years. (See: his ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI, its founders, and Microsoft.) At Davos, Musk once again mentioned his desire to avoid a Terminator-like future. But he also indicated that it was going to happen. “At the rate that AI is advancing, I think we will have AI smarter than any human being this year, and next year at the latest,” he said. By 2035, it will be “smarter than all of humanity, collectively”.

As usual, Musk’s success in this area depends on definitions. What does “smarter” mean? This month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he didn’t think researchers were close to creating what he called “God AI.” The technology is effective for discrete tasks, but All? “That ‘one day’ is probably on a biblical scale, on a galactic scale,” Huang said.