From H1B visa to working will be optional in 10-15 years: What Elon Musk said on Nikhil Kamath's 'WTF' podcast

In the podcast, the world's richest man calls for entrepreneurs to be bullies, saying they should learn to make more than they can take.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk featured on Nikhil Kamath's WTF podcast in a two hour show covering a range of topics, including the H1B visa row, tariffs, his family and advice to young Indian entrepreneurs.

In the podcast, the world's richest man called for entrepreneurs to be bullies, saying they should learn to make more than they can take.

"Musk said, "I'm a big fan of anyone who wants to bully. So, I think anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect."

Elon Musk's advice to entrepreneurs

In the podcast, Musk said that young entrepreneurs should become net contributors to the society and linked pursuit of money to happiness.

"If you want to create something valuable financially, you you don't pursue that. It's best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, money will come as a natural consequence of that as opposed to pursuing money directly," he said.

Musk, who owns Tesla, X, SpaceX, and xAi, said that aspirin business people must grind hard to make a business work. He also warned about "meaningful chance of failure".

"Just be focused on having the output to be worth more than the input. That are you a value creator. That's what really matters," he said.

'America benefitted from Indian talent'

Musk said America has benefitted immensely from talented Indians, adding that the US' "anti-immigration" policies were a result of misusing H-1B visa programme and the previous government's "free-for-all" approach.

Talking about the perception of some Americans that their jobs are being taken away by people from other countries, he said, "I don't know how real that is. My direct observation is that there's always a scarcity of talented people. So you know, from my standpoint, I'm like we have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done and so more talented people would be good."

Speaking about the misuse of the H-1B visa programme, Musk some companies have gamed the system but was not in favour of scrapping the programme.

"I think there's been some misuse of the, you know, H-1B programme. It would be accurate to say that there's, you know, like some of the outsourcing companies have kind of gamed the system on the H-1B front, and we need to stop the gaming of the system. But I'm certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H1B programme. I think they don't realise that would actually be very bad," he said.

The H-1B visa has been a gateway for young engineers and scientists from India, China and other countries to secure high-paying jobs in the US. However, in September, US President Donald Trump new H-1B visa applications would cost $100,000 (Rs 89,47,000), up from the roughly $2,000 to $5,000 employers were paying to sponsor workers.

The H-1B visa, issued for three years and renewable for another three, has enabled US tech firms to hire millions of skilled foreign workers to fill talent gaps.

'Working will be optional'

The billionaire predicted that people will not have to work after about 15-20 years, with most operations being run on robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

"It may not be that far in the future. Maybe... I say in less than 20 years, working will be optional. Working at all will be optional. (It will be) Like a hobby, pretty much," Musk said.

Acknowledging the fact that the prediction could turn out to be ridiculous, Musk said that he thinks that advancements in robotics and AI could make working optional.

"Obviously, people can play this back in 20 years and say, 'Look, Elon made this ridiculous prediction, and it's not true, but I think it will turn out to be true that in less than 20 years, maybe. Even as little as... 10 or 15 years. The advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional in the same way that you can grow your own vegetables in your garden, or you could go to the store and buy vegetables," the 54-year-old said.

Musk had made a similar claim at the US-Saudi Investment Forum on November 19, saying AI and robots would eventually allow work to become optional for human beings, that money would become "irrelevant".

Money will disappear as a concept

According to Musk, AI will run out of things that it can do for humans and will start working even for robots and other AIs.

"At a certain point, AI will actually saturate on anything humans can think of and then at that point, it becomes a situation where AI is doing things for AI and robotics because they have run out of things to do to make the humans happy, because there's a limit."

He said that AI and humanoid robots will eliminate poverty, adding that it could make everyone wealthy.

In his conversation with Kamath, he said that in the long term, money will disappear as a concept.

"Honestly, it's kind of strange, but in a future where anyone can have anything, I think you no longer need money as a database for labour allocation. If AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then the relevance of money declines dramatically.

He also said that in the future, humans will have "power generation as the de facto currency".

Elon Musk tried to stop Trump's tariffs

On the talk show, Musk also revealed that tried to convince Trump not to impose tariffs but was unsuccessful, adding that tariffs create problems in markets and don’t make sense even at a basic level. 

“I mean, the President has made it clear he loves tariffs. You know, I’ve tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully.”

Musk opined that free trade is better and more efficient. “Tariffs tend to create distortions in markets,” Musk said.

“Would you want tariffs between you and everyone else at an individual level? That would make life very difficult. Would you want tariffs between each city? No—that would be very annoying. Would you want tariffs between each state within the United States? That would be disastrous for the economy. So then why do you want tariffs between countries?” he added.