Elon Musk certainly made a lot of predictions at Davos

Elon Musk, The richest man on earth is very good at making money. His record of predicting the future is less well known.

Over the years, he made musk Several strange predictions-on Self-driving carson Space explorationon Brain chips, on Robots– That didn’t work. Tesla CEO and former host of the so-called Government Efficiency Department He seems at least a little self-aware. During his surprise appearance and debut at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, he concluded with something resembling a mission statement: “On the whole, for the sake of quality of life, it is better to err on the side of being optimistic and wrong than being pessimistic and right.”

However, when companies get their hands across multiple industries — automobiles and robotics (Tesla), space travel and communications (SpaceX), social media (X), artificial intelligence (xAI), infrastructure (Boring Company), and neurotechnology (Neuralink) — even improvised predictions can move global markets. Here are some predictions Musk made on Thursday:

Aliens don’t exist (maybe)

Elon Musk He opened his Davos speech — a conversation with his friend and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink — with a discussion of his values, and some jokes about aliens. “We have 9,000 satellites out 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 it might just be us.”

Humanoid robots will change human lives, and will go on sale in 2027

Musk started making promises about… Optimusthe company’s humanoid robot, in 2021. More recently, he said that Tesla — now rebranded as a robotics and autonomy company — will make thousands of Optimus robots in 2025. But the company It is said Still struggling To get Optimus’s hand to work. That didn’t stop Musk from repeating some of his far-reaching claims at Davos about how the product would change human lives forever.

“If we have AI everywhere that is essentially free, or close to it, and robots everywhere, we will have an explosion, an expansion of the global economy that is truly unprecedented,” Musk said. What does that mean for you? He said that billions of robots powered by artificial intelligence will outnumber humans and “satisfy all human needs.” “You won’t be able to think of something to ask a robot at some point, there will be an abundance of goods and services.”

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

Robots will become “ubiquitous” in the United States by 2027

In 2025, after years of self-driving promises, Tesla finally achieved this car. Launched robotaxi service limited In Austin, Texas, albeit with a A human safety monitor sits at each passenger’s seat. But this did not prevent Musk from confirming that most US residents will have access to automated taxis by the end of that year.

Now, in 2026, Musk is moving the goalposts once again. He said Thursday that his company’s robotaxis will be “widespread by the end of this year in the United States.” If history is any guide, it’s not that that happened, but the company He is Working to launch robo-taxi service in a few states that have looser regulations, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada.

Human aging is a ‘very solvable problem’

Musk admitted that he had not spent much time studying human aging. But he expected there would be a solution. “When we find the causes of aging, we will find that they are incredibly clear,” he said. get it, Their peers in Silicon Valley.

SpaceX will complete a fully reusable rocket this year

SpaceX has been working on the Starship reusable rocket platform for a decade, and in those years, it has missed several big deadlines set by Musk. He expected that in 2020 there would be a manned mission to Mars It will be launched by 2024. He said the spacecraft would reach orbit by 2022, although the company did not do so until last year.

In Davos, Musk repeated a promise from last year: that the spacecraft will be fully reusable by the end of this year, which will cut the costs of space travel by “a factor of 100” and eventually allow space shipping to compete with aircraft shipping prices. SpaceX has had successful test flights recently, but launching a fully reusable rocket by the end of this year could be difficult.

Artificial Intelligence will become smarter than humans this year, and smarter than all of humanity in 2035

Musk has been deeply involved in the development of artificial intelligence and has been closely governed by its meaning for many years. (See: His ongoing lawsuits Against OpenAI, its founders, and Microsoft.) In Davos, Musk once again stated his desire to avoid a “disruptive” future. But he also indicated it was coming. “At the rate AI is advancing, I believe we will have AI that is smarter than any human this year, and no later than next year,” he said. By 2035, it will become “smarter than all of humanity.”

As usual, whether Musk gets this right depends on the definitions. What does “smarter” mean? This month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang He said He did not believe that researchers were close to creating what he called “divine artificial intelligence.” Technology is good at discrete tasks, but doing them Everything? “Maybe this will be ‘one day’ on biblical scales, on galactic scales,” Huang said.