xAI CEO and founder Elon Musk says he’s comfortable in predicting that AI and robotics will trigger massive economic growth in just a decade.
In an interview with Peter Diamandis at the Abundance Summit 2026, Musk says AI models are becoming less reliant on humans en route toward recursive self-improvement.
In AI, recursive self-improvement is the process by which a model iteratively redesigns, updates, or improves its own code and architecture without human intervention.
According to Musk, it’s only a matter of months before humans are taken out of the loop.
“Humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So every successive model is built by the one before it. So, that is happening to a large degree, but it’s not yet fully automated. It may be there at the end of this year, but not later than next year.”
Musk also highlights AI’s rapid pace of development.
“We’re in the hard takeoff, right now. I mean, at this point, I go to sleep, there’s some massive AI breakthrough, and when I wake up, there’s another one. Yeah, it’s hard to keep track, honestly. It’s a bit of a head spinner.”
Looking ahead, Musk believes that AI and robotics will drive massive productivity gains that could dwarf today’s economic output.
“This is going to sound pretty crazy… I’d say the economy is 10 times its current size in 10 years. Greater than. 10x and roughly 10 years.
I feel is actually a fairly comfortable prediction, if there’s no World War III or something that could put a kink in all those plans, those expectations. But in the absence of World War III, if current trends continue, I would say the economy 10xes in 10 years.”
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