The Abundance That AI Might Promise Is Not Free

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.

Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis assist the concept that “every thing will likely be free.” They purport to imagine that AI abundance will finish poverty and supply a common excessive revenue.

Others within the mega tech ecosystem point out the approaching abundance. Demis Hassabis, for instance, says AI might spark a “renaissance” of “radical abundance.”

Politicians on the World Financial Discussion board 2026 in Davos preferred Musk’s imaginative and prescient. They had been thrilled that their financial issues would quickly be “let out.” This story is sort of interesting. Who doesn’t wish to get issues without cost? 

What does it really imply? Would all financial actions haven’t any value? Would all companies change into altruistic and search no revenue?

Allow us to unpack the narrative.

The price of manufacturing could be low cost, however by no means zero

Let’s put issues in perspective. Within the age of AI abundance, services and products won’t arrive out of “skinny air.” They’d nonetheless want labor, supplies, vitality and infrastructure.

The advances in AI and different rising applied sciences could result in very low cost vitality and extremely automated manufacturing. This evolution will end result within the marginal value of most digital and even bodily items approaching zero. 

This is because of three fundamental elements. First is the automation of labor, the place machines and AI deal with virtually all manufacturing, logistics and lots of companies. The second is superior manufacturing and AI distribution, like 3D printing, robotics and AI logistics techniques that drastically scale back waste and stock, making “sufficient for everybody” technically possible. Lastly, ample vitality — fusion or extremely‑low cost photo voltaic makes vitality so inexpensive that it stops being the bottleneck. 

As a result of vitality underlies every thing bodily, all different prices fall. 

Plans are already in place. Elon Musk is now prioritizing lunar manufacturing and AI, with a objective of over 1,000 gigawatts of solar energy. Utilizing photo voltaic vitality as a substitute of nuclear energy will scale back vitality value to virtually zero. The catch: the preliminary value to determine the infrastructure on the moon may be very excessive, and it will want to beat main challenges.

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Underneath these situations, it’s believable that schooling assets change into considerably free to the consumer as a result of they’re AI‑generated and infinitely replicable as soon as the system is constructed. A big fraction of healthcare turns into extraordinarily low cost, as soon as the suitable AI and robotic infrastructure exists. 

On the stage of physics and engineering, if the actual bottlenecks — vitality and automation — are ample, prices collapse, however they don’t fully disappear.

Infrastructure is the lacking layer that nobody talks about

Robotics and vitality must run at scale and velocity to create an “abundance” of every thing for everybody. For this, it wants infrastructure.

Automation and robotics run on what Jensen Haung calls “AI factories.” That is AI infrastructure, representing a shift in direction of treating AI growth as an industrial course of, enabling organizations to constantly practice and refine AI fashions for higher security and effectivity.

They’re specialised, high-performance computing knowledge facilities designed to “manufacture” intelligence by changing uncooked knowledge into skilled AI fashions and tokens, relatively than merely storing knowledge. Utilizing superior GPUs and large interconnected infrastructure, they’re the engines of AI purposes similar to autonomous autos, robotics and generative AI.

AI factories are costly. They want some huge cash to construct and run. Corporations which have already arrange the infrastructure will continue to grow and bettering. For instance, Nvidia is 5 instances extra worthwhile than IBM was within the Nineteen Eighties, with solely a tenth of the employees. Productiveness and earnings will enhance, as a result of AI tremendously boosts effectivity. Investments will go to those that personal AI fashions, platforms and particularly the infrastructure.

It will result in the largest focus of wealth in historical past.

Main gamers embrace tech giants like Nvidia, AWS and SpaceX. They may proceed to dominate the market, making it robust for newcomers to compete.

Governments are additionally concerned. China is utilizing its big photo voltaic vitality capability to spice up the energy-heavy AI growth. This creates a novel “AI and vitality” ecosystem. Right here, synthetic intelligence optimises renewable vitality technology, whereas solar energy helps knowledge centres. China is seen as a pacesetter in renewable vitality use.

Low-cost vitality will not be low cost 

Vitality is the gasoline that runs AI factories, that are the engine of all robotics, automation and AI purposes that may generate abundance. Vitality fuels the infrastructure, and infrastructure runs the AI purposes. Subsequently, vitality is the actual bottleneck. With out low cost vitality, this “free” idea fails.

At the moment, electrical energy is the first type of vitality used to run the infrastructure. China is aggressively integrating renewable vitality into its infrastructure and different areas are increasing renewable-powered vitality into knowledge facilities as nicely. Electrical energy technology and grid capability for AI-scale infrastructure may be very pricey and never scalable. To succeed in abundance at scale, vitality have to be very low cost and scalable.

What are the choices?

Fission vitality is a sort of or nuclear vitality. It’s absolutely mature, offering secure energy, however produces radioactive waste. It carries the chance of nuclear proliferation, and security issues concerning meltdowns. It’s cheaper than present fossil-based electrical energy sources however nonetheless has a tangible value, and, like the opposite electrical energy sources it’s restricted, and never scalable.

Fusion vitality includes merging mild atoms to create vitality, mimicking the solar, whereas conventional nuclear vitality splits heavy atoms. Fusion provides almost limitless, cleaner vitality with out long-lived high-level waste. 

Fusion is inherently safer with no danger of a runaway chain response. 

The caveat, nevertheless, is that fission is what’s at the moment getting used. Creating nuclear fusion for vitality is awfully costly and requires upfront investments of a whole bunch of billions of {dollars}, and it’s nonetheless experimental and certain many years away from large-scale business use.

Not like nuclear fission, nuclear fusion is scalable. It’s low cost however not doesn’t value zero. Somebody has to pay the upfront prices to construct the infrastructure, to create it after which preserve it. 

Elon Musk goes to the moon

Lunar solar energy offers ample vitality with out atmospheric points. But, it has excessive prices for launching, constructing and sustaining in a vacuum. Musk’s plan is to maneuver all manufacturing, together with the AI manufacturing facility, to the moon.

The moon has low gravity and loads of assets, making it the most cost effective place for AI infrastructure.

Robots will terraform and construct infrastructure. People will come to supervise and increase, whereas AI knowledge centres will gasoline the house economic system.

With Starlink, SpaceX, Optimus robots and xAI, Musk is in a powerful place to make this occur.

Nonetheless, machines for making superior AI chips want to achieve the moon. These bus-sized machines require very exact situations.

The answer is a brand new technique known as Atomically Exact Manufacturing (APM). This builds atom by atom and aligns with Musk’s “first precept” considering.

If profitable, this might unlock limitless photo voltaic vitality and uncooked supplies from the moon and asteroids. There could be no thermal limits or atmospheric interference.

This might result in boundless AI at a low value. Consultants say that if lunar fabrication works, it might create a trillion-dollar, and even a whole bunch of trillions, alternative.

Who will profit most from this hundred-trillion-dollar likelihood? Will or not it’s shared pretty?

The tender jail of “free”

When you’ve gotten centralized infrastructures and techniques, whoever owns the infrastructure units the phrases of engagement. Strongly centralized techniques can present intensive “free” companies, however in trade, they usually demand excessive management over speech, motion, knowledge and financial decisions. Non‑authoritarian welfare states could commerce some particular person autonomy for safety and assured companies. Many “free” digital companies in the present day are funded by surveillance, profiling and behavioral manipulation — your knowledge and a spotlight are the actual value. 

In a world of AI abundance, the infrastructure could also be authorities owned. It might be owned by companies. It may very well be owned by way of a public-private partnership. Both means, the infrastructure is centralized and the centralized energy will dictate the distribution phrases — how AI abundance is distributed, who will get what, underneath what situations. In the event that they want to, they will abruptly “shut the valve” and nothing is distributed both to a person or a gaggle. Your dependency on their companies turns into a “tender jail” stripped of your autonomy and self-sovereignty.

It is perhaps a hundred-trillion-dollar alternative, however the proprietor of the centralized infrastructure will get the lion’s share and can dictate what’s going to trickle right down to the lots.

They are saying if one thing is “free”, you’re the product. This stays true in a world of sheer abundance. In that world, the product is your self-sovereignty.

Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.