Elon Musk warns that time is running out: in an interview with Forbes, the tycoon predicts that in five years digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence, with at least a hundred million humanoid robots on the streets, and perhaps a billion.
"In five years, digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence," Musk says in the clip, recorded as part of the Forbes Innovator 250 list. His calculation: between one hundred million and one billion humanoids, and an economy capable of doubling in size in five to seven years due to the pure effect of automation.
You may also likeMore from the new TeslaIt's not an isolated prediction. At Davos in January 2026, Musk had already mapped out the same timeline: AI smarter than any individual human by the end of 2025 or early 2026, and above collective humanity by 2030-2031, with personal robots to care for children, pets, and the elderly if safety is maintained.
In September, before G20 innovation ministers, he put numbers on the economy: AI alone would contribute between 20% and 30% to global GDP, from $20 trillion to $30 trillion a year, and a single humanoid would perform like five humans in a decade. A billion of them, he said, would produce more than all of humanity combined.
The extreme economic forecast is echoed in other labs: Musk in September endorsed the Anthropic scenario where the U.S. GDP would grow 15% annually with robots in mass production, enough to double the economy every four and a half years, although with labor participation falling from 60% to 45%.
Tesla is preparing the physical ground: an Optimus line in Fremont designed for one million robots a year and another in Texas aiming for ten million, although Musk admits that initial production will be "extremely slow" and that the memory of the chips was cut to be able to scale.
You may also likeVIDEO: "Elon es nuestro Thomas Edison moderno...Musk himself qualifies his track record: his deadlines have been moved earlier, and everything depends on two bottlenecks, electricity and manufacturing. In 2026 alone, he already warned of a deficit of about 15 gigawatts to power AI chips.
The 68-second video circulates cropped on networks with the frame of "time left". The figures are those of Musk, not faits accomplis: today tens of thousands of humanoids are sent a year, not hundreds of millions.
