Elon Musk Says Work Will Be Optional — but Mark Cuban Warns It Could Mean Higher Taxes
Written by
Nicholas Morine
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is no stranger to producing headline-making predictions, recently proclaiming a utopian view that “work will be optional in the future” in late March.
Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban didn’t exactly agree with Musk’s vision of the future, firing back on X with a lengthy hypothetical take on X’s business and legal positioning moving forward. Seemingly sarcastically engaging with Musk’s optimism, Cuban stated great interest in seeing the risks and disclosures tied to the social media platform’s IPO prospectus and future SEC filings.
“Risks: Within the next four years we expect to completely recreate all processes and procedures in each organization to optimize the replacement of humans with humanoids and AI,” Cuban wrote, adding that the cascade of competitive and consumer risks were paired with an incessant demand for endless licensed training material for Grok and other xAI-owned models.
But the “Shark Tank” personality also highlighted a hiccup with Musk’s proposal.
Tax Risks Also on the Table If AI Succeeds in Supplanting Human Labor More Broadly
Cuban continued his dystopian line of thinking, posing that should work actually become optional due to AI takeover of human labor, all levels of government could be expected to levy new (and wildly unpredictable) taxes — including a “robot utilization tax, token utilization tax,” and more. Cuban didn’t exactly pull punches here, using a strong expletive to accentuate his point.
The logic is sound. Individual income taxes account for about half of all federal revenue, with Social Security and Medicare taxes taking up another 35%, according to U.S. Treasury data. Without Americans working their usual positions and earning income — and thus paying their share of income taxes — revenues would plummet, and government would need to scramble for new sources of tax income to replace these.
Cuban Signals Trouble for Trading on the Nasdaq: Does Grok Go Blockchain in That Case?
Mark Cuban then pivoted to talk about the potential that the existing market infrastructure common to the Nasdaq may not be able to “implement AI effectively,” blocking trading there. Instead, the “Shark Tank” personality said, tokenization on the “new Grok blockchain” would have to be deployed as an alternative.
And while this is, of course, all a bit of cynical fun-poking on Cuban’s part, his closing thoughts on the subject of SEC disclosures was a bit sobering.
“This prospectus was created in a human, AI partnership with 87 percent of the words presented in the prospectus generated by Grok,” Cuban began, although the lack of certain punctuation (hyphens when called for, periods at other times) makes this claim more satirical than a statement of fact.
“The future of SEC disclosures is going to be insane. Contractual protections are going to be insane. The future is now. Our legal system is yesterday,” he concluded.
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