A future without work? That’s the question increasingly being debated by some of the most influential figures in technology and artificial intelligence. While Wall Street grappled with the AI bubble in 2025, leaders in the field are now turning their attention to a more profound possibility: a world where AI has rendered traditional employment obsolete, and human life is defined not by labor, but by abundance. Elon Musk, founder of xAI and Tesla, envisions a future where AI drives such massive economic growth that all of humanity becomes wealthy. In this scenario, the need for work diminishes, and people are freed to pursue creativity, exploration, and personal fulfillment. Musk has long argued that AI will not only replace jobs but also create a new kind of prosperity, one where material needs are met for everyone. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, takes a more measured view. He believes AI could lead to a reimagined workweek—shorter, more flexible, and less focused on economic survival. While he doesn’t see a full end to work, he acknowledges that AI will transform how people spend their time, allowing for more leisure, education, and family life. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pushing the idea even further. He doesn’t just support a universal basic income (UBI) in the traditional sense—he envisions a "universal basic wealth" system. In a July conversation with comedian Theo Von, Altman suggested that instead of simply giving people money, society should create a model where individuals have an ownership stake in the output of AI. "I think if you just say, 'OK, AI is going to do everything, and then everybody gets a dividend from that, it's not going to feel good," he said. "We need a system where people have a real share in what AI creates." Altman worries about the psychological and social impact of a world where humans are no longer central to production. "I worry about that too," he admitted, "but I believe humans will find a way to see themselves as the main characters in the story, even in a world of superintelligent machines." Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is more skeptical. He believes that universal basic income and universal high income are unlikely to coexist in practice. "We're not going to have a world where everyone is paid a lot and no one works," he said, suggesting that some form of economic contribution will still be necessary, even in an AI-driven society. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei points to economist John Maynard Keynes, who once predicted that technological progress would eventually lead to a 15-hour workweek. Amodei believes Keynes was on the right track, and that AI is now making that vision a real possibility. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis sees a future of "radical abundance" — a world where scarcity is a thing of the past. "We've got to make sure it gets distributed fairly, but that's more of a political question," he told The Guardian. "If it is, we should be in an amazing world of abundance for the first time in human history, where things don't have to be zero sum. And if that works, we should be travelling to the stars, really." Still, Hassabis cautions that the real challenge isn’t just creating abundance — it’s ensuring it’s shared equitably. "That's going to be one of the biggest things we're going to have to figure out," he said. "Let's say we get radical abundance, and we distribute that in a good way, what happens next?"