Elon and Jensen: Work Becomes Optional

Learn English with Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. In this 2025 conversation at the US–Saudi forum, hosted by H.E. Abdullah Alswaha, they explore how AI factories, humanoid robots, and space-based supercomputing could reshape work, wealth, and global infrastructure. From optional work and generative AI to Saudi Arabia’s ambition to lead the “intelligence age,” this talk offers rich vocabulary, big ideas, and real-world examples that are perfect for advanced English learners.

Who This Speech Is For

• Learners interested in artificial intelligence, robotics, and the future of work.

• Students exploring advanced English used in technology, economics, and global policy.

• Intermediate to advanced learners wanting to understand complex explanations in clear spoken English.

How This Speech Helps Your English

• Hear natural explanations of technical ideas like generative AI, robotics, and accelerated computing.

• Learn vocabulary for modern industries including energy, space, infrastructure, and computing.

• Observe how speakers simplify complex concepts using comparisons, metaphors, and storytelling.

• Improve your listening through long-form dialogue between leaders discussing real-world impact.

Why This Speech Matters

• Elon Musk and Jensen Huang outline how AI factories, robotics, and space-based compute could redefine global productivity.

• The conversation highlights Saudi Arabia’s strategic shift from an energy-built economy to an intelligence-driven one.

• It explains why work may become optional as AI increases productivity, yet creative people may become even busier.

• The discussion gives a rare look at how nations and companies are preparing for the next technological era.

Alswaha: Please have a seat. Now I’m sure we can do a bigger round of applause for one of the greatest two leaders of our history. Let’s go ahead. So, we’re talking about… I lost count, you know, $7 to $8 trillion worth of market cap. I lost count. But right now, we are here to celebrate a historic moment, a moment that yesterday during the dinner, and thank you for joining us under the patronage of the honorable president and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, Al-Saud al-Musaiedi, where we had the pleasure to hear it firsthand. This is the greatest alliance between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, where we have joined hands, and you have helped us build our energy-based economy, fueling and energizing the industrial age. And now fast forward, going to the intelligence age, where we can fuel AI factories, robotics, EVs, AVs, and all of the rest. Speaking of that, let’s start with you, Elon, if you don’t mind. Jensen, feel free to chime in. You have a big fascination of something all of us have admired, first-order thinking, what Jensen sometimes calls first-order scaling, which is an opportunity for how you have dropped the cost of batteries from 1,000 per kilowatt hour to sub-100 bucks. And right now, you’re doing the same thing with robotics for actuators, with servo rotors and motors. So, I want to hear from you, how do you manage to always disrupt every single industry with that thinking?

Elon Musk: Well, it’s mostly not a disruption, it’s a creation. So, with say SpaceX, with reusable rockets, there really weren’t any reusable rockets. But the essence of revolutionizing space travel is reusability. If you throw the rocket away every time, the cost of access to space is extremely high. With respect to electric cars, there weren’t any electric cars when we started making them, really. You couldn’t buy one to the best of my knowledge. So with Tesla, we wanted to make electric cars compelling and affordable. That was the goal. You know, with respect to humanoid robotics, there are no useful humanoid robots at this point. There are sort of gimmicks, but there are no actually useful humanoid robots. And I think Tesla’s gonna make the first actually useful humanoid robots. And this will be quite a revolution, and I think it’s something that everyone will want, because I was thinking, who wouldn’t want their own personal C-3PO or R2-D2? Of course. Everyone would want one, right? And then there would be many an industry providing products and services. This is why I say that humanoid robots will be the biggest industry, or the biggest product ever. Bigger than cellphones or anything else because everyone’s gonna want one, or maybe more than one, and there’ll be many an industry.

Jensen Huang: I just want R2-D2 in C-3PO’s body.

Alswaha: There you go.

Elon Musk: Well, to… I mean, a humanoid robot would be better than R2-D2 and C-3PO combined… Times ten. People often talk about sort of eliminating poverty and that kind of thing, but really, how long have they been talking about that? There’s lots of talk, you know, there’s lot of NGOs sort of trying to do these things, but really not succeeding, and you know, the evidence speaks for itself. But AI and humanoid robots will actually eliminate poverty. And Tesla won’t be the only one that makes them. I think Tesla will pioneer this, but there will be many other companies that make humanoid robots. But there is only basically one way to make everyone wealthy, and that is AI and robotics.

Alswaha: And we can’t talk about robotics without AI factories. And yesterday was such a historic day for the two nations, but also for all of us, where we celebrate the AI strategic partnership with the US. Signed witnessed by the honorable president and His Royal Highness about how we are committing our capital, energy, land to energize the AI-US ecosystem to be able to build inference nodes, training nodes, and to be the most AI-enabled nation. With that announcement, tell me what’s next in AI factories, Jensen?

Jensen Huang: There’s a beautiful story about how Saudi Arabia’s building AI refineries… and now building AI factories oil… oil refineries to AI factories.

Alswaha: I love that.

Jensen Huang: You know, I’ve said that AI is an infrastructure, and the reason for that is of course, we understand AI from the perspective of the technology and how it’s revolutionizing every industry. Digital intelligence, of course, has applications into every field. And so, it’s gonna be used by every company, every industry, every country. In that way, it’s foundational, and therefore it’s part of infrastructure. What is new about AI from a computer science perspective is that the way computing was done in the past was largely retrieval-based computing. Somebody typed in a story or somebody created a piece of art or came up with four versions of a digital ad, or… it’s all pre-built by somebody, which is then using a system to retrieve the appropriate version for you. It’s a retrieval-based computing model. Hadoop and many of the frameworks and operating systems that have passed all designed to retrieve the appropriate information for you. But today, software is going to be generated in real time. It’s generative. Based on the context, based on the circumstance, based on who you are, based on the problem you asked, based on your prompt, it will generate unique content for you every single time. For everybody, it’s unique. When you use Grok, every time you use it is different.

Alswaha: We all love Grok.

Jensen Huang: Right? Based on the prompt that you give it and based on the circumstance. And so therefore, it used to be retrieval-based. Today, it’s generative. And if it’s generative, and every time is different, then you need AI factories all over the world to generate the content in real time, which is the reason why you need AI factories. And this is a unique way of doing computation, but the benefit, of course, is that everything isn’t preconceived and pre-documented, and it’s contextually sensible and therefore intelligent.

Alswaha: So, AI factories and robotics, and we heard it yesterday from His Royal Highness, his vision how to augment our workforce with roughly tens of millions of robotics to be able to infuse the next wave of productivity and progress. But this scares a lot of folks when it comes to the future of jobs. So, let’s hear about your thoughts, Elon and Jensen, on that.

Elon Musk: Sure. Well, say like in the long term, where will things end up? Long term, I don’t know, what long term is. Maybe it’s 10, 20 years or something like that. For me, that’s long term. My prediction is that work will be optional.

Alswaha: Optional?

Elon Musk: Optional.

Alswaha: We’ll take that.

Elon Musk: I mean, it’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that. If you want to work… You know, in the same way like you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables or you could grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables. That will be what work is like, optional. And between now and then, there’s actually a lot of work to get to that point. I’d always recommend people read Iain Banks’ Culture books to get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like. And interestingly in those books, money doesn’t exist. It’s kind of interesting. My guess is, if you go out long enough, assuming there’s a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, the money will stop being relevant at some point in the future. There will still be constraints on power, like electricity and mass. The fundamental physics elements will still be constraints. But I think at some point, currency becomes irrelevant.

Alswaha: Jensen, any thoughts?

Elon Musk: By the way, the NVIDIA earnings call is later today.

Jensen Huang: And by the way, since currency is irrelevant. Elon just wants to share with you some breaking news. The two of us would like to share some breaking news. Let’s see. I would say there’s different horizons you could look at. Everybody’s jobs will be different. I think that’s for sure. How students learn will be different. How people do their work will be different, obviously, because a lot of the things that we do mundanely, or arduously, or very difficultly are going to be done very simply. And so we’re gonna be more productive from that sense. One of the things that I will say is that for most people or a company, if your life becomes more productive, and if the things that you’re doing with great difficulty become simpler, it is very likely, because you have so many ideas, you’ll have more time to go pursue things. It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI. I’m gonna be busier as a result of AI. And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we want to pursue, so many things that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue. If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster. And so, in the near term, I would say that there’s every evidence that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas. One thing that I will say, give you some evidence, is that… and I was just telling Elon about this earlier. Radiology, for example, has largely been converted to AI-driven radiology, and there’s some really great companies doing that. And the surprising thing is the prediction that all radiologists would be the first jobs to go was exactly the opposite. The trend shows that there are more radiologists being hired now as a result of AI. And the reason for that, if you take a step back, is because the goal of a radiologist is not to study the images. The goal of a radiologist is to diagnose a disease. Now, the studying of the images became so productive, they could study more images, study more modalities, spend more time with the patients. And as a result, they’re actually accepting more patients or doing more radiology all around the world, or doing a better job with diagnosing disease. And so that’s kind of the near-term outcome of AI and productivity. And we’ll see what happens long term. You know… when currency doesn’t matter anymore, just let me know right before.

Elon Musk: You’ll see it coming.

Jensen Huang: You’ll see it coming.

Elon Musk: We text often, so just…

Jensen Huang: We do.

Elon Musk: Just text it out. Just let me know before.

Alswaha: I kinda agree with both of you because if you look at every technological trend, every general purpose technology has been net new positive, for the globe, for humanity and so forth. And let me share with you two case studies…

Jensen Huang: Your Excellency, I think it’s precisely the reason, the reason for that is because all the great ideas from innovators like Elon, you have so many good ideas that AI…

Alswaha: And Jensen as well.

Jensen Huang: Well, you know.

Elon Musk: Indeed.

Jensen Huang: Thank you.

Alswaha: So let me share with you two stories from two Saudi innovators in collaboration with a lot of the great work that NVIDIA does, that Grok does. So one of them is Professor Omar Yaghi, who is the first American Saudi to win a Nobel Prize in creating new chemistry. And the way he has done that, he has leveraged AI accelerators and models like Grok to be able to create new chemistry when it comes to metal organic frameworks. Those are metal ions, they’re positively charged with organic linkers to be able to effectively create a sponge with .33 nanometers pores to capture water from air and also to capture carbon dioxide. The second story has also to do with AI accelerated by NVIDIA and with models like Grok, which is NanoPalm, which is effectively creating a nano robot 500 nanometers by 1,000 nanometers to be able to do gene editing, leveraging the CRISPR technology to take out sickle cell disease. Now in both these instances, they originated 20 years ago in research, but AI was able to really accelerate the outcomes and the outputs such that we can move into new value pools. So I think with every technological trend, humanity’s gonna always manage to shift to new value pools when it comes to workforce and productivity. But we have some great announcements to talk about here today. Let’s begin with you, Elon. The things that we’re doing with xAI.

Elon Musk: We’re excited to announce that we’re doing a 500 megawatt… I mean, 500… Sorry.

Jensen Huang: 500 megawatt.

Elon Musk: 500 megawatt.

Alswaha: We’re doing 500 megawatts.

Jensen Huang: Gigawatt? Sorry, this…

Alswaha: Not quite yet.

Elon Musk: No, no. The 500 gigawatt one will have to wait. That’ll be eight bazillion trillion dollars.

Jensen Huang: Stop that.

Elon Musk: So yeah, we are doing xAI and the King of Saudi Arabia are doing a…

Alswaha: With Humane, 500 megawatts. Starting with 50 megawatts phase one. And we’re doing it with NVIDIA. Congratulations to the Humane team, to Tareq team, such a fantastic job. Jensen, I think we’re also doing some great announcements this week.

Jensen Huang: We are?

Alswaha: Yeah.

Jensen Huang: We’re announcing all kinds of things, our partnership with Humane is going incredibly well. First of all, we worked together to get this company started and off the ground, and just got an incredible customer with Elon. Could you imagine a startup company, approximately $0 billion in revenues now going to build a data center for Elon? 500 megawatts is gigantic, this company is off the charts right away. In addition to that, we’re working… AWS, as you know, is also coming…

Alswaha: Congratulations to the Humane team with AWS starting with 100 megawatts with a gigawatt ambition and counting.

Jensen Huang: So AWS is also coming to Humane. We’re working with Humane on Omniverse digital twins. As you know, AI is not just agentic AI and chatbots, and cognitive AI is incredibly important to the world. But AI applies to everything, chemicals and proteins and genes and physics and fluid dynamics and particles and of course, robotics and activation, and we created this world called Omniverse where robots can learn how to be good robots. And it’s physically based, it obeys the laws of physics, and so robots can learn in these environments. And we’re working with Humane to apply Omniverse to all kinds of digital factories and robotics and warehouses and things like that. So, that’s another. We’re also working in Saudi Arabia to build supercomputers to simulate quantum computers, and using our computers to be the controller and the error correction. Quantum error correction requires an enormous amount of computation, and so we’re doing a lot of great work there too. So, a big partnership with Humane. They’re off the charts, off the ground and off the charts at the same time.

Alswaha: This is how we walk the talk in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in partnership with the US. Yesterday, the President and His Royal Highness announced the AI strategic framework and partnership. Today, we’re going big with Elon and Jensen. So thank you for those opportunities. Now, they told me I have time for two last questions. So last night at the dinner, I got a number of questions because it seems that the schedule leaked, and everybody was giving me hints about the last two questions I’m gonna do. So the first one was for you, Elon, and there’s a big one for you, Jensen, so prepare for that one. AI in space, is that possible?

Elon Musk: Yes. If civilization continues, which it probably will, then AI in space is inevitable. You know, I always have to preface that, you know. We shouldn’t take civilization for granted. We need to make sure to take care to ensure that civilization has an upward arc. I mean, any student of history knows that civilization does not always have an upward arc, and in fact, civilizations have life cycles. So, hopefully, we are in a strong upward arc. I think we are for now, but we don’t want to take that for granted or be complacent. The way to think of AI in space is that in order to achieve any meaningful percentage of a Kardashev scale civilization where you’re using even a millionth of the sun’s energy, you must have solar-powered AI satellites in deep space. Once you think in terms of a Kardashev 2 scale civilization, which is what percentage of the sun’s energy are you turning into useful work, then it becomes obvious that space is overwhelmingly what matters, overwhelmingly. The sun only receives roughly one two-billionth of… The Earth only receives roughly one two-billionth of the sun’s energy. So, if you want to have something that is, say, a million times more energy than Earth could possibly produce. You must go into space. And so, this is where it’s kind of handy to have a space company, I guess. Sell the book as they say.

Jensen Huang: Easier to cool chips in space too.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Jensen Huang: Easier to cool chips in space.

Elon Musk: Yes. There’s definitely no water in space, so you’re gonna have to do something that doesn’t involve water.

Jensen Huang: Just hang out.

Elon Musk: Well, you just gotta radiate.

Jensen Huang: That’s right.

Elon Musk: So my estimate is that actually the cost of electricity, like the cost-effectiveness of AI in space will be overwhelmingly better than AI on the ground. Long before you exhaust potential energy sources on Earth. Long before… Meaning, I think even perhaps in the four or five year timeframe, the lowest cost way to do AI compute will be with solar-powered AI satellites. So, I’d say not more than five years from now.

Alswaha: Wow.

Jensen Huang: And just look at the supercomputers we’re building together. Let’s say each one of the racks is two tons. Out of that two tons, 1.95 of it is probably for cooling.

Elon Musk: Right.

Alswaha: Oh, yeah.

Jensen Huang: Just imagine how tiny that little supercomputer is, right? Each one of these GB300 racks would just be a little tiny thing.

Elon Musk: And electricity generation is already becoming a challenge. So if you start doing any kind of scaling for both electricity generation and cooling, you realize, okay, space is incredibly compelling. So, like let’s say you wanted to do, I don’t know, two or three hundred gigawatts per year of AI compute. It’s very difficult to do that on Earth. The US average electricity usage, last time I checked, was around 460 gigawatts per year average usage. If you’re doing 300 gigawatts a year, that would be like two-thirds of US electricity production per year. There’s no way you’re building power plants at that level. And then if you take it up to, say, a terawatt per year, impossible. Like, you have to do that in space. There just is no way to do a terawatt per year on Earth. And space, you’ve got continuous solar. You actually don’t need batteries because it’s always sunny in space.

Jensen Huang: That’s right, exactly.

Elon Musk: And the solar panels actually become cheaper because you don’t need glass or framing. And the cooling is just radiative. So, that’s why I think…

Jensen Huang: That’s the dream.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Jensen Huang: That’s the dream.

Alswaha: So, Jensen, everybody last night was asking me, and I’m mindful it’s an earnings call for you today, so I’m gonna say this delicately. Everybody has been asking me to ask you, are we gonna have an AI bubble?

Jensen Huang: And that’s the last question? All right, let me just tell you what we see, okay? So I think it’s really important when you look at what’s happening around the world and go back to first principles of what’s happening in computer science and computing. There are three things that are happening. The first thing is that we all know that Moore’s Law has run its course. That the amount of demand for computing versus the amount of computation we can get out of general purpose computing is really challenging. And so the world’s been moving to accelerated computing for some time. We’ve been pushing this now for over 20 years. Let me give you one statistic. I was just at supercomputing. Six years ago, CPUs were 90 percent of the world’s supercomputers, top 500 supercomputers. Six years ago. This year, less than 15 percent. Went from 90 percent to 10 percent, and meanwhile, accelerated computing went from the other way, 10 percent to now 90 percent. Okay? So, you’re seeing that inflection point, the transition in high-performance computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing. Well, one of the most data-intensive, one of the most intensive computation things that the world does in cloud is data processing. Several hundred billion dollars of computation is done on just raw data processing. That axis is the engine of the internet today. That’s going generative AI. It used to be running on CPUs, now it runs on GPUs. Which then says the third thing, when… If you just look at those two applications, many of the internet companies can build enormous number of GPU supercomputers just doing that. Of course, then it creates the third opportunity on top of it, which is Agentic AI. This is Grok, and this is OpenAI, this is Anthropic, you know, this is Gemini. Agentic AI sits on top of that. But don’t forget to think about what is happening above, underneath what everybody sees as AI today. There’s a whole movement of computing from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing. And if you just… If you take that into consideration, you’ll come to the conclusion that, in fact, what is left over to fuel that revolutionary Agentic AI is not only substantially less than you thought, and all of it justified.

Alswaha: Well, I was just informed by the team that my boss and your bosses are going to talk next, the Honorable President and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, and hence we ran out of time. But in essence… So much love for you, Elon and Jensen. But this, in essence, is a ’92 alliance that shifted from energy to digital to the intelligence age, powered by pioneers such as Elon and Jensen, to serve humanity and create on a net new basis new economies, new jobs, and a better future for humanity, powered by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States. Thank you for a lifetime partnership and friendship. Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Jensen.