Elon Musk says you should get a ‘broad-based education’ in arts and sciences — so you ‘know what to ask the robots for’ when they run the world

Lightning’s run, however, illustrates both the advancements in humanoid robotics and how far the tech still has to go to accurately replicate human functionality.

Yet, in a recent interview with China Media Group, Elon Musk predicted that a billion humanoid robots would be in circulation within a decade and, perhaps, 100 billion — roughly 12 times the current human population — in 20 years.

Musk predicted that “it’s going to get pretty wild” and that “if you want a castle, robots will build you a castle.” He also suggested getting “as broad-based [an] education as possible” in the arts, sciences, engineering and general knowledge to better communicate with your robo-pals.

“In order to know what to ask the robots for, you need to be able to formulate the question. And with the broadest possible general knowledge, you’ll be better able to formulate the questions.”

Moneywise reached out to Musk for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.

Musk sees a near-future brimming with robots — others aren’t so sure

Musk, whose Tesla company is engineering its own Optimus humanoid robots, said such tech would be more productive than R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars because it “could take care of elderly parents or be a good guardian and watch over the children or be a teacher” to your kid.

He added that money might not even matter in the future because, with robots doing all the labor, we’d live in “an age of abundance.” In order to make it all work, though, he said humans need to increase their communication speed.

“Otherwise, to an AI that is communicating at a terabit a second, talking to a human will be like talking to a tree,” Musk said. “You know, you talk to a tree, it takes a long time to respond.”

Not everyone in the tech world, however, agrees with Musk’s vision.

Last year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that humanoid robots “ought to go to factories first” because “the domain is much more guard-railed, and the use case is much more specific.”

Time noted that Amnon Shashua, CEO of AI company Mobileye, believes that it’ll be around 2030 before humanoids even “reliably perform ‘pick, drop, and move’ tasks.”

And while JP Morgan acknowledges analyst predictions that humanoid robot sales could hit the $300 billion mark by 2035, they warned that “the gap between a viral demo reel and a truly useful general-purpose robot remains quite wide — something investors need to appreciate.”

In terms of how humans interact with humanoid robots, a 2026 study of workers in the care, hospitality and prototype manufacturing industries found that human employees were willing to try them out but expected “a set of robot social skills, consisting of the abilities to perceive and interpret social situations, communicate verbally with social actors around them and adapt to their emotional and cognitive states.”

The participants also made clear that they “want emotional tasks to remain human responsibility and do not intuit robots to be able to navigate situations of conflict or negotiation.”

A separate workplace study found that “adapting to robots required not only new technical skills but also problem-solving and willingness to learn,” while a third Finnish study recommended robotics stakeholders “actively promote robot literacy among the adult population” to help foster the relationship between human and machine.

How much will your own humanoid helper cost?

Another big question regarding humanoid robots is this: if there’s 100 billion of them helping us care for family members and build our castles, how much are they going to cost?

JP Morgan noted that “low-cost humanoids” can range “from $5,000 to $10,000,” but cited China’s “manufacturing depth” and the fact that the country produces “about 70% of the world’s actuators — the motors, sensors and transmissions that function as humanoid robots’ ‘muscles’” as the reason why the materials needed to build a humanoid robot could cost $131,000 in the U.S. compared to $46,000 in China.

Today, $4,900 will get you a humanoid robot from Chinese company Unitree that’s capable of, according to its website, sight and speech, cartwheels and handstands, among other talents, with a battery life of one hour.

On the other end of the cost scale, California-based Feather Robotics sells a quasi-humanoid robotic torso on wheels that’s customizable, has 10-hours of battery life and “superhuman reach” for $29,990.