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In a conversation with Nikhil Kamath, Elon Musk said that AI can slow down the pace of urbanization. If AI increases productivity then tier-2 and 3 cities will benefit.
New Delhi. China’s rapid urbanization is today counted among the world’s greatest economic miracles. The speed with which China has attracted the rural population to cities in the last four decades is almost unprecedented in modern history. While in 1978 only 17.9 percent of China’s total population lived in cities, by 2025 this figure has increased to between 68 to 70 percent. Will India also become like China in the future? Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath asked the same question to the world’s richest person Elon Musk in his podcast ‘People by WTF’. Musk has expressed three possibilities regarding India’s urbanization. He says that if AI increases productivity then the need to live in cities may reduce.
Elon Musk said that if manufacturing increases in India and large-scale city-centric investments come, then China-like urbanization can be seen in India. Elon Musk is looking more at the second possibility. He says that a hybrid model of urbanization can be born in India. In this, there will be very rapid development of some parts of the city and due to remote work and AI, there will be local development in rural areas. Its possibility is also high. If digital infrastructure (Internet, logistics, electricity) is expanded well, the pressure of urbanization will reduce and distributed economic clusters will be formed.
Impact of Covid on urbanization
The Covid pandemic changed the way of working and gave rise to remote work and hybrid models. Some people chose to leave the city and shift to cities around or small towns. This change was also ‘artificial’ to some extent, which happened due to the lockdown. But now many companies have adopted remote work permanently and the situation may change completely.
Impact of AI on urbanization
Elon Musk says that if AI and robotics increase their productivity so much that many tasks (some knowledge work and construction work) become remote or automated, then the need to live in cities may decrease. This will reduce the value of physical proximity and people will prefer to stay away from big cities due to factors like quality of life, housing cost and pollution.
