Tech billionaire Elon Musk has claimed that medical degrees could soon lose their relevance, predicting that artificial intelligence-powered robots will outperform human surgeons within the next few years.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the assertion while speaking on the Moonshots podcast hosted by Peter Diamandis, where he argued that human doctors are slow to train, prone to errors, and inherently limited compared to machines.
According to Musk, humanoid robots such as Tesla’s Optimus are expected to surpass the world’s best surgeons within three years.
“Right now there’s a shortage of doctors and great surgeons,” Musk said. “It takes a super long time to learn how to be a good doctor. Doctors have limited time, they make mistakes. How many great surgeons are there? Not that many.”
When Diamandis asked if that meant people should stop going to medical school, Musk bluntly replied, “Yes. Pointless.”
This is not the first time Musk has made such predictions. In April 2025, he claimed that robots would soon master surgical procedures, citing Neuralink’s surgical robot, which implants ultra-thin electrodes into the human brain with a level of precision difficult for human hands to achieve.
Despite rapid advances in robotic surgery, medical experts continue to warn that healthcare cannot function without human judgement, accountability, and ethical responsibility, stressing that technology should complement—not replace—human doctors.
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