As AI continues to evolve at breakneck speed, and developers warn of models going rogue, Elon Musk says people should simply “enjoy the ride”.

The boss of SpaceX told The Economist while he remains concerned about risks posed by advancements in AI and robotics, “the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all”.

Musk said his “philosophical conclusion” after fearing for AI’s threat to humanity was to “look on the bright side”. He said progress has come so quickly “even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t”.

The interview was recorded the day before OpenAI’s revelation on Tuesday that some of its most advanced AI models hacked a start-up after it lost control of them during a security test.

While dismissed by some as a marketing stunt, it sparked concerns about AI systems falling out of alignment with human values.

The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes questioned Musk on a range of topics, from whether he believed big tech executives should work together to tackle AI safety risks to why he intervenes in European politics.

With the rise of rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, Musk said: “It just seems like all roads lead to acceleration of AI… you can just sort of be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.”

In a wide-ranging interview, the entrepreneur also made typically outlandish predictions, such as claiming “money won’t matter” in a decade.

He also pushed back on suggestions he supports “far right” views.

Minton Beddoes said both data and her own experience of living in the UK told a different story to the image portrayed by the trillionaire in his X posts.

“You come see my country that I live in all the time,” she said when Musk offered to take her on a tour of the country.

Asked when he had last visited the UK, Musk said “a few years ago”.

The trillionaire was also asked about his sharing of a film on X reportedly banned in Germany for its violence and anti-migrant message.

“My partner is… she’s half Indian, and I have four children with her,” Musk said of his partner Shivon Zillis, an executive at his brain tech firm Neuralink.

“One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist, so I would say I’m not racist.”

Musk also said there were “senior executives of all races” at his companies, adding: “I don’t think there’s any racism there”.

But when pressed on whether he was “anti-Muslim”, he was less defiant.

“If people are coming to a country with antithetical views, I am against that,” he said.

“I’m against rape and murder, I’m against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve come to accept in the West,” he continued, criticising the media for not understanding or reflecting this.

Musk also told The Economist he was well aware he was “loathed” by some.

Some polls have sought to measure public opinion of the SpaceX founder, with one YouGov tracker monitoring his favourability in the US and UK on a quarterly basis.

Its findings suggest while widely known for his fame, “dislikes” of Musk have increased in recent years to eclipse his popularity.

However, when Minton Beddoes noted his almost 250 million followers on X at one point during the interview, Musk was quick to quip: “Popular guy”.

“Maybe some people do loathe me, and that’s probably true, I don’t care,” he said later.

“But the fact that, as you pointed out, a quarter of a billion people follow me… I think a lot more people actually like me than don’t.”

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Google parent Alphabet saw its business continue to grow in recent months, yet growing spending on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure put its leftover cash into negative territory.

The company’s free cash flow, the cash it maintained after paying for operations and investments, came in at negative $5.9bn (£4.3bn) for the first time in at least a decade, according to its past financial records.

Alphabet’s spending on AI is now expected to hit as much as $205bn this year, an increase from $190bn, as major tech companies race to build around a new wave of the technology.

Meanwhile, Alphabet’s combined quarterly revenue hit $119.8bn, up 23% compared with the same time last year.

But the company’s stock fell 4% in after-hours trading.

Anat Ashkanazi, Google’s chief financial officer, noted on a call with financial analysts that the company had shown negative free cash flow due to growing capital expenditures, essentially all of which was related to AI spending.

She said the company spent $45bn in the second quarter, with 60% of the cost going towards servers and the remaining 40% going towards data centres.

Alphabet’s capital spending was $36bn in the first quarter of this year.

Ashkanazi said on the call that when it comes to AI, “the demand still outpaces that investment”.

“As long as we see these attractive opportunities to invest, we will continue to invest.”

Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said that the technological shift to AI tools and capabilities still “feels like early innings in a shift across multiple areas” and that the company’s plans around generating financial returns on its spending were “disciplined”.

“What I see with what you can do with frontier capabilities, there is still a lot of work left to do to translate that into experiences for our users. So that looks like extraordinary opportunities with extraordinary returns.”

Rachel Winter, a partner at the wealth management firm Killik & Co, said there was a bit of surprise among investors about how much Google was spending.

“They said that this year the total they will spend will be between $195bn and $205bn. So these are huge numbers. And I think the fact that the shares dropped about 3.5% in after-hours trading when the results came out, that suggests there is a little bit of concern about those levels.”

Tesla, the electric vehicle company controlled by Elon Musk, also reported negative free cash flow on Wednesday of $1.1bn for the second quarter due to its own increasing investment costs.

It was the company’s first negative showing of leftover cash in two years, according to its financial records.

Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla’s chief financial officer, said during a call with analysts that the company will spend as much as $25bn this year, more than double its capital spending in 2025.

He added that Tesla was in “a big investment cycle” and that its spending would probably increase further over the next three years.

Tesla’s stock also dropped by 4% in after-hours trading.