The billionaire businessman has suggested that the US must embrace cutting-edge technologies - or the country will risk facing bankruptcy.

During an appearance on the Dwarkesh podcast, Musk explained: "I think in the absence of AI and robotics, we're actually totally screwed."

The Tesla boss observed that the US national debt risks spiralling out of control in the coming years. However, he suggested that AI could help America to regain control of its finances.

Musk said: "The national debt is piling up like crazy. Our interest payments on the national debt exceed the military budget, which is a trillion dollars. Over a trillion dollars just the interest payments."

Musk suggested that AI and robotics could form the backbone of the US economy moving forwards.

He explained: "We are 1,000 percent going to go bankrupt as a country and fail as a country without AI and robots - nothing else will solve the national debt."

Meanwhile, Alessandro Galeazzi, from the University of Padova in Italy, who researches social media behaviour, recently observed that AI "increases the brain rot effect".

He told the BBC: "I would say AI slop increases the brain rot effect, making people quickly consume content that they know is not only unlikely to be real, but probably not meaningful or interesting."