"Rotting people’s brains": Elon Musk speaks about the invention he believes has worsened modern life 

Elon Musk recently opened up about the invention he feels has decreased people's quality of life in his latest interview with Katie Miller. The Tesla CEO also discussed probing topics like the future of humanity, AI, aliens, God, and the like in the interview that dropped on December 9, 2025.

During the conversation, Musk was asked to name an invention that has "made us worse, not better." The billionaire tech magnate replied:

"Maybe short-form video. It seems to be rotting people's brains."

Short-form video first gained traction after the social media platform TikTok took off. Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok was launched in 2016 and allowed users to post videos ranging from three seconds to a minute.

At present, all mainstream social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the like host features to push short-form content on their respective platforms.

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Elon Musk talks about social media as a whole and discusses the impact of AI

Elon Musk and Grok - Source: Getty (Photo by Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Elsewhere in the conversation with Katie Miller, Musk highlighted the impact of social media and how it allegedly makes people more "performative." According to him, users on social media thrive on engagement, and people do anything to accumulate likes and impressions on TikTok.

“Well, social media makes people more performative. Um, by the same token, you get more real life video of of things that that are actually happening and and anything that is very interesting will go viral on the internet," claimed the tech magnate.

Discussing the impact of AI on today's generation, Musk highlighted that work will become obsolete in the future. People will not have to do chores as artificial intelligence will be able to provide goods and services without human intervention.

People will be able to do whatever they want with their free time. Um work will be optional," said Musk.

He elaborated:

“Assuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the um AI and robots will be able to do anything that that humans want them to do essentially. So hopefully not more than that, but AI and robotics will be able to provide us provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want."

Elon Musk ended the discussion by touching upon the negative impact of the exponential growth of artificial intelligence. The Tesla CEO revealed that he would like to slow down the rapid development of AI. He even claimed to have had several nightmares connected to AI.

“I would certainly slow down uh AI and robotics, but I can't. It seems to be well it's advancing at a very rapid pace.”

He continued:

Actually, l've had a lot of Al nightmares. Uh I had AI nightmares many days in a row.”

Elon Musk's interview with Katie Miller has already touched over 38k views in just over 7 hours of going live on YouTube.