![\"Musk](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/musk-said-he-believed.jpg\" "\\"Musk")
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Musk said he believed artificial intelligence would increase the size of the global economy by 20-30 percent, or roughly $20 trillion to $30 trillion, per year.<\/p>\n
Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk on Tuesday stressed the need for more AI data centers and the electric power needed to support them at a meeting of G20 technology ministers focused on the disruptions and opportunities brought by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The U.S. tech bosses spoke virtually at a G20 meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, organized by the White House and dedicated to keeping the AI revolution largely free of government regulations and scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The talks came amid a growing backlash against the construction of AI data centers in the United States, a question that has become a major issue as the country heads to midterm elections later this year.<\/p>\n
Meta boss Zuckerberg said the buildout would require “hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of jobs” in the skilled trades, “just because the demand for data centers is immense.”<\/p>\n
“What we’ve basically found at Meta is that we … can’t find the skilled tradespeople<\/a> that we need to build the data centers … that we as one company are trying to build,” he said.<\/p>\n In separate remarks, Tesla and SpaceX chief Musk stressed the massive amounts of electricity needed by AI data centers, calling out a “crisis of power” in the AI buildout that was giving China the advantage.<\/p>\n “There will be a significant power shortfall next year, not (the) distant future,” Musk said, adding that his company was building the required power generation to support its data centers.<\/p>\n The tech leaders’ comments came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump attacked opponents of AI data centers as “backwards and poor.”<\/p>\n Polls show a majority of Americans are now against building the centers, amid complaints about rising electricity bills and noise from the facilities.<\/p>\n Musk said he believed artificial intelligence would increase the size of the global economy by 20%\u201330%, or roughly $20 trillion to $30 trillion, per year.<\/p>\n In another virtual address to the ministers, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said the achievement of human-level AI<\/a> would unleash 10 times the impact of the Industrial Revolution.<\/p>\n “It’s a huge opportunity that we have to grasp … but we’ve got to do that in a responsible way,” Hassabis said.<\/p>\n The United States holds the rotating G20 presidency this year and is hosting a series of ministerial meetings ahead of a leaders’ summit that Trump will convene on Dec. 14\u201315 at his Trump National Doral resort in Miami.<\/p>\n The Chapel Hill meeting is organized by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.<\/p>\n Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are expected in person Wednesday for fireside chats with Lutnick.<\/p>\n Musk, in his remarks, singled out European governments for what he called overregulation of technology that was stifling their economies.<\/p>\n Technology ministers from EU members France, Italy and Germany were sitting in the room\u2014as well as EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen.<\/p>\n Innovation needs to be “relatively free of regulation, meaning that new things must be legal by default as opposed to illegal by default,” Musk said.<\/p>\n “In the EU … things are generally illegal by default,” he added.<\/p>\n “It doesn’t ultimately stop it, but it slows it down quite considerably,” he said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKey concepts \n Who’s behind this story?\n <\/p>\n
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