In front of a packed conference hall, Musk had a chance to tear into a World Economic Forum he has long derided as a "boring" confab of out-of-touch elites.

But in a remarkably subdued "conversation" with WEF interim chair Larry Fink -- also the CEO of investment behemoth BlackRock -- Musk stuck to his script of optimistic enthusiasm for AI, robotics and space travel.

He was not pressed for example on the scandal caused by sexualised deepfakes of his Grok AI tool, or claims of persistent fake news spread by his X social network.

"Who wouldn't want a robot to watch over your kids, take care of your pet... If you had a robot that could take care and protect an elderly parent, that'd be great," he told the audience.

His Optimus robots will be doing more complex tasks later this year, he said, and "by the end of next year I think we'll be selling humanoid robots to the public".

Musk also predicted the artificial intelligence boom will have models that are "smarter than any human by the end of this year, and I would say no later than next year".

"And then probably by 2030 or 2031, so five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively."

But he ended his talk with a caveat: "Generally, I think that for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong, rather than being a pessimist and right."

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