Mr Musk is of course wrong and over-reacting to peak population predictions. He has it in his head that we will stop making babies altogether and go extinct, which is ludicrous. If his intention was to get the general problem noticed, he actually made things worse.
The media reached out to academics who take the most opposite stance, and the result is publicity suggesting there is nothing to worry about.
Here’s how CNN responded:
Elon Musk thinks the population will collapse. Demographers say it’s not happening
By 2080, the world’s population is expected to peak at 10.4 billion. Then there’s a 50% chance that the population will plateau or begin to decrease by 2100. More conservative models like the one published in 2020 in the Lancet anticipate the global population would be about 8.8 billion people by 2100.
The entire article flip-flops between scary numbers and nothing-to-worry-about, but the headline affects how people read it.
The most likely scenario (my opinion, based on the sensible predictions of others that consider social factors and not just a dumb linear progression of current numbers), is that peak population will be circa 2050.