Elon Musk Says AI Will Put Us All Out Of Work
Then we’ll have to find new purpose in life
Yesterday a big AI conference took place at Bletchley Park, UK, to discuss the safety of artificial intelligence, and how to manage the risks of bad actors using it in warfare or to create chemical weapons.
At the close of the two-day conference, Elon Musk met with the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, in a conversation at Lancaster House in London. An audience of invited guests from the tech industry, plus a few journalists, were present.
Musk and Sunak seemed relaxed in each other’s company and jovial in their conversation. Sunak appeared to be lapping up the opportunity to interview the Billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and X (Twitter).
During the conversation, they chatted about risks and opportunities in AI, which Musk described as, “the most disruptive force in history”.
He said: “There will come a point where no job is needed — you can have a job if you want one for personal satisfaction but AI will do everything. It’s both good and bad — one of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life.”
Musk also expressed concerns about the safety of AI technology: “There is a safety concern, especially with humanoid robots — at least a car can’t chase you into a building or up a tree… What if one day they get a software update and they’re not so friendly anymore?”
On that topic, he concluded, they need, “some kind of off switch”.
He did however say that on balance, he thought AI would, “be a force for good”. When discussing the benefits, he talked about friendships with AI and excellent educational opportunities.
“One of my sons has trouble making friends and an AI friend would be great for him,” he said, adding that AI would be: “the best and most patient tutor”.
AI is “like having a very smart friend, that you can ask anything,” he told Sunak.
“Ask how to make something, how to solve any problem, and it will tell you. Obviously, companies are going to adopt this, so I think we’ll have much better customer service… That’ll probably be the first thing that goes.”
He elaborated on the possible role of AI in education: “If you’re trying to understand the subject, it’s like having a phenomenal tutor on any subject.”
He said the technology was almost ready for education and tutoring, but it still needs work as it’s not without flaws…
“We still have a little bit of a problem that it can give you an answer that is confidently wrong, with great grammar, bullet points in there, and citations — but it’s not real,” he laughed. “So we need to make sure it’s not giving you confidently wrong tutor answers.”
On the issue of security, many big technology companies have signed an agreement to allow governments, including the UK, USA, and Singapore, to test their models for security risks. The companies who’ve signed the agreement include Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, Mistral, and Meta.
Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015 but he left the company in 2018 after co-founders rejected his plan to run the company due to conflicts of interest.
Musk said he wanted the company to be a non-profit company and didn’t agree with the direction it was going. He has also since expressed concerns about the safety of AI technology and the risks of it being misused.
On 12 July 2023, Musk founded his own AI company, xAI, and he told Sunak that he plans to use the technology to improve X (Twitter).
He applauded Sunak for including China in the conference, because “if they’re not participants it’s pointless”. They need to be committed to the same safety standards as everyone else, or otherwise, “they would just jump into the lead and exceed us all”.
He commented that the summit, “will go down in history as being very important”.
Filming was limited to the Downing Street crew, who released footage to the press afterwards.
Will AI put us all out of work?
If AI could do everything, thereby making most of us unemployed, it begs the question: ‘How would people make a living?’ Some jobs are already being eliminated because it’s cheaper to use AI.
I noticed recently that Britain’s high profile OK magazine was openly using AI to write some of its online articles. That’s one less journalist needed on the team.
But I’m not convinced that AI will put everyone out of work. Musk’s idea that customer services would be one of the first things to go reminded me of an experience just recently where I closed a bank account because it was impossible to have a conversation with a human. The chatbot could not resolve my issue, so the best solution was to leave.
I am no longer a Natwest Customer. That’s the effect of relying on AI to do the job. Having said that, as AI becomes better and able to understand questions and respond in useful ways, it could take over and arguably do a better job than the lazy person on the customer service desk who’s too busy checking their social media feeds to care about our problems.
Sources: The Financial Times; Business Insider; BBC News; xAI
© Susie Kearley 2023. All Rights Reserved.
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