Elon Musk to Rishi Sunak: ‘There will be a point where no job is needed, AI will be able to do everything.’

UK PM Rishi Sunak decided to interview Elon Musk after UK recently conducted the world’s first AI Safety Summit, held at Bletchley Park, England. Focus of the interview was Musk’s views on generative AI and his opinion on the regulation of the technology. Musk was quick to emphasize that if AI regulation is done right, it will lead to a situation when no job is required. He said to Mr. Sunak, “It’s hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you wanted to have a job for personal satisfaction. But the AI would be able to do everything.” He also commended UK PM for inviting China into the conversation for AI regulation.

According to Musk, time will arrive when AI will be smarter than the smartest human. At that juncture, people won’t require to work unless they want to for personal satisfaction, as AI would be adept at doing everything. When owner of X, xAI, Tesla, and SpaceX speaks about future implications of AI one can’t simply ignore. AI can prove to be the most disruptive force in history and could ultimately make human jobs obsolete, he believes.

Musk said AI is akin to a magic genie that can grant infinite wishes. However, he also cautioned about the threats AI poses to humanity. He said, “If you wish for a magic genie, that gives you any wish you want, and there’s no limit. You don’t have those three wish limits nonsense, it’s both good and bad. One of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life.” He once stated that AI could be far more dangerous than nuclear weapons and has suggested a pause in the development of AI more advanced compared to OpenAI’s GPT-4 software.

Musk has quite a long history with AI. He was a founding co-chair of OpenAI along with Sam Altman and contributed to OpenAI’s original $1 billion of funding. He left in 2018, citing conflicts of interest from his connection with Tesla. Since then, he has got far more critical of the path OpenAI has taken. In July, Musk proclaimed he was forming xAI to “understand reality.” In a conversation streamed on X (Musk’s social media platform), with Congressmen Mike Gallagher and Ro Khanna following xAI’s launch, Musk put forward his approach to AI safety. “From an AI safety standpoint, a maximally curious AI, one that is trying to understand the universe, is going to be pro-humanity,” he had stated then.