Billionaire CEO Elon Musk shared his future predictions for artificial intelligence this week, including the likelihood that almost all jobs will be replaced by AI technology.
VivaTech Paris
SpaceX, X, XAI, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined the tech conference VivaTech in Paris this week, to share his vision of the future via conference call – and some are torn over his bombastic predictions.
An Interesting Question
He went into detail discussing contemporary artificial intelligence technology in the near future, but one audience member prompted an interesting question – since many fear that AI will eventually automate most professions – did Musk see a future where he could also be replaced by AI?
“Probably None of Us Will Have a Job”
“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job,” Musk said in response to conference-goers on Thursday.
Universal High Income
He then went on to describe an optimistic future scenario where humans do not work, but are sustained by a “universal high income” rather than the universal basic income (UBI) that is most often proposed in these scenarios.
“No Shortage of Goods and Services”
“But in that benign scenario, there will be universal high income, not universal basic income,” he continued. “There will be no shortage of goods and services.”
Robots Will Take Care of Everything
Musk explained that in this hypothetical future scenario jobs would be “optional,” because AI and “the robots” would take care of all goods and services, leaving humans free to pursue careers of their choice (if they choose to work).
If You Want to Work, You Can
“If you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job,” Musk said. “But otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”
Problems on the Horizon?
The economic impact of AI has been a concern since burgeoning technology like ChatGPT has gained more attention and become more advanced. Many are concerned that millions will lose their jobs and be unable to find further employment in their fields.
Existential Not Economic
But in Musk’s vision of the future, the biggest problems humans will face will be existential, not economic.
The Real Question
“If a computer and the robots can do everything better than you, then… does your life have meaning? That will really be the question in the benign scenario,” he elaborated.
Related Book Series
He then pointed to the “Culture” sci-fi book series by author Ian Banks, which follows a future society run entirely by technology. Musk called this book series “the best envisioning of a future AI.”
Not Everything Explained
While the strange, sci-fi-reminiscent predictions did much to grab listeners’ attention, Musk did leave out a lot of explanations to help the audience understand how this future might come to be.
What Does It Mean For Now?
It also did little to alleviate concerns about AI’s effect on the job marketplace in the foreseeable future. While there have not been any mass layoffs due to AI technology yet, many companies and some entire industries are looking at the best ways to use AI to cut costs.
The Wealthy Benefit First
AI job automation is currently a major threat to primarily low to medium-income professions, with experts speculating that working-class and middle-class people are most likely to feel the negative impacts, while the wealthy are most likely to benefit.
New Research Out
Researchers from Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University released a paper on the occupations and industries that are most “exposed” to the effects of language-modeling AI.
Telemarketing, Teaching, Law
The careers that topped the list were telemarketers, secondary and post-secondary school teachers across various disciplines, foreign language teachers, and legal professionals.
The Godfather of AI Chimes in
Musk is far from the only person working on AI innovation who believes that the technology will eventually sweep across the marketplace, taking many jobs with it. So does Geoffrey Hinton, the former Google machine learning designer and AI pioneer, often dubbed the ‘godfather’ of AI.
Consulting with Downing Street
In an interview with the BBC earlier this month Hinton said he had been hired to consult with the British government and had strongly urged officials to implement a UBI to safeguard against AI-related job losses.
Push for UBI
“I was consulted by people in Downing Street and I advised them that universal basic income was a good idea,” he said, elaborating that if these potential unemployed masses were not economically protected it would “be very bad for society.”
So far, there is no indication of a universal basic income, universal high income, or any other social safety net for these people being established by any government.
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