Elon Musk says AI will take all our jobs

Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Britain on November 1, 2023.

Elon Musk says artificial intelligence will take all our jobs and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“Probably none of us will have a job,” Musk said about AI at a tech conference on Thursday.

While speaking remotely via webcam at VivaTech 2024 in Paris, Musk described a future where jobs would be “optional.”

“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.”

For this scenario to work, he said, there would need to be “universal high income” – not to be confused with universal basic income, although he did not share what that could look like. (UBI refers to the government giving a certain amount of money to everyone regardless of how much they earn.)

“There would be no shortage of goods or services,” he said.

AI capabilities have surged over the past few years, fast enough that regulators, companies and consumers are still figuring out how to use the technology responsibly. Concerns also continue to mount over how various industries and jobs will change as AI proliferates in the market.

In January, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab found workplaces are adopting AI much more slowly than some had expected and feared. The report also said the majority of jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI were not economically beneficial for employers to automate at that time.

Experts also largely believe that many jobs that require a high emotional intelligence and human interaction will not need replacing, such as mental health professionals, creatives and teachers.

Musk has been outspoken about his concerns around AI. During the keynote on Thursday, he called the technology his biggest fear. He cited the “Culture Book Series” by Ian Banks, a utopian fictionalized look at a society run by advanced technology, as the most realistic and “the best envisioning of a future AI.”

In a job-free future, though, Musk questioned whether people would feel emotionally fulfilled.

“The question will really be one of meaning – if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” he said. “I do think there’s perhaps still a role for humans in this – in that we may give AI meaning.”

He also used his stage time to urge parents to limit the amount of social media that children can see because “they’re being programmed by a dopamine-maximizing AI.”

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