Billionaire businessman, Mr Elon Musk has reiterated his stance this week that artificial intelligence will eventually eliminate the need for humans to work, giving his vision on how the future will look as the technology continues to rapidly advance.
“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”, CNN reported.
Musk holds several roles as the CEO of Tesla, and founder of xAI, SpaceX and Neuralink, as well as the owner of social media platform X.
“In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job,” Musk replied. “There will be universal high income — and not universal basic income — universal high income. There’ll be no shortage of goods or services.”
The tech mogul said that in his opinion, there is an 80% chance that AI advances will result in such a situation where humans will not need a job and will have all they need.
“The question will really be one of meaning, of how — if a computer can do, and the robots can do everything better than you … does your life have meaning?” Musk said. “That really will be the question in that benign scenario, and in the negative scenario, all bets are off where we’re in deep trouble.”
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”
