UK AI Safety Summit: Musk likens AI to ‘magic genie,’ says no jobs needed in future
The United Kingdom’s global summit on artificial intelligence (AI) safety, the AI Safety Summit, concluded on Nov. 2 with a one-on-one chat between U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk was one of many big names to attend the summit, including heads of OpenAI, Meta, Google and its AI division DeepMind, along with leaders from 27 countries. Musk’s nearly hour-long chat with Sunak was one of the main events of the second day.
AI discussion with @RishiSunak
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Their conversation touched on everything from AI risks to China and opened with Elon Musk likening the emerging technology to a “magic genie.”
Both mentioned these intelligent bots needing a physical “off-switch” and drew parallels to science-fiction movies like The Terminator. “All these movies with the same plot fundamentally all end with the person turning it off,” Sunak said.
Musk commented:
This was brought up after governments and AI companies came to an agreement to put new models through official testing before their public release, which Sunak called a “landmark agreement.”
Related: NIST establishes AI Safety Institute Consortium in response to Biden executive order
When asked about AI’s impact on the labor market, Musk called it the most “disruptive force in history” and said the technology will be smarter than the smartest human.
“I don’t know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable,” Musk concluded.
In addition, Musk commented on China’s inclusion in the summit, saying their presence was “essential.” “If they’re not participants, it’s pointless,” he said.
Over the past year, the U.S. and China have gone head-to-head in the race to develop and deploy the most advanced AI systems.
When Sunak
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