Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk

Rishi Sunak: Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Elon, thanks for being here. Elon Musk: Thank you for having me.

Rishi Sunak: We feel, we feel very privileged, very excited to have you. Right, so I'm gonna start with some questions, and then we're gonna open it up. Great. Let me get straight into it.

So Bill Gates said, "There is no one in our time who has done more to push the bounds of science innovation than you." Elon Musk: Well, that's kind of him to say. Rishi Sunak: Yeah, well, that's it.

That is a nice thing to have anyone say about you nice coming from Bill Gates. But oddly enough, when it comes to AI, actually for around a decade, you've almost been doing the opposite and saying, "Hang Yeah. We need to think about what we're doing and what we're pushing here, and what do we do to make this safe?

Yeah. Actually, maybe we shouldn't be pushing as fast or as hard as we are." Like, I mean, you've been doing it for a decade.

Like, what was it that caused you to think about it that way, and you know, why do we need to be worried? Elon Musk: Yeah, I've been somewhat of a Cassandra for quite a while, where where people would, I would tell people, like, "We should really be concerned about AI." They'd be like, "What are you talking about?"

Like, they've never really had any experience with AI. But since I was immersed in, technology. I have been immersed in technology for a long time, I could see it coming.

So, but I think this year was there've been a number of breakthroughs. I mean, you know, the point at which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves, you know, like, somebody could make a video of you saying anything in real time, or me. And so there's sort of the deep fake videos, which are really incredibly good, in fact, sometimes more convincing than real ones.

Deep real. And and then, and then obviously things like ChatGPT were quite remarkable. Now, I saw, GPT-1, GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-4, the, you know, the whole sort of lead up to that.

So it was easy for me to, kind of see where it's going. If you just sort of extrapolate the points on a curve, and assuming that trend will continue, then we will have, profound artificial intelligence and obviously at a level that far exceeds, human intelligence.

So, but I'm glad to see at this point that, people are taking, safety seriously, and I'd, like to say thank you for holding this, AI safety conference. I think actually it will go down in history as being very important. I think it's, it's really quite profound.

And and I do think overall that the potential is there for artificial intelligence, AI, to, have most likely a positive effect, and to create a future of abundance where there is no scarcity of goods and services.

But it is somewhat the, of the magic genie problem, where if you have a magic genie that can grant all the wishes, usually those stories, don't end well. Be careful what you wish for, including wishes. Rishi Sunak: Yeah. So you you talked a little bit about the summit, and thank you for being engaged in it, which has been great, and people enjoyed having you there participating in this dialogue.

Now, one of the things that we achieved today in the meetings between the companies and the leaders was a, an agreement that externally, ideally, governments should be doing safety testing of models before they're released. Yeah. I think this is something that you've spoken about a little bit. It was something we worked really hard Yeah.

Because, you know, my job in government is to say, "Hang on, there is a potential risk here. Not a, not a definite risk, but a potential Yeah. Of something that could be bad."

Yeah. You know, my job is to protect the country. Yes. And we can only do that if we develop the capability we need in our safety institute and then go in and make sure we can test the models before they are released. Delighted that that happened today, but you know, what's your view on what we should be doing, right?

You've talked Yeah. The potential risk, right? Again, we don't know.

But you know, what are the types of things governments like ours should be doing to manage and mitigate against those risks? Elon Musk: Well, I generally think that it is good for government to play a role when the public safety is at risk. So, you know, for, really for the vast majority of software, the public safety is not at risk.

Mm. I mean, if the, if the, app crashes on your phone or your laptop, it's not a you know, massive catastrophe. But when you're talking about digital super intelligence, I think, which does pose a risk to the public, then there is a role for government to play to safeguard the interests of the public.

And this is of course true in many fields, you know, aviation, cars. You know, I and I deal with regulators, throughout the world, because of, Starlink being communications, rockets being aerospace, and cars, you know, being trans vehicle transport. So I'm very familiar with dealing with regulators, and I actually agree with the vast majority of regulations.

There's a few that I disagree with from time to time, but point one percent probably of well, less than one percent of regulations I disagree with. So, and there is some concern from, people in Silicon Valley who've never dealt with regulators before, and they think that this is gonna just crush innovation and slow them down and be annoying. And and it will be annoying.

It's true. They're not wrong about that. But but I think there's we've learnt over the years that, having a referee is a good thing. And if you look at any sports game, there's always a referee and nobody's suggesting, I think, to have a sports game without one.

And I think that's the right way to think about this, is for government to be a referee to make sure there's sportsmanlike conduct and and that the public safety is, you know, it is addressed, that we care about the public safety. Because I think there might be at times too much optimism about technology.

And I speak I say that as a technologist, I mean, so I ought to know. And and like I said, on balance, I think that AI will Be a force for good most likely, but the probability of it going bad is not 0%. Yeah. So we just need to mitigate the downside potential.

Rishi Sunak: And then how, you talk about referee, and that's what we're trying to create. Elon Musk: Demis is right there. Rishi Sunak: Yeah, well, there we go.

I mean, you know, and we talked about this, and Demis and I discussed this a long time ago. Elon Musk: We're, like, literally facing right at him. Rishi Sunak: And actually, you know, Demis, to his credit, and the credit of people in the industry, did say that to us.

Yeah. You know, Demis said it's not Yeah. That Demis and his colleagues are marking their own homework, right? Right. There needs to be someone independent, and that's why we've developed the Safety Institute here.

I mean, do you think governments can develop the expertise? One of the things we need to do is say, "Hang on, you know, Demis, Sam, all the others have got a lot of very smart people doing this." Governments need to quickly tool up capability-Yeah.

Personnel-wise. So which is what we're doing. And I mean, do you think it is possible for governments to do that fast enough given how quickly the technology is developing? Or what do we need to do to make sure we do do it quick enough?

Elon Musk: No, I think it's, it's, it's good, it's a great point you're making. The pace of AI is faster than any technology I've seen in history by far. And it's, it seems to be growing in capability by at least fivefold, perhaps tenfold per year.

It'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year. Yeah. So and and government isn't used to moving at that speed. But I think even if there are not, firm regulations, even if there's not, even if there isn't an enforcement capability, simply having insight and being able to highlight concerns to the public will be very powerful.

So even if that's all that's accomplished, I think that will Rishi Sunak: That's very Elon Musk: very good. Rishi Sunak: Okay. Yeah, well, hopefully we can do better than that. Elon Musk: Hopefully, yeah. Rishi Sunak: Yeah. No, but that's helpful.

Actually, and we were talking before. It was striking, you know, you're someone who spent their life in technology- Yeah. Living Moore's Law, and what was interesting over the last couple of days talking to everyone who's doing the development of this, and I think you'd concur with this, is just the pace of advancement here is unlike Yeah.

All of you have seen in your careers in technology. Is that fair? Yes. Because you've got these kind of compounding effects from the hardware and the data and the personnel.

Elon Musk: Yeah. The, I mean, the two, currently the two leading centers for AI development are the San Francisco Bay Area and the, and the sort of London area. The, and there are many other places where it's being done, but those are the two leading areas.

So I think if, you know, if the United States and the UK, and China are, sort of aligned on safety, that's all gonna be a a good thing. Rishi Sunak: Good thing. Because Elon Musk: that's really, that's where, that's, that's where the leadership is generally. Rishi Sunak: I mean, you actually, it's interesting, you mentioned China there.

Yeah. So I took a decision to invite China to summit over the last couple days. Very Elon Musk: good. Rishi Sunak: And it was not an easy decision. A lot of people criticized me for it.

You know, my view is if you're gonna try and Elon Musk: It's essential. Rishi Sunak: Serious conversation, you need to. But I what would your thoughts, you do business all around the world.

You just talked about it there. Yeah. You know, should we be engaging with them? Can we trust them?

Is that the right thing to have done? Elon Musk: If we don't, if China is not on board with, AI safety, it's somewhat of a moot situation. The single biggest objection that I get to any kind of AI regulation or sort of safety controls, are, "Well, China's not gonna do it, and therefore, they will just jump into the lead and exceed us all."

But actually, China is willing to participate in AI safety, and thank you for inviting them, and I and they you know, I think, I think we should thank China for attending.

When I was, when I was in China earlier this year, the, my main subject of discussion with the the leadership in China was AI safety and saying that this is really something that they should care about. And they took it seriously, and I'm, and you are too, which is, which is great. And having them here I think was essential really.

If they're not, if they're, if they're not participants, it's, it's, pointless. Rishi Sunak: It's pointless, yeah. No, that And I think we were pleased. I think they were engaged yesterday in the discussions- Yeah.

And actually ended up signing the same communiqué that everyone else did. Elon Musk: That's great. Rishi Sunak: Which is a good start, right? Yeah. And as if we need everyone to approach this in a similar way if we're gonna have, I think, a realistic chance of resolving it.

I was gonna you talked about innovation earlier and regulation being annoying. There was a good debate today we had about open source, and I think you've kind of been a proponent of algorithmic transparency and making some of the X algorithms public. And yeah, actually, we were talking about, Geoffrey Hinton on the way in.

Yeah. And he's particularly, he's been very concerned about open source models being used by bad actors. You've got a group of people who say they are critical to innovation happening in that distributed way. Look, it's, it's a trick.

There's probably no perfect answer, and there is a tricky balance. I what are your thoughts on how we should approach this open source question? Or you know, where should we be targeting whatever regulatory or monitoring that we're gonna do?

Elon Musk: Well, the open source, algorithms and data tend to lag the closed source by six to twelve months. But so that, so that, but given the rate of improvement that there's actually therefore quite a big difference between the the closed source and the, and the open. If things are improving by a factor of, let's say, Mm-hmm.

Or more, then being a year behind is you're five times worse. So it's, it's a pretty big difference. And that might be actually an okay situation.

But it certainly will, it will get to the point where you've got open source, AI that can do, that will start to approach human-level intelligence or perhaps exceed it. I don't know quite what to do about it.

I think it's somewhat inevitable that there'll be some amount of open source, and I guess I would have a slight bias towards open source, 'cause at least you can see what's going on. And whereas closed source, you don't know what's going on. Now, it should be said with AI that even if it's open source, do you actually know what's going on?

Right. Because if you've got a gigantic data file and You know, sort of billions of of data points or weights and parameters. You can't just read it and see what it's gonna do. It's a gigantic file of inscrutable numbers.

You can test it when you run it, you can test it, you can run a bunch of tests to see what it's gonna do. But it's probabilistic as opposed to, deterministic. It's not, it's not like traditional programming where you've got Yeah.

A you've got very discrete logic and and the outcome is very predictable, and you can read each line and see what each line's gonna do. A neural net is, just a whole bunch of probabilities. I mean, it sort of ends up being a giant comma-separated value file.

It's like, our digital guide is a CSV file? Really? Okay. But that is kind of what it is. Rishi Sunak: Yeah. Now, at that point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot because, again, conversations with the people who are developing the technology make the point that you've just made.

It is not like normal software where there's predictability about inputs improving leading to this particular output improving. Yeah. And as the models iterate and improve, we don't quite know what's gonna come out the other end. And I think Denis would agree with that.

Which is why I think there is this, bias for, look, we need to get in there while the training runs are being done, before the models are released, to understand what has this new iteration, brought Yeah. In terms of capability, which it sounds like you would agree with. I was gonna shift gears a little bit.

On, you know, you've talked a lot about human consciousness, human agency, which I actually might strike people as strange, given that you are known for being such a brilliant innovator and technologist. But it's, it's quite heartfelt when I hear you talk about it, and the importance of maintaining that agency and technology, and preserving human consciousness.

Yeah. Now, that kind of links to the thing I was gonna ask, is when I do interviews or talk to people out and about in this job about AI, the thing that comes up most, actually, is probably not so much the stuff we've been talking about, but jobs. It'Right. What does AI mean for my job?

Yeah. Is it gonna mean that I don't have a job, or my kids are not gonna have a job? Now, you know, my answer as a, you know, as a policymaker, as a leader is, you know, actually, AI's already creating jobs, and you can see that in the companies that are starting. Also, the way it's being used is a little bit more as a co-pilot necessarily, versus replacing the person.

There's still human agency, but it's helping you do your job Yeah. Which is a good thing. And as we've seen with technological revolutions in the past, clearly there's change in the labor Yeah.

The amount of jobs. I was quoting an MIT study today that they did a couple of years ago. Something like 60% of the jobs at that moment didn't exist 40 years ago.

Sure. So hard to predict. And my job is to create an incredible education system, whether it's at school, whether it's retraining Yeah. At any point in their career.

'Cause ultimately, if we've got a skilled population- Yeah. They'll be able to keep up with the pace of change and have a good life. But you know, that, it's still a concern.

And you know, what would your kind of observation be on AI and the impact on labor markets and people's jobs, and how they should feel about that as they think about this? Elon Musk: Well, I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here. You know, where we have for the first time, we will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human.

And that, I mean, 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 want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction. But the AI will be able to do everything.

So I don't know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable. It's, it'you know, that's why, that's why I say if you if you wish for a magic genie that gives you any wishes you want, and there's no limit.

You don't have those three limit, three-wish limit nonsense. You just have as many wishes as you want.

So, it's both good and bad. One of the challenges in the future will be, how do we find meaning in life if you have a magic genie that can do everything you want? When there's new technology, it tends to have usually follow an S curve.

Mm-hmm. In this case, we're gonna be on the exponential portion of the S curve for a long time. And you we have, like, so you'll be able to ask for anything. And it'll, it won't be a.

And we won't have universal basic income. We'll have universal high income. Hmm. So in some, in some sense, it'll be somewhat of a leveler, or an equalizer, you know, 'cause, really, I think everyone will have access to this magic genie.

And you'll be able to ask any question. It'll be certainly be good for education. You it'll be the best tutor you could, and the most patient tutor.

Except they're all they. And there will be no shortage of goods and services. It will be an age of abundance.

I think if. I'd recommend people read, Iain Banks. The Banks Culture books are probably the best envisioning, in fact, not probably, they're definitely by far the best envisioning of an AI future.

There's nothing even close. So I'd recommend, really recommend Banks. I'm I'm a very big fan.

All his books are good. Doesn't say which one, all of them. So that's.

That'll give you a sense of what is a, I guess, a fairly utopian or protopian, future with AI. Yeah. Rishi Sunak: Which is good from a, as you said, it's a universal high income, which is a nice phrase, and that's, it's good from Yeah. Materialistic sense. Yeah. Age of abundance.

Actually, that, it kind of then leads to the question that you posed, right? I'm somebody who believes, you know, work gives you meaning. Right. I write a lot about that as leader.

I think work is a good thing. It you know, gives people purpose in their lives. And if you then remove a large chunk of You know, what does that mean and where do you get that?

Yeah. You know, where do you get that drive, that motivation, that purpose? I mean, you were talking about it. You work a lot of hours.

Elon Musk: I do. Rishi Sunak: And you know, Elon Musk: No, I as I was mentioning when we were talking earlier, I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief. Because of I'm putting so much blood, sweat, and tears into a work project and burning the, you know, 3:00 AM oil, then, I'm like, "Wait, why am I doing this? I can just wait for the AI to do it."

I'm just lashing myself for no reason. Yeah. I must like be a glutton for punishment or something. Rishi Sunak: We call Elon Musk: So it's Rishi Sunak: Call Demis and tell him to hurry up, and then you can have a holiday, right?

That's the plan. Yeah. No, it's a. Look, it's a tricky, it's a tricky thing because I think, you know, part of our job is to make sure that we can navigate to that very, I think, largely positive place that you're describing- Elon Musk: It is, it is like

Rishi Sunak: And Elon Musk: Largely positive, yeah. Rishi Sunak: Help people through it between now and then because these things bring a lot about change in the labor market, as we've seen. Elon Musk: Yeah. I think it probably is generally a good thing 'cause, you know, there are a lot of jobs that are, uncomfortable or dangerous Which

Sort of tedious. And the computer will have no problem doing that. Be happy to do that all day long. So, you know, it's, it's fun to cook food, but it's not that fun to wash the dishes.

And like, but the computer's perfectly happy to wash dishes. And I guess there is, You know, we still have, sports like where humans compete in like the Olympics and obviously, a machine can can go faster than any human, but we still have, we still humans race against each other.

And have all, you know, have these sports competitions against each other where even though the machines are better, we're, they're still I guess competing to see who can be the best human at something. Yeah. And Rishi Sunak: we're doing that. Elon Musk: And people do find fulfillment in that.

Yeah. So I guess that's perhaps a good example of how even when machines are faster than us, stronger than Rishi Sunak: We still find a way. Elon Musk: We still Yeah. Competing against other humans to at least see who's the best human.

Rishi Sunak: Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a good, that's a good analogy. And we've been talking a lot about managing the risks. I just before we move on, I finish on AI, is just talk a little bit about the opportunities.

You know, you're engaged in lots of different companies. Neuralink- Yeah. Being an obvious one. Very. Which is doing, which is doing some exciting stuff.

I you touched on the thing that I'm probably most excited about, it which is in education. Yeah. And I think many people will have seen Sal Khan's, video from earlier this year, his TED Talk about, as you talked about, it's like personal tutor. Yeah. Every child. Elon Musk: Personal tutor.

An amazing personal tutor. Rishi Sunak: An amazing personal tutor. Yeah. And we know the difference in learning, having that personalized Yeah.

Is incredible compared to classroom learning. Yeah. So if you can have every child have a personal tutor specifically for them that then just evolves with them over Yeah. That could be extraordinary.

And so that, you know, for me, I look at that, I think, "Gosh, well, that is within reach at this point." Yeah. And that's one of the benefits I'm most excited about. Like, when you look at the landscape of things that you see as possible, what is it that, you know, you Yeah.

Particularly excited about? Elon Musk: I think certainly AI tutors are gonna be amazing. Perhaps already are. I think there's also perhaps companionship, which may seem odd 'cause how can the computer really be your friend?

But if you have an AI that has memory, you know, and remembers all of your interactions and has read every. You can say like give it permission to read everything you've ever done. So it really will know you better than anyone, perhaps even yourself.

And and where you can talk to it every day and those conversations build upon each other. You will actually have a great friend. As long as that friend can stay your friend and not get turned off or something.

Don't turn off my friends. But I think that will actually be a real thing. Oh. And I have a, one of my sons is, sort of has some learning disabilities and has trouble making friends actually and I was like, "Well, you know, he an AI friend would actually be great for him."

Rishi Sunak: Oh, okay. You know, it's a, that was a surprising answer but that's actually, it's worth reflecting on. Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. I mean, we're already seeing it actually as we deliver, you know, psychotherapy anyway, now doing far Yeah.

By digitally and by telephone to people and it's making a huge difference and you can see a world in which actually, you know, AI can provide that, social benefit to people. Just a quick question on X, and then we should open it up to everybody. You made a change when you in one of the.

Well, made many changes Elon Musk: Yeah, quite a few. Rishi Sunak: One of, one of the changes which, you know, kind of, you know, goes into the space that, you know, we have to operate in and this balance between free Yeah. And moderation is a, you know, we grapple with as politicians.

Sure. You know, you were grappling with your own version of that and you moved away from a kind of manual Yeah. Way of doing it, the moderation to the community notes. Yeah. And I think that's, it was, it was an interesting change, right?

It's not what everyone Yeah. Has done. It would be good, you know, what's, what was the reasoning behind that and why do you think that is a better way to do that? Elon Musk: Yeah. Part of the problem is if you empower people as censors then, well, how, there's gonna be some amount of bias, they have.

And then whoever appoints the censors is effectively in control of information. So then the idea behind community notes is, well, how do we have a consensus-driven, I mean, so it's not really censoring it, but consensus-driven approach to truth.

How do we or how do we how do we make things, the least amount untrue? Like, you can say like, one can't pass, perhaps get to pure truth, but you can aspire to be more truthful. So the thing about community notes is it doesn't actually delete anything.

It simply adds context. Now, that context could be, "This thing is untrue for the following reasons." and but it, but importantly with community notes, everything is open source actually.

So you can the software, every line of the software, you can see all of the data that went into a community note, and you can independently create that community note. So if you've got. If you see a manipulation of the data, you can actually highlight that and say, "Well, this, there appears to be some gaming of the system."

And you can suggest improvements. So it's, it's, it's maximum transparency. Rishi Sunak: And combined with the kind of wisdom of the Yeah.

And transparency to get to a better answer, is it? Elon Musk: And really one of the key elements of community notes is that in order for a note to be shown, people who have historically disagreed must agree. And there is a bit of AI usage, here.

So there's, we'll populate a parameter space, around, each contributor to community notes, and then a parameter space. So you So everyone's got basically these vectors associated with them, which. So it's, it's, it's not as simple as right or left.

It's saying, it's, it's more, it's several hundred vectors that. Because things are more complicated than simply right or left. And then we'll, we'll do sort of, inverse correlation.

Say like, "Okay, these people generally disagree, but they agree about this note." Rishi Sunak: Okay, so then that Elon Musk: gives the note credibility. Rishi Sunak: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's, that'That's, that's Elon Musk: the, that's the core of it, and it's working quite well. Yeah. I've yet to see a note actually be present for more than a few hours, that is incorrect. So the batting average is extremely good.

And when I ask people say, oh, they're worried about community notes sort of being disinformational, like send me one, and then they can't. Wow. So I think it's, I think it's quite good.

I mean, the general aspiration is with the X platform is to inform and entertain the public, and to be as accurate as possible and as truthful as possible, even if someone doesn't like the truth. You know, there's, there's, people don't always like the truth. Rishi Sunak: No. Yeah. Not Elon Musk: always.

Yeah. But that's, that's, that's the aspiration, and I think if we are, if we stay true to the truth, then I think we'll find that people, use the system to learn what is going on and to learn. They it, I think actually truth pays. So I think it'll be what.

I mean, assuming you don't wanna engage in self-delusion, then, the, then I think it's, it's the smart move. Rishi Sunak: It's been a huge privilege and a pleasure to have you here. Elon Musk: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me.