Elon Musk’s AI chat with Rishi Sunak: Everything you need to know

A chat about AI between US tech mogul Elon Musk and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak focused heavily on utopian futures and theoretical risks of superhuman intelligence instead of actual harms caused by AI systems already deployed by tech companies

By Jeremy Hsu

3 November 2023

Elon Musk was interviewed by UK prime minister Rishi Sunak about the future of artificial intelligence

CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

In an event following the UK’s AI Safety Summit, entrepreneur Elon Musk spoke with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak about it being most likely that future AIs will be “a force for good” and someday enable a “future of abundance”.

That utopian narrative about a future superhuman AI – one that Musk claims would eliminate the need for human work and even provide meaningful companionship – shaped much of the conversation between the pair. But their conversation’s focus on an “age of abundance” glossed over the current negative impacts and controversies surrounding the tech industry’s race to develop large AI models – and didn’t get into specifics on how governments should regulate AI and address real-world risks.

“I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history here, where we will have for the first time something that is smarter than the smartest human,” said Musk. “There will come a point when no job is needed – you can have a job if you want for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.”

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Theoretical versus actual AI risks

Musk also acknowledged his longstanding position of frequently warning about the existential risks that superhuman AI could pose to humanity in the future. In March 2023, he was among the signatories of an open letter that called for a six-month pause in training AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model.

During his conversation with Sunak, he envisioned governments focusing their regulatory powers on powerful AIs that could pose a public safety risk, and once again raised the prospect of “digital superintelligence”. Similarly, Sunak referred to government efforts to implement safety testing of the most powerful AI models being deployed by companies.

“My job in government is to say, ‘hang on, there is a potential risk here, not a definite risk but a potential risk of something that could be bad,’” said Sunak. “My job is to protect the country and we can only do that if we develop that capability in our safety institute and then go in and make sure we can test the models before they are released.”