Okay, all right, well, good evening, everybody. Welcome Elon,
thanks for being here, Thank you for having me. We feel very prov
we're excited to have you. Right, So I'm going to start with some
questions and then we're going to open it up. 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. What's kind
of going to say, Well, that's 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 on, you need to think about what we're doing and
what we're pushing here, and what do we do to make this safe?
And actually maybe we shouldn't be pushing as faster or as hard as we are.
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? Yeah? I've been somewhat of a
Cassandra for quite a while where people would I would tell you, like we
should really be con learned about aid, like, what are you talking about?
Like, I'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 that
there have been a number of breakthroughs. I mean, you know, the
point of which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves, you know,
like it sort you can make a video of you saying anything in real
time or me, And so there's sort of the deep bake videos which are
really incredibly good, in fact, sometimes more convincing than real ones and a
bit deep real and and then and then obviously things like chat GPT we were
quite remarkable. Now I saw GPT one, GPT two, GPT three,
GPT four that 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 as seeing that train
will continue, then we will have profound, artificially intelligence and obviously at a
level that far exceeds human intelligence. So I'm glad to see at this point
that people are taking safety seriously and I'd like I say thank you for holding
this AI safety conference. I think actually will go down in history as being
very important. I think it's really quite profound, and I do think overall
that the potential is there for artificial intelligence AI too 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 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. Who care for what you wish for? Including wishes? Yeah,
so 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.
Puspending in this dialogue now, one of the things that we achieved today in
the meetings between the companies and the leaders was an agreement that externally, ideally,
governments should be doing safety testing of models before they're released. I think
this is something that you've spoken about a little bit. It was something we
worked really hard on 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 risk of something that could be bad. My
job is to protect the country 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. Delight of that that happened
today. But you know, what's your view on what we should be doing,
right you've talked about the potential risk? Right again, we don't know,
but you know, what are the types of things governments like our should
be doing to manage and mitigate against those risks. Well, generally think that
it is good for government to play a role when the public safety is at
risk. So you know, really, for the vast majority of software,
the public safety is not at risk. I mean, if if the app
crashes on your phone, your laptop, it's not a massive catastrophe. But
when you're talking about digital superintelligence, I think, which does pose a risk
to the public, then there is a role for government to play to safeguard
the interest of the public. And this is of course true in many fields,
you know, aviation, cars, you know, I deal with regulators
throughout the world because of stalling being communications, rockets being aerospace, and cars
you know, being tracked vehicle transport. So I'm very familiar with dealing with
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 zero point one
percent, probably less than one percent of regulations I disagree with. So there
is some concern and from people in Silicon Valley who who've never dealt with regulators
before, and they think that this is gonna just crush innovation and slow them
down and be annoying. But 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 and nobody's suggesting I
think to have a sports game with that one. And I think that's the
right way to think about this, is for for governed to be a referee,
to make sure the sportsmanlike conduct 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 said, on balance, I think that that the AI will be
a forcible good most likely, but the probability of it going bad it is
not zero. Said, so we just need to mitigate the downside potential.
And then how you talk about referee and that's what we're demonstrate. Yeah,
well there we go. I mean, you know, and we talked about
this and Demos and I discussed this a long time ago, like literally facing
right and actually Demister his credit and the credit of people in the industry,
did say that to us. I think you say, it's not right that
Demis and his colleagues are marking their own homework, 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 and
Sam all the others have got a lot of very smart people doing this.
Governments need to quickly tool up capability wise, personnel wise, which is what
we're doing. 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.
No, I think 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 seems to be growing in capability by at least fivefold, perhaps tenfold
per year. It'll certainly grow by an automatitude next year. Yeah, so
so, 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, so we're 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 be very very good. Okay, yeah, well
hopefully we can do better than that, hopefully. Yeah. Yeah, No,
but that's how fast we were talking before. It was striking. You're
someone who spent their life in technology. They're living More's law. And what
it was interesting over the last couple of days talking to everyone who's doing the
development of this, and I think you concur with this is is just the
pace of advancement here is unlike anything all of you have seen in your careers
and technology. Is that fair because you've got these kind of compounding effects from
the hardware and the data and the personnel. Yeah, I mean the two
currently the two leading centers for a development are the San Fransco Bay area and
the sort of London area, And there are many other places where it's being
done, but those are 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 going to be a good thing. That's really that's where
that's where the leadership is generally. You actually you mentioned China there. So
I took a decision to invite China to summit over the last three days,
and it was not an easy decision. A lot of people criticizes me for,
you know, my view as if you're going to try serious conversation,
you need to. But what would your thoughts? You do business all around
the world. You just talked about it there. Should we be engaging with
them? Can we trust them? Is that the right thing to have done?
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 is
not going to 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 they you know, I think we should
thank China for attending. When I was when I was in China earlier this
year, my main subject of discussion with this the leadership in China was a
safety and saying that this this is really something that they they should care about,
and they took it seriously and and and you are too, which is
which is great. And having them here I think was essential. Really if
the if they're if they're not participants, it's it's pointless. Yeah, that's
and I think we were pleased. I think they were engaged yesterday in the
discussions and actually ended up signing the same communicy that everyone else did, which
is a good stop, right. And I said, if we need everyone
to approach us in a similar way, if we're going to have a realistic
chance of resolving it. I was going to tell you 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 ex algorithms public and you actually we were talking about
every hint and on the way in. You know, he's particularly 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 your thoughts on how we should approach this open source question
or where should we be targeting whatever regulatory or monitoring that we're going to do
well. The open source algorithms and data tend to lag the closed source by
six to twelve months. So that but given the rate of improvement that there's
actually therefore quite a big difference between the closed source and the and the open
If things are improving by a factor of let's say five or more than being
a year behind is you're five times worse. So it's a pretty big difference.
And that might be actually an okay situation, but it certainly we'll get
to the point where you've got open source AI that can do that, that
will start to approach human level intelligence, will PHAPS succeeded. I don't know
quite what to do about it. I think it's somewhat inevitable. There will
be some amount of open source, and I guess I would have a slight
bias towards open source because at least you can see what's going on. It
wears closed source. You don't know what's going on. Now, it should
be said with AI that even if it's an open source, do you actually
know what's going on? Because if you've got a gigantic data file and you
know sort of billions of data points or weights and parameters, you can't just
read it and see what it's going to do. It's a gigantic file of
inscrutable numbers. You can test it when you when you run it, you
can test it. You can run a bunch of tests to see what it's
going to do. But it's probabilistic as opposed to deterministic. It's not it's
not like traditional programming, where you've got it you've got very discrete logic and
the outcome is very predictable, and you can read each line and see what
each line is going to 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 CSP file. Really
okay, but that's kind of what it is. Yeah, Now, that
point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot,
because again conversations with the people are developing their 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, and as the models iterate and improve,
we don't quite know what's going to come out the other end. I think
Demis 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 is this new iteration
broad about in terms of capability, which it sounds like you would would agree
with. I was going to shift Goz a little bit on. You know,
you've talked a lot about human consciousness human agency, which actually might strike
people as 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 in technology and preserving human consciousness. Now
it kind of links to the thing I was going to 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 it probably not so much the
stuff we've been talking about, but jobs. It's what is AI mean for
my job? Is it going to mean that I don't have a job or
my kids are not going to have a job. Now, you know,
my answer as a policymaker, as a leader is actually, AI is 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 better, which is a good thing. And as
we've seen with technological revolutions in the past, clearly there's change in the labor
market the amount of jobs. I was quoting an MIT study today that they
did a couple of years ago is something like sixty percent of the jobs at
that moment exists forty years ago, so hard to predict. And my job
is to create an incredible education system, whether it's at school, whether it's
retraining people at any point in their career, because ultimately, if we've got
a skill population, 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 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. Well, I think we are seeing the most disruptive force in history
here. You know, 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 uncomfortable, it's it's you know, That's why that's why I say,
if you, 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 limits three wish limits, not since you just have many 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 if you
have a magic genie that can do everything you want. I do think we's
it's hard. You know, when there's when when there's new technology, it
tends to have usually follow an S curve. In this case, we're going
to be on the exponential portion of the S curve for a long time,
and we have to like so we able to ask for anything. And it
won't be we won't have universal basic income. We'll have universal high income.
So in some in some sense it will be somewhat of a leveler or an
equalizer, because really I think everyone will have access to this magic Jenny anyway,
able to ask any question. It will certainly be good for education,
you could it'll be the best tutor you could add them the most patient tutor,
UH said there all day. And there will be no shortage of goods
and services, will be an age of abundance. I think if i'd recommend
people read in Banks, the Banks culture books are probably the best in visioning.
In fact, not probably, they're definitely by far the best envisioning of
an a future. There's nothing even close. So I'd recommend, really recommend
Banks. I'm a very big fan. All these books are good. There's
not Jay which one all of them. So so that's that'll give you a
sense of what is a I guess a fairly utopian or pro topin future with
with Ai, which is good for as you said, it's a universal high
income, which is a nice phrase, and that's it's good from a kind
of materialistic sense of abundance. Actually, that then leads to the question that
you pose, right, I'm someone who believes, you know, work gives
you meaning. I write a lot about that. As you know, 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 that,
you know, what does that mean? And where do you get that?
You know, where do you get that drive, that motivation, that purpose?
I mean you're talking about it. You work a lot of hours,
you know, as I was mentioning, when we were talking earlier. I
have to somewhat engage in liberate suspension of disbelief because I'm putting so much blood,
sweat and tears into a work project and burning the you know, three
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. Must be a gutton for punishment or something. So we
called called called demos and tell them to hurry up and then you can have
a holiday. It'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 described people through it between now and then,
because these things bring a lot aboutter change in in the labor market as we've
seen. Yeah, I think it's probably is generally a good thing because you
know, there are a lot of jobs that are uncomfortable or dangerous or which
sort of tedious, and the computer will have no problem doing that. We're
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, but
the computer is perfectly happy to watch the dishes. I guess there is.
You know, we still have sports like where where humans compete and 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 and have a you
know, these sports competitions against each other where even though the machines are better,
which I guess computnitity, who can be the best human at something?
And people do find performing in that. So I guess that's perhaps a good
example of how even when machines are faster than are stronger than us, we
still find a way we saw enjoy computing against other humans, so at leaste,
who was the best human? Yeah, that's a good it's a good
analogy. And we've been talking a lot about managing the risks. Just before
we move on and finish on AI is just talk a little bit about the
opportunities. You know, you're engaged in lots of different companies. You're an
obvious line which is doing which is doing some exciting stuff. You touched on
the thing that I'm probably most excited about, which is an education. Yeah,
and I think many people will have seen sal CON's video from earlier this
year. Is Ted talk about as you talked about, it's like a personal
tutor. Yeah, an amazing personal tutor, an amazing personal tutor. And
we know the difference in learning having that personal tutor is incredible compared to class
from learning. So if you can have every child, I'll have a personal
tutor specifically for them that then just evolves with them over time. Yeah,
it could be extraordinary. And so that you know, for me, I
look at it, I think, gosh, that is within reach at this
point. And that's one of the benefits I'm most excited about. When you
look at the landscape of things that you see as possible, what is it
that you know you are particularly excited about. I think certainly AI AI tutors
are going to be amazing, perhaps already are. I think there's also perhaps
companionship, which may seem odd because how can the computer really be your friend?
But if you if you have an AI that has memory, you know,
and remembers all of your interactions and has read everything, you've got to
actually 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 and where
you can talk to it every day and those conversations spoiled 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. 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 AI friend
would actually be a great fri enid Okay, you know's that was a surprising
answer. That's actually it's worth worth reflecting on that. That's really interesting.
I mean we're already seeing it actually as we deliver you know, psychotherapy anyway,
now doing far more by digitally and by telephone to people, and it's
making a huge difference. And you can see a world and which actually,
you know, AI can provide that social benefit to people. Just a quick
question on on X and then we should open it up to everybody. You
made a change when in one of the made many changes, but one of
the one of the changes, We've got a real thing about it. You
really do, really do one of the changes which you know kind of you
know, it goes into the space that you know, we have to operate
in. And this, this balance between free speech and moderation is you know,
we grapple with as politicians. You were grappling with your own version of
that, and you you moved away from a kind of manual human way of
doing it, the moderation to the community notes and yeah, and I think
that's you know, it was an interesting change, right, It's not what
everyone else 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? Yeah? Part of the problem is if you if
you empower people as sensors, then well there's going to be some amount of
bias they have, and then whoever appoints the sensors is effectively in control of
information. So then the idea behind community notice, 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 how do we how do we
make things the least amount untrue? Like you say, like what you can't
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. And that context could be this thing is untrue for the following reasons.
And but but importantly with community notes, everything is open source actually,
so you can see the software, every line of the software. You can
see all of the data that went into a community note, and and you
can independently create that community note. So if you've got if you see a
manipulations of data, you can actually highlight that and say well this, this,
this, the appears to be some gaming of the system, and you
can suggest improvement. So it's it's it's maximum transparency, which is i think
combined with the kind of wisdom of the crowds and transparency to get to a
better answer is you. And really one of the key elements of community notes
is that in order for a note to be shown, people who have historic
disagreed must agree. And there is a bit of AI usage here, so
there's will populate a parameter space around each contributor to community notes, and then
the parameter space so everyone's got basically these these vectors associated with them, which
so it's it's not as simple as as right or left it's saying it's it's
more, it's several hundred vectors. That that because things are more complicated than
something right right or left and and and then will we'll do sort of inverse
correlation, say like, okay, these these people generally disagree, but they
agree about this note. Okay, so then that so then that that that
gives the note credibility. Yeah, that's that's the that's the core of it.
And it's working quite well. I get to see a note actually be
be present for more than a few hours that that is incorrect. So the
batting average is extremely good. And when I ask PEP, people say,
oh, they're worried about community notes sort of being dis like, send me
one and then they can't. So 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, people
don't always like the truth, not always, 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. I think actually truth pays, so I think it'll
be what I mean, assuming you don't want to engage your self delusion,
then I think it's it's the smart move. So excellent, very helpful.
Right, let's open it up to all our guests here, and we've got
some microphones that they'll come. Put your hands up, they'll come and find
you. We got yes, go for it. Thank you, good evening.
Alice Bentink from Entrepreneur. First, thank you for a fascinating conversation.
I suppose a question for each of you, Prime Minister. The UK has
some of the best universities in the world, we have the talent. What
will it takes the UK to be a real breeding ground for unicorn companies?
And elon being a founder in the UK is still a non obvious career choice
for the most exceptional technical talent. What are the cultural elements that we need
to put into place to change this? Thank you both. Well you want
to go first, go for it? Sure? Well, you're right that
there are cultural elements where you know, the culture should celebrate creating new companies
and there should be a bias towards supporting small, small companies because they're the
ones that need nurturing. The larger companies really don't need nurturing. So you
know, just you can think of it's sort of like a garden. If
it's a little sprout that needs needs nurturing, if it's a mighty oak,
it doesn't need quite as much. So I think that that is a mindset
change that is important. But but I should mention that London is you know,
London and San Francisco or the Bay Area are really the two census for
AI. So that so London is actually doing very well on that front.
That the two I said, the two leading locations on Earth. You know,
San Francisco's probably head of London, but London is really very strong.
But London Area, greater London home counties, I guess, keep keep going.
So I'm just saying objectively this is the case. And but you do
need that. You need you need the infrastructure, need, you need landlords
who are willing to rant to new companies, who you need law firms and
accounts that are willing to support new companies. And it's generally it is a
mindset change, and I think some of that is happening. But I think
really it's just culturally people need to decide this is this is a good thing.
Yeah yeah, actually, well thanks for what you said about the UK.
It's something that we work hard on. Lots of people in the room
are part of what makes this a fabulous place for companies, including Alice.
So that's what i'd say is my job is to get all the you know,
the nuts and bolts right, make sure that all of you are starting
companies can raise a capital that you need everything from you know, your seed
funding with our incredible you know eis tax release all the way through to you
know, your late stage rounds. And we need reform of our pension funds
and the Chancellor's got a bunch of incredible reforms to unlock capital from all the
people who have it and deploy it into growth equity. Right, that is
a work in progress. We're not there yet, but I think we're we're
making We're making good progress. We need talent, we need people, you
know, so that means an education system that prioritizes the things that matter.
And you've seen my reforms. I go on about more matt, more maths,
more maths, but I think that it's important, but also attracting the
best and the brightest here. If you look at our fastest growing companies in
this country, and I think it's probably the same in the US, over
half of them have a non British founder, right, And so that tells
you we've got to be a place that is open to the world's best and
brightest entrepreneurial talent. So the visa regime that we've put in place, I
think, does that makes it easy for those people to come here. And
then actually it's the thing that we've spent the beginning of the session talking about
the regulation, right, making sure that we've got a regulatory system that's pro
innovation. That Yeah, of course we always need guardrails on the things that
will worry us, but we've got to create a space for people to innovate
and do different things. Now, those are all my jobs. The thing
that is tougher is the thing that Elon talked about, which is culture.
Right, It's how do you transpose that culture from places like Silicon Valley across
the world where people are unafraid to give up the security of a regular paycheck
to go and start something, be comfortable with failure, You talk about that
a lot. I think you talk about it more and when you're playing games,
right, but that you've got to be comfortable failing and knowing that that's
just part of the process. And that is as a tricky cultural thing to
do overnight, but it's an important part of I think creating that kind of
environment. Yeah, if you don't succeed with your first startup, it shouldn't
be a sort of a catastrophic career ending exactly, thing it should be you
know, well good I think generally should like should be like, well,
you know, you gave it a good shot, you know, and and
and now try again and exactly. It's so one thing I'm going to mention
is like, obviously creating a company is sort of a high risk, high
reward situation. But I don't know quite what the how it works in the
UK, I think probably better than continental Europe, but the stock options are
very difficult in most parts of Europe. I'm not sure how does you give
it. But if somebody's basically going to risk the sort of life savings and
with and the vast majority of startups fail, So I mean you hear about
the startups that succeed, but most companies are most startups consist of you know,
a massive amount of work followed by failure. That's actually most most companies.
And so it's a high risk kigh reward and so the higher reward part
does need to be there for it to make sense. I think that was
a very soft pitch for a tax policy that I need chance that. But
actually I can tell you so like AI agree, and we have so we
have, I think relative to certainly European countries, but certainly the US,
definitely California a much lower rate of capital gains tax right. So for those
people who are risking and growing something like, we think the reward should be
there at the end. So it's twenty percent capital gains tax right. And
on stock options, I don't know if we've got anyone from Index Ventures in
the room. So Index one of our bleeding VC funds here. They do
a regular report looking at most countries' tax treatment of stock options. And you
know, when I was a Chancellor of Treasury Sexuary equivalent, you know,
we were I think down at we were pretty good, but we were fourth
or fifth. Then I said we need to for exactly the reason that you
mentioned was like this has got to be the best place for renovative We need
to move that up. And I think in the last iteration of that report
we had because of the changes that Jeremy and I have made, we have
moved up to I think second from memory. Hopefully that actually give you and
everyone else some comfort that we recognize. That's important because when people work hard
and risk things, yeah, they should be able to enjoy the rewards high
reward. Yeah. And I think we have a we very much have a
tax system that supports that. And those are the values that you know,
I believe in, and I think most of us in this room probably do
as well. Right, next, next question, I've got seven front of
me, and then I'll come over here. Gone gone, So thanks very
much. We've talked about some really big ideas, global changing ideas. I'm
really interested, particularly in the Contexte creation of science and technology, superhubs and
so on. How does that app onto the everyday lives of people living in
say Austin, Texas, to choose around you and more in my case Nottingham,
East Midlands. Uh, what what is? How do you see that
evolving for people? You know every day sort of every day effective AI for
context, Elon so SEB. SEB runs our equivalent of CDs, right or
Walgreens, so you know when actually I visited, right, So he's got
millions of people coming in the shops every day, and it's making sure how
do we make this relevant? I think is your question, how is this
relevant to that person? You know? Maybe actually let me go I'll go
first on that because I think it's a fair a fair point. I was
just going over with the team a couple of things that we're doing because I
was saying, like, how are we doing AI right now that it's making
a difference to people's lives. And we have this thing called gov dot UK,
which is which actually when we when it happened several years ago, was
a pioneering thing. All the government information brought together on one website, gov
dot uk, so you need to get a driving license, passport, any
interaction with government. It was centralized in a very easy, relatively easy to
use way, better than most. So we're about so we're about to deploy
AI across that PI form. So that is something that I think, you
know, several million people a day use right, so a large chunk of
the population is interacting with gov dot UK every single day to do all these
day to day tasks. Right, every one of your customers is doing all
those things, and so we're about to deploy AI into that to make that
whole process so much easier. Because you know, some people will be like,
look, well I'm currently here and I've lost my passport and my flights
in five hours. You know at the moment that would require you know how
many steps to figure out what you do? You know, well, actually,
when we deploy the AI, it should be that you could just literally
say that and boom boom boom, bom boom. This is what we're going
to do walking through it, and that's going to benefit millions of millions of
people every single day, right, Because that's a very practical way in my
seat, that I can start using this technology to help people in their day
to day lives, not just healthcare discoveries and everything else that we're also doing.
But I thought that's quite a powerful demonstration of literally your day to day
customer seeing actually their just day to day life get a little bit easier because
of something that you know, Elon Demis and others in this room have helped
create. Yeah, exactly, The most immediate thing is just being able to
ask, like having a very smart friend that you can ask anything, you
know, ask how to make something, how to solve any problem, and
it'll tell you so. And obviously companies are going to adopt this, so
I think maybe you'll have much better customer service. I guess essentially that'll probably
be the first thing you notice. And then if we talked about education,
so having a tutor, so if you're trying to understand a subject, like
having a phenomenal tutor on any subject, is that that's really pretty much there
already almost. I mean we need to obviously, I need to stop hallucinating
before you know it can't give you. I mean that we still have a
little bit of the problem where it can give you an answer that's competently wrong
with great grammar and you know, in bullet points and everything in citations,
it was not real. So that's be okay. We need to make sure
it's it's not it's not it's not giving you competently wrong tunor answers. But
but that's going to happen pretty quickly where it is actually correct. So yeah,
I'm gonna say for any for any parent who was homeschooling during COVID and
realizing what their kids needed to be helped with. That will come as an
enormous relief. I think, yeah, very very good. Right have we
got let's go questions over here? Who have we got? We only microphones
or brand you they're perfect? Hi, Brent Herman. So you know you've
spoken eloquently about abundance in the Age of abundance, So it feels obviously with
AI it's everything else were everywhere all at once. But with robots, and
to get the age of abundance, we'll need a lot of robots. I
know you're working on robots as well. Are there sort of constraints that we
should think of our politician should be thinking of that we might get one country
might get heavily behind in robots. They can do all these things and end
to the age of bunds and therefore be it a strategic disadvantage. Well,
really, anything that can be actuated by a computer is effectively a robot.
So you can think of frankly, Tesla cars or robots on wheels. Anything
that's connected to the Internet is effectively an endpoint actuator for artificial intelligence. So
you've got Bust and Dynamics. Obviously, they've been making impressive robots for a
while. I think there are at this point mostly on by Hundai, So
I guess who is probably gonna make robots of that are humanoid and and some
interesting shapes that I wasn't just patting, like the one that looks like a
has wheels and looks sort of like a kangaroo on wheels. I'm sure what
that is, but it looks a little demanded, frankly. But but there's
gonna be all sorts of all sorts of robots. You've got the company Dison
in the UK, which I think there's some pretty impressive things. I think
the UK will not be behind actually on that front. UK also has ARM,
which is really the best one one of the best paths, the best
in chip design in the world. Tees I use a lot of a lot
of ARM technology. Almost everyone does, actually, so I think UK is
in a strong position. Germany obviously makes a lot of robots, natural robots
that I mean, I think generally countries that make robots of any kind,
even if they seem somewhat conventional'll be We'll be fine. I do think there
is a there is a safety concern, especially with humanoid robots, because at
least the car can't chase you into this building not very easily, you know,
or chase you over a tree, or you know, you can sort
of run up a flight of stairs and get away from a tesla. I
think it's a Stephen King movie about that if your car gets possessed. So,
but if you have a humanoid robot, it can it can basically chase
you anywhere. So I think we should have some kind of hardwired local cutoff
that you can't update from the internet. So anything that can be software updated
from the internet obviously can be overridden. But if you have a local sort
of off switch where you have to say a keyword or something, and then
that puts the robot into a safe state, some kind of localized safe state
ability, an off switch, you know, where you don't have to get
too close to the robot. I don't know, if we've got millions of
these things going over the place, you're not selling it, just you know,
I know, I'm saying this is something we should be quite concerned about
because Robert Robert can follow you anywhere. Then you know what if they just
one day get a software update, and they're not so friendly anymore. We've
got a James Cameron movie on our house. It's actually that's it's funny you're
saying that because in our session that we had today, you know, just
I would say who they made exactly the same point right then, as we're
talking about they're talking about movies actually about mentioning James Cameron. They're talking about
James cameeron movies, and they're saying, if you think about it's not just
those movies, but any of these movies, trains, subways, metro.
They said, all these movies with the same plot fundamentally all end with the
person turning it off right or finding a way to shut the thing down.
And they were making the same point that you were about the importance of actual
physical off switches and so all the technology is great, but undamentally, the
same movie has played out fifty times, we've all watched it, and all
fundamentally, you know, you know, the point I'm revenged right or ends
in pretty much the same way with someone finding a way to just do the
wrong. Which is kind of interesting that you've said a similar point. Right,
it's not the it's not the obvious place you'd go to, but be
One of the tests for the AI was just so like, blank is your
favorite Dreamers camera movie? Excellent? Right, Yes, we got over there.
Yeah, perfect, Hi question for you both. So I'm a founder
of a AI and mL scale up in the third center for AI, which
is leads in the North of England a bit biased. Since the launch of
chat GBT three months after that, we saw a real increase in phishing attacks
using much more sophisticated language patterns. What do we do to protect businesses consumers
that they trust this technology better and how do we bring them along that journey
with us? Well, I think we shouldn't trust it that much. Actually,
it is actually quite quite a significant challenge because we're getting to the point
where even open source AI can pass human capture tests. So you know this,
are you a human identify all the traffic lights in this picture? You're
like, Okay, it's going to have no problem doing that. In fact,
it'll do it better than the human and faster than human. So we're
like, how do you you know at the point which is better a better
human? Better passing human tests than humans? Then well, what tests actually
make sense? That is a real problem. I don't actually have a good
solution to it. That's one of the things we're trying to figure out on
the XP form is how to deal with that, because it really we really
are at the point where even with with open source, you know, readily
available AI, you don't need to be sort of leading in the field.
You can actually be better than humans at passing these tests. And that's sort
of why we think, well, perhaps we should sort of charge a dollar
or a pound a year. It's a very tiny amount of money, but
it's it's still it still makes it privatively expensive to make a million bots.
So and especially if you need a million payment methods, then you run out
of sort of stolen credit cards pretty quickly. So that that's that's sort of
where we're thinking, like we might have to sort of just charge some very
tiny amount of moneyo point three cents a day effectively to deal with the the
onsought of AI powered bonds. And if if and that that is that is
spilit growing problem, but it will be I think perhaps an insurmountable problem next
year. So and then you have to worry about, well, manipulation of
information is making something seem very popular when in fact it it's not because it's
getting boosted by all these likes and reposts from AI powered barts. So that's
why I sort of think somewhat inevitably it leads to some small payment in order
to dramatically increase the cost of a bart. So I think I frankly,
I think probably any social media system it doesn't do that. Also believe you
over on my bart. You know, I think my general answer would be,
you know, we need to show that we are on top of mitigating
the risks right so people can trust the technology. That's what actually the last
couple of days has been about on the Safety Summit is just showing, you
know, we're investing in the Safety Institute, having the people who can do
the research on these things to figure out how we mitigate against them, and
we have to do it fast, and we have to keep iterating it because
all of us probably in this room, believe that the technology can be incredibly
powerful, but we've got to make sure we bring people along that journey with
us, that we're handling the risks that are there and as there's a job
to do, and the last couple of days I think we make good progress
on it. Because we want to focus on the positives and manage these things.
But that requires action, and that's what the last couple of days has
been about your your story, you know, analogy. There was part of
the research that actually, you know, the team working on the task force
here published and presented yesterday. I don't know if you saw it was,
which is essentially that it was a using AI to do to create a ton
of fake profiles on social media and then infiltrate particular groups with particular information.
And actually, at the moment that, as I said to your point,
there's a cost free it's getting. It's getting at the point where it's like,
really, you're going to have one hundred for a penny sort of thing.
Ridiculous. And if you think about some of these social networks that quite
a neighborhood or town levels, not that many big profiles that you need to
quickly create. Suddenly they're everywhere and there's some local issue that might be of
importance, and you know, the team have run versions of how that would
look like, and suddenly they're interacting with everybody and then spreading and misinformation around.
Were literally as part of the research that we published on this information yesterday.
It's a it's a real challenge. Yeah, exactly to your point.
I mean the images. You don't even need to steal somebody's picture because then
that's traceable. But you can actually just say, create a new image of
a person realistic looking but doesn't exist, and then create a biography realistic but
doesn't exist, and do that en mass and practically the only way of Bill
tells that the grammar is too good. Don't give away typho. Come on
now, I'm getting waved at because I think we are out of time.
I don't we take one very brief last question and let's make it go on?
Yes, sir, going, you're right in front of me, go
elon. Question for you related to the X platform. Are there simple things
we can do, especially when it comes to visual media. You alluded to
the fact that it's fairly straightforward and effectively free to make people like yourselves say
and do things that you never said or did. Can we do something like
cryptographically signed media. I'm from Adobe, We're working on this project. Twitter
was a member. Love to see X come back. Okay, digitally signed
media to indicate not only what was created by AI, but what came from
a camera, what was real to imbue a sense of trust in media that
can go viral. That sounds like a good idea. Actually, so if
some way of authenticating would be would be good. So, yeah, that
sounds like a good idea, which we'll probably do it. Yeah, there
you go, actually on that on that point. So I've already and this
is particularly pertinent for people in my job, right, and I've already had
a situation happened to me with adopted image that goes everywhere negative. By the
time everyone realizes, well that's fake and we should stop sending it, the
damages the damage is done. And actually we were again reflecting today. If
you think next year, you've got elections in you know, I think you
know, the US, India, I think Indonesia probably here there you go,
massive news. Actually you've got just an enormous junk of the world's population
is voting next year, right, and you've got EU elections as well.
You know. Actually, just these issues are right in front of ours.
Next year is one of big elections across the globe, probably the first set
of elections where this has been a real issue. So figuring out how we
manage that is I think kind of mission critical for the people who want,
you know, the integrity of our democracy. Yeah, I mean some of
it it's quite entertaining, Like the pope and the puffa jacket. Have you
seen that one? That's amazing, But I mean I saw ritter people who
think that's real. I'm like, well, one of the answer is wearing
a puffa jacket and lie, you know, be sweating. But it actually
looks quite quite dashing of things. In fact, I think AI fashion is
going to be a real thing. So do in glue like, we live
in the most interesting times, and I think this is it is, you
know, eight like eighty percent likely to be good and twenty percent bad.
I think if we're cognizant and careful about the bad part, on balance,
actually it will be the future that we want. Well for the future that
is preferable, and it actually will be some somewhat of a leveler, an
equalizer in the sense that you know, every I think everyone will have access
to goods and services and education, and so you know, I think probably
it leads to more human happiness. So I guess I'd probably leave on an
optimistic note. Tough act. Yeah, that's well, that's that is a
great note to end on. I think that you know we're all onant that
better future. I think it's there. The promise of it is certainly there.
Lots of people in this room, including yourselves, are working hard to
make it happen. Our job in government is to make sure happened safely.
But on the basis of this conversation in the last couple of days, I'm
certainly leaving more confident that we can make that happen. It's been a huge
privilege and pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much for having me.
I think it's