Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Bill Gates said, there is no one in our time
who has done more to push the bounds of science.
Speaker 3: Innovation than you.
Speaker 1: What's kind of going to say, well.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Make this safe?
Speaker 2: And actually maybe we shouldn't be pushing as faster 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?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I've been somewhat of a Cassandra for quite a
while where people would I tell you, like, we should
really be concerned about AI, and that'd be like, what
are you talking about? Like I've never really had any
experience with it 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's been a number of breakthroughs. I mean,
you know, the point in which someone can see a
dynamically created video of themselves, you know, like it, so
you can make a video of you anything in real time,
or me. And so there's sort of the deep pic
videos which are really incredibly good, in fact, sometimes more
convincing than real ones and deep real and then and
then obviously things like chat GPT were quite remarkable, and
now I saw a GPT one, GP two, GPT three,
GPD 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 tread will continue, then we will have profound artificial intelligence,
and obviously at the level that far exceeds human intelligence.
So but I'm glad to see at this point that
people are taking safety seriously, and I like, I 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 really quite profound, 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 of the magic
gene problem where if you have a magic gene that
can grab all the wishes, usually those stories don't end well.
Too careful what you wish for, including wishes.
Speaker 2: 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 pulling 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 their relief. 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,
and not a definite risk, but a potential risk of
something that could be bad.
Speaker 3: My job is to protect.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Models before they are released.
Speaker 2: Delight of 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
ours should be doing to manage and degate against those risks.
Speaker 1: Well, I 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. If the app crashes
on your phone, your laptop, it's not a massive catastrophe.
But when 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 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 from people in
Silicon Valley who who have never dealt with regulators before,
and they think that this is going to just crush
innovation and slow them down and be annoying. But and
it will be annoying, It's true. They're not wrong about that.
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 for governed to be a referee, to make
sure the sportsmanlike conduct and that the public safety is
you know, 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 like I said that, on balance, I think that
the AI will be a forceful good most likely, but
the probability of it going bad it's not zero percent. Yeah,
so we just need to mitigate the downside potential.
Speaker 3: And then how you talk about referee and that's.
Speaker 1: What we're demonstrate there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there we go.
Speaker 2: I mean you know, and we talked about this in
demos and I discussed this a long time ago, like
literally facing right and actually Demoster his credit and the
credit of people in the industry.
Speaker 3: Did say that to us.
Speaker 2: You say it's not right. Yeah, that Demis and his
colleagues are marking their own homework.
Speaker 3: Right. There needs to be someone independent, and.
Speaker 2: That's why we've developed the Safety Institute here. Do you
think governments can develop the expertise. One of the things
we need to do is they hang on you know,
Denis and Sam all the others. I've 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 it quick enough?
Speaker 1: No, I think 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 peraps tenfold per year.
It'll certainly grow by an automatitude next year. Yeah, 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 good.
Speaker 3: Okay, y well, hopefully we can do better than that.
Speaker 1: Hopefully.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, but that's how fair. Actually, we were
talking before it was striking. You know, 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 just the pace
of advancement here is unlike anything all of you have
seen in your careers and technology.
Speaker 3: Is that fair because you've got these kind.
Speaker 2: Of compounding effects from the hardware and the data and
the personnel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the two currently the two leading centers
for a development are the San Franusco area and the
sort of London area, 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 going to be. That's really that's where that's
where the leadership is general.
Speaker 2: And 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 easy decision. A lot
of people criticize me for you know, my viewers, if
you're going to try it essential 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?
Speaker 1: 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 a 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 a safety and thank
you for inviting them, and they you know, I think
we should thank China for for attending. When I was
in China earlier this year, My main subject of discussion
with 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 you are too, which
is great. And having them here I think was essential. Really,
if they're not participants, it's pointless.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, I know 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 You talked about innovation earlier and
regulation being annoying.
Speaker 3: There was a good debate today we had about.
Speaker 2: Open source, and I think you've kind of been a
proponent of algorithmic transparency and making some of the ex
algorithms public and actually we were talking about every hint
and on the way in. He's particularly been very concerned
about open source models being used.
Speaker 3: By bad actors.
Speaker 2: You've got a group of people who say they are
critical to innovation happening in that distributed way.
Speaker 3: Look, it's a trick.
Speaker 2: There's probably no perfect answer, and there is a tricky balance.
What are 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.
Speaker 1: To do well. The open source algorithms and data tend
to lag the closed source by six to twelve. But
given the rate of improvement that there's actually there for
quite a big difference between the closed source in 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 PAPS succeeded. I don't know
quite what to do about it. I think it's somewhat
inevermentle 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 days of 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 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 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's going to do. A neural net is just a
much 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, that is kind
of what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, at that point you've just made is one
that we have been talking about a lot, because again
conversation with the people are developing their technology.
Speaker 3: Make the point that you've just made. It is not
like normal.
Speaker 2: 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 we would agree with that, which
is why I think there is this bias that 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 agree with. I was
going to shift goes a little bit on You know,
you've talked a lot about human consciousness human agency, which
it actually might strike people as strange given that you
are known for being such a brilliant innovator and technologist,
but it's quite heartfelt when I hear you talk about
it and the importance of maintaining that agency in technology
and preserving human consciousness.
Speaker 3: Now it kind of links.
Speaker 2: 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, answer as a policymaker.
Speaker 3: As a leader is actually, AI is already.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: The amount of jobs.
Speaker 2: I was quoting an MIT study today that they did
a couple of years ago, something like sixty percent of
the jobs at that moment didn't exist forty years ago.
Speaker 3: So hard to predict.
Speaker 2: 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 you know, what
would your kind of observation be on AI and the
impact of labor markets and people's jobs and how they
should feel about that as they think about this.
Speaker 1: 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 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. You know. That's why
I say, 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 limit, not
since you 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. I do think we it's hard you
know when when? When this 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 ask
for anything, and it won't be if 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 gene and you're able to
ask any question. It will certainly be good for education.
It'll be the best tutor you could, the most patient
tutor sit 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. Does not say which one all of them,
So that's that'll give you a sense of what is
a I guess a fairly utopian pro toopian future with
with AI, Yeah, which is.
Speaker 2: Good from an as you said, it's a universal high income,
which is a nice phrase, and that's it's good for
a materialistic sense of abundance. Actually, that kind of then
leads to the question.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 3: And where do you get that?
Speaker 2: You know, where do you get that drive, that motivation,
that purpose. I mean, you're talking about it. You work
a lot of our you know.
Speaker 1: As I was mentioning when we were talking earlier, I
have to somewhat engage in the liberty suspension of disbelief
because I'm putting so much blood, sweat and tears into
a work project in 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. It must be a
glutton for punishment.
Speaker 2: Called demos and tell them to hurry up and then
you can have a holiday.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a plan. Yeah, No, it's a Look, it's
a tricky.
Speaker 2: 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 and
help people through it between now and then, because these
things bring a lot about a change in the labor
market as we've seen.
Speaker 1: 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
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 a 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 saw
humans race against each other and have all, you know,
have these sports competitions against each other where even though
the machines are better, which there's all I guess computingity,
who can be the best human at something and people
do find fulfillment in that. So I guess that's perhaps
a good example of how even when machines are faster
than us, stronger than us.
Speaker 3: We still find a way.
Speaker 1: We still enjoy competing against other humans, so at least
who's the best human.
Speaker 2: It'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 one, 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 Suth's.
Speaker 3: Video from earlier this year.
Speaker 2: Is ted talk about as you talked about, it's like
a personal tutor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an amazing personal tutor, an.
Speaker 3: Amazing personal tutor.
Speaker 2: And we know the difference in learning having that personal
his tutor is incredible compared to class from learning. So
if you can have every child have a personal tutor
specifically for them that then just evolves with them over time,
that could be extraordinary. 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.
Speaker 1: I think certainly a tutors are going to be the 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 haven't that has memory, you know,
and remembers all of your interactions and has read every
you're going 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 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 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 friend.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know 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 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 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 in one of the made
many changes, but one of the one.
Speaker 1: Of the change that letter. Yet thing about it, you really.
Speaker 2: 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 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 moved away from a kind of
manual human way of doing it the moderation.
Speaker 3: To the community that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's 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?
Speaker 1: 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 that they have and then whoever
points 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 or how do we make things the least amount untrue?
Could you say, like you can't perhaps get to pure truth,
but you can aspire to be more truthful. So the
thing about comurnity 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. 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 you can independently create that community note. So if
you've got if you see manipulations of data, you can
actually highlight that and say, well this this there appears
to be some gaming of the system, and you can
suggest improvement. So it's maximum transparency, which.
Speaker 2: Is I think combined with the kind of wisdom of
the crowds and trying to get to a better answer.
Speaker 1: 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 this will populate
a parameter space around each contributor to the community notes,
and then a parameter space so everyone's got basically these
vectors associated with them, which so it's not as simple
as right or left, it's saying, it's more it's several
hundred vectors. That that because things are more complicated than
something right, right or left, and and they will we'll
do sort of inverse correlation, say like, okay, these people
generally disagree, but they agree about this note. Okay, so
then that so then that that that gives the note credibility. Okay, yeah,
that's that's the core of it. And it's working quite well.
I get to see a note actually be present for
more than a few hours, but that 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 disinformation, 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 at always, but 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 I think actually truth pays, so I think it'll
be well, I mean, assuming you don't want to engage
in self delusion, then I think it's the smart move.
Speaker 3: Excellent, very helpful. Right, let's open it up to all
our guests here, and.
Speaker 2: We've got some microphones that'll complete I find you have,
we got yes, go for it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, good evening.
Speaker 4: Alice Pentink from an 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
take for the UK to be a real breeding unicorn companies?
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?
Speaker 3: Thank you? You want to go first?
Speaker 1: 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 companies because 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 nurturing, if it's a
mighty ogre, doesn't need quite as much. So I think
that is a mindset change that is important. But I
should mention that London is you know, London and San
Francisco or the Bay Area are really the two centers
for AI. So that so London is actually doing very
well on that front. That the two most I said,
the two leading locations on Earth. You know, San Francisco's
probably head of London, but London's really very strong. But
London Area greater London home counties, I guess. So I'm
just saying objectively this is the case. But you do
need that. You need the infrastructure, you need the landlords
who are willing to rent to new companies. You need
more 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
a good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, 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 they're nuts and bolts right, make sure
that all of you are starting companies can raise the
capital that you need everything from. You know, you'll see
funding with our incredible you know EI tax reliefs all
the way through.
Speaker 3: To your late stage rounds.
Speaker 2: 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 deployed into
growth equity.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That is a work in progress. We're not there yet,
but I think we're making good progress. We need talent,
we need people, so that means an education system that
prioritizes the things that matter.
Speaker 3: And you've seen my reforms.
Speaker 2: I go on about more maths, more maths, more maths,
But I think that it's important but also attracting the
best and the brightest fit. 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.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Now, those are all my jobs.
Speaker 2: 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 and
be comfortable with failure.
Speaker 3: You talk about that a lot. I think you talked about.
Speaker 2: It more when you were playing games, right, But you've
got to be comfortable failing and knowing that that's just
part of the process. And that is a tricky cultural
thing to do overnight, but it's an important part of
I think creating that.
Speaker 3: Kind of environment.
Speaker 1: 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 should
like should be like, well, you know, you gave it
a good shot, you know, in now try.
Speaker 3: Again and exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's so one thing I'm going to mention is,
like I've seen, creating a company is sort of a
high risk, high reward situation. But I don't know quite
what the how works. In the UK I think is
probably better than contenttle Europe, but I'm not sure how
does the new give it. But if somebody's basically going
to risk their life savings and with the beast 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.
But that's actually most companies, and so it's a high risk,
high reward and so the higher reward part does need
to be there for it to make sense.
Speaker 2: I think that was a very soft pitch for a
tax policy. I mean, 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.
Speaker 3: So it's twenty percent capital gains tax right.
Speaker 2: And on stock options, I don't know if we've got
anyone from Index Ventures in the room.
Speaker 3: So you know, Index one of our bleeding VC funds here.
Speaker 2: Okay, they do a regular report looking at most countries
tax of stock options. And you know, when I was
a Chancellor of Treasury sexualy equivalent, you know, we were
I think down we were pretty good, but we were
fourth or fifth, and I said we need to for
exactly the reason that you mentioned. I 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 had made, we have moved
up to I think second from memory. So hopefully they
actually give you and everyone else some comfort that we recognize.
That's important because when people work hard and risk things, yeah, they.
Speaker 3: Should be able to enjoy the rewards and award.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Gone, thanks very much.
Speaker 5: We've talked about some really big ideas, global changing ideas.
I'm really interested, particularly in the context of creation of
science and technology superhubs and so on. How does that
map onto the everyday lives of people living in say Austin, Texas,
to choose not aroundin the more in my case Nottingham,
East Midlands. What is how do you see that evolving
for people you know every.
Speaker 2: Day sort of every day effective AI for context, Elon
Sis said runs are equivalent of CDs, right or Walgreens.
So you know, as 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 that your question how is this relevant to that person?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Maybe actually let me go I'll go first on that
because I think it's a fair point. I was just
going over with the team a couple of things that
we're doing because I was saying, 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 which is
which actually when we when it happened several years ago,
was a pioneering thing all the government information together on
one website and 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.
Speaker 3: Better than most. So we're about to deploy AI across
that platform.
Speaker 2: So that is something that I think you know, several
million people a day use, right, So a large chunk
of the popular is interacting with gov dot UK every single.
Speaker 3: Day to do all these day to day tasks.
Speaker 2: 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.
At the moment, that would require you know how many
steps to figure out what you do. Yeah, Actually, when
we deploy the AI, it should be that you could
just literally say that and boom, this is.
Speaker 3: What we're going to do, walk.
Speaker 2: You through it, and that's going to benefit millions and
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.
Speaker 1: 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 will probably be the first thing you notice.
And then we talked about education. So having a tutor
so that 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 a problem where it can give you an
answer that's confidently wrong with great grammar, you know, bullet
points and everything in citations. It was not real. So
that's be okay, we need to make sure it's not
it's not it's not giving you confidently wrong tutor answers.
But but that's going to happen pretty quickly where it
is actually correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, say for any parent who was homeschooling and realizing
what their kids needed to be helped with, yeah, that
will come as an enormous relief.
Speaker 1: I think they're very good.
Speaker 2: Right, have we got let's go questions over here, who
have got only microphones or brand that perfect.
Speaker 6: 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 everywhere, all at once, but with robots,
and to get the age of abundance will need a
lot of robots. I know you're working out 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
that can do all these things and end to the
age of bunds and therefore be it a strategic disadvantage.
Speaker 1: 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 they are at
this point mostly owned by Hundai, So I guess I
is probably gonna make robots that are humanoid and some
interesting shapes that I wasn't just beating 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's a little demanded, frankly, but there's going to
be all sorts of robots. You've got the company Dison,
in which I think there's some pretty impressive things, and
I think the UK will not be behind. Actually on
that front, the UK also has ARM, which is really
the best once one of the best peraps, the best
in chip design in the world. Tesla uses a lot
of ARM technology almost every winds actually, so I think
the UK is in a strong position. Germany obviously makes
a lot of robots, industrial robots. I mean, I think
generally countries that make robots of any kind, even if
they seem somewhat conventional, will be fine. I do think
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 pere car
gets possessed so, but if you have a humanoid robot,
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 could be
after updated from the internet obviously could 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, it's some
kind of localized safe state ability and off switch, you know,
where you don't have to get too close to the robot.
I don't know. So we've got millions of these things
going over the place.
Speaker 3: You're not selling it, just you know, I know.
Speaker 1: I'm saying this is something we should be quite concerned
about because 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.
Speaker 2: It's actually that's it's funny you're saying that, because in
our session that we had today, I just would say
who they made exactly the same point right then, And
so we're talking about they're talking about movies actually about
mentioning James Cameron. They're talking about James cameraon movies the same.
If you think about it, it's not just those movies, but
any of these movies, trains, subways, metros. They said, all
these movies with the same plot fundamentally all and 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.
Speaker 3: Physical off switches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so all the technology is great, but undamentally,
the same movie has played out fifty times. We've all
watched it and they're all fundamentally you know, you know
point I'm revenge right, it all ends in pretty much
the same way, with someone finding their way to just.
Speaker 1: Do it wrong.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: Be one of the tests for the AI, which is
so like blank is your favorite Gamers camera movie for
Linda Blank?
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, right, Yes, we got over there, yep, perfect, Hi.
Speaker 7: 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 and
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 so they trust this technology better
and how do we bring them along that.
Speaker 1: Journey with this, Well, I think we shouldn't trusted that much. Actually,
it is actually quite quite a significant allenge because we're
getting to the point where even open source AI can
pass human capture tests. So you know, this is are
you're human identify all the traffic lights in this picture.
You're like, okay, yeah, 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 know it's the point which is 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.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: One of the things we're trying to figure out on
the X platform is how to deal with that, because
it really we really are at the point where even
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 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's that's sort of where we're thinking, like we
might have to sort of just charge some very tiny
amount of money three cents a day effectively to deal
with the onsought of AI power advance. And that is
not a 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 bot. So
I frankly I think probably any social media system that
doesn't do that will simply be over on by bot.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: Has been about. Your story, you know, analogy.
Speaker 2: There was part of the research that actually, you know,
the team working on the task force here published and
presented yesterday.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you.
Speaker 2: Saw it was, which is essentially that it was 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, and there's a cost.
Speaker 1: Free, it's getting to the point where it's like, really,
you're going to have one hundred for a penny sort
of thing. Ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And if you think about some of these social networks
quite a neighborhood or town level, it's not that many
fake profiles.
Speaker 3: Suddenly they're everywhere and.
Speaker 2: There's some local issue that might be of importance, and
you know, the team of run versions of how that
would look like, and suddenly they're interacting with everybody and
then spreading and misinformation around. Yeah, challenge, and we literally
as part of the research that we published on this
information yesterday, it's a real challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly to your point. I mean the images, it's
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 it doesn't exist,
and then create a biography realistic but doesn't exist, and
do that en mass and practically the only way of
able to tell us that the grammar is too good
give away typhos.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 8: 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
working on this project. Twitter was a member. Love to
see X come back digitally sign media to indicate not
only what was created by AI, but what came from
a camera, what was real to imview, A sense of
trust in media that can go viral.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a good idea. Actually, so if some
way of authenticating would be good. So, yeah, that sounds
like a good idea, we should probably do it.
Speaker 2: There you go, and actually on that on that point already,
And this is particularly partner for people in my job,
right and I've already had a situation happened to me
with adopted image that goes everywhere negative.
Speaker 3: By the time everyone realizes all.
Speaker 2: That's fake and we should stop sending it the damages damage.
Speaker 3: And actually we were again reflecting today.
Speaker 2: If you think next year, you've got elections in you know,
I think you know, the US, India, I think Indonesia.
Speaker 3: Probably here there you go for massive news and actually you've.
Speaker 2: Got just an enormous junk of the world's population is
voting next year, right, and you've got EU elections as well.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Actually, just these issues are right in front of ours.
Next year is where a big election across the globe,
probably the first set of elections.
Speaker 3: Where this has been a real issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So figuring out how we manage that is I
think kind of mission critical for the people who want
the integrity of our democracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean some of it is quite entertaining, like
the pope and the puffer jacket. Have you seen that one?
That's amazing, But I mean I still write to people
who think that's real. I'm like, well, one of the
answer is wearing a puffer jacket in July, right, 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 doing gloom like we learn in the most interesting times.
And I think this is it is, you know, like
eighty percent likely to be good and twenty percent bad.
And I think if we're cognizant and careful about the
bad part, on balance, actually it will be the future
that we want or for the future that is preferable,
and it actually will be somewhat of a leveler, an
equalizer in the sense that you know, 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.
Speaker 3: Tough act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's that is a great note to end on.
I think we all want that better future. I think
it's that the promise of it is certainly there. Lots
of people in this room, including yourselves, are working hard to.
Speaker 3: Make it happen.
Speaker 2: Our job in government is to make sure it happen safely.
But on the basis of this conversation in the last
couple of days, I'm certainly leaving more confident.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.