The year 2024 has emerged as a fiercely competitive time in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), with both OpenAI and Google unveiling more advanced and lifelike AI systems. Recently, Elon Musk’s xAI has entered the fray, announcing a significant milestone with $6 billion raised in funding. However, Mr. Musk’s prediction that AI will replace human jobs casts a chilling shadow over these advancements.
xAI emphasized that its primary focus is on developing advanced AI systems that are realistic, highly capable, and benefit humanity to the greatest extent possible. The company’s mission is to understand the true nature of the universe.
Mr. Musk also revealed to investors his plans to build a supercomputer to support xAI’s development. This supercomputer, comprising 100,000 H100 Nvidia GPUs, is expected to be operational by next fall. He mentioned that training the Grok-2 model required about 20,000 H100s, and future models, including Grok-3, will need 100,000 chips.
Musk’s Predictions About AI
On May 24, Mr. Musk participated via video conference in the 2024 “Viva Technology” startup conference held in Paris, France, where he shared his views and predictions about AI. The insights are alarming.He further warned that the two largest AI players, Google Gemini and OpenAI in partnership with Microsoft, “are not maximally truth seeking” and “are pandering to political correctness.”
“[For] example, when Google Gemini came out, one of the questions people asked [was] which is worse, misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear warfare. And it said, misgendering Caitlyn Jenner,” Mr. Musk explained.
“I think that’s extremely dangerous because it could conclude [that] the best way to avoid misgendering would be to destroy all humans, then misgendering is impossible.”
Regarding AI safety, Mr. Musk said, “One of the challenges you have with programming explicit morality into AI is [the] one Luigi problem—if you program Luigi, you can automatically invert that and create bad Luigi.”
“So what? What you cannot invert is the truth of physical reality ... you can’t invert the rules of physics. You can’t invert logic,” Mr. Musk added.
“I think what regulators should be concerned about is, is the AI being rigorously truthful? ... And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Japanese computer engineer Kiyohara Jin questioned the positive development of AI, citing “a lag in human morality.”
“From the current trend, the faster AI develops, the faster human jobs will be replaced. If human brains are implanted with chips, people will be completely controlled by machines. Discussing the positive development of AI is premature because human morality has not kept up,” Mr. Kiyohara said.
‘AI Will Take Over Human Jobs and Education’
In the past, Mr. Musk was a vocal opponent of the rapid development of AI, calling for swift government regulation. However, as AI technology advances, his views appear to be evolving.When asked during the conference about the impact of AI on humans, he said, “In a benign scenario, probably none of us will have a job. There would be universal high income, not universal basic income [but] ‘universal high income.’ There would be no shortage of goods and services.”
However, his next words were thought-provoking: “If the computer and robot can do everything better than you, what meaning does your life have? ... In a negative scenario ... we’re in deep trouble.”
Mr. Musk also discussed how AI will affect children and education. He stated, “Parents will still be responsible for [their children’s] values and morals, [but] AI will dramatically affect education. Because AI is a patient teacher, it will be almost always correct, and can tailor lessons specifically to the child. In the future.”
Despite this, he expressed concern about the impact of social media and AI algorithms on children.
“I do worry that kids these days are being trained by social media. And the social media AI algorithms are basically dopamine maximizers ... I would urge parents to limit the amount of social media that children are able to see.”
Mr. Musk’s predictions about AI’s impact on humans and children echo those of Zack Kass, a former senior marketing executive at OpenAI, who suggested in January that most people won’t have jobs and will heavily rely on AI in their daily lives.
AI Intensifies Executives’ Concerns About Job Security
Mr. Altman’s speech in May highlighted a growing issue: an increasing number of executives and employees are worried about their jobs being replaced by AI. However, they are also compelled to use or learn AI to keep up with the current trend and wave of AI adoption.The survey found that 75 percent of employees use AI in the workplace, but more than half of the respondents hide the fact that they are using AI for their most important tasks. This is because over half of them fear that their jobs are most susceptible to being replaced by AI, yet they are forced to learn and utilize AI to improve their work efficiency.
This displacement has already sparked a wave of protests. Many filmmakers and studios have long relied on AI for production, causing directors, voice actors, and scriptwriters to worry about their livelihoods.
The rapid development of AI makes Mr. Ogino uneasy. He said, “Whether AI development is positive or negative, it will bring disaster to humanity. In a negative scenario, the continuation of human survival will face enormous challenges. In a positive scenario, humans will become overly dependent on AI for all decisions, cease to labor and think, and eventually become puppets manipulated by AI, altering their thoughts and behaviors.”
