Okay. Alright. Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome. Elon, thanks for being here.
Thank you for having me.
We feel we feel very privileged. We're excited to have you. Right. So I'm gonna start with some questions, and
then we're gonna 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.
Well, that's kind of him to say.
Yeah. Well, that's it. That is a nice thing to have anyone say about you. Nice coming from Bill Gates. But oddly enough, when it comes to AI, actually for around a decade, you've almost been doing the opposite and saying, hang on.
Yeah.
We need to think about what we're doing and what we're pushing here and what do we do to make this safe and and actually maybe we shouldn't be pushing this faster 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?
Yeah. I've been somewhat of a Cassandra for quite a while where people would I would tell people, like, we should really be concerned about AI. They'd be like, what are you talking about? Like, I've never really had any experience with with AI. But since I was immersed in technology I have been immersed in technology for a long time. I could see it coming. So but I think this year was there there have been a number of of breakthroughs. I mean, you know, the point at which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves. You know, like, somebody can make a video of you saying anything in real time or me. And so there's sort of the the deep fake videos, which are really incredibly good, in fact, sometimes more convincing than real ones, and bit deep real. And then and then, obviously, things like chat GPT were were quite remarkable. Now I saw GPT one, GPT two, GPT three, GPT four, the the, you know, the whole sort of lead up to that. So it was easy for me to kind of see where it's going if you just sort of extrapolate the points on a curve and assume that trend will continue, then we will have profound artificial intelligence and obviously at a level that far exceeds human intelligence. So but I'm I'm glad to see at this point that people are taking safety seriously, and I'd I'd like to say thank you for holding this AI safety conference. I think actually it will go down in history as being very important. I think it's it's really quite profound. And and 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 but it it is somewhat the of the the magic genie problem, where if you have a magic genie that can grant all the wishes, usually those stories don't end well. Be careful what you wish for, including wishes.
Yeah. Yeah. So you you you talked a little bit about the the summit, and thank you for being engaged in it which has been great and people enjoyed having you there, participating in this dialogue. Now one of the things that we achieved today in the meetings between the companies and the leaders was an agreement that externally, ideally, governments should be doing safety testing of models before they're released. Yeah. I think this is something that you've spoken about a little bit. It was something we worked really hard on Yeah. Because, you know, my job in government is to say, hang on. There is a potential risk here. Not a not a definite risk, but a potential risk Yeah. Of something that could be bad.
Yeah.
You know, my job is to protect the country.
Yes.
That and we can only do that if we develop the capability we need in our safety institute and then go in and make sure we can test the models before they are released. Delighted that that happened today, but, you know, what 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 mitigate against those risks?
Well, I generally think that 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 if the app crashes on your phone or 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 interests of the public. And and this is, of course, true in in many fields, you know, aviation, cars. You know, I I I deal with regulators throughout the world because of Starlink 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 point 1% probably of or less than 1% of regulations I disagree with. So and there is some concern from people in Silicon Valley who who've never dealt with regulators before, and they think that this is gonna just crush innovation and 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 but I think there's we've learned over the years that having a referee is a good thing. And if you look at any sports game, there's always a a referee. And and nobody's suggesting, I think, to have a sports game without one. And and I think that's the the right way to think about this is for for Govind to be a a referee to make sure the sportsmanlike conduct and and and that the public safety is, you know, is addressed, that we care about the public safety. Because I 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 and and like I said, on on balance, I think that that AI will be a force for good, most likely, but the probability of it going bad is not 0%.
Yeah.
So we we just need to mitigate the downside potential.
And then how you talk about referee, and that's
what right there.
Yeah. Well, there we go. I mean, you know, and we talked about this and Demis and I discussed this a long time ago.
We're like literally facing right at it.
And actually, you know, Demis to his credit and the credit of people in the industry did say that to
us. Yeah.
I think, you know, Demis said it's not right. Yeah. That Dennis 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 they hang on, you know, Dennis 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 it's it's a good it's a great point you're making. The the pace of of AI is faster than any technology I've seen in history by far. And it's it seems to be growing in capability by at at least fivefold, perhaps tenfold per year. It'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year.
Yeah.
So so and and and government isn't used to moving at that speed. But I but I think even if there are not firm regulations, even if there's not even if there isn't an enforcement capability, simply having insight and being able to highlight concerns to the public will be very powerful. So even if that's all that's accomplished, I think that will be very, very good.
Okay. Yeah. Well, hopefully, can do better than that. Hopefully, yeah. Yeah. No. But that that's helpful. Actually, we were talking before. It it was striking. You you're someone who spent their life in technology
Yeah.
Living Moore's Law. And what was interesting over the last couple of days talking to everyone who's doing the development of this, and I think you concur with this, is is just the pace of advancement here is unlike anything
Yeah.
All of you have seen in your careers in technology. Is that fair? Because you've got these kind of compounding effects from the hardware and and the data and the personnel.
Yeah. I mean, the the two currently, two leading centers for AI development are the San Francisco Bay Area and the and the sort of London area. But and there there are many other places where it's being done, but those are the two leading areas. So I think if, you know, if if if The United States and The UK and and China are sort of aligned on on safety, that's all gonna be a a good thing. Because that's really that's where that's that's where the the leadership is generally.
You actually it's interesting. You mentioned China there. So I I took a decision to invite China to to Summit over the last few And it was not an easy decision. A lot of people criticized me for it. You know, my view is if you're gonna try
It's essential.
Serious conversation, you need to. But I what were your thoughts? You do business all around the world. You just talked about it there. Yeah. You know, should we be engaging with them? Can we trust them? Is that the right thing to have done?
If if we don't if if China is not on board with AI safety, it it's somewhat of a moot situation. The single biggest objection that I get to any kind of AI regulation or sort of safety controls are, well, China's not gonna do it, and therefore they will just jump into the lead and exceed us all. But but actually China is willing to participate in AI safety. And thank you for inviting them. And I and they, you know, I think I think we should thank China for for attending. When I was I was in China earlier this year, my main subject of discussion with this this the leadership in China was AI safety and saying that this this is really something that they they should care about. And they took it seriously. And and and and you are too, which is which is great. And having them here, I think, was essential, really. If they're if they're if they're not participants, it's it's pointless.
It's pointless. Yeah. No. That and I think we were pleased. I think they were engaged yesterday in the discussions and actually ended up signing the same communique that everyone else did.
That's great.
Which is a good start. Right? And as I we need everyone to approach us in a similar way if we're gonna have, I think, a realistic chance of of resolving it. I was gonna you you talked about innovation earlier and and regulation being annoying. There was a good debate today we had about open source. And I think you you've kind of been a proponent of algorithmic transparency and making some of the the x algorithms public. And we actually we were talking about Jeffrey Hinton on the way in. Yeah. You know, he he's particularly he's been very concerned about open source models being used by bad actors. You've got a group of people who say they are critical to innovation happening in that distributed way. Look, it's it's a trick there's probably no perfect answer and there's a tricky balance. What are your thoughts on how we should approach this open source question? Or, you know, where should we be targeting whatever regulatory or monitoring that we're gonna do?
Well, the open source algorithms and data tend to lag the closed source by six to twelve months. But so that so that but given the rate of improvement that there's actually, therefore, quite a big difference between the the closed source and the and the open. If things are improving by a factor of, let's say, five or more, then 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 it certainly will get to the point where you've got open source AI that can do that that will start to approach human level intelligence or perhaps succeed it. I don't know quite what to do about it. I I think it's somewhat inevitable that there'll be some amount of open source, and I I guess I would have a slight bias towards open source because at least you can see what's going on. And whereas closed source, you don't know what's going on. Now it should be said with AI that even if it's open source, you actually know what's going on? Because if you've got a gigantic data file and, you know, sort of billions of of data points or weights and parameters, you can't just read it and see what it's gonna do. It's a gigantic file of inscrutable numbers. You can test it when you when you run it. You can test it you can run a bunch of tests to see what it's gonna do, but it's probabilistic as opposed to deterministic. It's not it's not like traditional programming where you've got a you've got very discrete logic and and and the outcome is very predictable, and you can read each line and see what each line is gonna do. Neural net is just a whole bunch of probabilities. I mean, sort of ends up being a giant comma separated value file. It's like our digital god is a CSV file? Really? Okay. But that that is kind of what it is.
Yeah. No. It's it's that that point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot because, again, conversations with people who are developing their technology make the point that you've just made. It it is not like normal software where there's predictability about inputs improving leading to this particular output improving. Yeah. And as the models iterate and improve, we don't quite know what's gonna come out the other end. I think Dennis would agree with that, which is why I think there is this bias for 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 brought about in terms of capability, which it it sounds like you would agree with. I I was gonna shift gears a little bit. You know, you've talked a lot about human consciousness, human agency, which actually might strike people as strange given that you are known for being such a brilliant innovator and technologist, but it's it's quite heartfelt when I hear you talk about it and the importance of maintaining that agency technology and preserving human consciousness.
Yeah.
Now, it kinda links the the thing I was gonna ask is when I do interviews or talk to people out and about in this job about AI, the thing that comes up most actually is probably not so much the stuff we've been talking about, but jobs. It's Right. What does AI mean for my job? Yeah.
Is it gonna mean that
I don't have a job or my kids are not gonna have a job? Now, you know, my my answer as a, you know, as a policy maker, as a leader is, you know, 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 copilot 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 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. Something like 60% of the jobs at that moment didn't exist forty years ago, so hard to predict. 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 skilled population, they'll be able to keep up with the the pace of change and have a good life. But, you know, that it's still a concern. And, you know, you what would your kind of observation be on on AI and the impact on labor markets and people's jobs and how they should feel about that as they 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 but there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you want to have a job for sort of personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything. So I don't know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable. It it's it's you know, that's why that's why I say if you if you wish for a magic genie, that gives you any wishes you want. And there's no limit. You don't have those three limits, three wish limit nonsense. You just have many as many wishes as you want. So it it 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 I do think we we it's it'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 gonna be on the exponential portion of the s curve for a long time. And, you know, we have like, so you'll able to ask for anything. It it won't be a and we won't have universal basic income. We'll have universal high income. So in some in some sense, it'll be somewhat of a leveler or an equalizer because, really, I think everyone will have access to this magic genie. And you'll be able to ask any question. It'll be certainly be good for education. You could it'll be the best tutor you could and and the most patient tutor. Except they're all there. And there will be no shortage of goods and services. We'll be in age of abundance. I think if I'd recommend people read in banks. The the Banks culture books are probably the best envisioning in fact, not probably. They're definitely by far the best envisioning of an AI future. There's nothing even close. So I'd recommend really recommend Banks. I'm a very big fan. All his books are good. It doesn't say 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 protopian future with with AI. Yeah.
Which is good from a as 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 it could then leads to the question that you posed. Right? I'm somebody who believes, you know, work gives you meaning. Right? Talk a lot about that as leader. I think work is a good thing. It, you know, gives people purpose in their lives. And if you then remove a large chunk of that, you know, what does that mean? And where do you get that? Yeah. You know, where do you get that drive, that motivation, that purpose? I mean, you were talking about it. You you work a lot of hours. I do. You know? No. I I
As as I was mentioning when we were talking earlier, I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief because I'm I'm putting so much blood, sweat, and tears into a work project and burning the, you know, 3AM oil. Then I'm like, wait. Why am I doing this? I can just wait for the AI to do it. I'm just lashing myself for no reason. Yeah. Must be a glutton for punishment or something. So We call
call call Dennis and tell him to hurry up, and then you can have a holiday. Right? That's the plan. Yeah. No. It's a look. It's a tricky it's a tricky thing because I think, you know, part of our job is to make sure that we can navigate to that very, I think, largely positive place that you're describing It
is like
help through it between now and then because these things bring a lot about a change in in the labor market as we've seen.
Yeah. I I think it's probably is generally a good thing because, you know, there there are a lot of jobs that are uncomfortable or dangerous or Yeah. Sort of tedious, and the computer will have no problem doing that. They'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. And, like, but the computer is perfectly happy to wash dishes. I guess there is you know, we still have sports, like, where where humans compete in, like, the Olympics. And, obviously, a machine can can go faster than any human, but we still have we still humans race against each other and and have all, you know, have these sports competitions against each other where even though the machines are better, we're that's all, I guess, competing to see who can be the best human at something. Yeah. And people do find fulfillment in that. So I guess that's perhaps good example of how even when machines are faster than us, stronger than us
We still find a way.
We still we still enjoy competing against other humans to at least see who's the best human.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a that's a good
that's a good analogy. And we've been talking a lot about managing the risks. Just before we move on, finish on AI, just talk a little bit about the opportunities. You know, you're engaged in lots of different companies, Europe being an obvious which is doing is doing some exciting stuff. You touched on the thing that I'm probably most excited about, which is in education.
Yeah.
And I think many people will have seen Sal Khan's video from earlier this year's TED Talk about as you talked about, it's that personal tutor.
Yeah. An amazing personal tutor.
An amazing personal tutor. And we know the difference in learning having that personalized tutor is incredible compared to classroom learning. So if you can have every child have a personal tutor specifically for them that then just evolves with them over time
Yes.
That could be extraordinary. And so that, you know, for me, I look at it and think, gosh, that is within reach at this point and and that's one of the benefits I'm most excited about. When you look at the the landscape of things that you see as possible, what is it that, you know, you are particularly excited about?
I I think certainly AI AI tutors are gonna 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 every you could say, like, give it permission to read everything you've ever done. So it really will know you better than anyone, perhaps even yourself, and and and where you can talk to it every day and and those conversations spawned upon each other. You will actually have a great friend. As long as that friend can stay your friend and not get turned off or something. Don't turn off my friends. But I think that will actually be a real thing. Oh. And I have a one of my sons is is sort of has some learning disabilities and has trouble making friends, actually. And and I was like, well, you know, he an AI friend would actually be great for him.
Oh, okay. You know, that was a surprising answer. That's actually worth worth reflecting on. That's interesting. I mean, we're already seeing it actually as we deliver, you know, psychotherapy anyway, now doing far more digitally and 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 on x, and then we should open it up to everybody. You made a change when you in one of the you made many changes,
but Yeah. A few.
One of one of the of the changes
You love that letter. Yeah. I've got a real thing about
it. You you really do. I really do. One of the changes
which, you know, kind of, you know, goes into the space that, you know, we have to operate in and this 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 and you you moved away from a kind of manual human Yeah. Way of doing it, the moderation to the the community notes. And Yeah. And I think that's you know, it an interesting change. Right? It's not what everyone else done. It'd 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 if you if you empower people as censors, then well, there's gonna be some amount of bias they have. And then whoever appoints the censors is effectively in control of information. So then the idea behind community notes is, well, how do we have a consensus driven I mean, so it's not really censoring it, but consensus driven approach to truth. How do we make things the least amount untrue? Like, you can say, like, one 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. Now 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 you and you can independently create that community note. So if you've got if if you see a manipulation of the data, you can actually highlight that and say, well, this this there appears to be some gaming of the system, and you can suggest improvements. So it's it's maximum transparency. Yeah. Which is I think
Combined with the kind of wisdom of the crowds transparency to get to a better answer.
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 and there is a bit of AI usage here. So this populated parameter space around each contributor to community notes and then a parameter space. So 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 100 vectors that that because things are more complicated than something right or left. And and and then we'll 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
And so then that that that gives the note credibility. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the that's the core of it, and it's working quite well. Yeah. 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 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, 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. No. Not always. Yeah. But but that's that's that's the aspiration. And I think if if we are if we stay true to the truth, then I think we'll find that people use use the system to learn what is going on and to to learn I think, actually, truth pays. So I I think it'll be what what I mean, assuming you don't wanna engage in self delusion, then then I think it's it's the smart move. You know?
So Excellent. Very helpful. Right. Let's open it up to all our guests here. We've got some microphones. They'll come put your hands up. They'll come and find you. We've got yes. Go for it. Thank you.
Good evening. Alice Benton 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 take for The UK to be a real breeding 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.
John, you wanna go first?
Go for it. Sure. Well, you're right that there are cultural elements where you you, you know, the culture should celebrate creating new companies. And And there should be a bias towards supporting small companies because they're the ones that need nurturing. The larger companies really don't need nurturing. So just you can think of it sort of like a garden. If it's a little sprout, it needs nurturing. If it's a mighty oak, it doesn't need quite as much. So I think that is a mindset change that is important. But I should mention that London is London and San Francisco or the Bay Area are really the two centers for AI. So London is actually doing very well on that front, the two I'd the two leading locations on Earth. You know, San Francisco's probably ahead of London, but London's really very strong. Well, London area. Greater London. Home counties, I guess.
Keep going. Keep going.
So I'm just saying objectively, this is the case. But you do need that you the infrastructure. Landlords who are willing to rent to new companies. You need law firms and accountants that are willing to support new companies. And it's generally a 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. 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 innovative companies including Alice. So Alice, I'd say is you know, 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 the capital that you need, everything from, you know, your seed funding with our incredible, you know, EIS tax reliefs all the way through to, 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. Alright? So that means an education system that prioritizes the things that matter. And you've seen my reforms. I go on about more maths, more maths, more maths. But I think that is important. But also attracting the best and the brightest here. If you look at our fastest growing companies in in this country, and I think it's probably the same in 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 spent the beginning of the session talking about, the regulation. Right? Making sure that we've got a regulatory system that's pro innovation. Yeah. We've of course, we always need guardrails on the things, that will worry us, but we've gotta 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 and be comfortable with failure. You you talked about that a lot. I think you talked about it more in when you were playing games. Right? That that you've gotta be comfortable
Yeah.
Failing and knowing that that's just part of the process. And that is a it's a tricky cultural thing to do overnight, but it's an important part of, I think, creating that kind of environment.
Yeah. If if if you don't succeed with your first start up, it shouldn't be a sort of a catastrophic career ending Exactly. Thing. It should be, you know, well, good I think generally, it should like should be like, well, you know, you gave it a good shot, you know, and and and now try again.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's
So one thing I was gonna mention is, like, obviously, creating a company is sort of a high risk, high reward situation. But and I I don't know quite what this how it works in in The UK. Think it's probably better than than Continental Europe. But the the stock options are very difficult in most parts of Europe. I'm not sure how it is in The UK. But but if somebody's basically going to risk their 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 of of work followed by failure. That's actually most most companies. And so it's a high risk, high reward. And and and so the high reward part does need to be there for it to make sense. Yeah.
I think that was a very soft pitch for a tax policy. There are many chancellor. But I actually I could tell you. So look, a I agree. And then we have so we have I think relative to certainly European countries, but certainly The US and definitely California, a much lower rate of capital gains tax.
Okay.
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 20% capital gains tax rate. And on stock options, I don't know if we've got anyone from Index Ventures in in the room. So, you know, Index, one of our leading VC funds here. Okay. They they do a a regular report looking at most countries' tax treatment of stock options. Yeah. And, you know, when I was chancellor of, you know, treasury secretary equivalent, you know, we were, I think, down at, 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 gotta be the best place to renovate it. 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 from memory.
Okay. Great.
Hopefully, that should 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 of that.
High risk, 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 Seb in front of me, and then I'll come over here. Go on. Go on, Seb.
Thanks very much. 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 super hubs and so on, how does that map onto the everyday lives of people living in, say, Austin, Texas to choose one around you more, in my case, Nottingham, East Midlands? What what is how do you see that evolving for people, you know, every day?
The sort of everyday effects of AI? Yeah.
For context, Elon. So Seb Seb runs our our equivalent of CVS, right, or Walgreens. So Okay. You know, when actually I visited, right, so he's got millions of people coming in his shops every day and it's making sure how do we make this relevant. I think Seb is your question. How how is this relevant to that person? Maybe You actually, I'll let me go I'll go first on that because I I think it's a 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, well, how are we doing AI right now that is making a difference to people's lives? And we have this thing called gov.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.uk, and so you need to get a driving license, pass or any interaction with government. It was centralized in a very easy, relatively easy to use way. Better than most. Better than most. Exactly. So we are we are about to we're about to deploy AI across that platform. 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.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 flight's in five hours. You know, 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, boom, boom, boom, boom. This is what we're gonna do. Walk you through it. And that's gonna benefit millions and millions of people every single day. Right? Because that's a very practical way in 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
Yeah.
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. No. Exactly. The the most immediate thing is just being able to ask, like, having a very smart friend that you can ask anything.
Right.
You know, ask how to make something, how to solve any problem, and it'll tell you. So and and obviously, companies are gonna adopt this. So I think you'll have much better customer service, I guess, essentially. That'll probably be the first thing that is and then 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, that's really pretty much there already almost. I mean, we need to obviously, AI needs to stop hallucinating before it can't give you I mean, still have a little bit of a problem where it can give you an answer that's confidently wrong with great grammar and bullet points and everything in citations that are not real. So it has to be okay. We need to make sure it's not it's not it's not giving you confidently wrong tutor answers. But but we that's gonna happen pretty quickly where it is actually correct. So yeah.
Was gonna say for any for any parent who was homeschooling during COVID and realizing what their kids needed to be helped with
Yeah.
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 don't need microphones or Brent, are you there? Perfect.
Hi. Brent Hoveman. So, you know, you've spoken eloquently about abundance and the age of abundance. So, it it feels obviously with AI, it's everything everywhere everywhere all at once. But with Yeah. With robots and to to get the age of abundance, we'll need a lot of robots. I know you're working a lot on robots as well. Are there sort of constraints that we should think of and our politicians should be thinking of that one country might get heavily behind in robots that can do all these things and enter the age of abundance and therefore be at 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 are robots on wheels. Anything that's connected to the Internet is effectively an endpoint actuator for artificial intelligence. So you've got Boston Dynamics. Obviously, they've been making impressive robots for a while. I think they're, at this point, mostly owned by Hyundai. So I I guess Hyundai is probably gonna make robots of that are humanoid and and and some rather interesting shapes that I wasn't anticipating, like the one that looks like a has wheels and looks sort of like a kangaroo on wheels. I'm not sure what that is, but looks a little demented, frankly. But there's gonna be all sorts of all sorts of robots. You've got the company Dyson in in The UK, which I think does some pretty impressive things. I I think The UK will not be behind actually on on that front. UK also has ARM, which is really the the best one of the best, perhaps the best in in chip design in the world. Tesla uses a lot of a lot of ARM technology. Almost everyone does, actually. So I think The UK is in a in a strong position. Germany obviously makes a lot of robots, industrial robots. I mean, I I think generally countries that make robots of any kind, even if they seem somewhat conventional, will be will be fine. I do think there is a there is a safety concern, especially with humanoid robots because, you know, at least the the car can't chase you into this building, not very easily, you know, or chase you off a tree or, you you can sort of run up a flight of stairs and get away from a Tesla. I think there'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 I think we should have some kind of hardwired local cutoff that you that you can't update from the Internet. So anything that can be software updated from the Internet obviously can be overwritten. But if you have a local sort of off switch where you pay perhaps 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. So we we do if if we've got millions of these things going all over the place
You're you're not selling it.
Just, you know, like
No. I I I know. I'm saying this is something we should be quite concerned about. Because if the robot robot can follow you anywhere, then, you know, what if they just one day get a software update and they're not so friendly anymore? Then we've we've got a James Cameron movie on our heads.
It's it's actually that's it's funny you're saying that because we in our session that we had today, I I, you know, just would say who made we they made exactly the same point. Right? Dennis, they were talking about they talk about movies. Actually, without mentioning James Cameron, they're talking about James Cameron movies. And they're saying, if you think about it, it's not just those movies, but any of these movies, trains, subways, metros, cars, buses. 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 that you were about the importance of actual physical off switches. Yeah. And so all the technology is great, but fundamentally, this same movie has played out 50 times. We've all watched it, and it all fundamentally, you know you know, the point I'm referring to. Right? It all ends in pretty much the same way with someone finding a way to
Yeah.
Do the thing. At which is kind of interesting that you said a similar point.
Right? Yeah.
It's it's not the it's not the obvious place you'd go to.
But Maybe that could be one of tests for the AI. We we we should say like, blank is your favorite James Cameron movie. Fill in the blank. Yep.
Excellent. Right. Yes. We got over there. Yep. Perfect.
Hi. Question for you both. So I'm a founder of a AI and ML scale up in the third center for AI, is Leeds in the North Of England. I'm a bit biased. Since the launch of ChatGPT, 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 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 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 is, are you a human? Identify all the traffic lights in this picture. You're like, okay. AI is gonna have no problem doing that. In fact, it'll do it better than a human and faster than a human. So we're like, how do you you know, at the point at which it's better a better human better passing human tests than humans, then, well, what tests actually make sense? That is a real problem. I I don't actually have a good solution to it. That one of the things we're trying to figure out on the X platform is how to deal with that because it real 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 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. That's a very tiny amount of money, but it still makes it prohibitively expensive to make a million baht. 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 money, 0.3¢ a day effectively, to deal with the onslaught of AI powered bots. And if if if and and that that is that is still a growing problem, but it will be, I think, perhaps an insurmountable problem next year. So and and and then you have to worry about, well, manipulation of of information is making something seem very popular when in fact it is not because it's getting boosted by all these likes and and and reposts from AI powered bots. So that's why I I sort of think somewhat inevitably it leads to some small payment in order to dramatically increase the the cost of a bot. So I think I think, frankly, I think probably any social media system that doesn't do that will simply be overrun by Vant. You know, I
think my my general answer would be, you know, we 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 I think all of us probably in this room believe that the technology can be incredibly powerful, but we've gotta make sure we bring people along that journey with us, that we're handling the risks that are there. And as I said, there's a job to do in the last couple of days. I think we made good progress on it because we wanna focus on the positives and manage these things, but that requires action. And and that's what the last couple of days have been about. Your your story, your 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 using AI to do, to create a ton of fake profiles Mhmm. On social media and then infiltrate particular groups Yeah. With particular information. Yeah. And actually, at the moment, that is, to your point, is like cost free.
It's it's getting to it's getting to the point where it's like, really you're gonna have a 100 for
a penny Yeah.
Sort of thing. Ridiculous.
And if you think about some of these social networks at quite a neighborhood or town level, it's not that many
Right.
Fake profiles that you quickly create. Suddenly they're everywhere, and there's some local issue that might be of importance. And, you know, the team have have run versions of how that would look like, and suddenly they're interacting with everybody and then spreading misinformation around. Yeah. That's a real challenge. Literally, as part
of the
research that we published on misinformation yesterday, it's a it's a real challenge.
Yeah. Exactly. And to your point, I mean, you the images, it's 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 a new image of a person, realistic looking, but doesn't exist, and and then create a biography, realistic but doesn't exist, and do that en masse. And and practically the only way you'll be able to tell is that the grammar is too good. Dead giveaway. Yeah. No typos? Come on.
Now I'm getting waved at because I think we are out of time. I know we take one very brief last question, and let's make a good one. Yes, sir. Go on. You're right in front of me. Go on.
Thank you for the opportunity. Elon, question for you related to 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.
Yeah.
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. 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 good. So yeah, I I that sounds like a good idea. We should we should probably do it.
Yeah. There you go. I I you know, and actually on that on that point, I so I've I've already so this is particularly pertinent for people in my job. Right? And I've already had a situation happen to me with a doctored image that goes everywhere negative. By the time everyone realizes, well, that's fake and we should stop sending it, the damage is 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. And actually, you've got just an enormous chunk of the world's population is voting next year. Right? And you've got EU elections as well. Yeah. And you know, actually just these issues are right in front of us. Know, next year is where big elections across the globe, probably the first set of elections where this has been a real issue.
Yeah.
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 is is quite entertaining, like the the pope in the puffer jacket. Have you seen that one? I haven't. That's amazing.
But, I mean, I still run
into people who who who think that's real. I'm like, well, what are the odds he's wearing a puffer jacket in July in Rome? You know, be sweating. But it actually looked quite quite dashing out of things. In fact, I think AI fashion is gonna be a real thing. So so I don't know if we're doom and gloomy. Like, we we live in the most interesting times, and I think this is it is, you know, like 80% likely to be good and 20% 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 the future that is preferable. And 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 I guess I'd probably leave on on an optimistic note. Perfect. Yeah.
I that's a well, that that's
a that is a great note to end on. I think that, you know, we all want that that better future. Yeah. We think it's there. The promise of it is certainly there. Lots of people in this room, including yourselves, working are hard to make it happen. Our job in government is to make sure it happens 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. So it's been a huge privilege and a pleasure to have you here.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
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