{"id":6272,"date":"2023-11-02T22:17:06","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T22:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connectwithfund.com\/business\/elon-musks-conversation-with-british-prime-minister-finishes-off-the-uks-ai-safety-summit\/"},"modified":"2023-11-02T22:17:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T22:17:06","slug":"elon-musks-conversation-with-british-prime-minister-finishes-off-the-uks-ai-safety-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connectwithfund.com\/?p=6272","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s conversation with British prime minister finishes off the UK\u2019s AI Safety Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Elon Musk sat down with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a conversation that dove into the dangers and opportunities of artificial intelligence on Thursday, capping off the UK\u2019s inaugural AI Safety Summit.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAI will be a force for good most likely,\u201d Musk said. \u201cBut the probability of it going bad is not zero percent.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The two men spoke in an interview-style chat from a stage at Lancaster House, a government venue in central London often used for diplomatic purposes, before the conversation was opened up to questions from journalists. The conversation was then posted for streaming on Musk\u2019s personal account on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter that he owns.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk was present throughout the two-day event held mainly at Bletchley Park, the headquarters for the Allied Forces codebreaking program during World War II,\u00a0along with US Vice President Kamala Harris, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and other notable politicians and global tech leaders. Chinese officials were also present at the event.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m glad to see at this point that people are taking AI seriously,\u201d Musk said to Sunak on Thursday.\u00a0\u201cThanks for this summit. I think it will go down in history as quite important.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n In office for just over a year, Sunak has restored some calm to British politics, but also faced challenges over his elite background, having studied at the exclusive Winchester College, Oxford and Stanford universities. Before entering politics, he worked for banks and hedge funds, including Goldman Sachs.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the first day of his AI event, more than 25 countries and the European Union signed the Bletchley Declaration, agreeing to work together to create a united approach to oversight in efforts to deploy AI technology in a \u201chuman-centric, trustworthy and responsible\u201d way, underscoring the \u201cpotential for serious, even catastrophic, harm\u201d that many tech leaders have expressed concern over.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk and world leaders
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\n Musk\u2019s conversation with Sunak is one of numerous chats with world leaders the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has joined in the past few months. It showed his growing influence in geopolitical affairs as well as various technology and industrial sectors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September, weeks before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Netanyahu met with Musk to discuss artificial intelligence and antisemitism on the Musk-owned social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, at a time Musk was warring with the Anti-Defamation League.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk also sat down with French President Emmanuel Macron numerous times in the past year. Other big names that recently made time for Musk in their schedule include Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September.\n <\/p>\n

\n At the event Thursday, Musk noted that if the AI powerhouses such as the United States and the UK \u201care aligned on AI safety, that is a good thing.\u201d And he suggested other global powers such as China should also remain involved in discussions.\n <\/p>\n

\n He compared AI to a magic genie and noted that fairy tales with magic genies that grant wishes \u201cdon\u2019t end well\u201d and cause people to \u201cbe careful what you wish for.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk has increasingly become a fixture in international affairs, making headlines not only for his meetings with heads of state but also for the provision \u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 of SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellite services in war-torn regions.\n <\/p>\n

\n The billionaire received backlash this week for pledging to provide aid organizations in Gaza with Starlink satellite service as the besieged strip struggles with internet connectivity. The Israeli Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi\u00a0said on X<\/a> that Hamas \u201cwill use it for terrorist activities.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cPerhaps Musk would be willing to condition it with the release of our abducted babies, sons, daughters, elderly people. All of them! By then, my office will cut any ties with starlink,\u201d Karhi posted.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk made\u00a0the announcement on X<\/a> after US Democratic Rep.\u00a0<\/strong>Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that \u201ccutting off all communication to a population of 2.2 million is unacceptable.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cStarlink will support connectivity to internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza,\u201d Musk said in a post replying to Ocasio-Cortez.\n <\/p>\n

\n In Walter Isaacson\u2019s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled \u201cElon Musk,\u201d it was revealed that Musk secretly ordered his engineers not to turn on his company\u2019s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet. CNN was provided the excerpt, which has since been amended, according to a version now published by\u00a0The Washington Post.\n <\/p>\n

\n Musk\u2019s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk\u2019s conversations with senior Russian officials, according to Isaacson.\n <\/p>\n

\n The billionaire\u2019s presence at the UK\u2019s summit brings an increased level of media attention to the event that is key to Sunak\u2019s hope for global AI regulation.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are seeing the most disruptive force in history here,\u201d Musk said during the meeting. Sunak and Musk discussed how digital super-intelligence could affect the public and require regulation the same way industries such as aviation and cars that require regulation.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI agree with the vast majority of regulations,\u201d Musk said, noting he quibbles with 1 percent or fewer regulations. \u201cA referee is a good thing.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n At the same time, Musk reiterated his \u201cfairly utopian\u201d belief that AI could create an \u201cage of abundance\u201d with \u201cno shortage of goods and services.\u201d He says AI could lead to a future where \u201cno job is needed\u201d and people enjoy a universal high income. He mentioned a world of AI tutors and companionship for people like his son who has learning disabilities and difficulty making friends.\n <\/p>\n

\n The next AI safety summit are set to be hosted by Korea and France and are scheduled for 2024.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN\u2019s Luke McGee, Ivana Kottasov\u00e1 and <\/em>Sean Lyngaas contributed to this report.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n