Elon Musk claims AI will soon replace all jobs with work becoming optional… | Latest Lifestyle News
In response to a New York Times report claiming Amazon is looking to replace about 600,000 jobs with robots and artificial intelligence, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said, “AI and robots will replace all jobs.”
Musk was responding to an X user who commented on the Times article, saying, “It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks.”
The CEO’s response did not end with AI replacing our jobs, though. Musk claims that “working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store.”
American Bazaar online reported on the response to the New York Times article, which highlighted documents and interviews suggesting that the company is working to automate 75% of its operations, all while encouraging employees to avoid words like “automation” and “AI.” Amazon refuted the report, saying it is not representative of their overall hiring policies.
Musk’s response is unsurprising, as in the past he has made statements claiming that AI will raise the standard of living, telling Ted Cruz in an interview that “Goods and services will become close to free. It’s not as though people will be wanting in terms of goods and services. You have tens of billions of robots that will make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing.”
In his vision of a world with little to no jobs for the average person, though, it’s unclear how Musk envisions people affording that “basically next to nothing.”
Musk appears to be genuine in his belief about goods and services costing less in the future, but he seems to be agreeing with the increasingly popular notion of an “AI dividend” that former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed in some detail earlier this year, suggesting that AI is made possible through societal investments and advances, and if it is to be replacing jobs, society should get a financial dividend from those profits and spread it across citizens to benefit.
Not all attitudes about AI and robots are so positive. With over 7.4 million people unemployed in the United States alone as of August, the prospect of losing even more jobs to technology is frightening to many. Even the so-called “godfather of AI,” Geoffrey Hinton, has expressed concern that “it will make a few people much richer and most people poorer.”
In addition to the employment impact, these technologies use a lot of energy, contributing to rising electricity costs, air pollution, and rising global temperatures, and also using exorbitant amounts of water to cool data processing centers.
Some X users were quick to disagree with Musk online. One user said, “I’m sorry, but basic human nature reveals that when people no longer have a purpose (most people feel they have some degree of purpose through their careers) that laziness, anger and despair will set in in short order. It seems like a good idea, but will backfire over time.”
Another user said, “And there will be massive unemployment during the transition period,” while even more responded with clips from dystopian movies and memes about universal control.
Others tried to be more optimistic. “The sooner we accept this reality,” one wrote, “the better we can manage the transition.”
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