Transcription
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 to say."
"Yeah. Well, that's it'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, 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 as fast or as hard as we are.' Like, I mean, you've been doing it for a decade. 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 be like what are you talking about? Like they'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 that there have been a number of of breakthroughs. I mean, you know, the point to which someone can see a dynamically created video of themselves. Um, you know, like somebody can make a video of you saying anything in real time or me and so there sort of the deep fake videos which are really incredibly good. In fact, sometimes more convincing than real ones and deep real and um and then and then obviously things like chat GPT were were quite remarkable. Now I saw uh GPT1, GPT2, GPT3, GPT4, you know, the whole sort of leadup 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. Um so but I'm I'm glad to see at this point that people are taking uh safety seriously and 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 a artificial intelligence AI to have most likely a positive effect. 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 app crashes on your phone or your laptop it's not a a massive catastrophe. But when you talking about digital super intelligence 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 and this is of course true in many fields you know aviation cars you know I I and I deal with regulators throughout the world because of being communications rockets being aerospace and cars you know being tra vehicle transport so I'm very familiar with dealing with with regulators and I actually agree with the vast majority majority of regulations. There's a few that I disagree with from time to time, but 0.1% probably of or less than 1% of regulations I disagree with. So there is some concern from people in Silicon Valley who who've never dealt with regulators before and they think that this is going to 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 government to be a a referee to make sure the sportsmanlike conduct and and and that the public safety is you know, is 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 and and and and like on on balance, I think that that the AI will be a forceful 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 we're trying to demonstrate that."
"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 him. And actually, you know, Demis to his credit and the credit of people in the industry did say that to us. You know, De say it's not right that Demis 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 say, 'Hang on, you know, Demis, Sam, all the others have got a lot of very smart people doing this. Governments need to quickly tool up capability wise, personnel wise, you know, 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 a good it's a great point you're making. Um, 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 10fold per year. It it'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year."
"Yeah."
"So, Currently the two leading centers for AI development are the San Francisco Bay area and and the sort of London area that um 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 the United States and the UK and and China are sort of aligned on on safety that's all going to be a good thing. That's really that's where that's that's where the the leadership is generally."
"I mean you actually it's interesting you mentioned China there. So I I took a decision to invite China to to summit over the last couple days and it was not an easy decision. A lot of people criticize me for it. You know my view is if you're going to try"
"serious conversation you need to. But I what would 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 mood situation. The single biggest objection that I get to any kind of AI regulation or sort of safety controls are well China's not going to do it and therefore they will just jump into the lead and exceed us all but but actually China is willing to participate in in AI safety and thank you for inviting them and I and they you know I think we should thank China for for attending. When I was when I was in China earlier this year, the 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 you are too which is which is great and having them here I think was essential really if they if they're if they're not participants it's it's pointless."
"It's pointless. Yeah. No, that's and I think we were pleased. They were engaged yesterday in the discussions and actually ended up signing the same communicate that everyone else did which is a good start right and as said we need everyone to approach us in a similar way if we're going to have I think a realistic chance of of resolving it. I was going to tell 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 you actually we were talking about Jeffrey Hinton on the way in. Yeah. You know he he's partic 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 is 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 going to do?"
"Well, the open source algorithms and data tend to lag the closed source by 6 to 12 months. But so 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 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 exceed it. I don't know quite what to do about it. I I think it's somewhat inevitable that there will be some amount of open source and I I I guess I would have a slight bias towards open source because at least you can see what's going on 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, do 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 going to do. It's a gigantic file of inscrable 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 going to do, but it 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's going to do. A neural net is just a whole bunch of probabilities. I mean it sort of ends up being a giant commaepparated value file. It's like our digital god is a CSV file really. Okay. But that that is kind of what it is."
"Yeah. Now it's that that point you've just made is one that we have been talking about a lot because again conversations the people are developing the 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 and as the models iterate and improve we don't quite know what's going to come out the other end I think Dennis would agree with that which is why I think there is this 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 they think about this."
"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 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's it's you know that's why that's why I say if 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 limit three wish limit nonsense. You just have many as many wishes as you want. So 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 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 going to be on the exponential portion of the S-curve for a long time. And you'll be able to be able to ask for anything and it won't be 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 you know, 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 it'll be the best tutor you could and the most patient tutor sit there all day and uh there will be no shortage of goods and services will be an age of abundance. I think if I I'd recommend people read in banks. 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 very big fan. All his books are good. Doesn't say which one. All of them. So, so that's that that'll give you a sense of what is a I guess a fairly utopian or protopian future with with AI. Yeah."
"Um"
"which is good from a 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 age of abundance actually that it kind of then leads to the question that you posed right I'm somebody who believes you know work gives you meaning right I think a lot about that as"
"as a 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"
"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, you know."
"No, I as I was mentioning when we we were talking earlier, I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief because if I'm I'm putting so much blood, sweat, and tears into a work project and burning the, you know, 3:00 a.m. 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 demos and tell them 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 and help people through it between now and then because these things bring a lot about 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 are a lot of jobs that are uncomfortable or dangerous or sort of tedious um and the computer will have no problem doing that. be 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. And like, but the computer's perfectly happy to wash dishes. And I I I guess there is um you know we still have uh 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 they're still I guess competing to see who can be the best human at something."
"and and people do find fulfillment in that. So I guess that's perhaps a a good example of how even when machines are faster than us, stronger than us,"
"We still we still enjoy competing against other humans to at least see who's the best human."
"Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good analogy. And we've been talking a lot about managing the risks. I just before we move on and finish on AI is just talk a little bit about the opportunities. You know, you you're engaged in lots of different companies, Neuroloop being an obvious one, which is doing which is doing some exciting stuff. I 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 like personal tutor."
"Yeah. Personal 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 that could be extraordinary. So that you know for me I look at that I think gosh that is within reach at this point at 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 going to 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 can 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 build 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. Um, 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."
"Okay. You know, it's that was a surprising answer, but that's actually it's worth worth reflecting on. That's really interesting. I mean, we're already seeing it actually as we deliver you know 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 on X and then we should open it up to everybody. You made a change when you one of the made many changes but"
"yeah quite a few one of one of the changes"
"I love that letter."
"Yeah,"
"I've got a real thing about it."
"You you really do. You 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"
"way of doing it the moderation to the the community notes and and I think that's you know 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"
"yeah part of the problem is if if you if you empower people as sensors then well that there's going to be some amount of bias they have and then Whoever appoints the sensors is effectively in control of information. So then the 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 or how do we how do we make things the least amount untrue like you can say like what one can't pass perhaps get to pure truth but you can aspire to be more truthful. Um so the the 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 ex 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 manipulation of the data you can actually highlight that and say well this this that there there appears to be some gaming of the system and you can suggest improvements. So it's it's it's maximum transparency which is I think"
"combined with a kind of wisdom of the crowds and transparency to get to a better answer is"
"and 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 and there is a bit of AI usage here. So there's we'll populate a 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 it's it's more it's several hundred vectors that that because things are more complicated than simply 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"
"so then that that that gives the note credibility."
"Okay. Yeah."
"Yeah. That that's the that's the core of it and it's working quite well. Yeah."
"I've yet to see a note actually be be present for more than a few hours uh 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 disinformational 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 with the Xplatform is to inform and entertain the public and to be as accurate as possible and as truthful as possible. Um even if someone doesn't like the truth you know people don't always like the truth. Um no not always 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 uh use use the system to learn what is going on and to to learn that it I think actually truth pays. So I think it'll be what what I mean assuming you don't want to engage in self delusion then then I think it's the smart move you know. So"
"excellent very helpful. Right. Let's open it up to all our guests. We've got some microphones. They'll come put your hands up. They'll come and find you. Uh, we've got Yes, go for it. Thank you."
"Good evening, Alice Benting from Entrepreneur First. Uh, 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? Um, and Elon, being a founder in the UK is still a nonobvious 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."
"You want to go first? Go for it."
"Um, sure. Well, you're right that there are cultural elements where you you you know the the culture should celebrate creating new companies and and and there should be a bias towards supporting small small companies because they're the ones that need nurturing. The larger companies really don't need nurturing. So, you know, just you can think of it sort of like a garden. If it's a little sprout, it needs needs nurturing. if it's a mighty oak, it doesn't need quite as much. Um, so I think that that that is a mindset change that is important, but but I I should mention that uh 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 doing very well on that front. The two mo I say the two leading locations on Earth. You know, San Francisco's probably ahead of London, but London's really very strong or London area. Greater London home counties I guess."
"Keep going. Keep going."
"So, I'm just saying objectively this is the case and and but you do need that. You need you need the infrastructure. You need you need landlords who are willing to rent to new companies. You you need law firms and accountants that are willing to support new companies. And it's generally a mind it is a mindset change. Um and I think some of that is happening but I think really it's just culturally people need to decide this is this is a good thing."
"Yeah."
"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 of science and technology, super hubs and so on. How does that map onto the everyday lives of of people living in say Austin, Texas to choose one or 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"
"for context Elon. So Seb Seb runs our our equivalent of CVS, right, or Walgreens. So 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 service your question. How is this relevant to that person? You know, maybe actually let me go I'll go first on that because I I think it's a a fair point. I was just going over with the team a couple of things that we're doing because I was saying like how are we doing AI right now that is making a difference to people's lives? And we have this thing called gov.uk UK which is which actually when it happened several years ago was a pioneering thing all the government information brought together on one website gov.uk UK you 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. Better than most. Better than most. Yeah. So we we are about so 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 flights in 5 hours you know at the moment that would require you know how many steps to figure out what you do you know actually when we deploy the AI it should be that you could just literally say that and boom boom boom boom this is what we're going to do walk 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 I see 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."
"Yeah. No, exactly. The the 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 and obviously companies are going to adopt this. So, I think you'll have much better customer service. I guess essentially that'll probably be the first thing you notice. And and then we talked about education."
"Yeah."
"So, having a tutor so if 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 AI needs to stop hallucinating before, you know, it can't give you mean that we still have a little bit of the problem where it can give you an answer that's confidently wrong um with great grammar, you know, in bullet points and everything and citations that was not real. So, it has to be okay. We need to make sure it's it's not it's not it's not giving you confidently wrong tutor answers. But, but we that that's going to happen quick pretty quickly where it is actually correct. going to 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. Very very good. Right. Have we got let's go questions over here? Who have we got? We need microphones or Brent, are you there? Perfect."
"Hi Brent Herman. 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 we might get one country might get heavily behind in 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 Hundai is probably going to 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 but there's going to 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 I think the UK will not be behind actually on on that front. UK also has ARM, which is really 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 UK is in a 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 will be fine. I do think there is there is a safety concern es especially with humanoid robots because at least the car can't chase you into this building not very easily you know or chase you off a tree or you know 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 overridden. Um but if you have a local sort of off switch where you 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. if we've got millions of these things going all over the place."
"You're not selling it. Just, you know, like"
"No, 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. We've got a James Cameron movie on our heads. It's it's actually that's it's funny you saying that because we in our session that we had today I you know just we say who we they made exactly the same point right Dennis so we're talking about they talk about movies actually without mentioning James Cameron they're talking about James Cameron movies but 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 is played out 50 times. We've all watched it and it all fundamentally, you know, you know, point I'm referring to, right? It all ends in pretty much the same way with someone finding their way to just"
"do the thing which is kind of interesting that you said the similar point, right? It's probably not the it's not the obvious place you'd go to, but"
"maybe that could be one of the tests for the AI. We we should say like blank is your favorite James Cameron movie. Fill in the blank."
"Excellent. Right. Yes. We got over there. Yeah. Perfect."
"Hi. Uh question for you both. So I'm a founder of a AI and ML scaleup in the third center for AI which is leadeds in the north of England. I'm a bit biased. Since the launch of chat GPT three months after that we saw a real increase in fishing attacks using much more sophisticated language patterns. um what do we do to protect businesses, consumers so 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 are you a human, identify all the traffic lights in this picture. You're like, okay, AI is going to have a 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 it's a 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 and I don't actually have a good solution to it that one of the things we're trying to figure out on the Xplatform is how to deal with that because it really 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 um 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 a dollar or a pound a year. It's a very tiny amount of money, but it's it's still still makes it privatatively expensive to make a million bots. So, and or especially if you need a million payment methods, then you you run out of sort of for 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.3 cents a day effectively to deal with the the onslaught of AI powered bots. And 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 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 bots."
"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 what 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 got to make sure we bring people along that journey with us that we're handling the risks that are there and as said there's a job to do and the last couple of days I think we made good progress on it because we want to focus on the positives and manage these things but that requires action and and that's what the last couple of days has been about. Your your um story you know 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 a essentially that it was a 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 is like costfree"
"it's it's getting it's getting to the point where it's like really you can have a hundred for a penny 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 fake profiles that you need 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. That's we literally as part of the research that we published on misinformation yesterday. It's 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 on mass. And practically the only way you'll be able to tell is that the grammar is too good. Don't give away."
"Yeah."
"No typos. 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 a good one. Yes. Uh gone. You're right in front of me. Go on."
"Good opportunity. Elon, question for you related to the Xplatform. 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."
"Yeah."
"Twitter was a member. Love to see X come back."
"Okay. Okay. Digitally signed media to indicate not only what was created by AI, but what came from a camera, what was real. Yeah."
"To imbue a sense of trust in media that can go viral."
"That sounds like a good idea actually. So if some some way of authenticating would be would be good. So yeah, I I that sounds like a good idea. We we should probably do it."
"Yeah, there you go. And actually on that on that point, 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 doctorred 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. Um and and actually you've got just an enormous chunk of the world's population is voting next year, right? And you got EU elections as well. You know, actually just these issues are right in front of us. You know, next year is one of"
"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 people who want, you know, the integrity of our democracy."
"Yeah. I mean, some of it is is quite entertaining. Like 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. Um 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 look quite quite dashing of things. In fact, I think AI fashion is going to be a real thing. So, so doom and gloom. Like 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 we're if we're cognizant and and careful about the bad part on balance actually it will be the future that we want or the the future that is preferable and and it actually will be some 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."