Elon Musk Says AI Will Take Over Our Jobs, Is It Really True?

Elon Musk made a very shocking statement at the VivaTech 2024 event on Thursday, where he said that AI would take over all our jobs.

This statement has left the AI and Developer community in a huge frenzy. It has been quite a hot topic and an ongoing debate whether AI will really replace our jobs in the long run.

AI is slowly making its way into almost every sector out there starting from healthcare, finance, marketing, social media, and many more. Also, the recent surge in Gen AI technologies in the form of LLMs and SLMs around the world has put AI at the forefront of our daily quotidian needs.

In this article, we will see if what Elon Musk said might actually come true. We will look into this possibility with the help of some research and some opinions. So, let’s get right into it!

Elon Musk on the Future of AI

Elon Musk was quite open when he stated what the impact of AI holds for future generations. He claims that all of our jobs will be taken over by artificial intelligence, and that’s not necessarily awful completely.

“Probably none of us will have a job, if you want to do a job that’s kinda like a hobby, you can do a job, but otherwise, AI and the robots will provide any goods and services that you want.”

Elon Musk said in the VivaTech 2024 Conference on Thursday

Speaking remotely. Musk expressed concern about AI replacing human labor. He proposed that in the future, working would be “optional,” more like a hobby than a necessity.

Musk also stressed the significance of properly weighing the ethical aspects of AI research, even though some people might find this scenario idealistic. He drew attention to the fact that current AI programs are being educated with “political correctness,” which he described as potentially dangerous.

“If you’ve got an AI that has been trained so hard for political correctness… and really, to make crazy statements like that… and OpenAI has a similar issue. It’s more subtle, but it’s a similar issue. I think that’s extremely dangerous.”

Added Elon Musk

The CEO of X expressed his displeasure with OpenAI but emphasized the importance of teaching AI to be truthful and open.

The technocrat also discussed how AI has the potential to revolutionize education by providing students with individualized, patient, and extremely knowledgeable instruction. The head of the X platform also encouraged regulators to promote truthfulness in AI training and demanded regulation for AI models.

Musk also questioned if individuals would experience emotional fulfillment in a world without jobs. Using his platform, he also urged parents to restrict their children’s exposure to social media since “a dopamine-maximizing AI is programming them.”

“The question will really be one of meaning  – if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” he said.  “I do think there’s perhaps still a role for humans in this – in that we may give AI meaning.”

Elon Musk continued in his conference speech.

Will AI really take over our Jobs?

Over the past few years, generative AI models such as GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude 3 have shown exponential growth in their capabilities, ranging from coding to creating images to creating music. The potential of artificial intelligence seems to be endless when processing power is sufficient.

The drawback of this extraordinary expansion is that entry-level positions in tech roles such as software developers and data analysts can become outdated. It’s no secret that one of the most in-demand jobs in the world at the moment is software development; in the twenty-first century, practically everyone aspires to be a techie.

Professionals compete fiercely for development positions in FAANG companies. Nonetheless, a number of concerning patterns have emerged in recent years, which many attribute to the influence of AI-based development.

The majority of people in both industrialized and developing nations think that computer technology is the finest fast-track career path. The business has been expanding quickly since the turn of the twenty-first century, with billion-dollar start-ups employing hundreds of developers from many areas. Every year, a large number of computer science majors and engineers join the workforce.

The fact that AI has the potential to significantly reduce the amount of labour needed for jobs is what is causing the concerns. An expert software engineer and an AI copilot will now be required for something that once only required four to five junior devs.

However, this is not only limited to the computer position roles such as software developers or analysts. Manufacturing and automation, logistics and transportation, healthcare, banking and finance, retail and e-commerce, customer service and support, agriculture, and legal services are among the sectors that AI will most likely affect.

The World Economic Forum’s 2020 Future of Jobs report estimates that by 2025, the transition from people to machines may remove 85 million jobs while creating 97 million new ones.

The Other Side of the Story

However, in the midst of all these indications, some sources also suggest that AI probably won’t replace our jobs so soon as we think.

The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT conducted research in January that revealed workplace adoption of AI is happening far more slowly than some had anticipated and worried. The bulk of jobs that had previously been deemed AI-vulnerable, according to the research, were not at the time economically advantageous for companies to automate.

“One key finding, for example, is that only about 23% of the wages paid to humans right now for jobs that could potentially be done by AI tools would be cost-effective for employers to replace with machines right now. While this could change over time, the overall findings suggest that job disruption from AI will likely unfurl at a gradual pace.”

Source CNN

Math is another factor that makes it unlikely that AI would totally replace humans: it’s both very easy and difficult. Generative AI encompasses large language models, which utilise robust mathematical formulas to analyse and detect patterns in enormous datasets, thereby transforming user inputs into novel text, image, video, or audio outputs.

However pattern recognition is only a small part of human intelligence. Because of this, Theo Omtzigt explains, the mathematical models behind current generative AI systems are “relatively super simple.”

“Right now, the machine learns how to recognize a cat and what it will look like in different lighting,” he says. “We would have to progress a lot deeper in our understanding of creative thoughts, ethics and consciousness before we would even have the building blocks to think of how to create an AI that would be able to wipe out humanity.”

Theo Omtzigt, chief technology officer at Lemurian Labs

Also, there has been this recent consensus as well that states “AI Won’t Replace Humans — But Humans With AI Will Replace Humans Without AI”

These facts suggest that AI is probably not going to replace humans anytime sooner.

What if AI actually replaces us?

A future in which AI replaces humans is not necessarily bad. As Elon Musk said at the tech conference, if people end up losing their jobs to AI, they can still continue to pursue it as a hobby or interest.

However, the downside to this is that people will lose the motivation, passion, and interest that drives them to keep on working. When there is a goal, there are results. Imagine a human workforce with no goals or sentiments, how would that turn out to be in the long run?

Definitely, it’s not just about the type of work and the fruits of labor associated with it, but it is hugely about the emotions that a person attaches to the work they are doing.

Also, another scenario in which humans can save themselves from being completely replaced by AI is by learning to use AI tools and empowering themselves accordingly.

PwC, a consultancy, looked at job postings from the previous year for a variety of positions, such as accountants, lawyers, and app developers. It was discovered that American salaries for occupations involving AI were, on average, 25% greater than those for equivalent positions in the same industry that did not call for those abilities.

“Countries and sectors that have a high demand for AI skills tend to see higher wage premiums, especially if there is a scarcity of skilled professionals,”

Mehdi Sahneh, senior economist at PwC UK, said in a statement.

Conclusion

Considering Elon Musk’s statements on the impact of AI on human jobs, we analyzed all possible scenarios. To say the truth, a future where AI replaces us is quite probable, but still it doesn’t have to be anytime sooner. Also, it doesn’t have to be necessarily bad considering the benefits AI brings to us. But, only time will tell.