Billionaire Elon Musk flew down to Cannes to talk about the transformative power of technological innovation, how AI is reshaping creativity, business and society, and the future of X with WPP’s CEO Mark Read at the 71st edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Musk shared that he believes AI will drastically change the world in the next couple of years. The chances of an AI-related disaster will stand at 10-20 percent, he added, seconding Geoff Hinton’s belief.
“I tend to agree with Geoff Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI and he thinks there’s a 10-20 percent probability of something terrible happening,” Musk said.
While he didn’t elaborate on what he meant by “terrible”, Musk said, “The glass is 80 percent full. Look on the bright side.”
However, he did say that the most likely outcome of the aforementioned is one of abundance. A possibility of goods and services being available to everyone. A situation where everyone has everything they need. In such a case Musk shared that the question will then be about personal purpose.
“There’s no shortage for any one of us. It would be a universal hike. Work would be optional,” Musk said. In his words, this would result in “a crisis of meaning.”
Musk spoke about how AI being able to potentially do everything a human can in a better way might cause an existential crisis.
“If AI can do everything you can do but better, what’s the point of doing things? I think there will be an existential crisis,” he said.
During his conversation with Read, Musk also addressed the most-likely implausible scenario of AI taking over humans. To this the billionaire said, “Would I want to be around to see it? Probably, yes.”
He added that we are currently in the most interesting time in history and asked the audience to “Enjoy the ride.”
Advertisers on X versus Musk
Read asked Musk why an advertiser would consider X as an effective platform. Musk shared that X is the most effective platform to reach the most influential people in the world.
“Probably the biggest thing for the X platform is if you’re trying to reach senior decision makers, if you want to reach the most influential people in the world, then the X platform is by far the best,” he said.
Speaking about the issue of advertisers advertising on X, Musk said, “Of course, advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine.” He added, “What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content they disagree with on the platform.”
“I believe in sort of freedom of choice, advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they think is compatible to their brand,” he added.