Last week, Rishi Sunak (the British PM) hosted an AI Safety Conference here in the UK.

The esteemed guest of honour at the conference?

None other than Space Karen himself, Elon Musk.

In a fascinating 50 minute interview, Rishi chewed the AI fat with Elon live on stage.

Here’s one of the most interesting clips:

Rishi:  When I do interviews and talk to people about AI, the thing that comes up the most, actually, is jobs.  What’s your observation on AI and the impact on people’s jobs?

Elon:  I think we’re seeing the most disruptive force in history here.  There will come a point where no job is needed.  You can have a job if you want to have a job for personal satisfaction, but the AI will be able to do everything.

This exchange between Dishy Rishi and Space Karen made me think of Aristotle.

Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle was writing about the “good life”.  

He defined this as a life of happiness, flourishing & virtue. 

Above all, the good life meant everyone having the personal freedom to pursue whatever activity they wanted - whether work, or not.

If Elon’s to be believed, the job-pocalypse is hurtling towards us and Aristotle’s vision could be closer than ever before.

(by the way - will the AI which takes all our jobs be called AIristotle?)

To add to this:

All this chat about the looming death of jobs prompts some curious questions.

I don’t mean broad, societal questions like how education systems will change, what cultural shifts will occur and what the role of money will be in a jobless world.

No doubt there’ll be radical impacts in all these areas.  But I’ll let someone else sort out this mess.

I’m more interested in the questions we can ask ourselves.

Questions like:

What role do I want work to play in my life?

If I had the freedom to do anything for work, what would I choose?

And, if I never had to work another day in my life, would I still work?  If not, what would I do?

These aren’t the sorts of questions we spend much time on today. 

But if Elon’s right (I’m not saying he is by the way, but his uncanny knack of predicting the future makes Nostradamus look like Mystic Meg), then everyone on the planet will need to consider questions like these.  Grappling with this sort of deep self-reflection will become unavoidable.

I’m sure some people would rather stick pins in their eyes than explore these types of questions.

Whereas others will see this “forced introspection” as akin to finding a winning lottery ticket.

Whatever the case…

If you want to get a head start, here’s where you can go:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

That’s all for today.

- Tom