What will Elon Musk and Rishi Sunak talk about in their AI chat?

The UK prime minister and US tech mogul are set to discuss the future of artificial intelligence, in a conversation streamed on Musk’s X platform. Here are some topics they might touch on

By Chris Stokel-Walker

2 November 2023

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and Elon Musk are both at the UK AI summit

TOLGA AKMEN/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock; Leon Neal/PA Images/Alamy

The UK’s AI Safety Summit closes today, with UK prime minister Rishi Sunak convening a small group of world and business leaders to discuss the risks of AI. But perhaps the most surprising development is a conversation due to take place this evening between Sunak and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Full details of the event are still unclear, but it will be broadcast on X, Musk’s social media platform, on a delay. The conversation is scheduled to last 45 minutes and will reportedly be moderated by an unknown individual, with some audience members, including tech executives and journalists, invited to ask questions. Politico reports that the UK government has said that the conversation won’t be edited before broadcast.

So, what will the two men talk about? Here are some possible topics.

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The risk of AI doom

Even before Musk arrived in the UK, he was warning about the risks of AI. Speaking to podcast host Joe Rogan, he said that AI development needed to be done carefully to avoid posing existential risks to humanity. It is a message he repeated once he arrived in the UK, telling reporters he thought AI was a real risk.

Not everyone is sure any conversation about risk will be earnestly carried out. “I would speculate that the conversation they have will be framed as a discussion about the merits of AI regulation, but, in reality, it will serve as a stage for these two self-indulgent individuals to flaunt themselves in their aspirational spheres – politics and tech,” says one former Twitter employee who was laid off by Musk, speaking to New Scientist anonymously.

Pausing AI development

Musk was one of the signatories of a letter, published in March, calling for a pause in AI development. The letter suggested that AI companies should halt for six months any development of AI systems more powerful than those that were then state of the art, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.