After a White House meeting with top AI executives, Elon Musk was asked what AI means for jobs. His answer was short: jobs will change. Here is what he said, and how it compares with his earlier claims.
Musk spoke to reporters on Tuesday, September 29, after President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson met AI leaders including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, ABC News reported. The meeting came as lawmakers weigh what action, if any, to take on AI. Musk sat to Trump’s left at the lunch, with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang on his right, according to AP. Trump said the group signed a voluntary accord that includes internal and external reviews of AI.
Asked about “laptop jobs” in footage shared by CBS News, Musk said “Jobs are going to change”, IBTimes reported. He added that he expects an “evolution of roles”, Yahoo Finance reported, and that AI will be very beneficial overall. TheStreet, citing CNBC, reported that his message was that AI will significantly alter the workplace.
How this compares with his earlier claims
The tone is milder than some of his earlier comments. In January, Musk said on a podcast that AI is already good enough to replace half of white-collar jobs, Axios reported. Fortune reported the same month that he said work could become optional within 10 to 20 years.
Other voices are more cautious. In that same January report, Axios noted there was little evidence AI was destroying large numbers of white-collar jobs at the time, though it pointed to developments showing the potential for major disruption. We covered another Musk warning on AI and retirement in our earlier story.
For workers, the message is practical. TheStreet noted that Musk stopped short of predicting mass unemployment, but left little room for the idea that most jobs would stay unchanged.
