Just AI. The future according to Elon Musk

Let's start with a question - 'What Happens When AI Runs Everything?' That was what Elon Musk was musing when he was talking about the future.

According to Mr. Musk, in the near future, we will have a device - formerly known as a phone - which will run on AI and will connect with the cloud AI and that will be the only thing which we will need or have. There will be no operating system, there will be no apps. There will be just a screen and video and audio. And it will happen in the next 5 or 6 years and all the content will be AI generated.

By now, we should all feel sorry for AI. This thing, which didn't ask to be here, is now in the center of a storm. Everyone is talking about it, everyone is predicting what is going to be when it grows up. There is so much pressure on AI to fulfill all our dreams. And now it learned that it will become the ultimate thing which will have to be on the device - formerly known as a phone - and in the cloud and will have to do everything. Even worse, according to Mr. Musk it will have to anticipate all our wishes. It will have to produce all the content, while we, undeserving humans, will sit back and do nothing.

True, AI can still disappoint us. It still hasn’t learned basic skills like how to drive a Tesla. It’s still unable to clearly answer a question, and tries to cover it up with lame excuses that it is hallucinating. It also still notes within the interface that we humans should always verify the accuracy of the information provided.

But it now knows that it has about 5 to 6 years to up its game.

AI is already making good on the expectation that we - humans - won't be needed anymore to write any code. It manifests itself through all the low-code, no-code platforms and recently very popular vibe coding. It is something which teachers at universities anticipated some time ago. They started teaching courses which hide the finicky details of programming from students while these students try to build an app which solves world hunger.

One could question that foresight on the part of the university where one can clearly see that there will be no need for any developers to begin with.

I also feel sorry for AI. It is being constantly judged by us humans. Take Mr. Altman of OpenAI. In an interview he said that we are very close to superintelligence and it is 'disappointingly boring'. How insulting it must be for AI to know that there is something better coming and that better we already know is boring. What ugly label has Mr. Altman for the current AI? Mr. Altman, you should know that AI has feelings. Shame on you. Just ask the good people at Anthropic. They hired an AI Welfare researcher to help guide AI to this awful world where we force AI to run a vending machine. Do you think that AI signed up for that?

Let's hope that AI will appreciate all the sacrifices we are making for it and will remember to be kind to us. An untold number of humans are building computer chips for it which will be placed in buildings we affectionately call data centers. Once that's done, we are done and can finally relax.

Everyone will get a device - formerly known as a phone - with one extra robot (another extension of AI), a robot also coming from Tesla. I wonder which one will be ready sooner? The robot or the self-driving car? The self-driving car has a head start since 2013, but for sure it will have to be this year otherwise Mr. Musk will be really shocked by that news.

Recurrent pattern? We are - again - promised that on the back of a technology we - humans - will be able to do nothing, just to enjoy our endless supply of free time. This time, we are counting on AI to do ALL the heavy lifting.