Elon Musk said on Wednesday that jobs will change as artificial intelligence and robots reshape workplaces, but that the most likely outcome of the technology is an "incredibly beneficial" one.
He was responding to a question on concerns over AI's impact on employment, after a White House meeting with technology leaders.
"Jobs are going to change," the xAI and Tesla chief told reporters. He said he expects an "evolution of roles" across different fields as AI and robotics spread.
Musk added that the most likely outcome is worth focusing on, and that if one could look into the future, "it is the future you would want".
US President Donald Trump, who stood alongside Musk, said the two had met Chinese President Xi Jinping last week and discussed data centres. "They want every data center," Trump said of China. "They want it because that's great for China."
The remarks came after Trump and six technology leaders signed a voluntary pact on AI safety.
Besides Musk, the signatories were Sundar Pichai of Google, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Greg Brockman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
The accord commits frontier AI developers to internal controls, an internal oversight team, independent external audits and a board-level oversight committee.
Job losses were also raised by others at the event. Huang said AI was essential to economic growth and had created about a million jobs in the US.
Musk's optimism sits alongside a wider public unease. Polls show a majority of Americans are now against building AI data centres, amid complaints about rising electricity bills and noise, with the issue gaining weight ahead of the midterm elections.
At a G20 technology ministers' meeting, Musk had said AI would expand the global economy by 20-30% a year, while Zuckerberg said the data centre build-out would need hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of skilled traded obs.
Critics have said the accord relies too heavily on self-regulation. Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Trump unserious about the risks AI poses.
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