Elon Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience this week, where he predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will be so transformative that it will replace traditional phones and apps.
Musk told Rogan that within a few years, AI will be so integrated into daily life that people will no longer open individual apps or platforms. Instead, he said, AI will anticipate what users want and curate everything directly for them through their devices.
“Well, I can tell you where I think things are gonna go, which is that it’s, we’re not gonna have a phone in the traditional sense,” Musk said. “What we call a phone will really be an edge node for AI inference, for AI video inference with, you know, with some radios to obviously connect to. But, essentially, you’ll have AI on the server side, communicating to an AI on your device, you know, formerly known as a phone, and generating real-time video of anything that you could possibly want.”
Musk explained that this shift would eliminate the need for operating systems or apps. “There won’t be operating systems or apps. It’ll just be, you’ve got a device that is there for the screen and audio, and to put as much AI on the device as possible,” he said.
Rogan asked Musk whether platforms like X or email services would still exist if apps disappeared. Musk replied, “You’ll get everything through AI.”
He explained that AI will learn to anticipate users’ preferences and deliver content automatically.
“Whatever you can think of. Or really, whatever the AI can anticipate you might want, it’ll show you.” Musk explained. “That’s my prediction for where things end up.”
When asked how soon this could happen, Musk estimated, “I don’t know. It’s probably, well it’s probably five or six years, something like that.”
“So five or six years, apps are like Blockbuster Video,” Rogan said, to which Musk responded, “Pretty much.”
“Most of what people consume in five or six years, maybe sooner than that, will be just AI-generated content,” Musk added.
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