Elon Musk says the AI 'supersonic tsunami' will eliminate desk jobs 'at a very rapid pace' (www.businessinsider.com)

Elon Musk told Joe Rogan that AI is already replacing — and will continue to replace — "desk jobs" that are digitally centric "at an accelerated rate," calling the wave a "supersonic tsunami." He argued that tasks that are purely information-processing (the kind of work people do at computers) will be automated rapidly, while jobs that involve moving atoms or sustained human interaction (cooking, farming, care work) will persist longer. Musk framed the transition as painful and disruptive but ultimately potentially beneficial: in a benign scenario he foresees robots and AI enabling a "universal high income" and optional work, though he cautioned against existential-risk outcomes. For the AI/ML community, Musk’s remarks reinforce two immediate implications: technical progress in models and automation is likely to accelerate displacement of white‑collar, routine cognitive tasks, and that societal responses (retraining, social safety nets, new job types) will be central to managing that disruption. His comments echo other industry forecasts — Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned of large-scale entry-level job losses, while some leaders dispute the timing — underscoring policy, ethics, and deployment questions that practitioners and organizations must confront as capabilities continue to improve.