Sunak: People should ‘be comfortable with failure’ and take risks to start firms
Rishi Sunak has suggested people should be more willing to give up regular pay and “be comfortable with failure” to start their own companies.
The Stanford-educated banker-turned-politician was speaking to the controversial X owner in front of an audience of business chiefs at London’s Lancaster House on Thursday to close the Government’s artificial intelligence (AI) summit.
The 50-minute interview included warnings by Mr Musk of humanoid robots that “can chase you anywhere” and a prediction that AI will make paid work redundant.
Mr Sunak agreed when the tech entrepreneur said the UK needed a “mindset change” towards a culture that celebrates creating new businesses.
“How do you transpose that culture from places like Silicon Valley across the world where people are unafraid to give up the security of a regular pay cheque to go and start something and be comfortable with failure?” the Prime Minister said.
“You’ve got to be comfortable failing and knowing that that’s just part of the process.”
He said it was “a tricky cultural thing to do overnight”, but “an important part of creating” an environment that breeds start-up companies.
Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth said: “How out of touch is Rishi Sunak?
“After 13 years of the Tories, the public are enduring the worst cost-of-living crisis in memory and he is spending his time telling Elon Musk that he wishes they would give up their jobs and be ready to fail.
“He hasn’t got a clue.”
The conversation saw a jacketless Mr Sunak throw softball questions to Mr Musk, whom he described as a “brilliant innovator and technologist”.
Press Association – Sophie Wingate