Is Artificial Intelligence Your Friend or Foe? Elon Musk Says AI Is More Dangerous Than Nukes
The founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, and entrepreneur previously involved with PayPal before its sale to EBay, Elon Musk weighed in on the subject of what the future may hold when artificial intelligence becomes smarter than people. His tweet had a few technologists and futurists a bit concerned.
The influence for his short comment about the risks of AI mentions the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom which directly examines the risks involved when computers become smarter than humans. The scene is very something like SkyNet from the Terminator movies where SkyNet building terminator machines and takes over the planet.
With the advent of facial recognition from a multitude of CCTV cameras around major cities and the ability of law enforcement to illicitly access smartphones to gather information on potential targets, apps that can scan a face in the street and search for an online profile matching that person and other scary real-life situations, some may argue that we're already at the stage now. Or at least, the basic components are there and it's just a question of whether they can all be tied together into a cohesive whole.
The Singularity
The concept of the “singularity” which essentially is the SkyNet moment when A.I. gets too smart for its own good and betters what humans can do, is something that smart people at Google like Ray Kurzweil and now Elon Musk are beginning to pay some credence to.
Whether Musk is right remains to be seen. Telsa electric cars are catching on and may certainly be the wave of the future as peak oil scarcity pricing takes hold in a few years' time. Futuristic space travel is something that several people, including Sir Richard Branson, are investing in.
Ambitious Statements To An Eager Audience
The latest vocal gambit from Musk may just be a matter of throwing out several different kinds of futuristic pitches across the proverbial plate, rather than professing to knowing what the future may hold. Throw enough futuristic paint at the wall and you might just end up with a new profitable business venture.
A follow-up tweet drew reference to hoping that human kind doesn't eventually become essentially unwitting hosts to another consciousness. Heady stuff indeed. But yet, this is the man whose talked about colonising Mars and other fanciful science fiction.
It remains to be seen whether this futuristic talk will add up to anything more than just that, talk.
