14 DAY TRIAL // Just as Google announced its plans to deepen its involvement in the field of Artificial Intelligence, by nabbing some new scientists to work alongside its own team, SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk warns against the dangers of these new technologies.
Not only is Musk asking people to be careful, but he’s comparing it all to “summoning the demon” that will destroy humanity. Now that’s a bit tough and he may have seen apocalyptic sci-fi movies one too many times.
“I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence,” Musk said.
He added that he was increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that someone doesn’t take a wrong step.
“You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like – ‘Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon?’ Doesn’t work out,” Musk added, indicating that he should probably see the Supernatural series.
Of course, Musk is known to have talked about keeping an eye on artificial intelligence and referencing the “Terminator” movies in the same phrase, so the new statements should come as no real surprise.
On the other hand, just as he’s urging everyone to use ultra-high care when dealing with Artificial Intelligence, Musk has actually made some investments in the field himself. He says he likes to keep an eye on things, but if he were really scared of the entire concept, he wouldn’t be investing in it, would he?
Google takes the reins
As mentioned, Google has been making some increased efforts to advance in the artificial intelligence domain. After paying some $400 million on DeepMind earlier this year and a whole lot more on robotics companies, the company hired two top AI teams last week, while also partnering with the Oxford University.
“It is a really exciting time for Artificial Intelligence research these days, and progress is being made on many fronts including image recognition and natural language understanding. Today we are delighted to announce a partnership with Oxford University to accelerate Google’s research efforts in these areas,” reads a blog post signed by Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind and vice president of engineering at Google.
You can watch Musk in the video below. His remarks come around the 1 hour, 7 minutes mark.
