In a recent outburst, Elon Musk spoke about the existential threat that AI poses to humanity. Amongst other sceptics Elon Musk debates the singularity theory — a hypothetical future moment where software becomes self-aware and smart beyond our capacity to understand.
The debate sparked recently after Elon commented on on an article by featured publisher at Edge online magazine, Jaron Larnier. The article titled ‘The Myth of AI’ which dispels the threat that AI supposedly poses. Jaron lanier was quoted as saying in his conversation with an Edge correspondent- “Most recently, some of the most beloved and respected figures in the tech and science world, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have taken that position of: “Oh my God, these things are an existential threat. They must be stopped.”
The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most,” wrote Musk. “Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand.” His prediction is way ahead of Ray Kurzweil’s, chief proponent of the singularity theory; which is sometime around 2045.
“The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast,” said Musk. “Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast — it is growing at a pace close to exponential.” DeepMind is an AI firm Musk recently invested in.
Insisting that the threat is very real, he commented that “The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital super-intelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen …”
Musk has also commented on potential dangers of A.I. as compared to Nuclear Weapons. In an email to Mashable, Musk’s spokesperson said the entrepreneur intends to publish a longer post on the topic of artificial intelligence soon.
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