Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly developed over the past few decades, and while it presents many opportunities for growth and progress, it also poses a significant threat to humanity. As reported in Daily Mail UK dated 29 March 2023, this is a fear shared by many, including Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. Musk’s interest in technology is well-known, as he has pushed the limits of space travel and electric cars, but his views on AI are more controversial.
In 2014, Musk called AI humanity’s ‘biggest existential threat’ and compared it to ‘summoning the demon.’ He believed that if AI became too advanced and got into the wrong hands, it could overtake humans and spell the end of mankind. This fear is known as singularity, a hypothetical future where technology surpasses human intelligence and changes the path of our evolution. In a 2016 interview, Musk stated that he and the OpenAI team created the company to ‘have democratization of AI technology to make it widely available,’ but he has since criticized the company for becoming a ‘closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.’
Despite his fear of AI, Musk has invested in AI companies such as Vicarious, DeepMind, and OpenAI. OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a large language model trained on a massive amount of text data that has taken the world by storm in recent months. The chatbot generates eerily human-like text in response to a given prompt and is used to write research papers, books, news articles, emails, and more. While Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, basks in its glory, Musk attacks ChatGPT from all ends, saying that the AI is ‘woke’ and deviates from OpenAI’s original non-profit mission.
Musk’s fear of AI is not unwarranted, as experts have warned about the dangers of AI and its potential to surpass human intelligence. Once AI reaches singularity, it will be able to innovate much faster than humans. The two possible outcomes of AI reaching singularity are humans and machines working together to create a world better suited for humanity or AI becoming more powerful than humans and making humans its slaves. Researchers are now looking for signs of AI reaching singularity, such as the technology’s ability to translate speech with the accuracy of a human and perform tasks faster.
Former Google engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts that singularity will be reached by 2045. He has made 147 predictions about technology advancements since the early 1990s, and 86 percent of them have been correct. While some may view singularity as a far-off possibility, it is important to recognize the potential dangers that AI poses and take precautions to prevent them.
Reference:
Smith, J. (2023). It’s a dangerous race that no one can predict or control’: Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and 1,000 other tech leaders call for pause on AI development which poses a ‘profound risk to society and humanity. [Online] Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11914149/Musk-experts-urge-pause-training-AI-systems-outperform-GPT-4.html (Accessed: 30 March 2023).