In the Washington Post, Justin Moyer talks about Elon Musk’s concern about runaway artificial intelligence:
Elon Musk — the futurist behind PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX — has been caught criticizing artificial intelligence again.
“The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe,” Musk wrote in a comment since deleted from the Web site Edge.org, but confirmed to Re/Code by his representatives. “10 years at most.”
The very future of Earth, Musk said, was at risk.
“The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety,” he wrote. “The recognize the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen.”
Musk seemed to sense that these comments might seem a little weird coming from a Fortune 1000 chief executive officer.
“This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand,” he wrote. “I am not alone in thinking we should be worried.”
Unfortunately, Musk didn’t explain how humanity might be compromised by “digital superintelligences,” “Terminator”-style.
He never does. Yet Musk has been holding forth on-and-off about the apocalypse artificial intelligence might bring for much of the past year.
