By Adario Strange | Mashable
Elon Musk Says Artificial Intelligence Could Be ’More Dangerous Than Nukes’
When Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, comments on the future, ears in the tech space perk up. But a weekend mini-rant from the futurist drew the attention of even some non-techies and revealed that he’s more worried about an artificial intelligence (A.I.) apocalypse than he’s let on in recent months.
Posting his thoughts to Twitter on Saturday, after recommending a book about A.I., Musk made what might be the most controversial technology statement of his career: “We need to be super careful with A.I. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.”
Others, like Google’s Ray Kurzweil, have discussed a technological “singularity,” in which A.I.’s take over from humans, but rarely has such a high profile voice with real ties to the technology business put the prospect in such stark terms.
To be fair, Musk’s thoughts should be considered within the context he made them, that is, suggesting the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, a work by Nick Bostrom that asks major questions about how humanity will cope with super-intelligent computers in the future.
Nevertheless, the comparison of A.I. to nuclear weapons, a threat that has cast a worrying shadow over much of the last 30 years in terms of humanity’s longevity possibly being cut short by a nuclear war, immediately raises a couple of questions.
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