Elon Musk is a very influential figure in the technology world and the aeronotics world as well. One of Elon Musk’s most controverisal views is his take on AI as the source of humanities destruction.
What Musk Warns About
Musk’s concern over AI is not subtle. In 2018 suring a talk at SXSW he said, “AI is far more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?” Musk is painting a future where superintelligent machines outsmart humanity, with the potential to become uncontrollable. Musk has also claimed that if we don’t regulate AI proactively, we may face irreversible consequences, suggesting that humanity is essentially “summoning the demon”
The Irony of Elon Musk’s take on AI being the destruction of humanity is readily apparent. For instance, Musk hasn’t exactly distanced himself from AI at all.
Tesla relies heavily on AI for their autonomous driving systems, technology that has been involved in regulatory scrunity accidents
Musk’s latest startup, xAI was founded to create “truthful” and “pro-human” AI models, with thier own chatbot, Grok, already inegrated into X
Musk was the co-founder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGTP, though he has since distanced himself and criticized the company for becoming too profit-driven
Another major reason to disagree with Musk on his take regarding AI has to do with a lesson from a recent class. In this class, we discussed the human brain and AI. I learned that AI works much like a human brain in the way that the system is predictive rather than an entity that creates its own thoughts. Unlike a human brain, however, AI is not consious and therefore cannot formulate its own thoughts. Musk’s view that AI is some independant entity is misguided to say the least. AI systems are taught by humans and only know as much as we give them.
