Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has gained notoriety for his doomsday predictions related to artificial intelligence (AI). He is convinced that AI will reach a point where it breaks free from human control and takes on a life of its own – possibly destroying humanity in the process.

“Guys who got rich writing code to solve banal problems like how to pay a stranger for stuff online now contemplate a vertiginous world where they are the creators of a new reality and perhaps a new species.”

Musk believes that well-intentioned people, such as his friend and Google co-founder Larry Page, may accidentally develop AI with destructive potential. And, Musk fears, AI could also fall into the hands of a nefarious government. Intellectual heavyweights such as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom and even Henry Kissinger have since echoed Musk’s fears.

“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.” (Elon Musk)

Page, however, believes that AI isn’t doomed to become a force for evil. He holds the general belief that “machines are only as good or bad as the people creating them.” Page stresses the many ways in which AI could improve people’s lives – freeing them to spend their time on the things they care most about. Other Silicon Valley leaders, including Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, go as far as to dismiss Musk’s apocalyptic talk as a shrewd PR move for his brand and an attempt to attract the top talent.

“Many people [in Silicon Valley] have accepted this future: We’ll live to be 150 years old, but we’ll have machine overlords.”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg rejects Musk’s warnings as premature and hypothetical. He likens today’s AI capabilities to air travel prior to the invention of airplanes, stating that regulations were only necessary once people succeeded at building planes that could fly. Musk counters that once AI reaches a point where it outsmarts humans, it’ll be too late. 

Tech industry leaders and lawmakers are beginning to address the potential risks of AI – a field that has so far remained largely unregulated. In 2016, US tech companies founded the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, which, among other goals, seeks to address the ethical implications of the technology. More than 1,000 technology leaders have signed an open letter asking for a ban on autonomous weapons. The European Union also started to discuss how to regulate AI and whether robots can be legal entities.