FOLLOW US

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has often warned about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI). His warnings, like those of Stephen Hawking, seem to fall on deaf ears.

Musk has been sounding the alarm about the possible dangers and potentially devastating effects of AI for years. He doesn’t pull any punches. It’s clear he thinks artificial intelligence poses a threat to humanity.

From “Wargames” to “DeepMind” AI keeps getting smarter

Of all the companies developing AI technology, Musk is most troubled by the Google-owned project DeepMind, he said in an interview with The New York Times.

Musk was an early investor in DeepMind. In 2014, Google bought DeepMind for over $500 million, according to reports. Musk said in a 2017 interview that his stake in DeepMind was so he can keep an eye on exploding AI developments. He didn’t make the deal for a return on his investment.

"The nature of the AI that they're building is one that crushes all humans at all games," he said. "It's basically the plotline in 'WarGames.'"

A film made in 1983, "WarGames" starred Matthew Broderick and pointed out the dangers of AI. It featured a superbrain computer that was trained to test wartime scenarios. Then the artificial intelligence is triggered and it leads to the brink of a nuclear war.

The billionaire warned in 2016 that human beings could become the equivalent of "house cats" to new AI overlords. Elon Musk has been repeatedly calling for regulation. He thinks researchers should use caution as AI technology is developed.

Estimates are that AI could surpass human intelligence in the next five years, even if we don't see the impact of it immediately.

The potential for total disruption in every sector is high. Despite the fact that most processes are already highly automated, there are still plenty of ways in which robots can be improved with the addition of AI.

"That doesn't mean that everything goes to hell in five years," Musk emphasized. "It just means that things get unstable or weird."

Robots are a big part of  popular culture

Today we have machines that can learn, think, and ask questions. With the onset of big data, advanced neural algorithms, and super-powered parallel processing, we have unprecedented growth in the field of AI.

In 2015, Mattel developed Barbie dolls that can talk, listen, and understand. By 2017, a robot, named Sophia became a citizen of Saudi Arabia.

While you read this article, automatons are hard at work in factories. And the Ford plant has two four-legged robots named Fluffy and Spot that are at it’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant crawling around it’s facilities to laser scan 3D images that engineers will use to redesign and retool its plants.