Elon Musk: ‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.’
 

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has warned about artificial intelligence before, tweeting that it could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Speaking Friday at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium, Musk called it our biggest existential threat:

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.

Musk was so caught up on artificial intelligence that he missed the audience’s next question. “Sorry can you repeat the question, I was just sort of thinking about the AI thing for a second,” he said.

Musk spoke expansively for over an hour, at one point even asking a MIT student what his favorite sci-fi books were. He left to a standing ovation. AeroAstro Centennial Webcast

Musk will go down in history as one of the greatest thinkers and innovators of our time. I would take the guy seriously.

“I don’t think anyone realizes how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing. Particularly if [the machine is] involved in recursive self-improvement . . . and its utility function is something that’s detrimental to humanity, then it will have a very bad effect,” said Musk.

“If its [function] is just something like getting rid of e-mail spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans . . . ” Musk trailed off, as the crowd laughed.... http://www.zengardner.com/artificial-intelligence-wipe-humanty-elon-musk/

Is that AI or Elon's wife?

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Well, um, duh.
Anyone who watched 2001 A Space Oddesy, or Terminator, or WarGames way back in the 1980's probably got that drift.

Q: Do his cars have Bluetooth connectivity integrated in Tesla products, just like the vehicles of Princess Diana and Michael Hastings?
A: Yes.

Q: Is he involved with Google self-driving cars?
A: No. Elon Musk is promoting his own AI: Self-Driving Cars From Tesla In About 3 Years, Says CEO Elon Musk

He may be onto something.

Imagine a machine thinking and then making a decision based purely on logic. And then having the ability to act on that thinking.
If a human goes "Postal" they can be stopped with force but a machine? There may be no way to stop them.

The ultimate night mare would be nano machines or the Grey Cloud acting with AI.

Interesting concept... Her "characters life" meant nothing to her because she was a clone and therefore would come back.

Yup. If you create a machine that can 100% think for itself, what is there to insure that the machine follows human programming?

Asimov talked about this stuff, what, 50 years ago? iRobot.

If we want to go way back...
The binary Abacus dates to 2700–2300 BC.
Physical traps date before known history.
The Antikythera Mechanism dates 150 to 100 BC, and was the first computer to output data based on input.

Demon?

Musk is more likely to summon a group of Luddites who will give him a country comeuppance.

Over 60.

I loved the story of the computer correcting the angle of a beam to earth developing a religious complex.

Edit:

Over 70!

iRobot was a compilation of stories written between 1940 and 1950.

Repeat, in case someone missed the irony the first time.

Oh, Lord. :rolleyes:

Elon Musk is a great marketer and is a real workaholic. Just ask his ex wife (wives?). But I would take anything he says about bleeding-edge technology or ethics with a grain of salt.

One of my friends is an (ex)-Rocket Scientist. I asked her about working for Space-X. She said she could not afford to be that poor. The "perk" is eventually people still working there will get to ride the Dragon to the ISS.

But....

SpaceX Sued Over Layoffs | Los Angeles Business Journal

I have a friend who works for a big satellite and launch systems manufacturer. He has supervised launches all over the planet. He told me the most terrifying thing he had ever seen was a SpaceX launch vehicle. Something about "criminally negligent lack of redundancy in critical systems". But I'm no rocket surgeon.

Redundancy! phift! If it'll break once it'll break three times!!!

Actually Space X, while it prolly won't be the Ford of space travel has/will helped to inspire others to begin the quest.

(Still think we should explore within instead of going out)

Existential insight from 50, 60 or 70 years ago is not ancient.

I can't claim to know very much about Musk or Asimov but ideas like theirs deserve to be considered of their own merit. The planet will continue to turn whether we are here or not. Seems better to consider things that might wreck the place.

I think there are reasons that ideas films, books and movies become popular. I believe the reason is that someone saved the masses the trouble of imagining an idea, turning it into a story and then documented/executed it. That stuff gets popular when it appeals to peoples' subconscious...the part of people that sees and speaks possibilities and truth.

Asimov and Musk don't appeal to everyone. But they did/do think---a lot---and have been able to turn those thoughts and ideas into stories and realities that are both appealing and scary.

I'm a little tired of considering all of it now...Issac and Elon probably wouldn't be.

Asimov and Musk being jointly credited with Asimov's ideas. Now we have proof the Musk is the king of marketers...and that our country is doomed.

+1

I know several SpaceX folks, both jumped ship when they separated reality from hype. Both were in prominent positions and commented that the company was a LONG way from manned launches.

I'd be more worried about corporate parasites that live off of taxpayer's money.


BYW, i'm very worried that some day mankind will learn how to harness the atom, to use it as a nuclear "weapon" reining down destruction on hundreds of thousands of people in Japan.

Does that make me some sort of visionary?

Comparing Musk to Azimov is a terrible injustice to a genius and Azimov fans have good reason to be upset.
Now if you compared him to Heinlein, that'd be fightin' words mister!

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1414428207.jpg

This ^^
Cheers
JB

Musk is an innovator. He's pushing the auto industry to innovate quickly. He's challenging existing models of car sales, marketing and distribution. He's also created some pretty cool products.

Regarding the merits of summoning the demon, we are giving up our control over our car and essentially control over our body to a car when we get into a driverless vehicle. We'll need to depend on the decisions of that driverless vehicle to react appropriately to unplanned and sudden changes to the road conditions. What if it malfunctions and runs over the neighbor's kid? Is the car company or the car's owner liable?

Musk has a vision for our future. He thinks with teraforming, huge advances in science and technology, mankind some day may have a chance with a future at Mars. It's worth pondering. Anyone with better ideas? Is mass extinction or the apocalypse a better idea?

Combine this

Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram | ExtremeTech

With this

Biological computer can decrypt images stored in DNA | ExtremeTech

Add a little AI and we are royally screwed.

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LOL do I have a better idea than trying to colonize Mars? Yeah, but only about a hundred thousand of them.
But hey, if that sort of make-believe stuff makes you FEEL good .........

@sammy, Let's hear the best out of your 100k ideas and how you'd make them a reality. Musk has the reputation of doing interesting stuff. Putting your ideas on the same level as his accomplishments hopefully makes YOU feel better.

It is already an issue. If a self driving car gets in a situation where it has two options, kill a pedestrian in the street or drive you off a cliff, what should it do? These things are being debated so they can be programmed.

Google is buying up tons of AI companies and pushing the research. The billionaires are interested in electronically living forever. More time is (currently) the one thing all their money can't buy.

Musk = PT Barnum

Hey, go easy. Steve Jobs is dead; the masses need another scheisster (spelling intentional) to tell them what's cool. Let them have their hero.

elon musk is no savior, no hero. he's just a guy who invents stuff, makes stuff, sells stuff like us. you may think he's pt barnum, but tesla does make a sedan that goes from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. elon musk cofounded paypal, is the CEO of tesla, CEO and CTO of space x, CEO of solarcity.

musk has a lot of ideas, some far fetched, some just crazy. but it's the crazy people that often make a difference in the world. i don't care about musk's politics. i care about the future of cars, about ways to make them better. musk is trying very hard to change transportation, to make it better.

musk may fail and ultimately make some very big mistakes. but i don't fault him for trying.

***

regarding steve jobs, he's a hero to all who didn't have a choice when it came to computers. mac or apple gave most of us a choice. i like people who start companies, fail, then somehow pick themselves up to start again. steve jobs was also the ceo of next and pixar, which gave us wonderful stories that changed the world. without steve job's money, pixar would have gone out of business. steve jobs was instrumental for the creation of toy story. the success of toy story led to films like finding memo, up, monsters inc, and the incredibles.

steve jobs may not be a hero to you, but he is a hero to my 90 year old dad, who couldn't work a cell phone until he got an iPhone. now my dad texts, manages his credit card online, browses the internet, and even buys things on amazon.com. my dad now uses an iPad. my mom is addicted to candy crush. the company steve jobs left behind made products that were so easy to use that even technophobes like my parents can use them. that's something pt barnum never did.

Yep. The robot series. Great stuff.