With the rage for ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence through the roof, Elon Musk has issued a strong warning. The AI is one of the greatest risks to the future of civilizationassured the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX during your participation at the World Government Summit that takes place in Dubai.
The statement seems somewhat fatalistic. Especially when the tycoon himself has been one of the founders of OpenAIthe startup that today is on everyone’s lips for its chatbot powered by the GPT-3 language model. However, it is not the first time that he has made a statement of this type.
Asked how he saw the development of technology in general in the next 10 years, Elon Musk chose to focus on artificial intelligence. This is how he released a strong definition about the true impact that it can have on a society level in the not too distant future.
“One of the biggest risks to the future of civilization is artificial intelligence. It is both positive and negative. He has great promise and great capabilities, but with that also comes great danger,” Elon Musk said. But far from remaining pessimistic, the businessman gave an interesting explanation of why it is necessary not to overlook the importance of security in the development of this type of technology.
“I think AI is something we need to be quite concerned about, and keep an eye on for its safety. I was instrumental in establishing OpenAI, and at the time I was concerned that Google was not paying enough attention to the security of AI. […] ChatGPT has illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become. In fact, artificial intelligence has been advanced for a while, it just didn’t have a user interface that was accessible to most people. What ChatGPT has done is give a user interface to a technology that has been around for several years.”
Elon Musk, at the World Government Summit.
Elon Musk believes it is crucial to regulate artificial intelligence
Speaking about the risks and challenges that artificial intelligence poses going forward, Elon Musk was blunt. “I think we should regulate the safety of AIs”, indicated. And he suggested the creation of a supervisory board that would function like the entities that regulate other potentially risky technologies for people, such as aviation, cars or the pharmaceutical industry.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said he believes that artificial intelligence today represents a greater danger to society than “aircraft, cars or medicines.” And that although the adoption of a regulatory framework could slow down the development of AIThat’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“The challenge here is that regulation tends to be established as a reaction to when something bad happens. […]. But if something bad happens with artificial intelligence, the reaction from a regulatory point of view can be very slow,” Elon Musk predicted.
Certainly, the businessman’s statements are very interesting. They are striking because it is about a person who has historically advocated the use of artificial intelligence; in fact, his intention is for Tesla cars to be able to drive completely autonomously. But highlight the potentially harmful aspects of technology neither does it make him an “anti-AI” figure.
What’s more, already in 2014 Elon Musk had expressed an opinion on the risks of artificial intelligence that had caused quite a stir. By then, he had tweeted that AI could be more dangerous than nuclear weapons.