Noted space explorer and Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks artificial intelligence-backed robots will one day kill us all. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes they’ll only bring rainbows and butterflies and medical cures. I tend to side with Tesla boy here, even though he has an out most of us don’t have because he can move to Mars whenever he wants.
In a weird, dramatic billionaire showdown on how AI will either save or doom us all, Zuckerberg and Musk keep going back and forth from total opposite sides of the spectrum. In a recent spat between the two, Musk tweeted that Zuckerberg’s “understanding of the subject is limited.”
Musk, whose Tesla cars are in the process of one day driving all by themselves with the help of AI, thinks this stuff can get really dangerous really fast. And while his actions and words don’t totally line up, I, an inferior human who admits to watching the Terminator series a few too many times, share Musk’s eternal fear of the human race being blasted away by its own creation.
Here, Elon, sum it up for me via Automotive News:
Fear that machines could become so intelligent that they might rise up and overthrow humanity is a common theme in science fiction.
Musk told a gathering of U.S. governors this month that the potential dangers are not so imaginary, and that they should move to regulate AI.
“I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react, because it seems so ethereal,” Musk said, according to a video of the event.
“AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization,” he added.
Let it be known that I don’t exactly agree with Musk on everything, such as his weird idea that digging holes from city center to city center will solve all of our traffic issues forever. Maybe we can hide in the holes when the robots take over.
But the folks at Facebook think the robots are good and would never want to hurt us. And, even if they did, Facebook head of artificial intelligence Yann LeCun said we “have a lot of checks and balances built into society to prevent evil from having infinite power.” Huh! Great to know. I will no longer fear.
On that note, Zuckerberg just can’t wait to see what the robots will do for us. Automotive News reports that Zuckerberg streamed a live video of himself on Facebook while grilling brisket at home—like the very regular man he is—when he got asked about Musk’s thoughts on the machines. From Automotive News:
“I’m really optimistic,” Zuckerberg countered, “and I think that people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios, I don’t understand it.
“It’s really negative, and in some ways I actually think it’s pretty irresponsible.”
Zuckerberg said AI could result in better diagnoses of diseases and the elimination of car wrecks, and he said he did not see how “in good conscience” people could want to slow down the development of AI through regulation.
There is only one logical answer here. Zuckerberg is a robot. He is siding with his peopl—fellow robots.
I hope you’re all ready for our impending doom and eventual vaporization. Judgement Day is inevitable.