Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, got spooked by a question about artificial intelligence at a Friday symposium, warning the audience that it could precipitate humanity's ultimate downfall.
"Do you have any plans to enter the field of artificial intelligence?" an audience member asked at MIT's annual AeroAstra Centennial Symposium.
"I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that," Musk responded,
Business Insider reported.
"I'm increasingly inclined to think that 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’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like — Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out."
The audience member then referenced the evil, sentient computer from Stanley Kubrick's iconic 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey."
"So I’ll take it there'll be no HAL 9000 going to Mars?"
"Heh. HAL 9000 would be easy. It’s way more complex . . . it’d put HAL 9000 to shame. That’s like a puppy dog," said Musk. He was then so preoccupied with visions of the robot apocalypse that he had to apologize for not listening to the next question.
The ominous warning from Musk was not the first, as he's previously stated that A.I. is "potentially more dangerous than nukes," echoing the sentiments of other great scientific thinkers like Stephen Hawking.
"Success in creating A.I. would be the biggest event in human history," Hawking stated earlier this year. "Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks."
Along with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, actor Ashton Kutcher, and several other high-profile Silicon Valley names, Musk recently invested in Vicarious, a technology company seeking to "achieve human-level intelligence in vision, language, and motor control."
By having a hand in the development of A.I., Musk hopes to make sure we don't accidentally open Pandora's box.
The A.I. question comes at 1:07:00 in the video below.