Hindustan Times (Amritsar)

Elon Musk escalates row with Zuckerberg over AI

- HT Correspond­ent letters@hindustant­imes.com (With inputs from IANS)

NEW DELHI: The ongoing spat between tech honchos El on Musk and Mark Zuckerberg escalated on Tuesday, with the Space X and Tesla CEO saying the Facebook creator’s understand­ing of artificial intelligen­ce (AI) is “limited”.

Zuckerberg had earlier claimed Musk’s warnings of the dangers of AI were “irresponsi­ble” and castigated him for arguing that care and regulation is needed to safeguard the future if AI were to become mainstream.

“I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios – I just, I don’t understand it. It’s really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsi­ble, ”Zuckerberg had said.

In response, Musk shot back with a tweet on Tuesday, writing, “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understand­ing of the subject is limited.”

He added that a movie on the subject of AI was “coming soon ,” but didn’t provide details about the film or his involvemen­t.

Musk had ignited a global discussion on the dangers of AI back in 2014, when he predicted that machines that are smarter than humans would spell “doom” for mankind. He is involved in a startup called Neuralink that

MUSK HAS REPEATEDLY WARNED ABOUT AI, DESCRIBING IT AS A POTENTIALL­Y EXISTENTIA­L THREAT TO THE HUMAN RACE.

intends to build devices to connect the human brain with computers.

Mean while, Zuckerberg considers himself an optimist when it comes to AI. Inspired by Iron Man’s AI assistant Jarvis, the Facebook chief has coded and developed his own artificial assistant which can control his home—including lights, temperatur­e, appliances, music and security — that learned his tastes, and can even entertain his daughter Max.

The system he developed uses several AI techniques, including natural language processing, speech recognitio­n, face recognitio­n and reinforcem­ent learning.

The war of words between Mus kan dZuc ker berg is not new. The two previously had a verbal duel after a SpaceX rocket carryinga Facebook satellite broke up into fragments during its launch in Florida last year.

 ?? REUTERS FILE ?? Elon Musk claimed that Mark Zuckerberg’s understand­ing of artificial intelligen­ce was “limited”.
REUTERS FILE Elon Musk claimed that Mark Zuckerberg’s understand­ing of artificial intelligen­ce was “limited”.

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