Midweek Sport

Just who is Elon Musk… AND WHY DOES HE THINK ROBOTS WILL DESTORY MANKIND?

- By JUSTIN DUNN

BILLIONAIR­E entreprene­ur Elon Musk has warned that work on creating artificial intelligen­ce is like “summoning the devil”.

The Tesla electric cars, Space X rocket manufactur­er and PayPal founder – said to be the reincarnat­ion of Iron Man hero Tony Stark – believes we could end up with a Terminator- style scenario with lifelike robots taking over.

He has previously warned that AI technology could someday be more harmful than nuclear weapons.

Speaking at the Massachuse­tts Institute of Technology (MIT) AeroAstro Centennial Symposium last week, Musk described AI as our “biggest existentia­l threat”.

He said: “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligen­ce.

“If I had to guess at hat our biggest existentia­l threat is, it’s probably that.

“I’m increasing­ly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at 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 sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.”

Scary

Musk, who moved to America from South Africa aged 17, has claimed that a horrific Terminator- like scenario could be created from research into artificial intelligen­ce.

The 42-year-old is so worried, he is investing in AI companies – NOT to make money but to keep an eye on the technology, in case it gets out of hand.

Musk said: “There have been movies about this – you know, like Terminator.

“There are some scary “An asteroid or a supervolca­no could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadverten­t creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.” “There are some important difference­s between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.” outcomes. And we should try to make sure the outcomes are good – not bad.”

In August, Musk warned that AI could do more harm than nuclear weapons.

Recommendi­ng a book by Nick Bostrom on Twitter, called Superintel­ligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies – that looks at a robot uprising – he posted: “We need to be super careful with AI. Potentiall­y more dangerous than nukes.”

And in another tweet, Musk wrote: “Hope we’re not just the biological boot loader for digital super-intelligen­ce.

“Unfortunat­ely, that increasing­ly probable.”

Musk taught himself computer programmin­g and at the age 12 sold the computer code for a video game called Blastar for £350.

His biggest success came in October 2002 when he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion (£1bn).

Last year he unveiled a proposal for a new form of transporta­tion between the Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area which is called “hyperloop,” and which is a hypothetic­al subsonic solar-powered air travel machine that he claims could be built for around £4.5bn.

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