Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not exactly been a believer in artificial intelligence development, and the 48-year-old seems to be reiterating that once more. Musk fired a warning note once more on the development of artificial intelligence, batting that this should be regulated. In fact, he even included Tesla for good measure.
Musk's recent tweet is in reaction to the latest MIT Technology Review profile of OpenAI. It is an organization founded by Musk back in 2015 together with Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman. The company was first formed as a non-profit company that got a $1 billion backing from its pool of investors. That same year, Musk assumed that the group would consider it as an alternative to sitting on the sidelines and encourage regulatory oversight, Tech Crunch reported. He would reiterate the need for a regulation needed to be put in place in 2017.
But years passed, and there were many changes that happened. That included the formation of a for-profit arm owned by a non-parent company in 2019. It also accepted a $1 billion investment from Microsoft and the formation of a wide-ranging partnership. These were seen as developments contravening to the founding principles of the company.
The comments of Musk comes a bit of a surprise considering he has been quite distant to MIT. Despite co-founding it, he maintains that he sees the Microsoft deal reasonable but stressed that OpenAI should be more open. Admitting that he no control and very limited insight into OpenAI, he is a bit wary on director Dario Almodei when it comes to ensuring the safe development of AI.
Musk's sudden address of advanced AI rekindles his concern on its development. The Tesla CEO is aware of the risks associated with creating AI, particularly when it comes to making it independent and/or advanced. In fact, he went as far as to say that it could pose a serious threat to the existence of human civilization if not properly controlled.
Hence, Musk believes that advanced AI development is something that should be regulated both by individual national governments and international governing bodies such as the United Nations. The threats that it offers is plausible and something not just taken out of some science-fiction film. It is a reality that could happen, especially if a man fails to control and approach it with caution properly. It may not be alarming for now, but that can easily change with the rapid development of technology.
