Elon Musk Voices Need to Regulate AI Before It Poses Risk to Humanity
Elon Musk renews his call for regulations on artificial intelligence before it can become a risk to humanity. In his speech, the Tesla founder underlined the need to regulate AI today, instead of putting it off for another time.
Musk took his time as the speaker of the National Governors Association summer meeting on Saturday, July 15, to voice out his concern over AI, and how regulation can rein in the imminent threat of the technology.
The entrepreneur spoke of the need to regulate AI even as it is in its very early stages. "I have exposure to the very cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it," Musk shared with the meeting attendees.
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"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," he added.
By AI, the Tesla CEO refers to general artificial intelligence — entities that can learn and perhaps gain consciousness, and not the task-oriented AI used by Google and Microsoft today.
François Chollet, a researcher working on neural net and deep learning with Google, shared his opinion that the more immediate threat seems to be propaganda and misinformation aided by advances in AI.
"Arguably the greatest threat is mass population control via message targeting and propaganda bot armies. [Machine learning is] not a requirement though," the Keras platform author noted, as quoted by The Verge.
AI regulation in the U.S. would be hampered by the Trump administration's general lack of interest in the area of technology and science, as pointed out by the MIT Technology Review.
Elon Musk will have to take even more opportunities to speak out about AI regulation if he is to make his voice heard on this issue.
The video below shows the comments by Elon Musk, about 48 minutes in, during the closing plenary of the "Ahead of the Curve" initiative by new NGA Chair and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval.
