Musk, Zuckerberg Trade Insults Over AI's "Existential Threat"
Elon Musk's recent comments about AI's "existential threat to human civilization" prompted a response from Mark Zuckerberg calling the Tesla CEO's comments "pretty irresponsible." Well Musk has struck back this morning, slamming theFacebook chief's understanding of AI as "limited."
As a reminder, Musk called on the government to proactively regulate artificial intelligence before things advance too far.(Musk begins talking around 42 minutes in)
“Until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” he said. “
AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive. Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it’s too late.”
“Normally the way regulations are set up is a while bunch of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry,” he continued.
“It takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization. AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”
Musk has been concerned about AI for years, and he’s working on technology that would connect the human brain to the computer software meant to mimic it.
And then, as The Independent reports, during a Facebook Live over the weekend, Mr Zuckerberg picked out a question that had been submitted to him by a viewer.
“I watched a recent interview with Elon Musk and his largest fear for future was AI. What are your thoughts on AI and how it could affect the world?” it asked.
Mr Zuckerberg answered: “I have pretty strong opinions on this. I am optimistic. I think you can build things and the world gets better. But with AI especially, I am really optimistic.
“And 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.”
Mr Zuckerberg dismissed those fears. He continued:
"In the next five to 10 years, AI is going to deliver so many improvements in the quality of our lives. One of the top causes of death for people is car accidents still and if you can eliminate that with AI, that is going to be just a dramatic improvement.
“Whenever I hear people saying AI is going to hurt people in the future, I think yeah, you know, technology can generally always be used for good and bad, and you need to be careful about how you build it and you need to be careful about what you build and how it is going to be used.
“But people who are arguing for slowing down the process of building AI, I just find that really questionable. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that.”
Musk decided to hit back in a comment posted to Twitter...
AI Wars - begun they have...
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Musk vs Zuckerberg, Round one goes too..
Zuckerberg, even though I like Musk better. There is no existential AI threat... i.e. no problem with AI currently....
There is much FUD over Artificial Intelligence as it evolves at a fast pace. Of course AI is being used more and more, including in our smartphones in the form of Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana.
But I am sure that the developers of AI applications and creators of robots will bring in enough checks and balances to ensure that robots don't become the primary decision makers. Till the time humans are ones controlling the buttons I think we are going to be fine.
Thanks for such an informative post!
Following for more!
Agreed! We can get into a discussion as to what exactly qualifies as AI. Some argue that Siri e.g. is not AI (even though it started as an AI project) or not the AI as we imagine of the future. This could get into semantics.
At some point we have to make sure our robots/AI are programmed to follow Asimov's Zero'th Law in the Foundation series:
"A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. ... Humanity is an abstraction."
If robots natural instinct is to help humanity. Would it's first job not be to kill at least 3 billion people which would be our eldely, sick and then poor? After all we are bursting at the seems so to speak?
Interesting circular reasoning but.....That is why the directives / laws override any "natural instincts" AI/robots learn through their neural learning. As Asimov wrote the directives can not be overridden (or should not!); since the elderly, sick, and poor are people too they can not be hurt because of the overriding Zero'th Law - No Harm to Humans. If we lose the ability to control machines in any literal sense completely we will have existential problems then.
Thanks for the disclaimer. I was kinda excited that Tyler Durden hisself was posting on Steemit, and am grateful you have disabused me of that misunderstanding.
I am grateful even more that you have undertaken to post Zerohedge's great content here, where I actually visit, and read.
As to the discourse between Zuckerberg and Musk, I really hope it reflects a fundamental difference between them. Zuckerberg is known to actively embrace censorship, propaganda, and data harvesting on the grandest scale.
Musk has done none of these. I therefore retain confidence in Musk's vision: to make life intraplanetary. Zuckerberg's vision seems simply to make money. I know which of these visions has meaning for me.
Edit: people may not be aware that killer robots are deployed today. The USG has employed them in Iraq, and other conflicts. So far the robots have not been made autonomous, that is, they are not able to shoot without a human being making the decision to fire. This is not a technological impediment, but is merely their practice.
The fact is that robots that can shoot and kill people are on streets today, and only institutional controls prevent them from acting to decide who to shoot.
Elon Musk could not be more correct in his alarm over AI. I do not want AI to decide who to shoot. I want humans to remain responsible for that decision, so I can know who needs to be hung.
Agree in some respects esp. on Musk and Zuck., but killer drones/robots are not AI. As you said, they are controlled by people much like any other weapon.
And there is great pressure being applied to make those killbots autonomous, which is to let AI decide to pull the trigger. There are battlefield situations where the decisions being made more quickly will determine the winner.
AI will be handed these weapons, because only AI can act quickly enough.
I expect there have already been instances of this happening. AEGIS, for example, does not wait for human confirmation.
I will defer to your expertise on AEGIS and automated triggers. That is the problem with many technologies now if one side takes the moral route e.g. only human controlled triggers and the other takes the automated AI route then it could clearly result in a first-strike takes all scenario as you say. Unfortunate and may result in new applications of mutually assured destruction.
Haha :D its funny how Elon diss Zuckerberg saying that his knowledge is "limited". That's a smooth intelectual insult right there.
Futuristic visions are birthed by independent visionaries. #allmindsmatter
So what did Musk tweet? The link doesn't give me anything obvious.
Tyler Durden for president!
excellent post !
I do not agree with Elon Musk's statement that Marc's understanding is limited over AI. He will surely invent great things with the use of AI and change our lives like facebook has done in so many ways.
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