Among his many warnings about the rise of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has said that autonomous machines are more dangerous to the world than North Korea and could unleash “weapons of terror.” He has compared the adoption of AI to “summoning the devil”.
Now the billionaire inventor and Tesla chief executive — who believes artificial intelligence could help trigger the next world war — has issued another severe warning about how super-intelligent machines could come to dominate the world. Those super computers could become “an immortal dictator from which we would never escape”, Musk passionately warns in the new documentary Do You Trust This Computer?
Watch the trailer here:
In the documentary, directed by Chris Paine (the man behind 2006’s Who Killed The Electric Car?), Musk joins a growing chorus of experts warning that intelligent machines are already fundamentally changing our society by amassing personal data, advancing science and medicine and beginning to create new forms of super intelligence.
Nothing will affect the future of humanity more than digital super-intelligence. Watch Chris Paine’s new AI movie for free until Sunday night at https://t.co/WehHcZX7Qe
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 6, 2018
“The pattern here is that AI might take a little while to wrap its tentacles around a new skill, but when it does it is unstoppable,” the film’s trailer warns.
In recent years, Musk’s warnings about the risks posed by AI have grown increasingly strident — drawing pushback last year from Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who called Musk’s dark predictions “pretty irresponsible”. Responding to Zuckerberg, Musk said his fellow tech billionaire’s understanding of the threat posed by artificial intelligence “is limited”.
According to a report in Mashable, Musk was so intent on spreading his warnings about AI to the public that he paid for Do You Trust This Computer to be streamed free on YouTube over the weekend.
“It’s a very important subject,” he said at the film’s premiere, according to Mashable. “It’s going to affect our lives in ways we can’t even imagine right now.”