While billionaire Elon Musk has shown his faith in technology with his work on electric cars and space exploration, he has his doubts about technology just like everyone else.
The chief executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX appeared in an on-stage discussion Wednesday at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit in San Francisco, where he talked to Apsen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson about how quickly AIs has been developing and how it could pose a threat to human beings, according to CNET.
"I don't think anyone realizes how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing. Particularly if [the machine is] involved in recursive self-improvement ... and its utility function is something that's detrimental to humanity, then it will have a very bad effect," Musk said.
Another problem Musk brought up is how robots could apply its everyday tasks to wiping out humanity, Business Insider reported.
"If its [function] is just something like getting rid of e-mail spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans ..."
Musk has shared his concerns about killer robots before, telling CNBC in June that he worries that AI with no limitations could lead to the kind of apocalyptic future seen in The Terminator and other movies where robots take over the world, CNET reported. He sent out a tweet in August recommending that everyone read an upcoming book that discusses how dangerous an abundance of AI can be.
"We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes," Musk wrote.
Isaacson brought up using SpaceX ships to move to Mars as an option to escape killer robots, Business Insider reported. Unfortunately, Musk said it wouldn't work.
"No - more likely than not that if there's some ... apocalypse scenario, it may follow people from Earth."
