Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke at the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Shanghai, talking about AI and its impact on humanity. Musk believes that most people are already cyborgs, as they are too connected with their smartphones.
Elon Musk held a discussion with Alibaba founder Jack Ma. As expected, Ma took a much more optimistic position than Musk. Ma encouraged people to believe in humanity, our creativity, and the future. “I do not think that artificial intelligence is a threat,” - he said. And then Musk replied: “It seems that these will be the famous last words”.
By Mask words, in general, people underestimate the capabilities of AI. They treat programs simply as an intelligent person, while AI is “a lot more”. Also, Elon Musk “optimistically” admitted that computers are already much smarter than people in many areas.
“We are used to thinking, for example, that playing chess well is an example of an intelligent person. And then Kasparov was defeated by Deep Blue in 97. That was a very long time ago, 22 years ago. I mean right now your cell phone could crush the world champion at chess, literally. Trying to beat a computer at GO would be like fighting Zeus, it’s not going to work” - Musk said.
Jack Ma responded:
“I think AI is going to open a new chapter of the society of the world that people try to understand ourselves better, rather than the outside world. And it’s so difficult to predict the future. 99.99 percent of the predictions that human beings had in history about the future — all wrong”.
Which of these two ingenious people will be right - time will tell, but this time would be better if Elon mistakes.
