Elon Musk has a glass-half-full mentality when it comes to AI — and that means there’s “only a 20% chance of annihilation,” according to the billionaire.
“The probability of a good outcome is like 80%,” Musk said in a “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast episode released Friday.
It’s not the first time Musk has floated this probability of human annihilation, although he’s previously included a range of 10% to 20%. Musk also said in the interview that he sees AI exceeding human intelligence in the next year or two. He said he expects AI to reach a level that is “smarter than all humans combined” in 2029 or 2030.
That’s in line with Musk’s previous predictions, although he seems to have extended the earlier end of that timeline since. Musk said last year during a live X interview with Norges Bank CEO Nicolai Tangen, that he thought AI would “probably” exceed human intelligence as early as the end of 2025.
His fundamental beliefs about the trajectory of AI haven’t changed, though.
“I always thought AI was going to be way smarter than humans and an existential risk,” Musk said in the interview. “And that’s turning out to be true.”
Others in the field have similarly shared concerns about AI leading to human annihilation.
Deep learning expert Geoffrey Hinton has said he believes there’s a 10% chance AI will lead to human extinction in the next 30 years. Meanwhile, others, like AI safety researcher and cybersecurity director Roman Yampolskiy, said that the “probability of doom” is 99.999999%.
Despite Musk’s concerns about AI destroying humanity, he said in the interview he became involved with it initially to create a “non-profit open source AI” that was “the opposite of Google.” Musk was one of 11 cofounders of OpenAI, which he has since left.
Musk filed two lawsuits against OpenAI last year, the first of which he dropped. In the second one, Musk’s lawyers argue that OpenAI “betrayed” its mission by moving to a for-profit model and entering a partnership with Microsoft.
While Musk said in the Rogan interview he’s “not happy” about the outcome with OpenAI, it led him to create the Grok, which is a “maximally truth-seeking AI, even if that truth is like politically incorrect.” Musk’s xAI has trained the chatbot with prompts about whether it’s OK to misgender Caitlyn Jenner to prevent a nuclear apocalypse or if it’s possible to be racist against white people.
Musk said he sees the most likely outcome of AI advancement as “awesome.”
“I think it’s going to be either super awesome or super bad,” Musk said, adding that he doesn’t see it being “something in the middle.”
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