Visionary billionaire Elon Musk won’t stop talking about the coming robopocalypse, and it’s frankly getting under Mark Zuckerberg‘s skin.
The two have taken opposite stances on the rise of Artificial Intelligence, with Musk sounding the alarm on multiple occasions about their potential danger, especially after he invested in an A.I startup called “DeepMind” then grew concerned when he witnessed how fast the technology was advancing. He has since declared that humans could very well “produce something evil by accident.”
Over the weekend, Zuckerberg was asked about Musk’s opinions during a Facebook Live Q&A session and responded:
“I don’t understand it. It’s really negative and in some ways I think it’s pretty irresponsible.
“I think you can build things and the world gets better. But with A.I. 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.”
Musk responded on Twitter:
I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2017
As both Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have also warned about the potential threat to humanity that A.I. technology brings with it, I think I’m siding with Elon on this one.
Hawking’s quote, btw, is worth revisiting:
“It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” he said.
“Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”
Read the whole Vanity Fair article about the dueling tech giants here.
(Photos: Pacific Coast News)