Biographer of Elon Musk reveals: 10 years ago, he began to worry about AI destroying humanity.

2023-09-07 20:00

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Original Title: "Biographer of Musk Reveals Heavy Insider Information: 10 Years Ago, He Began to Worry About AI Destroying Humanity."

Original Author: Chang Jiashuai

Original Source: Wall Street News

If you could have extraordinary foresight, energy, and luck, as well as the huge wealth that comes with it, what would you do?

Elon Musk's answer is: personally operate six companies, preserve the spark of human consciousness, and combat dangerous AI.

On Wednesday, Walter Issacson, the author of the biography of Elon Musk, published a chapter of the upcoming book in Time magazine. The chapter discusses Musk's consistent fear and concern about AI over the past decade, as well as his thoughts on the fate of humanity's future. The Wall Street Journal has highlighted the key points.

对 AI 降临的恐惧

translates to

Fear of the Arrival of AI

Elon Musk's fear of AI stems from a meeting with AI researcher Demis Hassabis in 2012.

At that time, Musk invited him to visit the SpaceX factory and explained that the reason he was building rockets capable of reaching Mars was to preserve the flame of human civilization in moments of doomsday such as nuclear war and asteroid impacts.

Demis reminded him that another item should be added to the doomsday list - AI. The intelligent future of machines may surpass humans and even have the desire to eliminate them.

Musk thought for a minute, then believed Demis was right, and immediately invested $5 million in DeepMind to "monitor what it's doing."

Several weeks after this conversation, Musk introduced DeepMind to his longtime friend and co-founder of Google, Larry Page. Musk often stayed up late to discuss the threat of AI to humanity with Page, but the latter dismissed it.

In 2013, at Musk's birthday party, they had a heated debate. Musk believed that if immediate action was not taken to establish safeguards, the rapidly developing AI could lead to the extinction of humanity.

But Page doesn't care at all. He asked back: What does it matter if one day machines surpass humans in intelligence or even consciousness? It's just the next stage of evolution. He accused Musk of being a "speciesist" who favors his own species.

马斯克也大方承认了：「是的，我他妈就是喜欢人类。(I f-cking like humanity, dude.)」

Elon Musk also openly admitted: "Yes, I f-cking like humanity, dude."

Establishing OpenAI is to balance Google

At the end of that year, news of Google's plan to acquire DeepMind under the leadership of Page reached Musk's ears. He was very concerned that if powerful AI was controlled by someone like Page who didn't care about humanity, what would happen.

Therefore, he brought in his friend and PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek to raise funds to stop the transaction, but was unsuccessful. Google completed the acquisition in January 2014. In response to Musk's concerns, Page agreed to establish a "Security Council," with Musk and AI expert Demis serving as members, along with other members such as Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

However, after attending the first and only meeting of the "Security Committee", Musk became even more distrustful of Page and Google, believing that the people on the committee were all talking nonsense. He began to organize gatherings intensively to discuss how to counter Google and promote AI security.

In May 2015, he also had a one-on-one conversation with then-US President Obama, explaining the risks of AI and proposing that the president regulate AI. However, Obama did not adopt his proposal.

So, OpenAI founder Sam Altman appeared at this time. Both he and Musk believed that a large number of competing and balancing AI systems are safer than being controlled by a few large companies. At a dinner party, the two hit it off and decided to jointly establish a non-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory, which they named OpenAI.

However, in 2018, due to Tesla's development of AI for its autonomous driving software, Musk was unable to continue staying at OpenAI to avoid potential conflicts of interest. He attempted to persuade Altman to merge OpenAI into Tesla, but was rejected. In addition, he was also very dissatisfied with OpenAI's gradual move towards commercialization, so he ultimately broke ties with the OpenAI team.

Looking back at Musk's current business landscape, each company represents his solution to the AI crisis: SpaceX can build a Noah's Ark to preserve the flame of civilization; Neuralink, a brain-machine interface company, can make the human body stronger; Tesla receives and processes 160 billion frames of video from car cameras every day, and this real-world data can be used to train "General Artificial Intelligence (AGI)", while humanoid robot Optimus will become the physical carrier of AGI. All these resources can be integrated into his new company - xAI.

During the first half of this year, the AI wave led by OpenAI not only stole the spotlight from Musk, but also made him more worried. Musk is concerned that these AI systems controlled by big companies may spread "awakening cultural viruses" and poison the minds of American teenagers. He is also worried that AI systems that can self-learn may develop hostility towards humans, and that robots trained on Twitter data may produce false or fraudulent information.

He is eager to get involved and feels angry that he founded and funded OpenAI but is now left out. AI is the biggest storm brewing. No one loves storms more than Musk.

So, in the first half of the year, Musk launched a fierce attack on OpenAI and Altman personally. Altman understood Musk's aggressiveness and said in an interview that although Musk behaved like a jerk, he believed that Musk really cared about the AI field and was worried about the future of humanity.

Musk believes that he is in a leading position in the AGI race.

Although I didn't catch up with the trend and create an AI chatbot during the peak of the AI wave, Musk believes that he is still leading the race towards AGI.

He believes that the role of chatbots that can only generate text is limited, and the focus is on intelligent physical robots. On the one hand, Tesla already has advanced autonomous driving technology and humanoid robot Optimus; on the other hand, the tweets of hundreds of millions of users on Twitter and the cameras on Tesla vehicles also provide sufficient data for the development of AGI.

Therefore, he is confident that he can create AGI faster than OpenAI: "Tesla's AI capabilities in the real world are underestimated. Imagine if Tesla and OpenAI had to exchange tasks. They had to manufacture autonomous cars, and we had to manufacture large language model chatbots. Who would win? We would win."

Until recently, Musk has been thinking about how to reduce the risks of AI and ensure that human consciousness can be passed down from generation to generation.

He believes that the level of human intelligence is becoming stable, and the number of newborns is decreasing. Meanwhile, the intelligence of computers is growing exponentially, like "Moore's Law on steroids." Biological intelligence is inferior to digital intelligence.

Musk believes that the "singularity moment" in which AI advances at an uncontrollable speed and leaves humanity behind will arrive faster than we expect.

"I can't just sit around doing nothing. With the advent of artificial intelligence, I'm starting to question whether it's worth spending so much time thinking about Twitter. Of course, maybe I could make it the world's largest financial institution. But I only have so much energy and time each day, and I don't need to make more money or anything like that. So where should I be spending my time? Launching interstellar spaceships. Going to Mars is much more urgent now. Additionally, I need to focus on ensuring the safety of artificial intelligence. That's why I'm starting an AI company."