If you have not heard of Elon Musk before then you are probably either living in a cave way out in the middle of nowhere or perhaps down a well?
The Tech Billionaire, Elon Musk is at it again, catapulting civilisation into the future once more. The CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX has said that humans will need to merge with machines or risk becoming irrelevant in the age of artificial intelligence.
He was speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week. Musk said that the speed of our brains operation and communication is a lot slower than computers. He was also quoted by CNBC:
“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” “It’s mostly about bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”
Computers relay information at “a trillion bits per second”, whereas humans, who mostly communicate by typing, can do so at about 10 bits per second.
Quite the contrast.
“Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,”
Following on from this…
He then went on to explain the fears he has over Deep AI, calling it “Artifical General Intelligence” (AGI?)
“Deep artificial intelligence — or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where you have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth — I think that is a dangerous situation,”
To compound his point further he added that the most immediate impact AI will have (tech-wise) is from truly autonomous vehicles, which, of course, his company is developing.
The disruption that will be created in the workplace will be both sudden and far-reaching. Drivers count for 12-15% of the global workforce and this would mean they face unemployment.
Deciding what roles these people will then have is top of the agenda.
He went on to warn global leaders of the danger in not paying attention to the developments of AI in their respective countries. He explained to be careful over the adoption of tech and to make sure that the researchers involved do not get “carried away”, advising that public safety officials will need to be on the ball so as the tech does not become a danger to the public.
Musk has also spoken about humans merging with AI in the past:
“I think if we can effectively merge with AI, like improving the neural link between the cortex and your digital extension of yourself, which already exists but just has a bandwidth issue, then effectively, you become an AI-human symbiote,”
Mr Musk fully believes this would become widespread very quickly and that anyone who wanted it could have it. Going through these channels would also solve the issue of control e.g. there would be no ‘Skynet’ in control as we would control the AI collectively, a bit like we control the internet right?
Right..?
Elon starts his talk at around 27:30.
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