Tech billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk issued a stern warning at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week that artificial intelligence has some very dangerous potential to the human race.
In an interview at the event he stated, “One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. I don’t mean narrow A.I – deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth. This is a dangerous situation.”
He continued, in regards to world governments, “Pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence. Make sure researchers don’t get carried away – scientists get so engrossed in their work they don’t realize what they are doing.” (Read more on Musk’s remarks here).
Half-joking that to a population that’s already ‘half-cyborg’ due to our reliance on smartphones, Musk shared that while there were positive benefits of AI to our world, that creating the kind of deep artificial intelligence that could be several times smarter than the smartest person on earth had some ‘dangerous possibilities’.
At the risk of being cliche, we’ve all seen ‘The Terminator’ series. Musk, as well as other tech geniuses like Steven Hawking, Bill Gates, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak have warned against the terrifying potential of artificial intelligence, confirming the plot of the popular movie series is not in fact, so outlandish.
The insatiable appetite the human race has for technological innovation can sometimes go above and beyond anything reasonable, and, like the Greek myth Icarus, might eventually lead to our own demise.
We as survivalists already know how much technology is disabling humans and stripping away basic skills we all might need some day. AI can’t protect us from natural disasters, and certainly might lead to unimaginable disasters as Musk warns.
This is all the more reason to keep pressing on with acquiring skills, knowledge, and gear that is not reliant on technology or massive global energy or information grids. We do have the benefit of having access to massive amounts of information via the internet right now, and we should take full advantage now. But the time might come when the lines blur between human and artificial intelligence, as Musk warned, so we have to always be prepared for the possibility to separate from technology to maintain the very essence of our humanity.
If you enjoyed this, you might also like….