(ANTIMEDIA) — Stating in a tweet this week that artificial intelligence would be the most likely cause of World War 3, entrepreneur and tech mogul Elon Musk added a new chapter to his crusade against unregulated AI. Coming on the heels of Vladimir Putin’s pronouncement that the best innovator in AI technology would be the next global leader — as well as Musk’s own statement that AI is more dangerous than North Korea — the new tweet comes amid a peak of global tensions regarding nuclear ICBMs.
China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017
Musk’s tweet, which was a response to Putin’s fairly obvious statement last week, made it clear that the SpaceX and Tesla founder believes the next nuclear strike is more likely to come from a preemptive AI attack than from a nation-state. With all three major superpowers — the United States, China, and Russia — pursuing militarized AI, Musk also asserted that governments, not corporations, would be the ones to control the existential risk presented by AI.
Govts don't need to follow normal laws. They will obtain AI developed by companies at gunpoint, if necessary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017
Musk has positioned himself as a neo-Luddite in the AI race but has also made the controversial claim that the best way for us to safeguard human civilization against runaway AI is to essentially merge our minds symbiotically with AI technology. This is why his company, OpenAI, is working on the creation of a “neural lace” that will act as a transhumanist brain-machine interface (BMI) capable of merging the human mind with AI in a cloud-type environment.
Is Musk’s posturing a brilliant marketing move meant to permanently nestle his brand into the next generation of tech development? Or does he legitimately fear a preemptive nuclear strike by an advanced artificial intelligence that sees the human race — not killer robots — as the greatest threat to life on Earth?
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