In the latest episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, once again shared his views on artificial intelligence (AI) development. Although he has always expressed concern about the potential risks of AI, this time, he seems to be relatively optimistic about humanity’s future.
Musk said he believes that the probability of AI causing human destruction is only 20%, and the likelihood of a good outcome is as high as 80%. This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned this probability, as he has previously predicted a 10 to 20 percent chance that AI will cause human extinction.
Musk also said in the interview that he expects AI to surpass human intelligence in the next year or two and reach a level “smarter than all humans combined” by 2029 or 2030. However, he said last year that AI could surpass human intelligence as early as the end of 2025.
Musk’s AI Journey: From OpenAI to xAI and the Battle for Truth
Musk’s fundamental view of AI hasn’t changed. He has always believed that AI will be far superior to human intelligence and pose an “existential risk”, and the current situation confirms his point. In the field of artificial intelligence, other experts have also expressed concern that AI could lead to the extinction of humans. Deep learning expert Jeffrey Hinton believes that there is a 10% chance that AI will cause human extinction in the next 30 years, and Roman Yampolski, AI security researcher and director of cybersecurity, said that the probability of humanity facing “destruction” is as high as 99.999999%.
Despite concerns about the prospect of AI potentially destroying humanity, Musk said in an interview that he initially ventured into the AI space to create a “non-profit, open-source AI” that would oppose Google. He was one of the 11 co-founders of OpenAI but later left the organization. Last year, Musk filed two lawsuits against OpenAI, the first of which was withdrawn. In the second lawsuit, Musk’s lawyers accused OpenAI of deviating from its mission, switching to a profit model, and forging a partnership with Microsoft.
Musk said in an interview that he was “unhappy” with the current OpenAI, which led him to found the company xAI and launch the Grok chatbot. Grok is designed to be “an AI that pursues the ultimate truth“, even if that truth may be “politically incorrect.” Musk said he thinks the most likely outcome of AI advances is “awesome” and that the future of AI will be “super-awesome” or “super-bad” rather than “in-between.”
