Musk says AI may kill civilization

While tech titans around the world work to materialize the concept of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist humans in their daily lives, some believe that the risk of emerging technology going awry is imminent. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and Twitter, reminded people of AI’s destructive potential in light of this possibility.

Musk’s plan to launch a new AI venture reportedly surfaced on March 15 after the entrepreneur convened a team of AI researchers and engineers. However, Musk continues to emphasize the destructive potential of AI if it falls into the wrong hands or is developed with malicious intent.

Musk believes that AI can be harmful. In an interview with FOX, he stated that AI could be more hazardous than, for instance, poorly managed aircraft design or production maintenance. While acknowledging the small likelihood, he stated:

“However small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilizational destruction.”

As Crypto Twitter took up the conversation, Musk provided significant support for his assertion:

“Anyone who thinks this risk is 0% is an idiot.”

On the other hand, tech entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates are more optimistic regarding AI and its potential positive effects on humanity.

On April 13, Amazon joined the race to develop AI services as the most recent tech titan to do so. Amazon Bedrock enables developers to create and scale generative AI applications.

Bedrock enables users to “privately customize foundation models with their data and easily integrate and deploy them into their applications,” according to a blog post announcing the service.