Tesla/Space X CEO Elon Musk pictured during a TED talk.

Tesla’s Musk Defends Autonomous Vehicles in AI Debate

Debate on the dangers of AI erupted once again between Elon Musk and another lead proponent of the technology, Harvard professor and author Steven Pinker—last year it was Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink founder Elon Musk called AI “a fundamental existential risk for civilization” at the National Governors Association meeting in a speech on July 2017, when he called for regulating AI. Zuckerberg responded by calling Musk “irresponsible,” provoking a Twitter war.

This time, Pinker had stated in a Wired magazine podcast that, “if Elon Musk was really serious about the AI threat he’d stop building those self-driving cars, which are the first kind of advanced AI that we’re going to see,” according to an article on Fortune.com.

Pinker doesn’t have the same kind of in-depth knowledge of the potential of AI as Musk, according to Fortune:

“Pinker, it must be pointed out, is not a technologist, but a psychologist and linguist. His early work developed the idea that language is an innate human ability forged by evolution⎯a position that itself has recently come under renewed scrutiny. Pinker’s more recent work has praised science, reason, and the march of technology—but he might want to take a harder look at some of the risks.”

Musk shot back on Twitter, “Wow, if even Pinker doesn’t understand the difference between functional/narrow AI (eg. car) and general AI, when the latter *literally* has a million times more compute power and an open-ended utility function, humanity is in deep trouble.”

Musk has warned about the dangers of AI use to control weapons, manipulate information to start wars and to supercede our biological intelligence.

To read more, go to Fortune.com