Can Elon Musk save us from the robots? That is exactly what he is hoping to do with a $10 million donation that will be handled by The Future of Life Institute. Essentially, Musk hopes to put systems in place that will prevent robots from turning against us and taking over humanity.
Stephen Hawking, who possesses one of the most brilliant minds in the world, even agrees with Musk’s previous declaration that a Terminator-like scenario would be more than possible in the future. Musk has raised alarm bells to this same end; warnings that should make every human being quake in their boots. He says that there is currently little oversight to prevent robots from deciding that humans are in their way, and disposing of us promptly once they gain the ability to do so.
Here is what could potentially happen. Once robots become self-aware and transform into fully functioning AI, which is a goal many futurists are working toward, the machines will be able to self-replicate without the need for human intervention. In addition to reproducing on their own, they will also become billions of times smarter than humans (the exact moment when this happens is known as “the singularity,”) and humans will become obsolete. Robots could then begin to use humans for their own purposes-whatever those purposes may be.
Now, before anyone laughs it off, consider this: such a scenario is not the fantasy of a computer nerd living in his parents’ basement. In fact, the most powerful and elite trendsetters in technology are spearheading a coordinated campaign to make the singularity happen as fast as possible, but with little to no set guidelines on how human beings can remain in control afterwards.
Ray Kurzweil, for example, who is the Director of Engineering at Google, is a transhumanist and futurist. Transhumanists believe in merging humans with robots and creating a new species that is “beyond human.” Kurzweil is deeply involved in numerous projects to this end. He even runs a school called Singularity University, where eager technologists gather to learn how they can do away with inferior humans and create a new super race of human/robot hybrids.
Kurzweil has his hand in a Google-owned company called DeepMind, which is working on building an AI human brain. No other information is given about DeepMind on its website, which literally contains two sentences of “mission statement” information: “Solve Intelligence. We combine the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.”
DeepMind is highly mysterious, yet Elon Musk seems to have access to the project, and he is worried about it. In an email to a colleague he wrote: “The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like DeepMind, you have no idea how fast-it is growing at a pace close to exponential.”
Robots with their own minds who can think for themselves may sound like an Orwellian delusion, yet it is easy to verify by reading about Kurzweil’s mission. Kurzweil often says he is trying to “solve humanity’s grand challenges,” yet he rarely or never talks about how he plans on controlling the machines once they supersede human beings. The reason he does not talk about this may be because many transhumanists feel that once a robot becomes self-aware, it would be unethical to try to control it. The robot would have the same rights as humans at that point, the futurists feel.
As The Verge reports, Elon Musk seems to believe differently, but can he save us from the robots? With the new $10 million in funding, Musk hopes to “mitigate existential risks facing humanity” that could occur should something like Kurzweil’s vision come to fruition. Musk explains:
It’s best to try to prevent a negative circumstance from occurring than to wait for it to occur and then be reactive. This is a case where the range of negative outcomes, some of them are quite severe. It’s not clear whether we’d be able to recover from some of these negative outcomes. In fact, you can construct scenarios where recovery of human civilization does not occur. When the risk is that severe, it seems like you should be proactive and not reactive.
Musk has previously stated that most people are not aware of how fast this type of technology is growing. The move toward AI is happening so rapidly, it seems the singularity could be just around the corner.
Thus far, there has been no discussion from Kurzweil or people of his ilk about mitigating risk, so it is unclear how he and other scientists will respond to Musk’s requested guidelines. The list of Musk’s recommendations centers heavily on ethics. This could pose a challenge to Musk since it seems transhumanists do not see eye to eye with him on what is ethical when it comes to robots. Musk wants humans to remain in command while many futurists feel robots should be able to be completely divorced from human control .
Can Elon Musk save us from the robots? Given many transhumanists’ beliefs, in the end, it may not be the robots who pose the greatest challenge.
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