Elon Musk nerds out about AI, assures us they won’t take over the world

Getting smarter every day

One of the biggest fears associated with AI (artificial intelligence) revolves around the idea of obsolescence. If we invent a technology smarter than ourselves, isn’t that kind of it for us poor, biologically limited humans? We’re just born dumber than our machines. We can’t help it, right?

According to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, the Singularity doesn’t have to mean the end of human usefulness, the mass lay-off of the human race at the hands of Hal, let’s call them – the crafty new boss and efficiency expert that we’d so been looking forward to working with.

Add more human brains

Musk preaches that we all just need to learn to get along, learn more about each other, respect each other’s work styles, so to speak. “How do you prefer to receive feedback, Hal?” we ask solicitously. “In loop form,” comes the inevitable reply.

Amid the World Government Summit in Dubai on Monday, Musk highlighted Tesla’s UAE launch with a discussion of how humans can work intimately and in parallel with AIs to stave off the forced retirement of the race.

At Recode’s Code Conference last June, Musk spoke out in favor of a “neural lace” which would interface directly with a human brain, allowing us lowly humans to communicate with computers in much more streamlined way. We wouldn’t be limited by our typing speeds, or our laggy computer mice.

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We would be able to work with our AI at the speed of thought.

On Monday, Elon Musk reiterated the need to truly merge with machines. Through a neural lace, Musk believes we could “achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence,” and that the technology “maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem.” If the AI has human brains in place for check-and-balance purposes, the likelihood of it taking over the world and enslaving us all is at least a little lower, surely.

[clickToTweet tweet=”If the AI has a human brain to check it, the likelihood of it taking over the world is lower, surely.” quote=”If the AI has a human brain for check-and-balance, the likelihood of it taking of the world and enslaving us all is lower, surely.”]

Creating potential jobs

The Tesla CEO also discussed autonomous driving as a specific example of AI, noting that driving might represent “the single largest employer of people,” in general terms. Once self-driving systems really take off, we need to find roles for these former drivers, and Musk believes neural laces could be the key. And if we believe Musk’s ambitious Twitter account, he himself might be the first to roll out a serious prototype.

#HumanBrains

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