Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s knowledge of AI is “limited,” in response to Zuckerberg’s criticism of Musk’s recent dire warning concerning the future of AI. In the comment thread of the Tweet, Musk was asked to elaborate, and said that an upcoming movie would have more details on his stance, seemingly in a joking manner. The Twitter comment thread did not seem to contain much of anything meaningful after that, and nothing more from Musk. Zuckerberg has yet to put out any official reply to Musk’s statement as of this writing.
The current situation springs from vastly different opinions on the future of AI held by the two CEOs. While Musk is convinced that unchecked AI development could lead to disaster, Zuckerberg believes that AI has a safe and secure future, and even went as far as to call Musk’s sounding of the alarm “pretty irresponsible.” Elon Musk has called for regulation around the development and maintenance of AI, despite many of the top names in the field, such as Google, already having onboard ethics committees, and even having a joint board stretching across multiple companies. Likewise, major players have assured the public in the past that they are all working to put limits on AI that would prevent any adverse side effects as things develop. Still, Musk maintains that the US government, and indeed all governments, should step in and limit what AI is allowed to do. He even pointed to a specific worst-case scenario of AI-driven robots revolting against mankind, as often seen in science fiction.
Though it’s easy to dismiss Musk’s concerns given what AI today is like, there are a great number of breakthroughs on the horizon, and safeguards are becoming more and more necessary. Artificial general intelligence is one such breakthrough, and it allows an AI program to build itself from the ground up; it starts with some bare minimum learning material that it’s fed, then learns from the environment around it through synthesis, just like humans do. AI programs are also being pushed toward the creative world in some experiments, and as seen last year when AlphaGO faced off with Go world champion Lee Sedol, they’re learning to do things previously thought to be out of their purview. Both Musk and Zuckerberg are exposed to AI on a daily basis, and work closely with it, which makes it a tough call as to which one’s opinion on the subject is more reflective of the direction that the technology is moving in.