'AI is significantly higher risk than nuclear weapons': Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has never shied away from criticising Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its potential risks to society. In his recent tweet, he has compared it to nuclear weapons. He further added that he has seen numerous technologies develop in his lifetime, but none with this level of risk.

AGI experts believe that a future artificial intelligence system will be able to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.

In his tweet, Musk said, "I’ve seen quite a few technologies develop, but none with this level of risk. AGI is significantly higher risk than nuclear weapons, in my opinion. Super smart humans have trouble imagining something vastly smarter than themselves." 

Musk was responding to a tweet from his ex-wife and Westworld actor, Talulah Riley. She shared a post of MIT professor Max Tegmark who is also skeptical about the impact of AI and the imminent threat of the technology that humans are willfully ignoring. 

Everyone should read Max’s article.

Most people I speak to suffer from combo of normalcy + survivorship bias when discussing AI; lots of “oh, but jacquard looms/printing press/automation/internet etc. etc.”

I keep being told that history is cyclical by people working to a… https://t.co/XBZ1XS7ZjW

— Talulah Riley (@TalulahRiley) April 25, 2023

Tegmark has compared the situation to the plot of the movie "Don't Look Up" starring Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio. He claims that the situation is very similar to an extinction-level event where an asteroid is moving toward Earth.

The film is essentially intended as a satire of human being's response to climate change. However, Tegmark claims that it fits even better in the case of AI development. Tegmark claimed that a survey showed that half of AI researchers give AI at least 10 per cent chance of causing human extinction. 

Elon Musk was one of the founding members of OpenAI, the company that released ChatGPT to the public. However, he stepped down in 2018 to attend to matters at Tesla. Musk has been extremely vocal about OpenAI moving out of the non-profit model and heavy investments from Microsoft. 

In response to the quick development of the GPT-4 model, Musk, Tegmark, Professor Stuart Russell, Steve Wozniak and thousands of experts and celebrities have signed a petition to halt the development of GPT-5. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI has assured that the company is currently focusing on GPT-4. Musk's latest tweet resurfaces the fundamental questions surrounding AI and its potential risks.

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