'I'm concerned...': Elon Musk opens up about AI safety, truth, birth rates, and dangers of ideological bias on Lex Fridman's podcast

Elon Musk, while optimistic about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), has repeatedly expressed concerns about its potential dangers. In his recent conversation with Lex Fridman, Musk delved into his philosophy on AI safety, highlighting the importance of truth-seeking AI, responsible objective function design, and the need to address declining birth rates.

"I am concerned about AI succeeding that is, that has got, that is programmed to lie, even in, even in small ways," Musk warned. "Because in small ways becomes big ways when it becomes very big ways, and when it’s used more and more at scale by humans."

He believes that even seemingly harmless biases or inaccuracies embedded in AI systems could have disastrous consequences as AI becomes more powerful. He cited examples of existing AI chatbots providing factually incorrect or politically biased responses, highlighting the potential for these biases to be amplified at scale.

Musk also expressed concern about declining birth rates, a trend he views as a significant existential threat to humanity. "I keep you know banging on the baby drum here um, for a reason," Musk stated. "Because it has been the, the source of civilisational collapse over and over again throughout history, and so, why don’t we just not try to stumble for that day?"

He argued that civilisations throughout history have collapsed due to a decline in birth rates, and that unless this trend is reversed, humanity itself could face a similar fate.