Elon Musk stands tall in the field of science and technology not only as a mere business magnate, but also as an investor, engineer and inventor who has devoted himself in augmenting several critical aspects of technology in our daily life, which could earlier be only imagined as figment of imagination in science fiction. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has always been in the forefront of making claims and putting forward ideas that may appear to be radical, but do pose serious observations and reflections in hindsight.
While we all had our fear of a dystopian future where machines would take over, Elon Musk while speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai voiced that one can no longer postpone the inevitable truth that one day in the near future, we might indeed become obsolete and the only way to keep ourselves to be relevant would be to form a symbiotic relationship with technology.
Sounding almost like a prophet heralding the birth of a new era, he said "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," explaining further he said "It's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself particularly output."
Since our brain in terms of speed lags behind the computing abilities of an AI pushing us towards extinction unless we manage to device a method of bandwidth interface to the brain; thus forming an interdependent relationship between human and machine intelligence.
Musk also hinted on the ramifications on the growth of "artificial general intelligence" saying that it would be "smarter than the smartest human on earth" and therefore is "dangerous situation" in its own merit. He asked the governments of the world to be vigilant and keep a check on the prevailing research that in currently being undertaken: "Pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence.... Make sure researchers don't get carried away — scientists get so engrossed in their work they don't realize what they are doing."
There are going to be massive job cuts as most things would get automated and AI dependent, wedging a cut in the demand of human labor. The immediate fallout from AI's evolution will lead to more job cuts as in autonomous cars, according to Musk.
"The most near term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars ... That is going to happen much faster than people realize and it's going to be a great convenience," he said.
"But there are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people ... Driving in various forms. So we need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick."
