Apart from being a visionary, Elon Musk, the CEO and founder of SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, has another side to his character. He never shies away from calling out big names, if they are not informed about certain subjects. Just a day after the Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg said that Elon Musk's doomsday prediction of AI is "irresponsible, Musk returned the favour by saying that Zuckerberg's understanding of AI is "limited."
While responding to a tweet that talked about Mark Zuckerberg's remarks on the matter, Elon Musk said he has spoken to the Facebook CEO earlier about it, and reached the conclusion that his "understanding of the subject is limited."
Even though AI is a technology that still is in its nascent stages, the recent acquisitions and efforts of most of the big and small companies suggest that the industry is aggressively placing big bets on it. Companies are continuously developing their researches and exploring new scopes to make use of machine learning and other AI elements to improve their products and services.
While AI is gaining this tremendous momentum in today's world, some experts, including Elon Musk, think that these efforts need to be regulated as they could pose a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation."
While speaking at the National Governors Association summer meeting earlier this month in the US, Musk said, "I have exposure to the very cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it. I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react, because it seems so ethereal."
During Zuckerberg's Facebook Live session, a user asked what he thought of Musk's aforementioned remarks and Mark said, "I have pretty strong opinions on this. I am optimistic. And I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios -- I just, I don't understand it. It's really negative and in some ways, I actually think it is pretty irresponsible."
Elon Musk, who himself has invested quite a lot in several AI startups (Google's DeepMind, for one) over the years, has been one of the most vocal and major voices to express his apprehensions about the state of AI, and how it could impact humans in the future. Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have also echoed the same sentiments over the period of time.
Interestingly, Elon Musk, in his personal capacity, and Facebook, both are among the investors in the non-profit startup OpenAI which aims to create an AI that augments humans' capabilities, rather than making them obsolete. Other companies that have also been a part in OpenAI include Google and Amazon.
You can see Mark Zuckerberg's said Facebook live session here:
