The Risks of Artificial Intelligence

Last March, at the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk issued a friendly warning: "Mark my words," he said, billionaire casual in a furry-collared bomber jacket and days' old scruff, "AI is far more dangerous than nukes." No shrinking violet, especially when it comes to opining about technology, the outspoken Musk has repeated a version of these artificial intelligence premonitions in other settings as well. "I am really quite close… to the cutting edge in AI, and it scares the hell out of me," he told his SXSW audience. "It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows, and the rate of improvement is exponential." Musk, though, is far from alone in his exceedingly skeptical (some might say bleakly alarmist) views. A year prior, the late physicist Stephen Hawking was similarly forthright when he told an audience in Portugal that AI's impact could be cataclysmic unless its rapid development is strictly and ethically controlled.