AI: A Force for Good or Bad?

This week, Elon Musk praised the work of OpenAI after a team of five neural networks had defeated five humans, who ranked in the top 99.95 percentile of players worldwide, in the popular game Dota 2. The five bots had learned the game by playing against itself at a rate of a staggering 180 years per day. The game requires strong teamwork among the five players and, therefore, the achievement is quite remarkable and more evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming more advanced. However, directly after the five bots beat the five humans 2-1, Musk cautioned for the power of AI by urging that OpenAI should focus on AI that works with humans, instead of against humans. His statement is in line with his previous warnings for AI, which Musk believes could result in a robot dictatorship or an AI-arms race amongst superpowers that could be the most plausible cause for World War III. With artificial intelligence becoming increasingly sophisticated, also the warnings against AI become more pervasive, and the question remains then, is AI good or bad?