Despite Musk's dark warning, artificial intelligence is more benefit than threat

We expect scary predictions about the technological future from philosophers and science fiction writers, not famous technologists. Elon Musk, though, turns out to have an imagination just as dark as that of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, who created the sentient and ultimately homicidal computer HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, HyperLoop, Solar City and other companies, spoke to the National Governors Association last week on a variety of technology topics. When he got to artificial intelligence, the field of programming computers to replace humans in tasks such as decision making and speech recognition, his words turned apocalyptic. He called artificial intelligence, or AI, a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization."