Elon Musk: To avoid becoming like monkeys, humans must merge with machines

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at a summit in Los Angeles earlier this month. (Reuters/Kyle Grillot) In recent years, Elon Musk has become one of the most vocal critics of artificial intelligence, issuing numerous warnings about the threat that powerful machines pose to the future of mankind. Now the 47-year-old billionaire inventor and Tesla chief executive has unveiled a potential way for the meager human brain to compete with a superior force that Musk has compared to “an immortal dictator” and “the devil.” During an interview with Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen that aired Sunday, Musk said humans must merge with artificial intelligence, creating a “symbiosis” that leads to “a democratization of intelligence.” “Essentially, how do we ensure that the future constitutes the sum of the will of humanity?” Musk said. “And so, if we have billions of people with the high-bandwidth link to the AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper-smart.” [ Elon Musk’s nightmarish warning: AI could become ‘an immortal dictator from which we would never escape’ ] What would an AI-infused human look like? The ever optimistic Musk told Axios that upgrading human intelligence would start with planting a chip in someone’s head with “a bunch of tiny wires” with the goal of creating a hard drive for peoples’ brains. Or as Musk phrased it: “Electron to neuron interface at a micro level.” By giving the masses access to super intelligence, information would not be monopolized by corporations and governments, Musk said. Fusing people with super intelligence, he said, could be used to treat spinal cord injuries and improve the human memory, helping people avoid dementia. As the algorithms and the hardware improve, Musk warned, “digital intelligence will exceed biological intelligence by a substantial margin. It’s obvious.” The unfortunate result […]

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