Twitter CEO Elon Musk is warning that artificial intelligence needs government regulatory oversight like other industries in order to make sure that the public is protected from potential dangers relating to the technology.
Musk made the remarks during an interview that aired Friday on HBO’s “Real Time” with Bill Maher.
“A friend of mine has a sort of modification of Occam’s razor, instead of the simplest thing being the most likely, the most ironic outcome is most likely,” Musk said. “So, with respect to AI, I just think we should be, we should have some sort of regulatory oversight.”
“So, you know, for anything that is a danger to the public, if it’s sort of aircraft, cars, food and drug and whatnot, we’ve got some regulatory oversight, like a referee, essentially, and making sure that companies don’t cut corners,” he said. “So, I think that since if, if one agrees that AI is a potential risk to the public, then there should be some regulatory body that oversees what companies are doing so that they don’t cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous.”
Maher noted that some notable figures, like American computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil do not think that AI is “a problem at all.”
“Yeah, it depends if some people want to live forever, or for a much longer period of time, and they see AI as the only way to, or digital super intelligence as the only thing that can figure out how to get them to live forever,” Musk said. “I think Kurzweil is in that category. So he would prefer to have AI, artificial general intelligence than not, because he couldn’t figure out longevity.”
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