AI is highly likely to destroy humans, Elon Musk warns

'Should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?'

Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017

(Reuters)

Elon Musk believes it’s highly likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a threat to people.

The Tesla founder is concerned that a handful of major companies will end up in control of AI systems with “extreme” levels of power.

In Mr Musk’s opinion, there’s a very small chance that humans will be safe from such systems.

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“Maybe there's a five to 10 percent chance of success [of making AI safe],” he told Neuralink staff after showing them a documentary on AI, reports Rolling Stone.

He also told them that he invested in DeepMind in order to keep an eye on Google’s development of AI.

Mr Musk has called for the companies working on AI to slow down to ensure they don’t unintentionally build something unsafe.

“Between Facebook, Google and Amazon – and arguably Apple, but they seem to care about privacy – they have more information about you than you can remember,” he told Rolling Stone.

“There's a lot of risk in concentration of power. So if AGI [artificial general intelligence] represents an extreme level of power, should that be controlled by a few people at Google with no oversight?”

Though he didn't expand on what sort of threat it could pose, he's previously said that AI is “a fundamental risk” to the existence of human civilisation.

He believes its development needs to be regulated “proactively”.

“I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it,” he said in July.

“I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal."