UPDATED 15:35 EST / JUNE 02 2016

NEWS

The power of AI should “not be concentrated in the hands of a few,” says Elon Musk

Tesla Motors and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been very vocal about his concerns over artificial intelligence research and the potential it has to disrupt our way of living for better or worse, and now during Recode’s recent Code Conference, Musk elaborated on how he intends to fight against the potential for the abuse of AI.

“I am concerned about certain directions AI could take that would be not good for the future,” Musk said during an onstage interview. “I think it would be fair to say that not all AI futures are benign. If we create some digital super intelligence that exceeds us all by a lot, it’s very important that they are benign.”

Musk explained that his fear is not necessarily that an AI will become a threat by itself, but rather that the most powerful intelligences will be in the hands of a very small number of companies, providing them with an unnerving level of power. Musk said that he created the Open AI non-profit AI research company as a way to encourage AI development without the constraint of having to be profitable. He hopes that this will help ensure that the incredible potential of the technology will not be controlled by a select few.

“I think it’s important if we have this incredible power of AI that it not be concentrated in the hands of a few and potentially lead to a world that we don’t want,” Musk said.

When asked if he is worried about any particular tech company working on AI research currently—including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and others—Musk responded, “I won’t name a name, but there is only one.”

Over the last year, the field of AI research has made major strides in the technology. For example, Google’s AlphaGo AI managed to successfully defeat on the the top Go players in the world, a feat that many AI developers had believed was likely several years away.

You can watch Recode’s full interview with Musk below (the discussion about AI begins at roughly the 40-minute mark):

Photo by OnInnovation 

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