Remember the time we brought you news of how Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are freaked out over the rise and rise of artificial intelligence, and the perils it hold for us humans? Well, turns out, they are not the only visionaries who feels like that. In a recent Reddit AMA (ask me anything), Bill Gates admitted that super intelligence in machines is something that gives him the heebie-jeebies. Gates echoed the concerns expressed over the past year by Hawking, Musk and others that something vaguely resembling the science fiction scenarios from the Terminator and Matrix franchises could come to pass if the potential of artificial superintelligence is not taken seriously.
“I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence,” Gates said. “First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent. That should be positive if we manage it well. A few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don’t understand why some people are not concerned.”
Speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics department’s Centennial Symposium in October, Elon Musk had this to say about AI, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.”
Earlier this month, Elon Musk put down $10 million of his own money to fund an effort to keep artificial intelligence friendly. Gates and Musk both have an interest in ensuring that artificial intelligence not only stays friendly, but stays viable given that it’s likely to play a role in the future of not only Microsoft, but also Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla.