Elon Musk is a smart man. He's the brains behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and Musk fragrance (maybe not the last one). He's just 46 and already an iconic figure in American business.
(I wonder if Musk changed his name to seem cooler, like when Laurence Turead became Mr. T. Apparently not, according to Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia once briefly listed me as a famous graduate of the college I attended and a frequent contributor to the Gary Radnich show on KNBR, back in the days when it was easy to change things.)
Anyway, I reached two conclusions: Elon Musk is the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, and Elon Musk makes me afraid.
Not because of what he does, but because of what he thinks.
Recently, he warned us about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
He commented on Twitter that AI (what we call artificial intelligence, although I habitually think of former NBA star Allen Iverson when I hear "AI") is more dangerous than North Korea. That might come as good news to South Korea, but is bad news for the rest of us.
Musk's tweet came after a product from his OpenAI company appeared at a $24 million video game tournament, beating some of the world's best players. (Frankly, the fact that I just typed a sentence that includes the phrase "a $24 million video game tournament" frightens me more than artificial intelligence.)
Musk warned that AI should be regulated. This echoed his statements a year earlier, when he said if IA is not regulated, humans could devolve into the equivalent of "house cats," compared to computers. (One plus: House cats wouldn't hold a $24 million video game tournament.)
Musk's campaign isn't just about video games and house cats, although that would frighten most right-thinking Americans, who don't like either. Musk joined other CEOs in signing an open letter to the United Nations, calling for a ban of the use of AI in weapons. The letter said, "lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare," following the gunpowder revolution and Prince and the Revolution, if my grasp of history is correct.
This wasn't the first time. Musk joined a bunch of other smart people who wrote a similar letter in 2015.
So what should we do? From my perspective, here's what's important: The source. This warning about artificial intelligence posing a threat to humanity isn't coming from someone who watched too many science-fiction movies or one of the nabobs on an internet message board. It's not from someone who wears aluminum foil hats. It's not from your crazy brother-in-law who thinks 9/11 was an inside job.
This is from Elon Musk, a successful, forward-thinking entrepreneur.
This is from the guy who is possibly changing the energy game with solar-powered batteries. This is from the guy who suggested a "hyperloop" from Northern California to Southern California and no one laughed, because he had a plan.
That's the guy who warns about artificial intelligence taking over the world and turning us into house cats.
So what to do?
Don't go to all the websites recommended by your computer. Don't let the navigation app on your smartphone dictate where you drive. Don't . . . ahh, what am I saying? I will continue to do all those things.
Anyway, who is Elon Musk, anyway? Did you see the hyperloop thing he proposed? What a nabob.
I read on an internet message board that this isn't real and I shouldn't worry. Of course, the phrasing seemed slightly less than human, so . . .
I'm sure it's nothing.
And you can count on me. I used to be a famous graduate of my college.
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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