Humans or Machines? Elon Musk, Jack Ma lock horns On Future of AI
The hot topic in the hour-long talk was AI, Jack Ma believes artificial intelligence poses no threat to humanity, but Elon Musk called that “famous last words” as the billionaire tech tycoons faced off an occasionally animated debate on futurism in Shanghai.
Artificial Intelligence provoked increasing concern among scientists such as late British cosmologist Stephen Hawking who warned that it will eventually turn on and “annihilate” humanity.
“Computers may be clever, but human beings are much smarter” Jack Ma said “We invented the computer — I’ve never seen a computer invent a human being.”
Musk continued the conversation that the “rate of advancement of computers in general is insane”, sketching out a vision in which super-fast, artificially intelligent devices eventually tire of dealing with dumb, slow humans. To this musk added “The computer will just get impatient if nothing else. It will be like talking to a tree”
Neuralink aims to develop implantable brain-machine interface devices, which conjures images of “The Matrix”, whose characters download software to their brains that instantly turns them into martial arts masters. But humanity will also have more leisure time in the future as AI takes on much of the burden of transporting, feeding, and thinking for earthlings, Ma continued to say that in future People could work as little as three days a week, four hours a day with the help of technology advances.
Jack Ma, 54, who steps down next month as head of Alibaba Group, questioned Musk’s push to develop spacecraft that could help us colonise Mars. “We need a hero like you, but we need more heroes like us improving things on earth,”
Researchers like Hawking have said the same, citing the risk of nuclear war, a devastating virus, global warming or asteroid collision.
Final words by: Jack Ma & Elon
Jack Ma & Elon agreed that human mortality is a good thing as each generation brings new ideas to the global challenges we face.
