Jack Ma (馬雲) believes artificial intelligence (AI) poses no threat to humanity, but Elon Musk called that “famous last words” as the billionaire tech tycoons faced off yesterday in an occasionally animated debate on futurism in Shanghai.
The Chinese cofounder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and the maverick industrialist behind Tesla Inc and SpaceX frequently pulled pained expressions and raised eyebrows as they started an AI conference with a dialogue that challenged attendees to keep up.
The issue of AI has provoked increasing concern among scientists, such as British cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who warned that it would eventually turn on and “annihilate” humanity.
Photo: Reuters
“Computers may be clever, but human beings are much smarter,” Ma said. “We invented the computer — I’ve never seen a computer invent a human being.”
While insisting that he is “not a tech guy,” the e-commerce mogul added: “I think AI can help us understand humans better. I don’t think it’s a threat.”
“I don’t know man, that’s like, famous last words,” Musk said.
He said 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.
“The computer will just get impatient if nothing else. It will be like talking to a tree,” Musk said.
Humankind’s hope lies in “going along for the ride” by harnessing some of that computing power, Musk said, as he offered an unabashed plug for his Neuralink Corp.
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.
“Right now we are already a cyborg because we are so well-integrated with our phones and our computers,” Musk said. “The phone is like an extension of yourself. If you forget your phone, its like a missing limb.”
However, 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 said.
“People could work as little as three days a week, four hours a day with the help of technology advances,” he said.
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