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.
EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH: China extended its legal jurisdiction to ban some dual-use goods of Chinese origin from being sold to the US, even by third countries Beijing has set out to extend its domestic laws across international borders with a ban on selling some goods to the US that applies to companies both inside and outside China. The new export control rules are China’s first attempt to replicate the extraterritorial reach of US and European sanctions by covering Chinese products or goods with Chinese parts in them. In an announcement this week, China declared it is banning the sale of dual-use items to the US military and also the export to the US of materials such as gallium and germanium. Companies and people overseas would be subject to
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
COLLABORATION: The operations center shows the close partnership between Taiwan and Japan in the field of semiconductors, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Tokyo Electron Ltd, Asia’s biggest semiconductor equipment supplier, yesterday launched a NT$2 billion (US$61.5 million) operations center in Tainan as it aims to expand capacity and meet growing demand. Its new Taiwan Operations Center is expected to help customers release their products faster, boost production efficiency and shorten equipment repair time in a cost-effective way, the company said. The center is about a five-minute drive from the factories of its major customers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) advanced 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer fabs. The operations center would have about 1,000 employees when it is fully utilized, the company
RSS