Within the last few years, Elon Musk started up several projects to steer away us from a possible AI dark ages or from the Terminator style apocalypse.
Tesla Bots
At the Tesla AI 2022 event, Elon Musk unveiled not one but two robots. The first one was a prototype, Bumble G. It walked around the stage, waved to the crowd and of course danced. It has no skin so the wires, motors and gears were exposed. The second robot was the production model named Tesla Optimus. It could not walk and was rolled on the stage, showing some movements. Although not complete, Tesla Optimus is going to be mass produced using low cost parts and powered by an AI brain.
Boston Dynamics
Critics were not impressed and compared them to Boston Dynamics robots. These robots on the other hand were very quick and very agile even performing back flips.
This was by design. A working robot should never not overpower a human.
OpenAI
Elon Musk started this project whose intent is the democratization of AI. Anyone can join in.
According to their website. “OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity. We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome”.
Among the many achievements of OpenAI is Dall-e which generates digital art from a text description. Below is an example the author tried using the free app StarryAI.
Elon Musk quoted Lord Acton saying “ Freedom is distribution of power and despotism is concentration of it. “ He step down from leading the project but continue to fund it because he wants AI to benefit all mankind and just empower a few elite.
Neuralink.
“If you can’t beat them, join them” Another strategy of Elon Musk is to establish a symbiotic relationship between humans and
Neuralink is Musk’s neural interface technology company. It’s developing a device that would be embedded in a person’s brain, where it would record brain activity and potentially stimulate it. Musk has compared the technology to a “FitBit in your skullAI.
Neuralink is a connector between a human and a computer. That allows the human to control a computer with his thoughts. Kind of like in the Matrix where the human is really plugged in.
Regulatory Body
One of the frustrations of Elon Musk is the lack of regulation in the use of AI. He says other technologies like nuclear power and biotech have oversight committees that regulate its use. “Shouldn’t it be regulated? The danger it imposed is much greater.”
As a last resort, the human race needs to be a multi-planetary species. If humanity destroys itself on earth, there are still members of species on other planets that will survive. There flies SpaceX.
