Bill Gates on Elon Musk’s AI view, “we shouldn’t panic about it”

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Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates recently challenged Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s cautious view of AI development, saying that he did not think that AI poses a risk to the future of humanity.

Gates told the Wall Street Journal that people should not buy Musk’s statements as our imminent fate. Instead, Gates advised that people should avoid panicking.

“This is a case where Elon and I disagree,” he said. “The so-called control problem that Elon is worried about isn’t something that people should feel is imminent … We shouldn’t panic about it.”

Gates joins Google AI executive John Giannandrea in opposing Musk’s views. Giannandrea said at TechCrunch Disrupt that he was not worried about an AI apocalypse despite warnings from leaders in the industry like Musk.

“I think there’s a huge amount of hype around AI right now. There’s a lot of people that are unreasonably concerned around the rise of general AI,” Giannandrea said. “Machine learning and artificial intelligence are extremely important and will revolutionize our industry. What we’re doing is building tools like the Google search engine and making you more productive.”

Before Gates and Giannandrea, Musk sparred on social media with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over AI development. Musk responded to Zuckerberg’s positive views of AI development by saying Zuckerberg had a “limited understanding” of the subject.

I've talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2017

Musk has ardently warned about the potential dangers of unregulated AI development, voicing concerns that a race to artificial dominance could lead to World War III and pos a direct risk to human civilization.

Last month, Musk and leaders in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence signed an open letter to the United Nations calling for the ban of autonomous weapons. A few weeks after the letter, Britain became the first nation to officially ban the use of fully autonomous weapons. The country committed to always have a human element involved in weapons technology, which is a departure from Russian efforts to create fully autonomous weaponized drones.

With Gates entering the discussion, more and more industry leaders are coming out to oppose Musk on his doomsday view of AI technology.

What are your thoughts on unregulated AI development? Let us know in the comments below.

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