Elon Musk’s Solution to the Problem of Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality
To say that Elon Musk is a genius most likely qualifies as an understatement. Not only is he a world-renowned technologist, but he’s founded SpaceX, OpenAI, Tesla, SolarCity and X.com (which eventually became Paypal). So, when Musk dedicates his notable brainpower to warning us that an A.I.apocalypse could become reality within the next 5-10 years, it’s hard not to listen. You might even look at Siri a little differently. After all, what does she do when you’re not talking to her?
However, Battlestar Galactica fans can exhale as Musk’s prediction doesn’t mean that we’ll see Cylon War during a Clinton or Trump presidency. Specifically, the potential end-of-days event described by Musk is the singularity, the theoretical moment during which artificial intelligence becomes both self-aware and possessed of a super intelligence exceeding that of its human creators.
Once on the other side of the singularity, the super intelligent A.I. has potential to be humanity’s undoing. Musk states that “with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” and in the wrong hands the technology could become a tool of “evil dictators.” And even with the best intentions, A.I. companies may be overconfident in their capacity to “shape and control the digital superintelligences,” and may fail to “prevent bad ones from escaping into the internet.”
Musk’s solution to the dangers that come with centralized control of a powerful A.I. is to democratize the technology, and to thereby decentralize control. However, his approach to democratization isn’t necessarily one that the founding fathers would have imagined. It’s more Hera Agathon than electoral college. Musk’s answer is to make every human a little more artificially intelligent by removing the “bandwidth constraints” to the cerebral cortex via neural lace. The digital layer of the neural lace would merge with human neurons to create a digital extension of the thinking mind, allowing A.I.-human symbiotes’ thoughts to exist both in their mind and in the cloud.
And nothing could go wrong with a world of brainiac A.I.-human hybrids, right? Let’s hope not. But if so, please feel free to utilize your neural link to upload your thoughts to the cloud, or you can just contact us.
