Christian and I have an ongoing discussion about the current state of artificial intelligence. Some of it is in the context of the second beast of Revelations 13:15 that is given power to speak by the first beast. We make no claims about what all that means, but use it as a point of reference for discussions about the current state of artificial intelligence, consciousness and the mind-brain problem. We do not believe artificial intelligence is anywhere close to enabling the “person-hood” of inanimate objects.
I said all that to say we think that even though Elon Musk is an amazing business man and promoter, he has some pretty unrealistic ideas about artificial intelligence. Here is a quote from an article at CNet where he waxes apocalyptic on the subject:
“If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that,” he said, referring to artificial intelligence. “I’m increasingly inclined to thing there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.”
This is not to say something like this could not happen someday. We know it happened at least once with humans. That being said, science has no idea at all about what consciousness even is. When we understand that, maybe I will start worrying about this a little more.