In Brief Elon Musk takes to Twitter, saying deep AI, not automation, is what humanity should be worried about. Musk is part of a group of tech leaders working to create protective technological measures to prepare for the advancement of deep AI. Deep AI Vs. Automation

In an apparent attempt at a joke, a Twitter user sent a Business Insider tweet featuring a driverless Tesla car to Elon Musk, asking him to confirm that the development in humanless automation would not result in a robotic apocalypse. Musk replied via tweet, reaffirming his oft-repeated position that it is not automation per se, but deep AI, that poses more of an apocalyptic risk to humanity:

Disruption may cause us discomfort, but its not a threat in and of itself. However, Musk and others do see the potential for deep AI to be world-shattering, at least for humans.

Its easy to understand why some are worried about this; AIs are learning how to encrypt messages efficiently. Jrgen Schmidhuber, considered to be the father of deep learning, believes that there will be trillions of self-replicating robot factories along our Solar Systems asteroid belt by 2050. He also thinks that robots will eventually explore the galaxy by themselves, motivated by their own curiosity, capable of deciding their own agenda without much human oversight. And, perhaps most disturbing, scientists working with Googles DeepMind AI tested whether or not AIare more prone to cooperation or competition and found that it can go either way, and AI are even capable of developing killer instincts, or a cooperative mindset, depending on the situation.

Musks solution to this potential threat is his famous neural lace concept. In brief, this ambitious project would use easily injectable electrodes to form a neural lace over the brain. The lace could both stimulate and interpret the brains electrical activity, and would eventually merge with the brain entirely, making human and AI part of the same organism.

The key isnt halting progress, or even fearing AI its learning how to merge with it successfully.

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Elon Musk Says Deep AI, Not Automation, Poses the Real Risk for Humanity - Futurism