On the Joe Rogan podcast this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musks inner Ralph Nader was on full display, with Musk promoting federal regulation of artificial intelligence, criticizing the auto industrys campaign against seat belts and safety regulation, and praising modern airbags as crazy good.
In the middle of a three and a half hour conversation, Rogan triggered the discussion on regulation when he said he was worried about artificial intelligence.
We should have oversight of some kind, Musk said. A regulatory agency like the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). We need an acronym to oversee this stuff.
Rogan expressed doubts about a government agency getting the job done.
The probability of industry capture is higher if its an industry body than if it is the government, Musk said. Its not zero if it is the government. There are plenty of instances of regulatory capture of a government agency. But the probability is lower than if it is an industry group. At the end of the day somebody has to go and tell Facebook, or Google or Tesla, this is okay or it is not okay. Or at least report back to the public this is what we found. Otherwise the inmates are running the asylum. And these are not necessarily friendly inmates.
Im not a fan of lets have the government do lots of things, Musk said. You want to have the government do the least amount of stuff. The right role of government is for it to be the referee on the field. When the government starts being a player on the field, thats problematic. Or when you start having more referees than players, which is the case in California, then thats not good. You cant have no referees. Everyone agrees that a referee might be annoying at times, but it is better to have a referee than not.
Rogan said Im just worried that its going to be too late, by the time these things become sentient, by the time they develop the ability to analyze what the threat of human beings are and whether or not human beings are essential
Im not saying that having regulatory agencies is some panacea or reduces the risk to zero, Musk said. There is still some significant risk even with a regulatory agency. Nonetheless, the good outweighs the bad and we should have one.
It took a while before there was an FAA, Musk said. There were a lot of plane companies cutting corners. It took a while before there was an FDA. What tends to happen is some company gets desperate, they are on the verge of bankruptcy and they are like we will just cut this corner, it will be fine. And then, somebody dies.
Look at seat belts. Now we take seat belts for granted. But the car companies fought seat belts like there was no tomorrow.
Really, they fought them? Rogan asked.
For decades, Musk said. The data was absolutely clear that you needed seat belts. The difference in fatalities with seat belts versus not seat belts is gigantic and obvious. Its not subtle. But still, the car companies fought seat belts for ten to twenty years. A lot of people died.
Now, these days with advanced airbags, I think we might have come full circle and no longer need seat belts if you have advanced airbags.
What if the car flips? Rogan asked.
You are just covered its airbags everywhere, Musk said. Modern airbags are so good it will blow your mind how good they are. At Tesla, we even update the software to improve how the airbags deploy. We will calculate are you an adult, how much do you weigh, are you sitting in this part of the seat or that part of the seat? You may be a baby. Are you a toddler?
Based on the weight? Rogan asked.
Not just the weight, but the pressure distribution on the seat. Are you sitting on the edge of your seat? Are you a fifth percent female or 95 percent male? The airbag firing will be different depending on where you are sitting on the seat, what size you are, and what your orientation is. And well update it over the years. It gets better over time.
A child could be sitting in the front seat? Rogan asked.
Unbelted child sitting in a bad position probably still fine, Musk said. The seat belt is like if you wear the seat belt thats nice. The airbag is doing the work. Airbag technology is crazy good. You want the airbag to inflate and then deflate, otherwise you are going to be asphyxiated.
We go way beyond the regulatory requirements. We got the lowest probability of injury of any cars they ever tested.
We get five stars in every category and subcategories. And if there was a sixth star, we would get a sixth star.
But then Musk admitted the star safety rating is kind of bullshit.
If a smart car hits a freight train, it doesnt matter how good your safety system is, you are screwed. If you are in a little car and it gets hit by a big car, the big car will win. A low star rating in a big car hitting a high star rating in a small car the small car is screwed. Small cars are not safe.
What about your small car? Rogan asked.
Our Model 3 is not small, Musk said.
What about the Roadster? Rogan asked.
The Roadster is not super safe, Musk said. The original Roadster is not super safe. Its safe for a car like that, but safety maximization is not the goal in a sports car.
Read more:
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]