Does Musk "dislike" AI to polish his own brand?

The fourth industrial revolution, represented by artificial intelligence, is the strengthening of human beings, not the rise of machines. Musk's doomsday remarks, whether Musk really "hates" artificial intelligence or has other motives, we don't have to worry.

Recently, for Boston robots (Boston? Robotics has launched a humanoid robot that can run and jump. As the founder of several technology companies, elon musk wrote on Twitter: "We will be finished soon." He also said that the development potential of robots based on artificial intelligence in the future will be surprising and even frightening, so legislators need to strengthen the supervision of artificial intelligence technology.

Musk "dislikes" AI to polish his own brand.

This is not the first time that Musk has shown such "fear" and "disgust" to artificial intelligence. As early as 20 14, in a public interview at MIT, Musk threw out the "AI threat theory". Since then, Musk has mentioned similar issues from time to time, and even had many public debates with Facebook founder Zuckerberg.

Many people in Silicon Valley think that Musk's remarks are nothing new. He is just poking fun at a deep-rooted contradiction, that is, the conflict between man and machine. This is not to save the human world, but to polish your own brand.

Someone summed up Musk's storytelling routine like this:

The first step is to discover human problems;

The second step, the problem is very big, must die;

The third step, it turns out that this matter can be solved with very "geek" technology; The fourth step is investment, merger and acquisition, company establishment and financing.

As a result, we see Musk constantly setting up new companies, such as Tesla, because human vehicles cause atmospheric warming and environmental threats; SolarCity, a solar energy company, was founded because human beings are facing energy shortage. Because of the great pressure of human beings, they had to emigrate to Mars, so the space exploration technology company Rocket Company was established. Set up an artificial intelligence enterprise, OpenAI, to carry out research and development of public welfare AI, and at the same time supervise and correct the problems existing in AI; Neuralink, a brain-computer interface research enterprise, was established to prevent human beings from being eliminated by AI and turn them into semi-robots. ...

Similarly, Zach Burke, who debated with Musk, is also considered to serve his own business development. Facebook set up an artificial intelligence research department on 20 13, and regularly published research results. Even uzak Berg's own house has increased intelligence.

Although the two had many debates, what is intelligence has never been clear. In fact, the argument in this case is of little significance.

Do machines really exist instead of people?

Musk's point of view, summed up very simply, is that "machines rise, human beings perish", and "silicon-based civilization" replaces "carbon-based culture", and human civilization finally ends. It is not difficult to refute such an argument. There are many contrary arguments abroad, such as Yoav, an artificial intelligence scholar from Stanford University, who will appear at the summit of "Global Thought Feast-Artificial Intelligence and Human Civilization" in China today. Shoham believes that in the future, the boundary between man and machine will become more and more blurred, and man and machine will merge, but there will be no machine to replace man.

Musk's doomsday theory is based on unconditional evolution theory. Therefore, he believes that as long as the computing power continues to improve and the amount of data continues to grow, the algorithm will allow the robot to constantly evolve itself. Eventually, one day, it will wake up and realize that human beings must be eliminated and become the overlord of the earth.

But is it possible? Looking back at the history of the development of artificial intelligence, it is not difficult to understand that every time the development of artificial intelligence falls into a low tide, it is because a technology that promotes the development of artificial intelligence has fallen into a bottleneck. The world in which human beings live is not a place where they can develop indefinitely. The objective laws and the finiteness of various resources determine that the objective environment is limited.

What's more, even if we can break through the limitations of one aspect and have unlimited growth, does it mean a qualitative change in the overall situation? The answer is also no.

Because the full coordination of all parts of an object can make it play its greatest role, rather than the infinite growth of a certain part.

Artificial intelligence is the enhancement of human beings, not the rise of machines.

In addition, even robots cannot be divorced from the real physical conditions. Simply put, robots cannot do without energy. AlphaGo, the first player to beat Li Shishi, used 1920 CPU and 280 GPU, and the electricity bill for the next chess game was as high as $3,000. In contrast, Li Shishi may only eat one or two bowls of rice in this competition. There is a great difference in energy consumption efficiency between "computer" and "human" brains.

Of course, you can say that the progress of technology and algorithms can help them solve the problem of energy efficiency, such as optimizing algorithms to reduce the energy consumption of smart phones. But the problem is that no matter how to improve the efficiency of calculation or energy consumption, it is short-term from the engineering point of view, and solutions like subsidies will not be long-term solutions after all.

In a word, the fourth industrial revolution, represented by artificial intelligence, is the strengthening of human beings, not the rise of machines, while various technologies of artificial intelligence are still specialized. Musk's doomsday remarks, whether Musk really "hates" artificial intelligence or has other motives, we don't need to worry.

However, such remarks are not meaningless. If one day, robots really rise as Musk said and can replace all human labor, whether physical or mental, what is the value of human existence? When human beings "evolve" in the direction of half-machine and half-man, is it just to compete with machines for jobs?

Taking this as a starting point may not be a good angle to reflect on the artificial intelligence revolution. What is the meaning and value of human existence? Perhaps this is the most thought-provoking question behind Musk's "doomsday remarks".