Why Does Elon Musk Fear AI?

Elon Musk, quite likely the most successful tech entrepreneur of all time, has urged innovators and scientists to take a 6-month pause on developing AI technology.

Musk played a vital role in the development of ChatGPT, an online AI technology that rapidly answers a variety of questions based on a database current to 2021. Musk had previously stated that he was worried about AI and that more regulatory oversight was needed.

ChatGPT poses major ethical considerations, being used by university students to complete assignments and by companies to create web pages.

We are already on the fourth iteration of the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT), and the market is struggling to catch up with recent innovations.

Elon Musk’s AI Fears

Musk, alongside thousands of other expert professionals, signed an open letter encouraging a halt on AI development, citing a number of reasons. The letter states that:

“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.

Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

ChatGPT remains the most controversial and wide-scale implementation of AI. The letter specifically relates to the advancement of AI technologies that are more powerful than the fourth version of ChatGPT(ChatGPT4.0).

The AI is currently developed by OpenAI, a platform that runs on Microsoft’s Azure.

The letter also calls for stronger regulatory oversight and declares that humanity has a bright future working with AI, but it has to be done at a pace manageable for human society.

The United Kingdom is currently developing a legislative framework for dealing with AI technologies, but such a framework can only be implemented slowly and with multiple changes, due to the impact AI will inevitably have on so many areas.

Is It Right To Fear AI?

It’s not far-fetched to take a cautious approach to a powerful technology with such far-reaching implications. We’ve already lost hundreds of thousands of technology jobs due to AI. Tech companies are claiming that this is due to the market, but such claims are dubious.

Microsoft recently implemented an AI cybersecurity framework that incorporates ChatGPT, while simultaneously laying off thousands of workers. AI is certainly taking the jobs; there is little doubt about that. This was predicted by many.

Yet, the issue is not due to any intrinsic flaws regarding AI. It’s just that the rate of change is unsustainable, and people need time to adapt to new technologies.

AI has an important role to play and will make multiple aspects of daily living far easier, provided that it is intelligently implemented.

There are many areas where AI will become a core part of daily life, and much of it is a step up from the digital process we are already familiar with including Google Analytics, Siri, Alexa, Google Maps, and more.

Provided AI is made to work with us instead of against us (for instance, by a small minority of society), then it will be a blessing to our evolution.

Areas Where AI Will Flourish

One key area that AI will inevitably streamline is financial management, and it already has to some extent. Passive robo-advisors allow for streamlined wealth management without any management fees and with ultra-low expense ratios.

All you do is fill out a questionnaire, and your funds are automatically assigned to a range of low-cost ETFs, based on risk tolerance and modern portfolio theory (MPT).

That fact is that creativity will always be needed alongside AI, and the technology is not a threat, once used sustainably. A form of enhanced hybrid intelligence will take place, where a group of industry experts can inform AI and adapt it at specific intervals.

Stoic AI, for instance, is an AI-based crypto trading app designed to manage and grow investors’ portfolios. Stoic has the innate ability to analyze cosmic amounts of market data to construct educated predictions on where particular assets are headed next.

There are various strategies depending on user risk tolerance levels for increased customization.

Typical trading apps available today do not have this learning and prediction ability. This is useful because AI is no longer the domain of hedge funds and financial institutions, but can be used by ordinary investors to grow their portfolios sustainably.

AI can also be incredibly helpful in areas where human error can be catastrophic and costly, such as self-driving cars, planes, and trains (always on time with ultra-low crash rates).

It can also be used for automatic company compliance in multiple jurisdictions (compliance is extremely cost-prohibitive for many businesses).

How Will AI Unfold Over The Coming Months?

For AI, all that matters is that it is implemented slowly and in an interactive manner so that existing society has time to integrate it. But the CEOs of both Microsoft and Google, the primary AI makers, did not sign the letter regarding the slowing of AI development.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt used China as an excuse for continual AI development, while Bill Gates believes we are in a beneficial AI revolution and that risks are largely overstated.

There is no doubt that AI can be incredibly useful for humanity, provided that it is only developed with planetary good in mind, not big tech profits.

But Musk’s AI fears are grounded and reflect what many lay people would feel about the wide scale and rapid implementation of AI without consent or safeguards, which seems to be happening right before our eyes.