"The biggest issue I see with so called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do, and they think they are smarter than they actually are,” said Musk. “This tends to plague smart people. They define themselves by their intelligence and they don’t like the idea that a machine could be way smarter than them, so they discount the idea — which is fundamentally flawed."
What's your take?
Is Artificial Intelligence more dangerous than nukes?
Obviously, the increasing role of artificial intelligence in the modern society and economy has not only benefits, but also potentially negative consequences. Threats such as reduction of jobs due to replacement of humans (as with every major breakthrough in the history of automation) or privacy/freedom concerns related to e.g. person identification (see Chinese Social Credit System) are real and need to be thoroughly evaluated. However, it is a common trend in the ever-popular shock journalism to invent increasingly spectacular hazards to incite fear of the new and unknown. Those are just noise that distracts the public debate from the real problems and as such shouldn't deserve our attention.
I consider the comparison of AI to nuclear weapons exactly this kind of sensationalistic noise. Just two popular and controversial terms put in a single sentence for dramatic effect, but exposing no actual problem. I am actually somewhat curious what is the origin of this issue - because it certainly isn't in this quote of Elon Musk. In fact, his statement does not mention any AI-related threat whatsoever, merely expressing his personal opinion on its proponents.
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