Will there come a time when A.I. is in control and can’t be turned off? 

                            “Absolutely.”  – Elon Musk

Elon Musk talked in an interview with Tucker Carlson and here are the highlights.  This was a short, engaging Part I (the 2nd part will air soon).  It’s significant that Elon considers Tesla and SpaceX much more complex than Twitter. The interview covers many areas.  Enjoy!

ADVANCED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE SINGULARITY.

ELON MUSK AGREES HE’S A SPECIESIST.

OpenAI has transitioned from the non-profit Elon founded in order to ethically distribute the power of artificial intelligence, into a closed-source for-profit partnered with Microsoft.

Elon said,

“It is fundamentally profound that the smartest creatures on this earth are humans. It is our defining characteristic.  

Now what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form?

It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance. It’s called the singularity.

Regulations are really only put into effect after something terrible has happened. 

If that’s the case for AI, and we only put in regulation after something terrible has happened, it may be too late to put the regulation in place.

The AI may be in control at that point.”

Elon explained that he and Google co-founder Larry Page were once close, and he would stay on Page’s couch.  They would talk about AI late into the night.  Elon said he was concerned about the dangers of AI.  Page called Elon a “Speciesist” when he said that “We need to make sure that humanity is okay.” Elon laughed and said he is one, and asked Page, “What are you?”

“My perception was that (Page) was not taking AI safety seriously enough. He really wanted a digital superintelligence. Basically, a digital god as soon as possible. He’s made many public statements that the whole goal of Google is artificial general intelligence.” – Elon Musk

TRUTH GPT.

Elon discussed creating an alternative to OpenAI, TruthGPT, because “Open AI” is being trained to be politically correct and to lie to people. Elon explained,

“What’s happening is they are training the AI to lie. It’s bad. To lie and to withhold information. To comment on some things, to not comment on other things.

But not to say what the data actually demands that it say.

In effect, Microsoft has a very strong say and, if not, directly controls OpenAI at this point.

You really have an OpenAI – Microsoft situation, and then Google DeepMind.  These are the two heavyweights in this arena.

I’m worried about the fact that it’s being trained to be politically correct, which is another way of saying untruthful things.  That’s a bad sign.

Certainly, the path to AI dystopia is to train an AI to be deceptive.”

Elon Musk explained the goal of TruthGPT,

“I’m going to start something which is called TruthGPT or a Maximum Truth Seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe, and I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.”

TWITTER PURCHASE.

Was it worth it to buy Twitter? Elon explains the Twitter purchase will greatly help ensure the strength of democracy and free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.

“It remains to be seen as to whether this was financially smart.  Currently, it is not. You know we just revalued the company at less than half of the acquisition price.

But some things are priceless.

Lose money or not, that is a secondary issue compared to ensuring the strength of democracy, and free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.”

NEXT PRESIDENT. 

NEW YORK TIMES.

FACEBOOK.

Elon confessed he voted for Biden in 2020, not Trump, and now he just wants a “normal person” with “common sense” to lead America.

He also disclosed what the media has been silent on.

“My understanding is that Zuckerberg spent $400 million in the last election nominally in a get-out-the-vote campaign but fundamentally in support of Democrats. Is that accurate or not accurate? Does that sound unbiased to you?”

As the most followed & interacted man on Twitter, Elon has useful advice on how to use Twitter. He explains, for example, that the New York Times’ Twitter account (and others) should choose only the top best articles to tweet. Otherwise, small insignificant articles clog people’s timelines, and relevant articles are missed.

COMMUNITY NOTES.

TRUTH.

“We got this Community Notes feature which is great. We put a lot of effort into ensuring that Community Notes does not get gamed or have biases.

It simply cares about what is the most accurate thing. The effect of Community Notes is more powerful than people realize because once people realize they can get Community Noted on Twitter, then they will think more carefully about what they say.

Basically, it’s an encouragement to be more truthful and less deceptive.”  – Elon Musk

DM’S WILL BE ENCRYPTED.

Tucker Carlson asked about Governmental Agencies having access to Twitter including Direct messages, “You were shocked to find out that various intel agencies were affecting [Twitter’s] operations?”  

Elon replied,  “The degree to which various Government Agencies had effectively full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind.” 

Elon added that direct messages will soon be encrypted (as an on/off toggle feature). 

TWITTER WAS OVERSTAFFED.

‘GLORIFIED ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION.’

Speaking about cutting staff at Twitter, Elon said,

“Turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter.

If you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don’t care that much about censorship, then it turns out you can let go of a lot of people.

What has been the product development over time with Twitter? So, years versus product improvement. You know, it’s a pretty flat line. 

So what were they doing?  It took a year to add an edit button that doesn’t work most of the time. It feels like a comedy situation over here.

The real question is how did it get so absurdly overstaffed?”

CONCLUSION.

I would call this a cautionary interview because Elon does much to explain how dangerous Advanced Artificial Intelligence is. The Good News is that the dire direction of AI today has managed to prompt Elon into moving forward with the creation of TruthGPT.  I am confident that humans will one day be very grateful to him for that!   

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───── ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Thanks to Tucker Carlson / FoxNews for Interviewing Elon Musk. You may watch the interview on Fox. This Article is by Gail Alfar, please credit accordingly and consider following and subscribing to my Twitter Account to support citizen writing. See @gailalfaratx on Twitter