Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s take on the ongoing artificial intelligence (AI) evolution is well known. The billionaire innovator and visionary has stated on multiple occasions that any unchecked rapid growth of AI could eventually pave the way in for an existential threat to the human race — much akin to the how things went down south for humanity in Hollywood blockbusters such as the Terminator and the Matrix.
However, Musk seems to be devising a plan in order to prevent a total annihilation of our species by our own creation. With that idea in mind, Musk started a new venture called Neuralink which will try finding ways to link the human brain with a machine interface. This, in his opinion, would stop AI becoming the “other” side.
When a Twitter user recently asked Musk if Neuralink was a “counter for Skynet”, the celebrity entrepreneur replied that it was the “aspiration” behind the company.
That is the aspiration: to avoid AI becoming other.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2017
For the uninitiated, Skynet is a fictional self-aware AI system depicted in the Terminator franchise that considered humans as a potential threat and made several attempts to wipe them out.
In his recent interview with the blog “Wait But Why”, Musk said that the company was planning to make micron-size devices that would help accomplish the goal of developing a human-machine interface.
“If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy. You wouldn’t need to verbalize unless you want to add a little flair to the conversation or something … But the conversation would be conceptual interaction on a level that’s difficult to conceive of right now,” Musk told Wait But Why.
Musk first hinted his plans for a new entity such as Neuralink back in February when he stated that humans must evolve into part machines or risk becoming irrelevant.