Elon Musk Fears an Artificial Intelligence Takeover

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk worries about what may happen if artificial intelligence continues to expand at its current speed. In fact, he believes that the worst-case scenario will be an artificial intelligence that decides to eliminate human life.

"I don't think anyone realizes how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing. Particularly if [the machine is] involved in recursive self-improvement . . . and its utility function is something that's detrimental to humanity, then it will have a very bad effect," said Musk.

"If its [function] is just something like getting rid of e-mail spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans . . . " Musk continued.

Isaacson then went on to ask Musk if his desire to live in Mars is one of his efforts to avoid being wiped out by machines.

"No-more likely than not that if there's some . . . apocalypse scenario, it may follow people from Earth," said Musk.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell was asked about the progress of the reusable transport systems and if it is one of the companies main goals in regards to transporting people to Mars.

"If you can't reuse them then you have to build them from scratch on Mars or you won't get to come back!," Shotwell said earlier on Wednesday.

"Do you think you maybe read too much science fiction?" Isaacson asked Musk.

"Yes, that's possible," he said. "Probably."

In response to a later question about Virtual Reality, Musk questioned whether or not the Summit itself might be a "simulation."

"There's a one in a billion chance that this is reality," Musk said.

Even though there was much laughs in the audience, it could possibly be a fact that Musk is indeed worried for the future of artificial intelligence.