Facebook's head of AI thinks Elon musk has 'no idea what he's talking about' — and he's not alone
Elon Musk is a prominent figure in the AI community, but a lot of experts don't see eye to eye with him. Today, Facebook's AI head, Jerome Persati, said that Elon Musk has "has no idea what he is talking about when he talks about AI."
Persati, who was reacting to an article on CNBC talking about Musk's image in the AI community explained that the Tesla founder often talks about risks of AI that are distracting us from real issues. He added that Musk likes to talk about machines taking over humans rather than focusing on the more pressing issue of fairness in AI.
1. My point is that AGI is a meaningless concept, don't even talk about it. 2. "gonna be upon us very quickly" https://t.co/QTbkLqG5pP 3. There are a lot of risks related to AI, he talks about the wrong ones (machines taking over) distracting us from the real issues (eg fairness)
— Jerome Pesenti (@an_open_mind) May 13, 2020
The Facebook AI head is not the only one to criticize Musk's AI opinions. In 2017, Musk said that AI might cause World War III and outlined the danger of AI-powered killer robots. He even went on to say AI is more dangerous than North Korea. Later, Bill Gates dismissed these claims and said people shouldn't panic about it.
In the same year, Mark Zuckerberg said that Musk's doomsday scenario predictions about AI are "pretty irresponsible." The Tesla founder retorted to that remark by saying Zuckerberg's understanding of AI is "limited".
In 2018, the social networking company's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said Musk was "nuts" to call for AI regulation. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also said that "Elon is exactly wrong" about AI and he doesn't understand that the technology will make humans smarter.
Last year, Musk even claimed that his neuro-tech startup Neuralink can "cure" Autism.
It seems like the OpenAI and Space X founder is not finding many friends in the AI community at the moment. We'll have to wait and see if Musk will reply to Persati's claims.
Published May 14, 2020 — 09:39 UTC
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