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Musk believes that AI will be "much smarter than the smartest human," and that puts human beings at a tremendous disadvantage.
"I think generally people underestimate the capability of AI — they sort of think it's a smart human," Musk said at a talk with Alibaba CEO Jack Ma at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, China last August. "But it's going to be much more than that. It will be much smarter than the smartest human."
And he's made much more alarming statements than that. "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization," he said in 2017. "I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned by it."
To that end, Musk has a company — Neuralink — that he's hoping will bridge the gap between human intellect and what he sees as far superior artificial intelligence. He was also an investor in several AI startups.
But AI researchers, including Pesenti, have criticized Musk's public statements about the current state of AI.
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"There is no such thing as AGI," Pesenti said, in reference to "artificial general intelligence" a theoretical type of AI that would be much more human-like in its ability to learn and adapt. "We are nowhere near matching human intelligence."
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