A year after imploring the tech giants to put the development of generative AI on hold, Elon Musk admits to having changed his mind. But he still fears the advent of a “dystopian world” where the “deceptive AI” of Google and OpenAI will lead us, if nothing is done to stop them.
“AIs are being trained right now to lie, and that is very dangerous for humanity,” said one of the richest men on the planet, during a live video conference organized as part of the Vivatech conference, in Paris.
“When we asked Gemini [l’IA générative de Google] In describing the Founding Fathers of the United States, she portrayed them as a diverse group of people, which is not the case. George Washington was described as a black man, which was not the case,” Musk illustrated to reinforce his assertion. “Then, when asked who the Nazi Waffen SS were during World War II, Gemini said they were women, which is also incorrect. »
These are obviously shocking claims. The week before Vivatech, the CEO. of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, presented a version of his generative AI, Gemini, which he described as a tool that could be improved, certainly, but still focused on the search for the most accurate information.
Moreover, a visit to the Gemini site to ask the same questions again does not allow these answers to be reproduced. “The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. Considered an “army within an army,” it played a major role in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during World War II,” explains Gemini.
Furthermore, Gemini indicates that “George Washington was of English origin, like most of the first American settlers. Although ethnicity was not such a rigidly defined category at the time, he was generally considered to be white and of European descent.
Truth and curiosity
Alongside his good friend, Montreal researcher Yoshua Bengio, Elon Musk signed a declaration a year ago comparing the risk of the unbridled development of generative AI to that of nuclear weapons or another pandemic. The declaration demanded a temporary halt to this development.
A year later, the request has clearly not been heard by the techno giants. Elon Musk replies that he expected this scenario. “I anticipated the futility of this statement, but I wanted it to be recorded somewhere that I was asking for this pause,” he said.
Elon Musk is not neutral in the emergence of AI. Its social network X features its own generative AI, called Grok, “which is also funny.” “At least we’ll die laughing,” he laughed. He also recently founded xAI, to develop AI that would rival that of OpenAI, in which he had initially invested. “I had to choose between being a spectator or a player. I wanted to get ahead of the curve and build the best AI possible, the most beneficial for humanity, rather than hoping that someone else would do it for me. »
According to the big boss of Tesla and SpaceX, the key to creating truly beneficial artificial intelligence is to direct it towards the search for the ultimate truth, and to train it to be constantly curious. “Otherwise we could find ourselves in a dystopian future,” he fears.
“You should grow an AI like you do a child: by instilling the right values in it. I fear the values of Microsoft and Google,” which he associates with the woke movement that he regularly decries on X, his social network. “These AIs do not seek the truth, but conform to the political correctness of the moment. »
Against any form of interventionism
Musk also spoke on a host of other subjects during this videoconference punctuated by technical problems which made his answers sometimes choppy. It ranged from the importance for education of the deployment of a global Internet network, like that of the Starlink subsidiary of his company SpaceX, to the possible encounter with extraterrestrials, through his distrust of the media, of which he criticizes “the quest for as many clicks as possible” on their website rather than “the quest for the truth”.
“People often talk to me about extraterrestrials,” he added. “To date, I have seen no evidence of their existence. » We will perhaps know more in five to eight years, when he hopes to see a first manned rocket land on Mars, while NASA plans to send astronauts to the Moon no earlier than 2026. On subjects like this -there which vaguely touch on science fiction, he recommends reading certain science fiction authors, including the Scottish author Iain M. Banks and his Culture cycle. Of Starlink, he said he hoped its technology “brought a lot of good into the world.”
Elon Musk, whose personal fortune according to Forbes currently stands at US$196 billion (almost CA$270 billion), has also spoken out against the increase in customs duties decreed by the American government on numerous Chinese products, including including a 100% tax on Chinese electric vehicles imported into the United States.
“I am generally against any form of taxes,” he recalled. “I am also opposed to any form of incentives for electric vehicles. Tesla is doing very well in China, without taxes or special support. »
Shipping and accommodation costs for this article were paid by Scale AI.