The devil is probably pretty mad at Elon Musk right now. The PayPal/Tesla/SpaceX founder, while being interviewed at the MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium, outed the demon of all demons by suggesting that he’s just hanging around in hell waiting for humanity to finally develop full artificial intelligence.
According to Musk, artificial intelligence is the demon’s gateway to us, even though it’s always seemed like he was already here in the form of Chuck Lorre.
I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with artificial intelligence.
I’m increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish. With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon. You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like — Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out. [audience laughs]
“Don’t laugh, you fools! You will all perish in flames!” is probably what Musk should have said there, but alas, he did no such thing. Maybe in some weird, sick way, he’s working with the devil. You’d have to sell your soul to be as successful as Musk, right?
Thanks for the warning, Elon. Right now, Satan is probably enduring some sort of rambling from Hitler, growing tired of scorching the butts of sinners every single day or whatever it is he does down there, waiting for us to finally summon him to our world. But now that we know his motives, maybe we’ll hold off on the whole AI thing. Though if the Terminator franchise (which Stephen Hawking once used to warn us about AI) has taught us anything, it’s that our fate is inevitable and the devil’s vacation on Earth is just a matter of time.
