Humans worrying about machines’ future potency and world-dominating potential is nothing new; there’s been like three movie franchises about that idea. But that idea has largely existed as a “What If?” possibility, something placed far away from the present tense.
According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, however, that “What If?” question should be “When?” He has an answer.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk was there to launch Tesla in the United Arab Emirates, and spoke on the need for humans to merge with machines to save our species from becoming irrelevant. As tech focuses more on artificial intelligence and automating jobs, some humans risk the possibility of becoming obsolete.
“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told the audience.
“It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”
Musk made similar comments last year at ReCode’s Code Conference, emphasizing tech’s need to develop a “neural lace” to interface directly with the brain. This neural lace will allow humans to communicate their thoughts more quickly with the computer than currently allowed with mechanisms like mouse and keyboard.
The human brain remains more powerful than the most advanced computer system, so, as TechCrunch puts it, “[b]reaking down the throughput barriers that stand in the way of that computer interacting with the technical variant could indeed help stave off human redundancy.”
Here’s how CNBC explained it:
Musk explained what he meant by saying that computers can communicate at “a trillion bits per second”, while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second.
In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there’s a need to merge with machines, according to Musk.
In essence, Musk is proffering the emergence of some kind of cyborg for future generations. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
“Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,” Musk said.
