By Adario Strange2014-11-18 01:56:08 UTC

There's plenty of debate over the singularity a hypothetical future moment where software becomes self-aware and smart beyond our capacity to understand. Some say it will be a boon for humanity; some foresee an Artificial Intelligence-driven apocalypse.

We already knew that Elon Musk was in the latter camp. Now we know that the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur thinks the A.I. doom is approaching faster than anyone suspects within the next 5-10 years.

It all started last Friday, when noted virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier was featured on publisher John Brockman's site, Edge.org, discussing the potential threat of artificial intelligence in a post titled "The Myth of A.I." Following his thoughts are comments from a number of science and technology luminaries weighing in on the topic. Among those comments were the thoughts of Musk, who sounded a particularly alarming note about the threat of A.I.

"The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most," wrote Musk. "Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don't understand."

The problem: according to a Musk spokesperson contacted by Mashable, the comments were emailed to Brockman and were not intended to be made public on the site.

Soon after after the comment appeared, it was removed, but not before a screenshot of the comment was captured and posted on Reddit, effectively ensuring that Musk's supposedly private comments were preserved for all the Internet see.

Aside from the frighteningly near-term prediction, the other thing that seemed to give Musk's comment import was the mention of DeepMind, a very real company he has invested in that works in the artificial intelligence space.

"The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I'm not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast," said Musk. "Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast it is growing at a pace close to exponential."

Later, Musk went on to claim that his view is shared by others working in the space.

More here:

Elon Musk's secret fear: Artificial Intelligence will turn deadly in 5 years