Elon Musk has branded artificial intelligencea fundamental existential risk for human civilisation.

He says we mustnt wait for a disaster to happen before deciding to regulate it, and that AI is, in his eyes, the scariest problem we now face.

He also wants the companies working on AI to slow down to ensure they dont unintentionally build something unsafe.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was speaking on-stage at the National Governors Association at the weekend.

I have exposure to the most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it, he said. I keep sounding the alarm bell but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they dont know how to react because it seems so ethereal.

I think we should be really concerned about AI and I think we should AIs a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive. Because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, its too late.

Normally the way regulations are set up is that a whole bunch of bad things happen, theres a public outcry, and then after many years, a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry. Theres a bunch of opposition from companies who dont like being told what to do by regulators. It takes forever.

That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilisation. AI is a fundamental risk to the risk of human civilisation, in a way that car accidents, airplane crashes, faulty drugs or bad food were not. They were harmful to a set of individual in society, but they were not harmful to society as a whole.

AI is a fundamental existential risk for human civilisation, and I dont think people fully appreciate that.

However, he recognises that this will be easier said than done, since companies dont like being regulated.

Also, any organisation working on AI will be crushed by competing companies if they dont work as quickly as possible, he said. It would be up to a regulator to control all of them.

When its cool and regulators are convinced that its safe to proceed, then you can go. But otherwise, slow down.

He added: I think wed better get on [introducing regulation] with AI, pronto. Therell certainly be a lot of job disruption because whats going to happen is robots will be able to do everything better than us. Im including all of us.

Earlier this year, Mr Musk said that humans will have to merge with machines to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and Googles director of engineering, believes that computers will have human-level intelligence by 2029.

However, he believes machines will improve humans, making us funnier, smarter and even sexier.

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Elon Musk: AI is a 'fundamental existential risk for human civilisation' and creators must slow down - The Independent