On November 19, 2014, a battle between titans started. A battle between two of the most powerful men in the world. Two men who impact billions of lives. They try to convince each other of good and evil. The ‘beginning of progress’ versus ‘the end of the world’.
Elon Musk was invited to Mark Zuckerberg’s home that day. During dinner, Zuckerberg and his team tried to convince Musk of the opportunities that artificial intelligence (AI) brings. Musk saw it very differently.
What seemed like a (distant) future at the time, has come closer in recent months at a breakneck pace. Where the average chatbot on the site of your bank or webshop is often still a painful experience, ChatGPT offers a Google Search ‘on steroids’.
Instead of searching, you now ask a question and ChatGPT answers. For example, Alexander Klöpping already showed in Op1 how ChatGPT produces two different opinion pieces about Mark Rutte within seconds. Written in Dutch and easy to read. So good, in fact, that in many cases it can hardly be distinguished from a human reaction.
But it doesn’t stop at chatting. For example, AI can compose all your music, improve your podcast, make a series of futuristic selfies of yourself or write all your website texts.
According to Zuckerberg, the chances are therefore infinite. AI can help detect defamation, racist or terrorist content on (his) social media (and of course other sites). It can help improve healthcare and education. Predict epidemics. Increase our productivity and improve the algorithm to show you the most viral content. So much for Zuck’s argument.
Musk rather sees the risks and even fears an ‘AI Apocalypse’. For example, he warns against AI falling into the wrong hands. And for AI as a super-intelligent being that eventually develops consciousness itself and thus poses a threat to our civilization.
But it can already be more concrete. For example, Google employees have been against Google AI developments for the Pentagon for years, and countries such as Russia and China are already investing heavily in AI.
Also think of the spread of fake news, lack of data security, spam and online fraud, less human interaction, fraud at school and the loss of jobs.
The latter is quite conceivable, because where for years we thought that it is mainly our creativity that protects our jobs from the emotionless computers, you now see that AI can replace mediocre writers, researchers, presenters, researchers, illustrators, administrative employees and soon, for example, bus drivers. , parking attendants and customer service representatives.
Not only Musk, but also many others fear for the smart software. Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, among others, is also holding his breath. He and Musk therefore started OpenAI together to ensure the safety of AI themselves. They push for more regulation and control over the development of AI and warn everyone about the dangers of AI.
The big question now is, which of the two titans will be right? Zuckerberg, who managed to manipulate an entire continent or Musk, who can evaporate hundreds of billions of dollars in stock market value with his outrageous behavior?
One thing is certain. Whatever Musk thinks about it; the development of AI will accelerate extremely in the coming period.
