Elon Musk's Unknown Future
The billionaire entrepreneur is approaching new artificial intelligence heights, making many wonder “why?”
It seems like hardly a week goes by without more news of a ground-breaking or ambitious advancement in Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and other forms of technology-enabled reality. The latest is coming from tech titan Elon Musk. He announced that he has founded a company called Neuralink, which has the intention of forming a direct connection between human brains and computers by creating a kind of “neural lace.”
The news first broke in the Wall Street Journal, who reported that “the billionaire entrepreneur now wants to merge computers with human brains to help people keep up with machines.” After they published their report, Musk tweeted confirmation of the rumor, stating: “Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to.”
Exploring New Worlds
Framing a decision to start a company as being driven by a need to respond to “existential risk” is a classic Silicon Valley move. It promotes the idea there is a deeply ethical imperative to respond to, rather than just a mere capitalist or individualist ambition. But when it comes to moves like Musk’s to forge new neural pathways via tech, one has to wonder: just what is at the core of the human interest in exploring alternative worlds when there is so much work to be done in the current one? Should we blithely applaud any attempt to drive forward our understanding of neural computing and the links between brains and AI, or should we be more critical?
Musk’s tweet isn’t the only evidence he sees his innovation in this space as a vital contribution to the future of humanity. As the Guardian reported, last month at the World Government Summit in Dubai, “Musk said people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in a future dominated by AI. He said a ‘merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence’ would be necessary for humans to stay economically valuable.”
Artificial Hype
Musk is clearly a master—indeed maybe even an author—of the Silicon Valley PR playbook, but his bold assertions about the future of humanity are more than just showboating. By framing his company as a response to a risk that the future state of humanity faces, he is instilling a kind of fear. Crucially, though, it is a fear that only he (and his companies) can address. This fear attracts investors and hype, even if there is scant evidence that humans are doomed to be economically obsolete at the face of AI.
Even worse, as one commentator at Mashable pointed out, Musk’s personal obsession with AI could be enabling the kind of future he fears: “The concept of neural lace comes from Iain M Banks, the late great author of the Culture novels and also a master of science fiction… And here’s the kicker for Elon Musk: the Culture is governed by powerful AI entities. They’re called Minds, and they’re basically God: all powerful, all good. They control the economy and produce everything; no need for entrepreneurs any more, and no financial reward for them either.”
Mechanical Passion
The lesson here isn’t simply to stifle innovation in the field of AI and VR for fear of what it might create; instead, the lesson is to avoid blindly following the cult of personality an individual like Musk creates into an unknown future. There are good reasons to be excited and eager to advance in this field, but we must be more critical about these kinds of initiatives and, importantly, the way they are framed. Meaningfully interrogating how they will create a better humanity in the short term and the long term—rather than merely vaunting them because they claim to help humanity avert an impending disaster—is a good start. Does that make sense? How do you feel about AI and Elon Musk, are you afraid, excited or a mixture of both?