Elon Musk, Tesla founder and the billionaire inventor behind the Hyperloop concept, has said that humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence.
Musk believes that ‘superintelligence’, intelligence that surpasses that of the brightest human minds, will be likely in 20 years’ time and that mass unemployment will be an outcome of artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more advanced.
“There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can’t do better,” he said at the World Government Summit. “We need to be very careful in how we develop artificial intelligence and make sure researchers don’t get carried away.”
Musk said that to some degree “we are already a cyborg” through the digital tools we have such as phones, computers and the applications, which he calls the “digital tertiary layer”.
He added that if humans must augment their capabilities through a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence” if they want to develop with a technologically advanced economy and failure to do this will see humans become “house cats” to AI.
Musk’s theory is that neural activity in the brain can work with “neuroprosthetics” to allow humans to communicate telepathically with technology.
He also announced that he’s developing an injectable mesh-like “neural lace” to fit on a brain to give it digital computing capabilities.
Musk also spoke about Hyperloop. He added: “If tunnelling technology can improve to the point where we can build tunnels fast, cheap and safe, then that would remove any traffic situations in cities.”
Bibop G. Gresta, Founder and Chairman of HTT – a company taking forward the Hyperloop concept – has stated at a major conference in India that he has been enticing global governments to invest in Hyperloop and that the Indian government could be making a big announcement on the technology by March, 2017.
To hear more from Musk, watch the video below from the Montana Economic Development Summit:
