| Altman is not a speciesist, I guess. Context: Elon Musk is perhaps the world’s most famous doom-monger and has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the possibility of super-smart machines wiping out humanity. But Google founder Larry Page allegedly dismissed these fears as ‘speciesist’ during an argument at a Napa Valley party in 2015. A top professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has claimed the two tech moguls clashed in a ‘long and spirited debate’ in the early hours of the morning. In his book Life 3.0: Being Human In The Age of Artificial Intelligence, Max Tegmark wrote: ‘[Page’s] main concerns were that AI paranoia would delay the digital utopia and/or cause a military takeover of AI that would fall foul of Google’s “don’t be evil” slogan. ‘Elon kept pushing back and asked Larry to clarify details of his arguments, such as why he was so confident that digital life wouldn’t destroy everything we care about. ‘At times, Larry accused Elon of being “speciesist”: treating certain life forms as inferior just because they were silicon-based rather than carbon-based.’ (https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/02/elon-musks-fears-artificial-i...) |