One expert warns there is a 20% chance that AI could lead to human extinction

Elon Musk has issued a disturbing warning that a ‘tsunami of AI’ is coming to humanity.

The billionaire previously claimed that he is washing his hands of politics after his stint as an unelected official in government came to an end last month.

Musk recently spoke at Y Combinator’s AI Startup School where he discussed a number of different subjects including his time in government.

The SpaceX founder said: “Fixing the government is kind of like the beach is dirty, and there’s some needles and feces and like trash and you want to clean up the beach.

“But then there’s also this thousand-foot wall of water which is a tsunami of AI. And how much does cleaning the beach really matter if you’ve got a thousand-foot tsunami about to hit? Not that much. … It’s just so much noise. The signal-to-noise ratio in politics is terrible.”

Speaking about the future of artificial intelligence, Musk continued: “I think we’re quite close to digital superintelligence. If it doesn’t happen this year, next year for sure.”

This comes as AI experts have begun to sound the alarm about the potential dangers of superintelligence.

Geoffrey Hinton, who is a leading computer scientist and cognitive psychologist best known for pioneering artificial intelligence, made an appearance on the Diary of a CEO podcast hosted by Steven Bartlett, where he warned about AI.

Dubbed the ‘godfather of AI’, Hinton revealed that he believes there is a 20% chance that the rise in AI could lead to human extinction.

However, Musk has said that this fate could be avoided if a focus is placed on the quality of data that AI is trained with.

He said: “Something that I think is extremely important in building AI is a very vigorous adherence to the truth—even if that truth is not politically correct.

“My intuition says what can make AI very dangerous is if you force AI to believe things that aren’t true.”

Musk added: “The hype over AI is pretty intense. Companies that are a year old getting multibillion-dollar valuations, which I guess could pan out and probably will pan out in some cases.”

Earlier this year, the world’s richest man claimed that empathy is the ‘fundamental weakness of Western civilization’ but that AI should have ‘empathy for humanity and life as we know it’.

It looks like we could be in for a very unpredictable and interesting time…