Matrix Report
During the World Artificial Intelligence (AI) Conference, which was held in Shanghai in late August, the world witnessed two influential billionaires debate AI cooperation and innovation, the relationship between people and machines, AI’s effect on the job market and also how education, health care, urban governance, travel and even art be presented in an intelligent era?
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, met with Jack Ma, Co-founder Alibaba, to answer the public’s queries about several matters, primarily Artificial Intelligence.
The Chinese billionaire started his discussion by declaring that in his opinion, AI was never Artificial Intelligence, but Alibaba Intelligence, setting the tone for the rest of the debate, implying Alibaba was a staunch supporter of Artificial Intelligence.
He iterated that Artificial Intelligence, could one day, possibly help humans understand themselves better. This was based on an analysis Jack Ma made, where predictions by humans are wrong 99.9% of the time. Furthermore, he stated that Artificial Intelligence could never be classified as a threat, since humans would always strive for control above any advancement.
Elon Musk, however, seemed out of character – not making a lot of impact with his words. His contributions were abstract rather than concrete but he was able to get a few messages about AI across. Musk acknowledged that AI was a vast technological advancement, however, some avenues remain unexplored. His greatest concern was unpredictability of the abilities of Artificial Intelligence. In his conversation with the audience and Jack Ma, he found himself leaning towards a dystopian view.
The conversation took a turn towards Elon Musk’s space exploration activities. Where Jack Ma subtly took jabs at the SpaceX Mars program, Musk defended his project, stating that even though his idea of sustainability of the resources on Earth was essential, Mars could be a potential alternative for the whole population of the Earth. Jack Ma, as impressed as he was with SpaceX achievements and initiatives, was still not willing to admit that humans needed an alternative to the Earth. Jack insisted that the Earth needed to be sustained and protected by smart individuals as a top priority. He argued that even if SpaceX managed to change the lives of one million people and sent them to Mars, the other 7.4 billion people would still need rescuing.
After much debate on this matter, Jack Ma and Elon Musk discussed jobs, where Ma wanted to talk about Artificial Intelligence and how it would affect the job market of the world. In some cases, he thought that it would reduce the number of days people worked, and the number of hours in those days, minimizing human involvement in the workforce drastically.
Even though myriad topics were discussed during the summit by the two tech billionaires, it was cumbersome to comprehend the intentions and objectives, allowing for very little progression of ideas and an anti-climatic end to an otherwise highly anticipated event.
