Elon Musk: Humans will lose control of artificial intelligence within a decade

Artificial intelligence could surpass the combined intelligence of humanity within about five years, and humans are unlikely to still be in control of the technology within a decade, according to Elon Musk.

Talk to The Economist Artificial intelligence is on track to outperform humans at almost every intellectual task, editor-in-chief Zani Minton Beddoes said Thursday, founder of xAI.

“There won’t really be anything that AI can’t do better than humans, except maybe being humans,” Musk said. “The most likely outcome is an era of astonishing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of. This may seem unbelievable, but here we are in 2026. Let’s see where we stand in 2036.”

This discussion is the latest example where Musk said he believes AI will lead to…Age of abundance“It will bring comfort and reassurance Existential crisis For humanity. However, Musk said he still believes advanced AI poses existential risks, but no longer sees a realistic path to slowing its development.

“I can’t see any way to stop this incredible momentum of artificial intelligence and robotics,” he said. “Sometimes I think that maybe even if there was a pause button, maybe we shouldn’t press it, because the more likely outcome is incredible abundance for everyone.”

Instead, Musk suggested that the world’s leading AI companies start holding regular meetings to discuss safety and security concerns. He also suggested giving competing AI labs limited early access to each other’s frontier models so they can identify dangerous capabilities before public release. If a company fails to address serious risks, governments can then intervene, he said.

While he suggested that top AI developers should work together, Musk also took time to criticize his old rival, Sam Altman. OpenAI Evolution From a non-profit organization to a for-profit company, saying it had deviated from its original mission.

“Well, I’m not a fan of Sam Altman because you created a non-profit that was supposed to be an open-source, world-owned AI company that somehow turned into an $800 billion for-profit, closed-source company,” he said.

In May, a California jury rejected Musk’s request 150 billion dollars It sued OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and co-founder Greg Brockman, finding the defendants not liable for allegations that they abandoned the nonprofit’s mission by shifting toward a commercial structure. The ruling ended one of Musk’s most prominent legal challenges against the developer of ChatGPT.

Musk also suggested having Anthropy as a co-founder Dario Amodei And his team no longer trusted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, arguing that they would have stayed at OpenAI otherwise.

“I think Dario is a very principled person,” he said. “He cares about the future of the world, and I think everyone I’ve met at Anthropic so far has had good intentions. No one has set off my evil detector.” “The road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions. There are few paving stones with good intentions, so we don’t want to be complacent.”

While Musk praised Amodei’s leadership of Anthropic, critics, including Sam Altman, accused the company of falling short Fear based Marketing to sell Claude AI products.

Despite his disagreements with OpenAI’s leadership, he said rival AI companies must be willing to cooperate on safety.

“At the end of the day, if we have to talk, we will talk,” Musk said. “Put aside our personal differences for the good of the world.”