Elon Musk issues dire warning on future impact of AI as national debt tops $1 trillion dollars
The world’s richest man has issued a warning about what the future of artificial intelligence could look like and the impact it might have on the world.
Elon Musk has spoken out about the rising national debt in the US, which currently stands at around $40 trillion.
The tech mogul appeared on an episode of the Dwarkesh Podcast earlier this year, where he claimed that we are ‘actually totally screwed’ without AI.
Musk said: “In the absence of AI and robotics, we’re actually totally screwed because the national debt is piling up like crazy.”
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He went on to say that the interest payments being paid on the national debt are higher than the entire budget for the US military, claiming that the only thing that can solve the problem is the advancement of AI.
Musk continued: “It’s the only thing that could solve the national debt. We are 1,000% going to go bankrupt as a country, and fail as a country, without AI and robots.
“Nothing else will solve the national debt. We just need enough time to build the AI and robots to not go bankrupt before then.”
The billionaire - and briefly trillionaire - went on to say: “My prediction is that by far the cheapest place to put AI will be space in 36 months or less, maybe 30 months. Mark my words.”
Elon Musk’s concerns over the future of AI
This isn’t the only time Musk has commented about his thoughts on AI. Sitting down for an interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, he discussed his thoughts on the expansion of the technology.
Musk admitted that he still has concerns about the potential risks associated with the advancement of the technology, explaining that the ‘most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all’.
Alarmingly, the world’s richest man went on to say that his ‘philosophical conclusion’ to the concerns is to ‘look on the bright side’, because ‘even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t’.
Musk’s vision of a so-called age of abundance could mean that cash is no longer important, as AI takes over jobs traditionally operated by humans.
The entrepreneur has publicly described a version of the future where there are millions of humanoid robots completing manual labor in the next five years, meaning that economic output could even double in the near future but will also put people out of work.