Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity entrepreneur Elon Musk has been talking about the dangers of artificial intelligence going genocidal for months, and now he’s putting his money where his paranoia is.
On Thursday Musk donated $10 million to The Future of Life Institute (FLI) — a non-profit with the goal of “working to mitigate existential risks facing humanity.” The organization will distribute Musk’s donation to scientists working toward “keeping AI beneficial to humanity.”
“Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important,” Musk said in a statement on FLI’s website. “I agree with them, so I’m today committing $10M to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.”
Scientists hoping to take advantage of the funds to further their research will begin applying for grants next Thursday.
“The plan is to award the majority of the grant funds to AI researchers, and the remainder to AI-related research involving other fields such as economics, law, ethics and policy,” FLI said in the statement.
Musk along with physicist Stephen Hawking and other noted scientists, researchers and innovators involved in the field of AI and tech signed an open letter Sunday calling for strong safety measures to be adopted over future AI development. The letter was published on FLI’s website.
The future-thinking entrepreneur previously described AI as a potential “demon” or “terminator” that could be “more dangerous than nukes” and capable of deleting humans like “spam email.”
Funding research on artificial intelligence safety. It’s all fun & games until someone loses an I http://t.co/t1aGnrTU21
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2015
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