Tech titan Elon Musk says artificial intelligence (AI) could surpass the collective intelligence of humanity in just a few years.
In a panel discussion at the All-In Summit, the billionaire says that advances in AI will continue as processing power scales, noting that incremental leaps in compute will yield massive jumps in capability
“I think there’s a natural logarithmic function associated with the amount of compute. So then, like, say, for argument’s sake, like 10x more compute will double the intelligence… That still means that you go from 100 IQ to 200 IQ. So pretty, pretty big deal.”
Musk predicts that intelligence won’t plateau but will extend to cosmic scales as computing power expands.
“I think we’ll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where, most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute, and then ultimately most of the power of the galaxy, sort of Kardashev 2, Kardashev 3 scale compute.”
The billionaire also contrasts AI’s rise with human limits.
“Once you think about artificial intelligence, not as sort of this, a destination that you reach, but really as part of the overall escalation of intelligence, that we are aware of. Human intelligence has also scaled as the population has increased, and we’ve been able to store more and more information. Now, because of population declines and low birth rate, human intelligence is somewhat plateauing and will actually decline.”
Meanwhile, he says that AI is now on the verge of outsmarting the entire human race.
“My guess is that, I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human at anything as soon as next year. And then probably within five, like say 2030, probably AI is smarter than the sum of all humans.”