Elon Musk slams proposal to create an artificial intelligence 'god' that people will worship

'On the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence...'

Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, arrives at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II in Hawthorne, California, U.S., August 27, 2017 (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

Elon Musk has spoken out against the possible creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) god that humans could worship.

The Tesla founder was reacting to an article about Anthony Levandowski, who was recently found to have founded a non-profit religious organisation calling for the creation of a “Godhead” based on AI.

Mr Musk tweeted that Mr Levandowski should be “on the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence”.

Mr Levandowski, who used to work on driverless cars for Uber, set up the organisation, called Way of the Future, in September 2015, according to a report in Wired.

Its mission statement is: “To develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society.”

Mr Musk shared a VentureBeat article alongside his tweet, which discusses the possibility of an AI god emerging by 2042, writing its own bible and being worshipped by humans.

The article concludes that this is not only possible but highly likely, largely because humans “tend to trust and obey things that seem more powerful and worthy than ourselves”, such as directions on a Maps app, or even Google search.

Experts have predicted that AI will be better than humans at all tasks within 45 years. Once it surpasses humans, there’s every chance that some of us could look towards AI for guidance, and trust the advice it offered.

“Teaching humans about religious education is similar to the way we teach knowledge to machines: repetition of many examples that are versions of a concept you want the machine to learn,” Vince Lynch, the founder of AI company IV.AI, told VentureBeat.

He added: “The concept of teaching a machine to learn … and then teaching it to teach … (or write AI) isn’t so different from the concept of a holy trinity or a being achieving enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success and failure.”

Mr Musk has spoken about the potential dangers of AI on multiple occasions.

This summer, he described it as “a fundamental existential risk for human civilisation”, and called on all companies working on AI to slow down to ensure they don’t unintentionally build something dangerous.

Other prominent figures, however, such as Google’s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, believe that machines will improve us, and help us become better humans.