The head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, said in an interview with MIT researcher Lex Friedman that his first question for super-advanced artificial intelligence would be related to simulation theory. In the course of a conversation about the future of unmanned vehicles that began quite peacefully within the framework of a podcast, the topic smoothly flowed first into the field of physics, then love, and then came to the question of whether our universe is someone's very complex computer simulation.
Musk paused for a few seconds, lowered his eyes to the floor and began to move them very quickly from side to side, apparently very carefully choosing the right answer. Finally he said:
Musk shared his idea that humanity lives inside a very large computer simulation back in 2016, noting that taking into account all the oddities that occur in our world, the probability of this is about "one millionth". As an argumentative analogy, he cited how fast and very cool the development of video games is. After all, just a few decades ago, the whole world was "chopped" in Pong - one of the first video games representing a tennis simulator, where a small square acted as a ball, and two rectangles as rackets. It took us only a few years to learn how to make photorealistic simulations of fictional worlds, so why not assume that someone “outside” has created an even more advanced photorealistic simulation that we all live in?
The initial interview with Musk focused on how advanced the self-driving cars of the future will be, and how using a neural network that collects data from eight installed cameras and 12 ultrasonic sensors in every Tesla vehicle will lead to fully self-driving vehicles. Ultimately, the conversation turned to how these neural networks can serve as the basis for the creation of general or universal artificial intelligence at the human level.
The head of Tesla and SpaceX has also founded the startup Neuralink in the past, which aims to create a universal computer interface that allows you to connect the human brain with a computer. In addition, Elon advocated the creation of a set of rules for AI development, pointing out that without control of this area, sooner or later we will all be in big trouble.
During the interview, Musk also noted that if there is no physical distinction between reality and simulation, then it is very likely that verification that our reality is a simulation will also be impossible.
Some AI experts are confident that ultra-advanced general artificial intelligence will emerge within the next decade. Perhaps Musk will still have the opportunity to personally ask the system a question that interests him.
Nikolay Khizhnyak