On September 1, 2017, Vladimir Putin visited Yaroslavl, where he took part in the Proektoria professional navigation forum, which took place from September 1 to 4. During a conversation with schoolchildren, the President answered their questions and touched on a number of important topics, including talking about his attitude to artificial intelligence. The president's quote was voiced by the RT channel, after which it attracted the attention of not only the foreign press, but also the head of SpaceX Elon Musk.
Putin suggested that a country that has achieved leadership in this area will be able to "become the ruler of the world" and noted that he personally would not like AI to become a monopoly in someone's particular hands, but promised that if Russia would achieve significant success in in this area, we will gladly share our developments in this area with other countries, as it already does in other areas of science and technology.
“Artificial intelligence is not only the future of Russia, it is the future of all mankind. There are colossal opportunities and threats that are difficult to predict today. But in order not to be at the end of the queue, we need to work on this already today, - quotes the president of TASS.
The head of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, posted on Twitter a link to an article by The Verge about Putin's conversation with schoolchildren, and in a commentary to the tweet noted that the technological race in the development of AI at the national level could cause World War III. In the message, he mentioned China, Russia and other countries that have serious developments in the field of high technologies.
Earlier, Elon Musk prepared an appeal to the UN, in which he called for the development of methods for regulating the development and use of combat robots and AI, since, in his opinion, they could become a serious threat to the world in the future. He argued for his position by the fact that he himself owns the non-profit organization OpenAI, which develops friendly and open artificial intelligence, and therefore has an idea of the subject of the conversation. Musk's petition was then signed by the heads of various technology companies, but many analysts and scientists were skeptical about the warning of the head of SpaceX, noting that it distracts the government and developers from much more important tasks.
Musk's subscribers were also divided. Many supported him, but some expressed doubts that Russia has a sufficient level of knowledge in the field of AI, noting that if anyone succeeds in gaining leadership, it will certainly not be Russia, but China. Some did not take Musk's tweet seriously and started posting gifs from Terminator and throwing links to the Russian robot Fyodor, who learned to shoot with two hands.
Elon Musk's position is understandable, because it is quite difficult to predict the impact of AI on our lives in the future, so his fears are to some extent justified. Even the most peaceful and necessary developments can be turned into a formidable weapon that threatens all of humanity.
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Viacheslav Larionov
