Elon Musk reveals what will kill us all

Billionaire Elon Musk revealed what will end human civilisation on Earth and it’s not what most people may think.

OPINION

The machines will kill us all — that much is certain. The only question is how we will go.

That is the take home message from billionaire Elon Musk’s interview with TV host Tucker Carlson. It is also the take home message from Terminator 2. And it is also probably correct.

For the benefit of the few remaining species now reading this, Musk this week spoke to Carlson in a genial and wide-ranging chat that included, in passing, the end of human civilisation on this planet. It was a bit like Leonardo da Vinci parachuting in as a surprise contestant on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

Elon Musk during his interview with Tucker Carlson. Picture: Fox

But in case I forgot to mention it, it also heralded the end of human civilisation on this planet and I feel like that is something we should probably address.

We talk a lot about climate change, which is important, and we talk a lot about pronouns, which are probably less important, but we don’t talk much about artificial intelligence overtaking human intelligence and enslaving our entire species.

And I can understand that. It’s a difficult subject to raise at the dinner table.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. On the contrary — and on the current trajectory — it’s probably inevitable.

We might like to think we are smarter than machines. We’re not.

Machines have been replacing humans since the industrial revolution and beyond. Middle-class creative types perhaps once thought this was mere grunt work and that their particular genius would be not only exempt but perhaps even more precious. As it turns out AI can imitate pretension too. We are all doomed.

Sure, I was heartened when a mate told me he asked ChatGPT to write a Joe Hildebrand column and it couldn’t do it but what hope is there for mere mortals?

AI chatbot ChatGPT is coming for our jobs. Picture: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Indeed that is the poison pill of our demise. Asked to name the most immediate threat of AI to our civilisation, Musk didn’t invoke Skynet or Hal. Instead he was most worried about an AI algorithm that could produce perfectly targeted and persuasive messaging on social media that might influence the outcome of elections.

And again, he’s not wrong.

We all know, for example, the highly sophisticated digital campaigning methods that have already been used to help elect everyone from Donald Trump to the Teals.

These are questionable enough when there are humans involved but what if there was a machine that was able to instantly harvest vast swathes of data and constantly hone the messaging of a candidate accordingly?

What if there was a machine that was able to carefully curate the news feed on every voter’s mobile devices in order to direct them into supporting a particular political party?

And what if there was a machine that could generate a perfect video replica of a charismatic leader and have them do or say whatever it wanted?

It seems terrifying when you put it in black and white and yet none of this is hypothetical. All of this is not only possible but actually on the verge of happening right now. The only cigarette paper of protection is that humans are still nominally in charge — and that’s bad enough as it is.

US voters were micro-targeted on social media in 2016 during former US President Donald Trump’s residential campaign. Picture: SCOTT OLSON Getty Images via AFP

And so we march headlong into the existential vortex of all civilisations: We are so preoccupied by what we can do that we rarely stop to think about what we should do. Like the machines we are seemingly pre-programmed for progress without actually knowing where that progress will take us.

And as always this takes us back to the eternal wisdom of the 20th century physicist Enrico Fermi.

As it happens, Musk mentioned Fermi in passing as he was discussing the existence of aliens on Earth, posing the great man’s simple lunchtime question: “Where is everybody?”

But the pyramid atop which this question sits is a far darker construction: If the universe is so vast and life is so probable why haven’t we seen any sign of it elsewhere? Why has nobody come?

The bleak answer suggested by some is that any species that has developed technology advanced enough to go to another planet must have already developed technology advanced enough to destroy its own.

And Fermi would know — he helped invent the atom bomb.

So far we have survived the nuclear age. The question is whether with AI we have created a weapon just as deadly but with no human finger on the button.

And whether we are prepared to bet the planet on it.