Musk believes China is on ‘team humanity’ when it comes to AI

Musk said he had warned top government officials there that digital super intelligence could try to take over their country.

By Anna Edgerton

Elon Musk said he believes that China is “on Team Humanity” and would be willing to work with the international community on common guidelines for artificial intelligence — a technology he described as “a civilisational risk.”

Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who took part in a Twitter Spaces discussion with Musk on Wednesday, was not so sure.

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Musk, who recently returned from a trip to China, said he had warned top government officials there that digital super intelligence could try to take over their country.

The Tesla Inc and SpaceX chief executive officer said while he recognises that he has “some vested interests in China,” his impression was that Beijing “is definitely interested in working in a cooperative international framework regarding AI regulation.”

Gallagher questioned whether China has ever played a constructive role in existing global institutions. He said he sees the Chinese Communist Party as more on “Team Genocidal Communism,” citing the threat to Taiwan and the use of technology to control the Uighur population in western China.

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Strategic competition with China has become one of the main arguments of those pushing for the US to forge ahead on artificial intelligence, even as some of AI’s initial investors and inventors have urged caution. Musk was one of thousands of signatories to an open letter published in March that called on AI researchers to pause development of powerful large language models to allow time for “shared safety protocols.”

Wednesday’s wide-ranging conversation on Twitter, the social media platform that Musk owns, came the day that he unveiled a website for xAI, a company he said should aim for AI that is “maximally curious, maximally truth seeking” rather than being programmed with one understanding of morality.

Musk said he’s hopeful that relations between the US and China will improve “once the, the very difficult question of Taiwan is — you know — resolved,” although he didn’t say how.

“It’s probably gonna get hot in the Pacific — hopefully not too hot,” Musk said. “Hopefully we can get past that and get to a positive situation for the world in the spirit of: aspirationally we’re all on Team Humanity. But it’s going to get spicy.”

The live Twitter Spaces event included California Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat whose district includes part of Silicon Valley. Khanna is a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which is led by Gallagher.

While all three participants tried to end the conversation on an optimistic note by affirming that the worst case scenario for artificial intelligence is unlikely, Musk said he stays up at night trying to “figure out how do we navigate to this to the best possible future for humanity.”

“It might end up being the hardest problem we’ve ever faced,” Musk said. “Nation-state battles will seem parochial ultimately compared to digital superintelligence.”