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The brand new guide by the technological journalist Karen Hao, “Empire of AI: Sam Altman’s desires and nightmares” (Revealed by Penguin Press), examines the Silicon Valley billionaire and his synthetic intelligence assist, which the technological entrepreneur Elon Musk himself has known as “the best existential risk” for humanity. [Musk has simultaneously promoted his own artificial intelligence company, xAI, and chatbot, Grok.]
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The “Empire Ai” by Karen Hao
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Chapter 1
Divine legislation
Everybody else has arrived, however Elon Musk was late. It was the summer season of 2015 and a gaggle of males gathered for a personal dinner at Sam Altman’s invitation to debate the long run and humanity.
Musk had met Altman, fourteen, his junior, a while earlier and fashioned impression. The president of the famend Starter Accelerator Silicon Valley Y combinator, Altman’s repute was preceded. After beginning the primary firm on the age of 19, it settled rapidly in Silicon Valley as a superb strategist and producer of nice ambitions, even for the land of excessive -thought founders. Musk discovered him to be clever, led and, most significantly, somebody who has supported comparable opinions on the necessity to develop and thoroughly develop synthetic intelligence. It was as if Musk would describe in a course of years later, Altman mirrored the whole lot Musk ever mentioned in regards to the topic to realize his confidence.
From Altman, he typically mentioned that Musk was a childhood hero. After the older entrepreneur confirmed him across the Spacex Spacex manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, California, this admiration had deepened. “The factor that sticks to reminiscence was the side of absolute certainty on his face when he spoke about sending large missiles to Mars,” Altman wrote later about expertise. “I went to suppose” so that is the purpose of reference for what the conviction seems like. “
Musk has been deeply apprehensive about AI for a while. In 2012, he met Hassabis Demis, CEO trainer of a laboratory deepmind Applied sciences, primarily based on London. Shortly thereafter, Hassabis additionally paid a go to to Musk to his SpaceX manufacturing facility. Whereas the 2 males settled within the canteen, surrounded by the sounds of large rocket and assembled components, Hassabis raised the chance that you simply have been extra superior, equivalent to that would overcome human intelligence, to be a risk to humanity. Furthermore, Musk’s failure to colonize Mars to flee wouldn’t work on this situation. Superintelligence, Hassabis mentioned with amusement, will merely comply with individuals within the galaxy. Musk, decisively much less amused, invested $ 5 million in Deepmind to maintain the tabs on the corporate.
Later, at his start social gathering in 2013 within the lush wines landscapes of the Napa Valley, Musk entered right into a heated and emotional debate along with his lengthy -time buddy and the co -founder of Google, Larry Web page, if in case you have an overcoming human intelligence was truly an issue. Web page didn’t suppose so, calling the subsequent stage of evolution. When Musk swung, Web page accused him of being a “speeist”, discriminating towards non -human species.
After that, Musk started to speak continually in regards to the existential danger of AI. At a fantasy symposium, he described that you simply most likely “the best existential risk” for humanity and its growth because the “name of the demon”. He met with the publishers in New York, caught by the considered writing his personal guide about extinction threats, together with AI. Later, at a recurring occasion of Stanford’s salon, a younger researcher by the identify of Timnit Gebru will come to him after a dialogue and requested him why he was so obsessive about when threatening local weather change was extra clearly existential. “Climatic modifications are dangerous, however it will not kill everybody,” he mentioned. “You would disappear humanity.”
From “Empire of AI: Desires and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s Openai” by Karen Hao, printed by Penguin Press, a fingerprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random Home, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Karen Hao.
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