Elon Musk says ‘digital superintelligence’ could exist in 5–6 years

Elon Musk said Wednesday that he believes “digital superintelligence” would exist within the next five or six years. 

“I would be surprised if there is not digital superintelligence in roughly the five- or six-year timeframe,” the billionaire said in a conversation on Twitter Spaces with Reps. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif.

“If this was a Netflix series or something, I’d say that the season finale would be a showdown between the West and China and that the series finale will be AGI,” Musk continued. 

Khanna remarked on how fast that timeline was, saying he had not realized it would happen that quickly. 

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Musk explained later in the conversation that the definition of digital superintelligence is “that it’s smarter than any human, at anything.”

“That’s not necessarily smarter than the sum of all humans – that’s a higher bar, to be smarter than the sum of all humans,” he added, admitting that thinking about a future with AI stresses him out.

The SpaceX leader also stated again that he was an advocate for regulatory oversight of the emerging tech.

“You can’t just go make a nuclear barrage, and everyone thinks that’s cool – like, we don’t think that’s cool. So there’s a lot of regulation around things that we think are dangerous,” he told the bipartisan lawmakers.

Musk and others signed an open letter earlier in the year calling for a moratorium on the development of all AI systems more advanced than OpenAI’s GPT-4.

The conversation came just hours after Musk announced the formation of his new artificial intelligence firm xAI.