Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, announced recently that artificial intelligence (AI) is on the verge of surpassing the intelligence of the shrewdest human beings, possibly as soon as next year or by 2026, setting off a dynamic debate among researchers, technologists, and ethicists.
“AI to Surpass Human Intelligence by 2026, Elon Musk Predicts”
“Elon Musk: AI Will Outstrip Human Intelligence by 2026”
“AI Expected to Surpass Human Intelligence by 2026, says Elon Musk”
“Elon Musk Anticipates AI Will Beat Human Intelligence by 2026”
“AI Predicted to Exceed Human Intelligence by 2026, Elon Musk Says”
The Tesla CEO’s forecast in an interview on X highlights the quickening race toward developing AI that mimics and exceeds human cognitive skills. Experts are now dividing the credibility of Musk’s timeline and the thoughtful questions it raises about the nature of intelligence, moral boundaries, and the future connection between humans and machines.
“Musk is right,” Yigit Ihlamur, an AI researcher and founder of Vela Partners, an AI investment firm, told PYMNTS. “AI is already smarter in some zones and will be smarter than us in more — but not all areas.”
Bold Declarations
In his latest interview, Elon Musk emphasized hardware boundaries as a possible impediment to the swift progress of AI technology. He stated that the sector faced a important bottleneck last year due to a lack of chips vital for AI training efforts.
This year, the problem shifts toward securing enough “voltage transformer supply” to meet the huge electricity demands of AI systems, a resource Musk hints could become rare over the next one to three years.
“My guess is we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human,, perhaps around the end of next year,” Musk said through a live interview with Norges Bank CEO Nicolai Tangen on X, formerly Twitter, earlier this week that’s now an episode of his podcast “In Good Company.”
The Tesla CEO’s added that the “total amount of sentient compute” — an idea that may refer to AI thinking and acting autonomously — will surpass all humans in coming five years.
Few experts say that the kind of AI that could outdo humans is a far cry from some of the simple chatbot interfaces in use today. Ihlamur said that AI agents that can reason, discuss, plan, perform and reproduce might advance the field.
“It is affluent and slow, but it is working really well in some forced scenarios,” he added. “Elon is proud on this supposition that it is going to get cheaper, faster and easier to build these systems. I agree with him.”
The insinuations are massive for those who believe in the future of super smart AI. Ihlamur said that computers will perform knowledge work faster, better, and more efficiently.
“This will have a mostly positive influence on society. We’ll have more access to doctors, teachers, and creations,” he added. Doctors will be 10 times better than before, and we’ll get much better advice and medicine.”
Genius-level AI will make the GDP grow significantly due to efficiencies, Ihlamur said. He predicted that products and services would become cheaper, increasing accessibility.
“It would be similar to the positive impact that Uber/Lyft had: more drivers on the road, getting paid with a click of a button, and consumers finding rides in a few minutes,” Ihlamur added. There will be disruption and fear in society, but mostly, the impact will be positive.”
Some observers see the potential for harm in the advent of super intelligent AI. Abdullah Ahmed, founder of Serene Data Ops, told PYMNTS that smarter AI could produce even more misinformation and malicious content.
“We are already seeing the floodgates open for misinformation using all sorts of AI,” he added. “AI-generated images of the White House on fire caused a mini stock crash, AI deepfake voices of our politicians are being used to send people misinformation about voting, and AI deepfake voices of popular doctors are being used to sell shady supplements.”
Worst of all, it could be AI that decides to wipe out the human race. The “paperclip maximizer” is a thought experiment by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom.
In this scenario, it might take extreme measures if a super intelligent artificial general intelligence (AGI) were programmed to maximize paperclip production without a built-in regard for human life. This could include eliminating humans to prevent them from interfering or even converting human atoms into paper clips to increase production.
Doubters Going to Doubt
But whether Musk is correct or not depends on the definition of intelligence, Flavio Villanustre, global chief information security officer of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, told PYMNTS.
He mentioned that if we define intelligence as the skill to remember and use information from what we’ve learned before in new situations, then today’s AI can do this better than almost everyone. And soon, these AI systems will improve to levels beyond what humans can do.
“However, many animals have the ability to learn too, and we wouldn’t define them as ‘intelligent’ in a human sense,” he added.
“Intelligence is also the ability to make sense of the world, look introspectively, reason, and find meaning in the world in a way that affects self-perception. For this to exist, consciousness or self-awareness is required.”
Villanustre said we have yet to successfully create this level of intelligence in machines. In fact, we’re no closer to achieving it now than we were 50 years ago.
“Even though we can assume this [AGI] will happen at some point, since history proves that if something can happen, it will eventually happen, it is highly unlikely that we will achieve this capability in the next decade,” he added. “From this standpoint, I believe Musk is incorrect, and this type of superintelligence won’t be reached in 2026.” Source
