Elon Musk says talking to humans will be like talking to a tree for future AI

[DeepInlet]

Sky has run a clip of Elon Musk making one of his more memorable comparisons. Speaking in an interview with China Media Group in Silicon Valley, he said that to an AI communicating at a terabyte a second, talking to a human will be like talking to a tree. It is a vivid image and very much his style. The point underneath it is about bandwidth rather than intelligence

He laid out the numbers as he sees them. Humans output roughly 100 bits per second when speaking or typing, our visual input is somewhere around 1 to 5 megabits per second, and computers talk to each other at trillions of bits per second. On that basis, the gap is enormous and only getting wider as AI systems speed up

His answer, unsurprisingly, is brain computer interfaces like Neuralink. The argument is that increasing the bandwidth between people and machines would help keep AI aligned with human goals. If AI can barely hear us, the reasoning goes, it will be hard for it to care what we want. Even a well meaning system would struggle with such a slow partner

I find the analogy interesting but I am not sure the logic holds. Speed of communication is not the same as understanding, and plenty of useful relationships work with slow channels. Also, it is hard to ignore that the solution he proposes happens to be a company he owns. That does not make him wrong, but it is worth keeping in mind

Still, the underlying worry is real enough. If AI systems end up doing most of the thinking and deciding at machine speed, humans risk becoming spectators. Do you think bandwidth is the actual bottleneck, or is it more about who controls the systems? And would anyone here volunteer for a brain implant to keep up?

It Will Be Like Talking To A Tree Elon Musk On The Gap Between Ai And Humans 13592343news.sky.com