The Great AI Altercation

There’s an ongoing argument in the tech community regarding whether advancements in AI are likely to be beneficial or harmful to humanity. Although they’ve previously staked out positions on the matter, in the past few days this has boiled over into a public spat between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

While some commentators have said that this is simply a matter of the two protecting their personal brands, I don’t believe their argument is a conscious matter of marketing, and I don’t think it’s a fair evaluation of either of their points. Rather, I suspect that they’re simply looking at two sides of the same coin, through the filter of their personal experience.

From where Zuckerberg is sitting, AI is already used to make Facebook work better: to better match up content to users, to better allocate data centre resources. Every new technological advancement leads to him hiring more recent PhD graduates, better service, more efficient use of resources.  He has also made a valid point with regards to self-driving cars saving lives (an aspect of the discussion where it is likely that he and Musk agree).

From where Musk is sitting, AI is likely going to take over vast additional areas of manufacturing, ultimately finishing off the process that automation and off-shoring started. He may personally gain in the short-term from the reduced costs of building product, but he knows he also has to sell to somebody – and if that person doesn’t have a job, they’re likely not going to be buying a luxury car (or a trip to Mars, for that matter).

The take-away will be no surprise to most readers: AI is disruptive. It will (and is already) benefiting some people, while causing obvious (hopefully, but not necessarily, short-term) harm others. It is impossible to determine right now whether there will be a net benefit on the far side of whatever societal disruption occurs. Opinion of public figures with regards to AI likely rests on whether they will personally benefit (whether they realize this consciously or not), and it is probably worthwhile to interpret their remarks that way.