“Because of AI's surprising history, it's hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach,” the group, OpenAI, said in a statement on their website. “When it does, it'll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritise a good outcome for all over its own self-interest.”
The project is a non-profit effort and their main objective is to save humanity, not generate income.
“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” the OpenAI website explains.
Others involved in the project include Musk’s PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, tech giant Infosys, and cloud-based computing platform Amazon Web Services.
"If I were to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence," Musk said at a symposium held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Telegraph reported. "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon."
The team at OpenAI aren’t the only ones concerned that super-intelligent computers could become sentient and see humanity as a liability.
The iconic Professor Stephen Hawking has also expressed concerns that artificial intelligence could eventually begin re-designing itself at a rate that will make them too intelligent for human control.
