Elon Musk, the mastermind behind Tesla Motors, SpaceX and Hyperloop, will offer $10 million in grants to fund 37 research projects dedicated to keeping artificial intelligence “beneficial” and “under control”.

Elon Musk. Image via Daily Tech.

With the mind blowing explosion of computing and the ever-growing interest in AI, we’re growing closer to the point where we have to ask ourselves whether we’ll still be in control and whether artificial intelligence will continue to work for humanity. Recently, Not only Elon Musk, but also Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have expressed worries regarding the future of AI.

“It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” Hawking said. “Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Actually, in recent times, concerns regarding how this situation will evolve have been expressed by more and more scientists.

“There are reasons to believe that unregulated and unconstrained development could incur significant dangers, both from “bad actors” like irresponsible governments and from the unprecedented capability of the technology itself,” said Oxford University’s Nick Bostrom. “The centre will focus explicitly on the long-term impacts of AI, the strategic implications of powerful AI systems as they come to exceed human capabilities in most domains of interest, and the policy responses that could best be used to mitigate the potential risks of this technology.”

But even if you aren’t afraid of something like this happening, the grants still represent a serious investment in the study of non-biological intelligence. All in all, Musk will fund 37 different projects which you can browse in detail here.

“Here are all these leading AI researchers saying that AI safety is important”, Musk said. “I agree with them, so I’m committing $10m to support research aimed at keeping AI beneficial for humanity.”

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