Elon Musk’s Shocking AI Prediction Stuns Lex Fridman And X Community

Elon Musk, the centibillionaire who opposes OpenAI with his xAI startup and strives to send humanity to Mars through SpaceX, has cited famous futurologist Ray Kurzweil about his expectations that artificial intelligence systems are likely to surpass the human mind within the next five years.

Not so long ago, Musk made a similar prediction, naming a much shorter time span.

AI to surpass all humans by 2029, Kurzweil says

Elon Musk made a repost of a tweet published by X user @KanekoaTheGreat with an extract from Joe Rogan’s podcast, where he talked to the renowned futurist and longevity evangelist Ray Kurzweil.

In the extract, Rogan and Kurzweil talk about AI and its superiority over humans, which Kurzweil not only believes to be a certainty in the future but gives a definitive prediction that it will happen within the next five years – by 2029. By that year, the scientist believes, AI will reach the level of intelligence of a human being.

The futurist stated that he had first made this prediction 30 years ago, in 1999, adding that a lot of people, including numerous experts from around the world, thought that he was “totally crazy.” He mentioned that as a result of a scientific conference organized by Stanford University, experts who participated in it arrived at the conclusion that AI will not become superior to humans for many years, and certainly not by 2029.

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Kurzweil added that many consider him to be conservative and say that AI will beat any human in anything much sooner, like “next year or the year after.”

The X community’s reaction to this was mixed, ranging from ironic disbelief to strong concern. Lex Fridman, who has had Musk on his podcasts several times, tweeted that he expects the future to be interesting and hopes that humanity will win against AI ultimately.

Elon Musk's recent AI dominance prediction

In early December, Elon Musk also made a prediction about artificial intelligence. By that time, his xAI start-up had already been running for about a year, and in late fall of 2023, he released AI chatbot Grok, integrating it for X users of Premium+.

Musk then stated that he expects AI to become better at everything a regular person can do. This would include discovering new physics principles and writing novels as good as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.