In a interview aired Monday between Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Musk said Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, wanted to use artificial intelligence to create a “digital god.”
After Musk pushed back on this concept, he said Page mockingly called him a “speciesist.”
“The reason OpenAI exists at all is that Larry Page and I used to be close friends, and I would stay at his house in Palo Alto. And I would talk to him late into the night about AI safety,” Musk told Tucker Carlson.
The tech billionaire said it appeared Page “was not taking AI safety seriously enough.”
“What did he say about it? ” Carlson pressed.
“He really seemed to wanted to sort of [develop a] digital superintelligence, basically digital God, if you will, as soon as possible,” Musk responded.
“He wanted that?” Carlson asked.
“He’s made many public statements over the years that the whole goal of Google is what’s called AGI, artificial general intelligence, or artificial superintelligence,” Musk replied.
“There’s great potential for good, but there’s also potential for bad…and then at one point I said, well we’ve got to make sure humanity’s okay here,” he added.
“And then he called me a speciesist. And there were witnesses. I wasn’t the only one there when he called me a speciesist. And so I was like, okay, that’s it. I’ve yes, I’m a speciesist.”
WATCH:
Elon Musk says Google co-founder Larry Page once told him that he wants to build a "Digital God" using AI and called him a "speciesist" when he told him how crazy that is. pic.twitter.com/7Ts2o7SmIb
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 18, 2023