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Elon Musk, the man behind PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX among other things, is known for having fairly big ideas, but his latest talk has made even those huge companies seem a bit smaller.
Speaking at the Code Conference in the US this week, Musk spoke on his belief that we could all be living in a video game or simulation, that people will be on Mars within a decade as well as the future of autonomous cars.
It’s fair to say that throughout the talk, Musk’s audience was fairly captivated.
This was one of the stand-out points of Musk’s time on stage – the suggestion that given the way technology and, in particular, gaming has developed in the last 40 years, we can (and indeed might have already) reach a point where reality and simulation can’t be told apart.
“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation is the following: 40 years ago we had Pong, two rectangles and a dot, that’s what games were,” he said.
“If you assume any rate of improvement at all, the games will become indistinguishable from reality.”
SpaceX, the space cargo and transportation company that Musk created, is making quite an impact on the exploration front. It is testing rockets that can land themselves and have carried cargo to the International Space Station.
But Musk has set his expectations even further away, suggesting that he can see humans on the red planet inside the next 10 years.
Musk has been outspoken on his concerns over artificial in the past, suggesting that he fears a future where computers surpass humans in their power, or are controlled by the few who then wield that power.
He reiterated that view here, adding that despite the huge current interest in AI from some of the technology industries’ biggest names – Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon are all working on it in some form – he’s only worried about one. He refused to name them, however.
