Elon Musk Told Joe Rogan He's 'Freaked Out' By AI, Warns It Could 'Destroy' Civilization

Editor's note: This article was originally published on May 30, 2023. It has since been updated.

Elon Musk spoke about the ticking AI bomb that will bring about the 'destruction of civilization' eventually. According to the New York Post, in a resurfaced podcast video from 2018, Musk called out the potent technology and revealed that it 'freaks him out.' Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he said, "I try to convince people to slow down AI – to regulate the AI. This is as futile – I tried for years, nobody listened."

Rogan then interrupted the Tesla founder. "This seems like a scene from a movie.… where the robots are going to f****** take over – you're freaking me out," and he laughed. Musk, however, continued to affirm his statement. "Nobody listened? No one? Nobody listened". Rogan then questioned if people will be more inclined to listen when the technology's capabilities become more apparent. "Maybe they will. So far, they haven't," Musk responded.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Tucker Carlson, Musk echoed his views once again. "AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance or bad car production, in the sense that it is, it has the potential — however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential of civilization destruction."

The Space X founder affirmed that he supports the 'regulation' of AI through government agencies, although he expressed that once AI becomes the one 'in control,' it could be hard to place regulations. "A regulatory agency needs to start with a group that initially seeks insight into AI, then solicits opinion from industry, and then has proposed rule-making."

Musk has sounded the alarm bells about the consequences of the 'unrestricted' use of artificial intelligence for a long time, also claiming that it may lead to the 'destruction of civilization.' Previously, Musk had also joined a group of other eminent tech leaders in signing an open letter 'calling for a six-month pause in the 'out of control' race for AI development.' He even tweeted about his stance on AI regulation: "I saw it happening from well before GPT-1, which is why I tried to warn the public for years. The only one-on-one meeting I ever had with Obama as President I used not to promote Tesla or SpaceX, but to encourage AI regulation."

Musk has gone ahead and challenged that he will be creating a rival AI to counter the AI programs started by tech giants Microsoft and Google. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, the tech billionaire said, "We're going to start something which I call TruthGPT." While describing the rival AI program, he said it will be a 'maximum truth-seeking AI' that "cares about understanding the universe. Hopefully, there's more good than harm," Musk remarked. Since then, Musk launched his own AI venture, called Grok, which is based on a The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy model, as per CNBC.