While science fiction and hollywood really love the idea of this magical moment where AI is created and becomes self aware and destroys us all, real AI is so far away that these concerns are laughable.
It's just like all those dummies worrying the LHC would destroy the earth. It's fear from ignorance.
I'm all for siding with Musk, but authority does not guarantee correctness.
Otherwise, you can quit your trolling.
Sure, we can develop "AI" that is good at a very narrow range of tasks (e.g., playing chess), but that's a million miles away from developing a human brain modeled in software.
I would even argue that may make us less competent, because we use our day to day development routine as a reference for that, while in fact it's very highly probable that the first true AI will have nothing to do with the technologies and paradigm you use everyday. I highly doubt it will coded in Java and AngularJS.
Moreover who told you a dangerous AI needed to be based on human brain? Even if that is true, and even if we are not able to do it today, it's quite realistic to assume that we will be able to at one point, not too far in time, in some decades.
So why not start reflecting today on the threat AI could cause? Rather than waiting for it to be embedded everywhere in our everyday life, and then asking if maybe we should start regulating it.
For a parallel look at the global warming issue, and how it's extremely difficult to make industries reduce their emissions now that they are responsible for a significant part of the GDP and are responsible for so much jobs. Same thing for ICE cars, we know they pollute, but we just can't stop using them like that.
All these doomsday AI scenarios are predicated on a machine becoming "self aware", having independent thought, the ability to handle self-directed learning, etc. Sounds a lot like human intelligence.
From what I've seen on Musk about this before, he's much more measured in his comments than Hawking is in this article. Maybe Hawking is being misrepresented.
When I've seen Musk make comments about it he talks about it in the way that people talk about the sun eventually expanding and swallowing the earth. It's not something that's going to happen really soon.
We're not even anywhere near an AI that can simulate the simplest living organisms let alone a truly intelligent AI. It's absurd to worry about a Skynet like scenario.
Someone should make a reverse website that looks up humans and determines whether the Internet has wiped out humanity yet :)