Elon Musk: Control over AI will be lost within a decade — an era of abundance or catastrophe?
xAI founder Elon Musk has once again raised the issue of the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its consequences for humanity. In a recent interview, he stated that AI could surpass the combined intelligence of all people within five years, and a complete loss of control over the technology will become a reality within the next decade. This statement certainly deserves close attention, especially against the backdrop of the current pace of development of large language models.
Musk emphasized that in the future, AI will perform virtually any intellectual task better than humans. "There will be nothing left that AI cannot do better than people, except, perhaps, being human," he noted. He sees the most likely scenario as an "age of abundance" by 2036, when robots and AI will provide humanity with virtually any goods and services. However, the risks of a catastrophic scenario, according to him, remain non-zero — he previously estimated the probability of humanity's demise due to AI at 10–20%.
Safety Mechanisms and Criticism of OpenAI
Musk acknowledged that stopping the development of AI and robotics is impossible, and even a hypothetical "stop button" would not necessarily be useful. Instead, he proposed that leading AI companies implement mutual checks on models before their public release. Competing laboratories, in his view, should identify dangerous capabilities of models, and only if serious risks are ignored should authorities step in. This idea echoes an initiative by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, indicating a consensus among key players.
During the interview, Musk also criticized OpenAI's transformation from a non-profit organization into a closed commercial business, calling it a departure from its original mission. He called for cooperation on safety issues even between competing companies, noting the principled stance of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. It is worth recalling that a court previously dismissed Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft related to the violation of non-profit obligations.
Expert commentary: Musk's prediction of losing control over AI within the next ten years is not just futurology, but a pragmatic assessment based on the exponential growth of computing power and data. However, the "age of abundance" is only possible under strict, globally coordinated safety measures. For now, the industry is moving toward a point of no return, and every new model release is a step into the unknown.