Why Mark Zuckerberg vs Elon Musk on AI is Stupid
They’re both right and we need them both for the best possible future
In recent days Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have entered something of a cat fight about their attitudes on AI, with Mark calling Elon’s strong warnings about the dangers of AI irresponsible and Elon calling Mark uninformed.

Splitting the top AI minds into opposing camps is what will really lead to disaster because no matter which camp wins, we all lose the best possible future.
The whole thing is so stupid because neither is correct, they just think differently about the world. They have internal models that naturally gravitate to different aspects of our species’ journey. They don’t actually seem to disagree on any facts, they just focus on different parts of the picture, and that’s a good thing! It means we have two great minds specializing on different parts of the landscape.
Mark’s Views
Mark prefers to focus on the benefits we’ll gain from AI such as autonomous vehicles and huge advances in healthcare. His brain naturally gravitates towards and most enjoys working on his vision for the best-case scenario.
He agrees that we need to pay attention to what and how we build things using AI, but he sees that more as a given and likes promoting the positive possibilities. He has a great understanding of AI as shown by Facebook’s focus on research, the hire of Yann LeCun as director of artificial intelligence research, and their recently published papers.
Elon’s Views
Elon focuses more on the dangers we may face from deep AI, like some number of humans being harmed or killed. His brain naturally gravitates towards and feels compelled to work on averting worst-case scenarios. This fits with his track record of trying to switch our species to renewable energy as quickly as possible and avoiding extinction of our species as a whole when an extinction event occurs on Earth someday.
He agrees there are benefits that come with AI, for example the work on autonomous driving Tesla is doing, but he sees that more as a given and feels it’s important to promote the aversion of disaster. He has a great understanding of AI as well. Otherwise his involvement in OpenAI would be super awkward and pointless.
What do they agree on?
Pretty much everything that’s actually relevant. They agree that AI has the potential to be dangerous if left to develop with no monitoring or regulation whatsoever and they agree that AI can and is producing huge benefits to our species. They just have a different focus, and that’s good!
Imagine if everyone were like Mark. We might get so caught up in the good things that we accidentally let something dangerous slip through the cracks.
Now imagine if everyone were like Elon. We might get so caught up in defending against anything bad that we forget to dream up the most amazing possibilities.
The truth is, we need both types of minds to maximize our species’ future. We need some players on Team Humans to focus more on offense and some to focus more on defense. Splitting the top AI minds into opposing camps is what will really lead to disaster because no matter which camp wins, we all lose the best possible future.
Instead, how about the Marks of the world listen to the Elons and reassure them with specifics on how they are safeguarding against their fears? And instead of pretending the Marks of the world don’t understand the dangers, the Elons just listen to those specifics and then let themselves be inspired by the wonders that await us as a species?

