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Saeed Ahmad
Saeed Ahmad

Posted on • Originally published at Medium

Jack Ma vs Elon Musk Debate — Different perspectives of future of AI

So, guys here we are with Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba sharing stage with Elon Musk, Tesla CEO for the first time at WAIC ’19 in Shanghai, China.

It was great to see both big names in AI discussing the disruptions that AI can cause to us in the future. Both differed in every point about AI, but the only thing to which both agreed was that a population collapse is more likely to happen in coming 20 years.

Read my complete article at Medium :

https://medium.com/@saeeddev/jack-ma-vs-elon-musk-debate-different-perspectives-of-future-of-ai-e3f980be235f?source=friends_link&sk=8baa35c2a878877ebf11b064080222a0

Let me know what do you think of future of AI?

Top comments (16)

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jonathanburnhill profile image
Jonathan Burnhill • Edited

It's all a double edged sword wether we like it or not!

I feel like the biggest problem is most AI we hear about is directly to do with business which will have implications.

Another problem is we have 7 billion people we cant garuntee to feed or provide adequate housing for today and the numbers ARE rising!

We need a big AI trying to solve this problem, maybe the super rich can be persuaded to view poorer nations as a long term investment, you need money to finance most ideas and as most AI is financed for business it leads to a vicious cycle over profit margins, reliability etc and there isn't much hope we're all going to be employed!

AI is an incredible exciting thing but unfortunately we will mainly benefit from consumerism and not entirely as a solution for all people to be garunteed a minimum baseline standard of living, one day maybe but not in our lifetime!!

If basic ethics are applied it would be a dream to work a few hours a day and spend more time doing the things we are passionate about.

AI isn't problem, we are!

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad • Edited

Jonathan I agree completely to you. Unfortunately, we as human beings are responsible for this and every revolution which was a chance to improve the situation of mankind in terms of making world a better place for all, we misused it. Let us go back into history, we can see that Industrial Revolution which brought a chance to improve us was misused and many people were killed in WWI and WWII. Atomic technology was also misused in the same context and millions of people have been killed and affected due to effects of use of nuclear weapons and incidents related to this. Same goes for AI. The future of mankind can be only saved by giving leadership positions to sensible people. Like there are reports that AI technologies related to face recognition are being in use by a particular country against a minority for mass surveillance. So, we have greatest responsibility on our shoulders as professionals that tech we are developing is only used for good.

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gregruminski profile image
Greg Ruminski

Atomic technology was also misused in the same context and billions of people have been killed and affected due to effects of use of nuclear weapons and incidents related to this

Excuse me? Billions of people killed by nuclear weapons and atomic incidents?

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad • Edited

Sorry.It's a typo.I meant millions. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyll, Wars around the world are an example. If we count both killed and effected, counts are not countable.

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tha_ozowuzuwoya profile image
PatrickServ..

We indeed are the problem.

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

Just worthy to mention Elon is an engineer, Jack Ma is not.

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad

Yeah. We can sense the difference between views of an engineer and entrepreneur from their debate. Engineers believe in machines and entrepreneurs believe in human beings.

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

Not just that, Jack Ma is mostly talking business cuz he doesn't understand the engineering aspects... he's a business man after all.

But, Elon is both an engineer and a business man. For this simple fact, he might have a much better perspective in every point.

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad

Yup. You are correct Yaser.

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mmphego profile image
Mpho Mphego • Edited

The only thing I got from that debate was that Jack Ma wants human workers which then validates one of my arguments regarding 996, Elon Musk is an Engineer and wants AI to automate all the boring jobs people do on a daily basis. Which simply means that humans will need to evolve and create new jobs

For example, all these robots will need maintance engineers, programmers so on an so forth... So in essence no jobs will be lost humans will just have to evolve and move with the time.

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad

Exactly. Human beings will be there.

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mmphego profile image
Mpho Mphego

My point exactly

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syntaxseed profile image
SyntaxSeed (Sherri W)

AI & automation proponents often cite how this will bring humanity this beautiful age of only having to work fewer hours & having a ton of leisure time.

But has humanity done a good job so far of spreading out the wealth that technology & automation generates?? Nope!

It will make the already rich business owners richer. It's a fantasy that this will benefit everyone. Unless we figure out how to ENSURE that the wealth generated is shared.

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad

Yeah. You are correct. Ethical aspects and equal power sharing among the masses is important.

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shawonashraf profile image
Shawon Ashraf

Sounds rude, but if I'm to listen to someone talking about the future of AI or the glorified suggestion machines of today that these companies love to call AI, I'd rather pick someone who's actively doing some research in the field instead of some corporate mumbo jumbo.

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mrsaeeddev profile image
Saeed Ahmad

Yeah but you know industrialists always define the coarse of any new tech. Researchers are unfortunately always workhorse. That's the main reason of misuse of technology as well. Today, we don't have ones who can follow the Socrates.