At the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), Ma Yun and the “Martians of the Future”, Elon Musk, who are self-deprecating as “Martians”, aim at artificial intelligence, the universe, education, and human life. I have staged a wonderful conversation on such topics.
The following is the full text of the live conversation (video click here):
Topic 1: AI
Muske: I think that future technological developments will transcend our capabilities.
Ma Yun: I am not a tech person. I am talking about life. I don’t think artificial intelligence is a threat, not a horrible thing, and humans can learn it.
Muske: Let’s take a look at the keyword AI. I heard that AI means “love”. Does that mean?
Ma Yun: I don’t particularly like to call AI artificial intelligence. I call it “Alibaba Intelligence.”
Muske: I feel that way too. In general, everyone will underestimate the ability of artificial intelligence, they think it may be like a smart person. In fact, artificial intelligence is much more powerful than this and may be smarter than the smartest person. What should we do in the face of this situation? I don’t know, I am not sure, but I hope that AI will be a good thing.
There is an old saying, if you can’t beat them, they will form a team with them. The company I developed is like this, the purpose is to let us join the AI team. Now that we are connected to mobile phones and computers, we have become a person with machine characteristics. The machine is the extension of your life in your life. You left the mobile phone like one less hand.arm.
The current artificial intelligence is too slow compared to the speed of thinking. Assuming that a computer has more computing power for several service points, each millisecond is a great improvement for the computer, which is nothing for us. Understanding the natural language of human beings is very short for computers, like the sound of whales, and the information of up to a hundred bytes per second is too fast and too slow for the computer to come too slow. Computers can talk in ways that exceed your hundreds of thousands of times of digital throughput. Robots should be particularly boring when they see people. I think machines are much smarter than people. This is the difference between the person and the computer I want to say.
Ma Yun: I am especially surprised by your vision of technology. I am not a high-tech person. I am talking about life. I feel that AI can open a new chapter to the world and let people understand themselves better than fully understand the outside world.
It’s hard to predict the future today, especially difficult. 99.9% of the forecasts are wrong, and only 0.001% of the forecasts are correct. Why is it right? That is good luck, in many cases 80% of the data is wrong.
For artificial intelligence, for Alibaba’s intelligence, I am very happy that they can better understand the nature of human beings. Many people are worried about artificial intelligence, they need to have more confidence in themselves. There are no solutions to many problems today, but in the future, young people will have solutions.
The future of AI is hard to predict. Historically, 99.99% of future predictions have proven to be wrong. People should have more confidence. AI is not a threat, nor a horrible thing. Humans can also learn.
I am very optimistic. I don’t think AI is a threat. I don’t think artificial intelligence is a terrible thing, because human beings are very smart. I think AI is very interesting and we will embrace it.
Muske: Tell everyone the fact that the speed of computer advancement is amazing. For example, playing video games, looking forward to 40 years and 50 years, you may have two squares of stand-alone games, but now many people can play games together on a game platform, making great progress. More and more games are getting more and more real. Technology will still have a huge development in the future.
Human civilization has a history of 7,000 years. This history of human civilization is very high and low from the perspective of civilization. I am not a natural optimistic or pessimistic person, but future technological development will surpass our ability to understand it. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Topic 2: Mars
Ma Yun: I heard that you are going to Mars? I am not interested in Mars, I just came back from Mars. I am more interested in what is happening on Earth, why everyone is so curious about Mars.
For Mars, we need to take action. I have not considered aliens. Where is the alien, this is a problem. Why didn’t you find aliens?People find aliens and say they have been to District 51? I said don’t make a joke. I have to know aliens.
Muske: I think we need to understand the nature of the universe to make sure we can enter different planets. This is not because I feel that there is no hope on the earth, but after all, there is such a possibility. Even if we do our best, the earth may still have things that humans cannot control. External forces or internal things cause civilization to be destroyed or we are subject to There are enough threats that we can only move to another planet to live.
In other words, for the first time in the history of the earth for 4.5 billion years, it is impossible to let life leave the earth for the first time. But how long will this window of opportunity be, long or short? Assuming the opportunity window is not long, we need to grab the opportunity window as soon as possible. This is my point of view.
Ma Yun: It is not so easy to grasp the future of the earth. But in the next hundred years we will do our best. I admire your courage to develop Mars, and many people around me are trying to improve the development of the existing earth.
It’s good to send 1 million people to Mars, but we have to care about the development of more than 7 billion people and make the earth more sustainable. I am not a fan of Mars, just like climbing to the top of the mountain and taking another step. Going to Mars, but I can’t come back. I feel that going to Mars is a feeling of not coming back, don’t do that.
I don’t like to climb the Himalayas. One day, if there is an elevator, I hope to take the elevator to the top of the Himalayas. Everyone spends a lot of time on the earth, no matter how long human civilization, a million years, 500,000 years, but each person has a life of up to 100 years on the earth, we can not solve all the problems in the future, but we must Be responsible for the future.
We need to be very concerned about how life can be better now. Through artificial intelligence, human beings can better understand their own words, and we can better enhance the world.
For the past 200 years, humans have hoped to understand others better, but I am interested in AI. Because AI allows you to better understand yourself and better understand the nature of human beings. I heard that you have to dig down inside the earth. This idea is very good. We need heroes like you, and we need heroes like us to work on earth.
Muske: I also support the Earth. There is no doubt that I also support the Earth, which sounds good. When one day human beings become living creatures of multiple planets, it is possible for human society to achieve greater development beyond the earth. From a resource point of view, for example, how much money you have to invest in medical care, how much money you have to pay for lipstick, we certainly will not say that spending a lot of money to buy cosmetics, I also support cosmetics, I think cosmetics are good. But I think it’s 0.5% of the Earth’s GDP… up to 1%Conducting research on life’s multi-planet does not require much investment. I think this is a smart investment for the future.
For example, using Tesla’s new energy electric vehicles to solve the problem of sustainable energy, using batteries and solar energy as a power solution can partially solve the problem of sustainable energy development. I am very excited that Tesla can come to Shanghai. The Tesla (China) team has done a great job. The super factory in Shanghai is very shocking. I am very surprised by the tremendous progress that Tesla has made in Shanghai. The whole world has seen a good case. How good an innovative company can make progress in China is very commendable. I pay tribute to everyone. You are great. I have not seen such rapid development in other places before. China is the future and the future is very exciting.
China’s entrepreneurial rocket companies are also great, they are on track, and I respect this innovative “rocket company”.
Topic 3: Employment
Ma Yun: Choose another topic, choose one for employment and life.
Muske: Choose employment.
Ma Yun: Yes. What new work will artificial intelligence create for us, or has this change begun? What do you think of it? In fact, people are worried about the innovation of every technology. For the past 100 years, we have been worried that new technology will take away employment opportunities. In fact, we have created many employment opportunities.
In the next 20 years, life expectancy will be longer. Life science and technology can make us live for 100 or 120 years. Even my grandfather is still working hard, but this is not necessarily a good thing. Why do you have so much work? I feel that working 3 days a week and working 4 hours a day is great.
We have electricity, electricity allows everyone to have more time, can sing and dance at night. With artificial intelligence, people will have more time to enjoy being a person. I have probably been to more than 300 different cities. My father may have been to 30 cities. My grandfather has been to 3 cities. My grandchildren may have been to 3,000 cities, can take Tesla, can always be on the road, have been traveling. I don’t think we need too much work. The job we need in the future is to make everyone happy, to make everyone happy, to let everyone experience life and enjoy human life.
I don’t worry too much about work. First of all, we will have a lot of work. The second point is that we don’t need a lot of work. The third is very interesting. The average life expectancy of the agricultural age is about 30 or 35 years old. After the technological revolution in the industrial age, people can live to 70 years old. In the era of artificial intelligence, people may live to 100 years, which is my guess. There is a problem now. When people are getting better and better, they don’t want to have children. We have a lot of work but no one wants to do it. We need artificial intelligence and robots to take care of the elderly. You may not be very happy because of this, becauseThis is actually a disaster when your grandfather’s grandfather says, “I will go to work tomorrow.”
We have no way to predict the future, but we should be prepared: we will enter such an era, everyone can live 120 years old, there will be many new problems, this is my opinion.
Musc: Yes. In the future, artificial intelligence will make the work meaningless. Maybe the final job is to write AI software. In the end, AI may write the software itself, so I suggest that you go to school, physics or do some interaction with people. Of course there is art. We have to think about the problem of neural connections, otherwise we will fall behind. We must do this work as soon as possible, and we have not much time left.
Ma Yun: I never worry about the problem that I can’t solve. I let others solve it. If no one solves it, let it go.
I am very interested in education and talk about education. What knowledge or skills do we have in the future to help us gain more advantages? Do you have any advice for young people who want to work on artificial intelligence?
I don’t think there will be professionals with artificial intelligence in the future. People are often worried about work, and I am worried about education. All the education systems teach children what they teach. The way they teach is mainly designed for the industrial age. I believe that machines will be smarter and smarter than people in the future. How can people do better, how can they become smarter and smarter? We should change the way we teach and change the content of teaching.
In the past, we focused on memory, but computers can be better than you remember, faster, you want to run faster, but machines can run faster than you. Human beings must be more creative and constructive. How can children be taught more creatively and constructively? I think this is the key to education.
We can spend more time training and training children to learn art, learn to draw, learn to dance, these are creative things. We have to understand that people have never been able to make a person. A computer is a machine, and a machine is a toy. We must have confidence that the machine has only chips, and we have our hearts, and our hearts are the source of wisdom. Therefore, in the next 10 years and 20 years, countries and governments should reform the education system to ensure that children can find jobs in the future. It is very important to work only three days a week and four hours a week.
Musc: Yes. Learn as much as you can to make yourself better predict the future and create the future. The best way to predict the future is to create the future. We have to assess what we are learning, can we let ourselves predict the future and let ourselves reduce the mistakes? We can think about education in this way.
Speaking of neural connections, we can take itAnything to upload, any skill can be uploaded immediately. The current education is that the bandwidth is very low and very slow, and the lecture is the worst. When predicting the future, it is difficult for us to make fewer mistakes. Not necessarily 99% is wrong, but we often make a lot of mistakes. But we still have to try, don’t try, don’t try, adjust, and make adjustments based on previous predictions.
Ma Yun: Yes, try it very well. We must always have the confidence to try it in the future. Mistakes can be said to be the best assets of mankind, the best wealth. When people worry about artificial intelligence disasters, I think this is not a disaster or a human error. We must believe that human beings can improve their mistakes and improve themselves. This requires education.
Today, a large number of babies are born every year in China. This is not enough. We need more. The earliest resources on earth are not coal, oil, electricity, but the human brain. How can the human brain be more creative and constructive? How to ensure that the machine is always a human toy and tool, not to control us? In my life, especially in the past two years, people often talk about artificial intelligence, saying that human beings will be controlled by machines. I never want these problems because it is impossible. Because people are different, machines are invented by humans. According to science, people can never create an animal that is smarter than themselves. There are many smart people here, but we still have no way to create a smarter person.
Muske: I really disagree with you.
We can create something smarter than us. They don’t have to be people. The earliest civilization was very primitive. There was no technology at the time. It just ran around, not being eaten by others, and wanted to survive. Now we have heating, there are a lot of food, these are new things. We are much smarter than in the past, and this will continue, not the last revolution. As you said, the most serious mistake made by smart people is to think that they are smart.
Ma Yun: Let me give you an example. Which human being creates something smarter than people?
Muske: Computers are smarter than people in many ways, and our goal is to become even higher. For example, in the past, chess is a smart person, and now your mobile phone can play chess to defeat the world champion. Go used to think that people were better than computers, but Li Shishi was defeated by Alpha go 4:1, and Alpha zero 100:0 defeated Alpha go. People and computers under Go are as hopeless as you and Zeus, and we are too far away. The pursuit of human intelligence is better than computer in less and less, and each aspect will be surpassed by more and more computers in the future. This is certain, or civilization can win. This is two possibilities.
Ma Yun: Computers may be smarter, but humans need more wisdom. Smart is academically driven, but wisdom is driven by experience. The computer is very smart, but humans invented the computer, I never saw the computerMing a person.
The second point is about Go and playing chess. Playing chess with a computer is stupid. Like people who created machines 100 years ago, people say that I can run faster than a car. It is impossible. Only a fool can go racing with a car. Go is designed for humans and makes people play chess. Chess is made people and people, why do people play chess with the computer? I never play chess, and I don’t play chess with my computer. I am very happy to watch two computers playing chess, but I am not interested in playing chess with the computer. Some people are sad to say that computers are smarter than people, and computers are better for playing chess. I think it is silly to play chess with computers. Don’t do this. We have to do what we are good at.
Muske: People are stronger than computers, will this happen?
Ma Yun: Computers are just one of the smart tools that humans create. Computers are smart, but humans will create more tools in the future and will be smarter than computers. This is my opinion.
Muske: For artificial intelligence, my opinion is that, in the end, you can advance artificial intelligence to solve problems and give people more freedom. The most freedom is reality. For example, the checkers are easy to solve, and can be solved with a traditional software computer. There is no challenge. It can be said that there is a complete solution for checkers, and it is almost impossible to win. Every routine has already been known. Then there is chess, and the degree of freedom is much higher than that of checkers, but it is also a game with a lower degree of freedom. After going to Go, the degree of freedom is much higher than that of chess, so we are constantly jumping in degrees of freedom, the order of magnitude is constantly rising, and the magnitude of intelligence is constantly rising, which can fully simulate all aspects of human beings.
Muske: Some people say that we are living in a simulation now. Some people joked that if life is a game, what do people think? I think our image is very good and the plot is very complicated, but it may take more than 20 years for a person to regain full consciousness. I don’t worry about the birth rate you are talking about. Most people think that the population is too much, but this is an outdated view. Assuming that artificial intelligence can bring a bright future, the biggest problem facing the world in 20 years is the collapse of the population. The biggest problem 20 years later is that the collapse of the population is not an explosion of the population. We can clearly foresee the human condition 20 years later. It takes 20 years for humans to be born again.
Ma Yun: I think this is very easy to predict. I agree that the population problem is a huge challenge. China’s 1.4 billion people sound a lot, but in the next 20 years, this will bring huge problems to China, the population will decline, and the rate of population decline will increase. Accelerate the crash.
Muske: Someone refutes that there will be immigrants. Where did they move over? Going to Mars, Mars also needs someone to live. There are no people there, and now there are only a few robots out there.
Ma Yun: This is usNeed special attention, we need more time to have new children born.
About another question, in my company, there are orderly and logical things, machines can always do well, and humans can do well without order or logic. There is basically no reason for you to love someone, but there is no reason to hate someone. When I want to do something bad on some people, there is logic. Once a logical AI can do better than you.
Musc: AI was originally love.
Ma Yun: You are right. In the AI world, if AI can bring love, if you are a successful person, you must have high emotional intelligence and IQ. In the future, you must have LQ to survive in the world. That is, the IQ of love is high, otherwise there is no way to survive in the era of artificial intelligence.
Muske: I really like your answer.
Topic 4: Life
Ma Yun: Life or humans and machines, or want to talk about auto driving, which one do you want to say?
Muske: I chose life.
Ma Yun: How long will human life last with the help of artificial intelligence, can artificial intelligence help the environment to be sustainable?
Muske: Humans can solve environmental sustainability problems, which I think is not easy. But I think this is a fully achievable prediction of the future, and we must take a lot of action while continuing this momentum to achieve environmental sustainability. China is a world leader in environmental sustainability and it is very amazing. About half of the world’s electric cars are made in China, which is the number of the past few years. Now it is not already self-satisfied, and humans can and will solve the problem of sustainable development.
If we can do neural connections, I believe that age is less important and you can save the state as if you saved a game. We can solve the problem of aging of living things. If we want to change DNA, it is a matter of time. People will be willing to change DNA, this is to think. It is very likely that humans will respond very well. If you really want to extend your life, you have to change the DNA, but you don’t know if you should do it.
Ma Yun: I think AI artificial intelligence can help us achieve environmental sustainability. When people have a better understanding of themselves, people will become smarter and smarter. Smart people know what they want and how to achieve it. And truly wise people know what they don’t want. When humans use artificial intelligence, they can better understand themselves. I think there are many ways. People can live on a healthy planet and protect a healthy planet.
Why do I want to stay on Earth, want to work on Earth, want to do everything to help the planet get better, and if it goes to outer space, it sounds great. Such asIf we can spend all our resources on the earth, such as taking out garbage from the ocean, it is more difficult than going to aliens. Artificial intelligence can help us achieve such goals.
Second, human beings can have a better life and live longer. What we need is to live healthier, that is, to better understand what is causing most of our diseases, and it is actually caused by our actions. I am 100% sure that people will live longer and be healthier, but they will not necessarily live a happier life. If you are to be happy, we must focus on values, our vision and our mission, and we must have a dream. People like technology very much and have illusions about technology. I think technology should be symbiotic with dreams. It is not technology that changes our world, but the dream behind it has really changed our world.
I hope that we can make the world a better place and help 7.4 billion people live better and healthier. This is the essence of the world. I believe we will be very happy to work. I really like Tesla’s products, making the world cleaner and cleaner without noise, and the technology is very good. I am very happy that you can set up the factory in China. We also need to do more things to change our world and improve. Our planet ensures that people care for their families, care for their health, and make people live a happier life. Also believe in us, believe in humanity, and believe in the younger generation. We have to take a responsible attitude today, but we cannot find all the solutions for the future. It is also a good thing for human beings to make mistakes. It is also a good thing for human beings to learn from their mistakes. The final death and demise of mankind is also a good thing.
Muske: I think what you said is right, we have to fight for the long-standing existence of consciousness.