According to technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, it is a real possibility that robots might become so efficient at doing human things, that they will one day kill us all.

Musk commented on the article The Myth Of AI on edge.org, saying that robots might become so intelligent in the next five years that we could be in some serious trouble.

“The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year timeframe. 10 years at most. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don’t understand,” Musk wrote on the page, before deleting the comment moments later.

In the deleted comment, the founder of SpaceX explained that the technology driving AI is moving more rapidly than what people know.

“The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast – it is growing at a pace close to exponential.”

Musk seemed to be slightly worried that something might genuinely happen one day, and while those responsible for AI development and programming are doing everything possible to ensure that The Terminator’s T-800 doesn’t cause planetary havoc, he isn’t completely convinced.

“I am not alone in thinking we should be worried. The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognise the danger, but believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be seen…”

This is not the first time that Musk has warned about killer robots. During a recent Vanity Fair conference, Musk gave the example of how robots might decide on a solution to combat spam emails.

“If its [function] is just something like getting rid of e-mail spam and it determines the best way of getting rid of spam is getting rid of humans…”

[Source – Business Insider, Image – CC by 2.0/Mark Strozier]