No one was supposed to talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

The conference was supposed to be a celebration of space exploration,

to catalog the wonders of spaceflight to an auditorium filled with science geeks.

The problem happened after Mr. Space X, Elon Musk, took the stage,

and a man in the audience stood to ask what seemed to like an innocent question.

Do you think that artificial intelligence is ready for primetime?

Or did Musk think that all the talk about AI was just overblown?

Elon Musk blinked at the man, and then he answered.

I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence.

If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is,

it's probably that.

But Elon Musk is the only smart person to warn about the risks of AI.

There are plenty of them.

In 2014, Stephen Hawking told the BBC basically the same thing.

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

It would take off on its own.

Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, would be superseded.

In fact, in 2015, Stephen Hawking, Musk, and hundreds of other researchers,

signed an open letter pleading with AI developers to be careful.

Don't create something which can't be controlled they warned.

Here's Musk again.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.

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