- Are we already cyborgs? Elon Musk seems to think so.
- The billionaire tweeted that humans depend on machines to maintain their memory.
- His comments come as the rise of AI has raised questions about how replaceable humans are.
Elon Musk said people are "already cyborgs" because of humanity's dependence on machines to maintain memory.
The billionaire tweeted the comment on Sunday in response to an online conversation on AI sparked by Marc Andreessen, who had been asked the extent to which humans were already partially made up of AI.
Andreessen is a prominent venture capitalist who triggered a social-media debate in recent days after publishing a lengthy blog post on AI.
Musk tweeted: "We are already cyborgs. Our memory is overwhelmingly outsourced to computers – they remember everything with extreme precision down to the pixel."
The Twitter owner has become increasingly vocal about the dangers of AI in recent months, suggesting that advanced AI risked eliminating or constraining humanity's growth. He has also gone as far as suggesting that there was a small likelihood of AI "annihilating humanity."
Musk has been particularly sharp in his criticism of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, the company he helped cofound before leaving the board in 2018 and selling his stake, for its pivot from being a nonprofit organization to a for-profit one under the watch of Microsoft.
The commercial rollout of the AI chatbot has raised concerns about the extent to which humans may be replaced by AI, with business leaders already making moves to swap workers with the technology they deemed just as capable.
Andreessen's lengthy blog, published June 6, sought to shut down some of what he described as the "hysterical fear and paranoia" surrounding AI, suggesting instead that the technology could be "a way to make everything we care about better."
In his tweet, Musk tried to outline the current differences between humans and AI machines. He said "there are still many things we can do that AI cannot," such as "thinking," which was "much less outsourced" for now.
Musk did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment outside of regular working hours.
Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.
Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.
