Everyone's saying the same thing after clip of Elon Musk resurfaces claiming we're 'summoning the demon' with AI
Musk has since developed robots, self-driving cars and an AI platform integrated into X
A clip of Elon Musk discussing the dangers of AI - which he referred to as a 'demon' - has resurfaced a decade later and has left everyone saying the same thing.
Cast your mind back to 2015. We still had smartphones and Netflix, and we even had artificial intelligence like Siri, but it was nowhere near as developed as it is now.
Most of the time, early AI was used to identify songs or confirm facts you couldn't be bothered Googling, but it's advanced so much over the years that many people now use it dozens of times a day, and others are going as far as to get into relationships with the tech.
With so many advancements having been made in such a short space of time, it's terrifying to think about where AI could be in just a few years - but Musk had his theories about the tech even before some of the more recent developments.
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In 2015, Musk appeared at a symposium at MIT where he discussed AI, saying: "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon."
He alluded to stories of 'a guy with a pentagram and the holy water' claiming they could control the 'demon', but made clear he wasn't sure that was the case when it came to artificial intelligence.
Fast forward to 2025, when Musk is among the entrepreneurs leading the way with AI through his Neuralink company, as well as Tesla's self-driving cars and humanoid robots, and people watching the clip have one observation about Musk's comments: he wasn't joking.
One viewer wrote: "The ironic thing is the people laughing thinking it’s a joke, but he’s dead serious."
Another commented: "The fact that this was 10 years ago is insane."
"Tf was we doing just not listening? [sic]," wrote a third, as a fourth commented: "Not funny at all he is actually telling you the truth."
As part of Musk's plans to continue utilizing AI, investment banking company Morgan Stanley announced today (July 1) that xAI, the artificial intelligence startup run by Musk, has raised a combined $10 billion as it attempts to compete with its rival, OpenAI.
In a statement, Morgan Stanley said the proceeds would 'support xAI’s continued development of cutting-edge AI solutions, including one of the world’s largest data center and its flagship Grok platform'.
Clearly, Musk isn't concerned about heeding his own warnings when it comes to the 'demon' of AI. Here's hoping we don't need to bring in the guy with the holy water any time soon.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Elon Musk, Technology, Tesla
Emily Brown