Elon Musk and Jack Ma’s Unnerving Debate on Artificial Intelligence and Space Exploration
Elon Musk and Jack Ma are two of the most successful techpreneurs, having contributed to society in several ways.
With Elon Musk’s PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla and Jack Ma’s AliBaba and AliExpress, you would expect the two to have a more insightful debate. Yet, their conversations are frequently marked with odd statements. To make things even more bizarre, the two tech gurus don’t really get along well with each other.
Jack Ma was notably more dismissive of Musk’s obsession with space exploration, Mars, and Artificial Intelligence. Meanwhile, Musk tried countering Jack Ma’s rhetoric with low key comebacks that seemed to resonate more with fans across social media.
When Jack Ma argued against the futility of predictions by stating “99.9 percent of all predictions are wrong,” Elon Mask retorted with his sly response, “including this one?”
In the debate about artificial intelligence, Jack Ma believed that AI is not something ‘terrible.’ Elon countered by arguing that humans are simply too slow to respond to the growing threat of AI, although he did make it a point to suggest he’s not all ‘doom and gloom.’
The two never seemed to get along and always had something to argue about. On machine learning, Ma stated that it’s a tool that can act as a force for good and deliver valuable insights into the minds of consumers. Elon opposed this remark by suggesting that machine learning would lead to mass unemployment.
While the two had contrasting opinions, they did agree on one thing: the world is headed towards a population collapse. Ma stated, “The biggest issue in 20 years will be population collapse. Not explosion.” [sic] Ma’s observation is based on the heels of the damaging ‘One Child Policy’ implemented by the Chinese government, the result being China’s now lopsided population with few young people.
For the first time in the debate, Musk responded with “I agree with you.” That’s what the Pew Research Center stated, according to their recent analysis of the global population data, stating that global fertility rates will fall by the year 2100.
