Elon Musk says the government needs 'some sort of contingency plan' to shutdown AI if it gets too powerful

• Elon Musk said the government needs "some sort of contingency plan" to deal with powerful AI.
• Musk told Tucker Carlson there needs to be a way to shut it down if it gets out of hand.

Elon Musk said the government needs to be prepared to step in if artificial intelligence gets out of hand.

During the second part of an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson Tuesday night, Musk said it would be "wise" for the government to set up "some sort of contingency plan" where it could shut down the service centers that power the AI programs.

"You don't have to blow them up, just cut the power," Musk said of the service centers.

The billionaire, who recently announced plans to launch his own AI venture, said he could see the government needing to take action if tech companies "lost control of some super AI."

"If there's something that we're concerned about and we're unable to stop it with software commands, then we'll probably want to have some kind of hardware off switch," he said.

Musk is one of many tech executives to call for AI regulation. Last month, Musk along with several other AI experts, including Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI development and warning of an "out-of-control" race for tech companies to deploy the technology. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have also called for government regulation and expressed concern about the potential dangers of the technology.

The Tesla CEO has been warning of the dangers of AI for years. When he helped found OpenAI in 2015, Musk said that AI was the "biggest existential threat" to humanity — though, he resigned from the company's board of directors about three years later and has been critical of the company ever since.

During an earlier airing of his interview with Carlson on Monday, Musk said he "kind of took my eye off the ball" when it came to OpenAI and explained that he helped found the company as a result of a disagreement with Google cofounder Larry Page. Now, Musk says he plans to create a "maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe." He told Carlson he plans to call it "TruthGPT" — a reference to ChatGPT.

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