Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk smiles as he attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China January 26, 2016. Musk gave a public shout-out to the sharpest minds in manufacturing this week, calling on them to come help Tesla Motors Inc build a million electric cars a year by 2020. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo - RTX2D6RR (REUTERS)
Renowned for his concerns over artificial intelligence and its potential negative impact on humanity, tech titan Elon Musk has made his most concerning comments yet surrounding AI.
It could be the cause of World War 3.
In a series of tweets on Monday, the Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and OpenAI co-founder wrote that artificial intelligence could be the eventual cause of the next world war.
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Musk expanded his comments, saying the war may not be caused by a country itself, but rather one of its' AI's, which could decide a "prepemptive strike is most [the] probable path to victory."
He is less concerned about North Korea and any potential build-up the country has made to its military stockpile, but rather what countries could do to grab any AI's, specifically those developed by various companies.
Musk's comments were in response to comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said that the country "who becomes the leader in this sphere [artificial intelligence] will be the ruler of the world."
Putin also warned that the development of artificial intelligence raises "colossal opportunities and threats that are difficult to predict now."
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Musk's companies, specifically Tesla, have used artificial intelligence to enhance its products and services. In the case of Tesla, artificial intelligence has been used to aid the autonomous driving capabilities of its vehicles.
Tesla has not yet responded to a request for comment from Fox News surrounding this story.
This is not the first time Musk has sounded the warning bells about AI. In recent months, he has verbally sparred with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for underestimating the potential negative impact of AI, saying Zuckerberg's "understanding of the subject is limited."
He's also said that artificial intelligence will "beat humans at everything" within the next few decades, labeling it humanity's "biggest risk."
The tech exec has even gone so far as to make pleas to the United Nations for a global ban on the use of killer robots, including drones, tanks and machine guns. “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close,” Musk and 115 other specialists from around the globe wrote in a letter to the U.N.
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AI, as defined by Merriam Webster, is "the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior."
It's not just Musk sounding the warning bells though: other luminaries, such as Stephen Hawking, have also expressed their concern about artificial intelligence. Hawking has previously said humans need to leave Earth in about 100 years due to concerns from overpopulation, climate change, disease and artificial intelligence.
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Musk, for his part, has tried to address these concerns via his latest ventures, the aforementioned OpenAI and Neuralink.
OpenAI is a non-profit, co-founded by Musk and Y Combinator president Sam Altman "that aims to promote and develop friendly AI in such a way as to benefit humanity as a whole."
Neuralink appears to be a bit more ambitious than OpenAI, having already received nearly $27 million in funding, according to the business information platform website, Crunchbase.
According to the company's sparsely populated website, Neuralink is "developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers."
In an April 2017 interview with the website Wait But Why, Musk alluded to the fact that Neuralink wants "redefine what future humans will be."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow Chris Ciaccia on Twitter @Chris_Ciaccia
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