Elon Musk: Artificial Intelligence 'Potentially More Dangerous Than Nukes'

Elon Musk, billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has warned that artificial intelligence could be "potentially more dangerous" than nuclear weapons.

Musk made the comment in a tweet recommending Superintelligence, a book by Nick Bostrom on artificial intelligence that involves a robot uprising.

Musk has previously invested in an AI company called Vicarious, which aims to build a "unified algorithmic architecture" to achieve human-level intelligence in vision, language and motor control.

Since investing in the San Francisco-based startup, Musk has expressed concerns about the threat of advanced artificial intelligence.

'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition'

In an interview with CNBC in June, Musk revealed that the purpose of the Vicarious investment was primarily to understand the technology rather than make any money.

Musk said: "I was also an investor in Deep Mind before Google acquired it and Vicarious. It's not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return.

"I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there."

Musk went on to reference the film Terminator, in which a form of artificial intelligence is given control of nuclear weapons and attempts to wipe out the human race.

"In the movie Terminator they didn't expect some sort of Terminator-like outcome," Musk said. "It is sort of like the Monty Python thing - nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."

In a follow-up tweet, Musk said: "Hope we're not just the biological boot loader for digital superintelligence. Unfortunately, that is increasingly probable."