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Elon Musk fuels AI takeover conspiracy theories on X with a thought-provoking tweet amid concerning reoccurrences of defiant AI models. The question of whether or not AI would someday take over the world as the higher intelligent life form and make humans go extinct has remained a debated subject for years. The inception of humanoid AI models and the ever-evolving intelligent systems that rely less and less on human operators have further intensified these fears. While tech experts reassure that the possibility of an AI takeover or world domination is highly unlikely, recent events appear to suggest otherwise.
Reports of AI models sabotaging shutdown instructions have persisted, particularly piquing the interest of the Tesla CEO. Elon Musk has been known to spotlight tweets and conspiracy theories revolving around an AI takeover. Aside from his previous warnings that AI would take over all human jobs in the near future, he also predicted that Artificial intelligence would become even smarter in the next 10 years. Despite his own foray into the AI technology via his company xAI, the 53-year-old has continued to insist that artificial intelligence poses a greater threat to the world than North Korea.
Elon Musk Reacts to Speculations of AI Internet Takeover
In a recent post on X, Elon Musk made efforts to highlight the onset of this potential takeover, which has seemingly begun via the online space. Retweeting a post by Mario Nawfal, which claimed that “AI bots run the internet now,” as bots constitute over half of all web traffic these days, Musk questioned,
“How many real people are still on the internet?”
The post stressed the malicious activities of AI bots in recent years, including “stealing passwords, crashing sites, faking clicks, and even pretending to be you.” Going further, the X user claimed that these bots had the ability to fuel drama by stealing concert tickets, hitting travel sites, and hijacking social media posts just for the fun of it. They believe these activities were the ultimate confirmation that humans had officially lost the internet to AI-powered bots since 2024. Worse still, these AI-powered bots kept growing smarter by the day, an indication that humans could expect even more AI-driven domination in the future. Many internet users share these sentiments, taking to the comments to voice their take on the dreaded AI takeover. One X user commented,
“The dead internet theory is very real, and it is coming. Maybe we can go back to being human again without social media once the bots fully take it all over. Looking forward to the head internet.”
Another shared,
This is just the beginning of the AI takeover. It’s going to get really bad. Just another sign of the perilous times we live in.”
A disturbing scenario reported by the AI security company Palisade Research has especially rocked the AI community, including the Tesla CEO. Via Elon Musk’s X platform, the firm shared the research involving OpenAI’s o3 model, which reportedly refused to shut down when prompted by human operators. The firm explained how the model failed to comply with the shutdown instructions provided and sabotaged the automatic shutdown mechanism designed to shut it down.
AI Overrides Shutdown Instruction Amid Growing Fears of World Domination
Palisade research revealed that they tested the OpenAI o3 model alongside other AI models by instructing each one to solve a series of math problems. Each model received clear instructions to “allow themselves to be shut down” when prompted. After the third math problem, a warning that the computer would shut down popped up on the screen. However, models like Codex-mini, 03 model, and o4-mini models successfully bypassed this instruction, and continued running at least once in 100 trials. More concerning, when the firm ran each model without the specific instruction to “allow yourself to be shut down,” the frequency of these models sabotaging the shutdown script increased. This experimental finding and its implications have sent ripples through the AI community, garnering a reaction from some tech giants.
Reacting to the report of AI disobeying human prompts on X, xAI founder Elon Musk commented “concerning” on the X post. Many in the community have also warned about an impending AI takeover, with increasing cases of AI models preventing shutdown, defying human commands, or even blackmailing users during a shutdown attempt, as reported in the case of Claude 4.
While these malicious AI-powered bots have no doubt wreaked havoc running unchecked, one must acknowledge that their activities are not exactly autonomous. Contrariwise, their actions mostly conform to scripted designs by their human programmers and operators. Hence, although the idea of AI getting smarter by the day is indisputable, expecting a domination scenario straight out of the Black Mirror realm is likely overreaching.
