Elon Musk still thinks a Mars colony will save us from a future dark age

The head of SpaceX and Tesla came to SXSW this week and gave a grave talk about the future of humanity

Elon Musk’s surprise SXSW talk this morning was a heavy and grave affair, full of discussion around all the ways humanity may be doomed in the future: from carbon in the atmosphere, World War III, and above all, runaway artificial intelligence. We have, many times, listened to Musk warn the public about these threats. That’s why the SpaceX and Tesla CEO thinks there is such a strong need to colonize Mars and maybe the Moon — as a safety net for humanity.

But here at SXSW — a tech, culture, and marketing extravaganza where people are ostensibly excited about the future — Musk’s words provided a stark deviation from the overhyped prognostications about how tech will change the world for the better. In some ways, it also feels like Musk is only ratcheting up his rhetoric on these subjects.

“There’s likely to be another dark ages... particularly if there’s a third world war,” Musk stressed, arguing that a Mars colony would stay away from the battle on Earth and carry the torch of human culture forward. He believes that the best way to ensure these dark ages are “shortened” is by having humans on other planets come back and rebuild.

Musk’s ventures, electric car maker Tesla and rocket transport outfit SpaceX, are designed specifically to help stave off these dangers, and in a worst case scenario, provide humanity the tools to escape them. Yet Musk took his time in Austin to give the audience another wake-up call regarding a threat no amount of climate change measures or anti-war rhetoric can help. “Mark my words,” Musk told the crowd, “AI is far more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?”

In some ways, Musk was revisiting his favorite talking points. Musk’s comments about AI here echo ones he’s made before as far back as 2014. He’s also reminded the public many times before that there is a very real possibility that a nuclear war could devastate the planet and that colonizing the Solar System is the only certain way to mitigate against such an extinction events.

Musk repeated comments he made last summer about government regulation of AI as well, warning today at SXSW that AI researchers are not to be as worried about the threat of machines as they should be. “The biggest issue i see with so called AI experts is they think they know more than they do. They think they’re smarter than they are,” he said. “This plagues smart people… they don’t like the idea that a machine could be smarter than them, so they discount the idea,” Musk told the crowd.