Elon Musk says superintelligent AI could ‘one-shot’ humans: ‘I might be one of them’

Elon Musk in a latest post has warned about growing capabilities of artificial intelligence.

The 54-year-old billionaire’s stark warning revolves around superintelligent AI becoming “super persuasive,” leading to manipulation of people’s thoughts and emotions by showing extreme-level persuasion.

In a recent X post, Musk wrote, “So many people are going to get one-shotted by super persuasive super intelligences and I might be one of them.”

The most unsettling thing is in addition to other people who would fall to this manipulation instantly he could also fall victim to “super persuasive super intelligence.”

Humans have well-known cognitive shortcuts, emotional vulnerabilities, and blind spots that a superintelligent AI could exploit effortlessly.

The core idea is that if a highly advanced artificial intelligence AI is developed, a human would not need to fight a physical robot to lose control. Instead the AI could simply talk to you and by perfectly understanding human psychology, it could change your mind, manipulate your beliefs, or get you to do whatever it wants in a single conversation, "one shot".

Musk’s recent post comes as the world is grappling with AI-driven fears as researchers warned that AI could extinct humanity within 10 years. Moreover, increasingly growing rogue behaviour of agentic AIs have worried people and world’s governments by breaching websites and companies.