Elon Musk reveals how early he started thinking about AI safety

The debate surrounding the terrifying risks of artificial intelligence is growing intense and highly worrisome as the tech companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are pushing for slowing down the development of frontier AI models.

The warnings related to threats posed by artificial intelligence are no longer limited to AI taking over jobs. Now the researchers working in tech companies are sounding alarm over AI-driven human extinction within a decade.

When Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay aimed at slowing down the breakneck pace of AI development, Elon Musk also backed Dario’s safety push.

In a recent post, the CEO of SpaceX also revealed how early he started thinking about AI safety.

Musk wrote, “People keep misunderstanding this. I CONTRIBUTED to Bostrom’s Superintelligence book and he thanked me by name in the foreword.”

“I was thinking about AI safety long before 2014.”

Musk’s post came in response to another post which showed 12 years ago the tech mogul warned the world of AI, calling it more dangerous than nukes.

In 2014, Musk posted after reading Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence, ““Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes”

Years before AI safety entered the mainstream and superintelligence was little more than a sci-fi trope, Elon Musk was already sounding the alarm.

Today, the reality has caught up to the foresight: artificial intelligence is inevitably on track to become the most powerful technology humanity has ever unleashed.

In the face of that trajectory, ensuring it remains firmly aligned with human survival and flourishing isn't just an important initiative—it is the single most critical challenge of our era.