Elon Musk says it is too late to stop AI. Even he could not halt it, the xAI founder told The Economist.
Musk spoke to The Economist’s Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes in an interview recorded on Monday, before OpenAI disclosed that one of its frontier models went rogue.
Why Musk Thinks It’s Too Late to Stop AI
This is a reversal. In March 2023, Musk signed the Future of Life Institute’s open letter urging a six-month pause on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. Months later, he launched his own AI company, xAI. Today he sees no brakes at all.
“I mean honestly, there seems to be just inexorable progress here in AI and in robots that even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t.”
The danger has not shrunk in his eyes. Musk stood by his earlier estimate of a 10% to 20% chance that killer robots would wipe out humanity.
“I still think there’s risk associated with AI and robots. It’s not zero.”
Still, he argued against pulling the plug. Even if a stop button existed, he said, “we probably shouldn’t press it” because the most likely outcome is abundance for all. His new philosophy fits in one line.
“Yeah, I mean, yes, pretty much, let’s enjoy the ride, is my philosophy at this point.”
Superintelligence in Five Years
Musk also put a date on it.
“I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about and around five years.”
Within 10 years, he argued, humans will likely no longer be in charge. He compared the coming intelligence gap to the one between humans and chimpanzees.
Musk admits he helped build this momentum. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as “essentially a counterweight to Google.” Anthropic later spun out of OpenAI. Both now race ahead of regulators, and Washington just cleared OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 for broad rollout.
“So it just seems like all roads lead to acceleration of AI. So then I’m like, OK, well, you can just sort of be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.”
The stakes reach well beyond Silicon Valley. The AI boom has already pulled capital away from crypto listings, while AI tokens swing on every breakthrough. Now the world’s richest man has declared the race unstoppable.
The interview is live at economist.com.