Menin questions Castillo-Madrid on Dario Amodei's AI botnet warning
Speaker Menin asks about Dario Amodei's article warning that AI agents could take over the internet with a botnet causing billions in damage, and Elon Musk's reply that Dario is right; Castillo-Madrid says she is unfamiliar and repeats SpaceX's safety and human-control commitments.
Thank you very much for your testimony.
So we have a number of questions.
On September 12th, Daria Mode authored an article entitled, We Must Pace the Frontiers.
here stating that within six to 12 months, a swarm of AI agents, quote, could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, end quote.
Was he correct here?
I wouldn't, I'm not familiar with that statement in particular.
What I will say is safety is core to SpaceX SI, and that goes from pre-training through release.
So people stay in control of our systems at every stage.
We do not release models we do not believe are safe and that we cannot keep under meaningful human control.
And if a model does not meet that bar, we hold it back and strengthen the model and safeguards.
We train models to ensure they don't assist with dangerous activity and evaluate them for misuse.
So then why did Elon Musk state on X in a post in response to those comments, Dario is right?
I believe we're optimistic about SI.
We obviously take the risk seriously.
Elon has been one of the earliest and most prominent voices in warning about SI risk and calling for oversight.
But we are extremely positive about what can be achieved.
We believe that superintelligence can help people solve problems that were previously beyond reach, accelerating scientific discovery and expanding knowledge and creating new opportunities for human progress.