Mark Zuckerberg
© Stephen Lam / Reuters
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has criticized enterprising fellow Elon Musk for an interview in which he laid bare his fears about artificial intelligence.

In a Facebook Live post Sunday, billionaire social media magnate Zuckerberg smoked brisket in a wood-burning oven while pondering Musk's "irresponsible" doomsday AI thoughts.

Earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his belief to US governors that AI could prove to be one of the most destructive technological innovations in history, unless regulation is taken swiftly.

During the talk he said AI is a "fundamental risk to civilization."

Touching on Musk's National Governors Association appearance, one Facebook Live commenter asked Zuckerberg about his opinion.

The question lead the Facebook owner to staunchly back the innovation of AI and suggest that Musk was being an irresponsible "naysayer."

"I think that people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios are, I don't understand it, it's really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible," Zuckerberg said.

"In the next five to 10 years, AI is going to deliver so many improvements to the quality of our lives. If you think about just safety and health, AI is already helping us basically diagnose diseases better [and] match up drugs with people depending [on their illness]," he said.

It seems Musk and Zuckerberg have had their differences on the issue. "I've talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited," Musk tweeted Tuesday.


Turning to the topic of autonomous vehicles, an industry which Elon Musk is heavily involved in through the company Tesla, Zuckerberg then indicated that if a person is against AI, then they are against safety innovations.

"If you look at self-driving cars, they are going to be safer than people driving cars.

"One of the top causes of death for people is car accidents and if you can eliminate that with AI that is going to be just a dramatic improvement in people's lives."

"So whenever I hear people say 'Oh AI is going to hurt people in the future,' I think yeah, technology can generally always be used for good and bad, and you need to be careful about how you build it.

"But people arguing about slowing down the process of building AI, I just find that really questionable.

"If you're arguing against AI then you're arguing against safer cars that aren't going to have accidents, and you're arguing against being better to diagnose people when they're sick."