Elon Musk said during an interview this week that the United States will win the race for artificial intelligence in the near term, but that long-term success over China will come down to which nation has the stronger manufacturing base.

Musk made the remarks during an interview on Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) “Verdict” podcast with co-host Ben Ferguson when asked about how the technology will change people’s lives.

“In 10 years, probably AI could do anything better than a human can cognitively, probably almost, I think, in 10 years, based on the current rate of improvement, AI will be smarter than the smartest human,” he said. “There will also be a massive number of robots, so humanoid robots.”

He claimed that there would be “tens of billions of robots” in existence by then that will “make you anything or provide any service you want for basically next to nothing.”

Cruz then asked Musk how the United States could win the war for AI dominance against China, saying that he wanted to make sure that if robots turned out to be killing machines in the future that he preferred they be American killer robots instead of Chinese killer robots.

“Well, next few years, I think America is likely to win, then it will be a function of who controls the AI chip fabrication, the factories that make the AI chips, who controls them, if more of them are controlled by China, then China will win,” Musk said.

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What will life look like 10 years from now?

@ElonMusk gives his thoughts to where we are headed with AI.

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Ted Cruz @tedcruz

What will life look like 10 years from now?

@ElonMusk gives his thoughts to where we are headed with AI.

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