Busta Rhymes has a “significant concern” about the unchecked power of AI.
The 12-time Grammy award-winning rapper, 51, said any technology that is controlled by powers that be worries him.
He told the Guardian in a question and answer session with fans: “Anything that the government and powers that be can create to try to play God is a significant concern to me.
“I just think that when you play with anything that replaces the mind, the body and the soul, and to the point where it actually devalues it, well, that is serious.”
He added about his belief phones are taking human souls: “They gave us these devices and if you speak a certain way, the phone stores all the data and then it is thinking for you. Then when you are texting somebody, well, words pop up the way you spell it, so you ain’t gotta type it any more!
“The phone is taking your soul from you. The way you think. It is becoming you.
“That is some real weird (stuff) when you think about it, right? When the AI gets to a place of evolution and they feel like: “(To hell with) the humans!” That is some (stuff) where I don’t know what the solution is.
“With AI, we’re (messing) around with something real dangerous.”
Busta, real name Trevor George Smith Jr, also spoke about how he once told David Bowie how he though his interracial relationship with his model wife Iman was “beautiful”.
He added: “I spent time in England when I was a little boy, staying in places like Morecambe, Preston and Blackpool. Wham!, Culture Club, David Bowie – all that was popping.
“In the summer holidays, my mother would always send me off (from New York) for a month to stay with our family overseas, and we had a lot of family who emigrated from Jamaica to England. It was also so I would stay out of mischief in Brooklyn.
“In England, that was the first time I saw an interracial relationship in public. So, when I was with Bowie on the tour, I told him it was great to see a beautiful black interracial relationship with the incredible Iman.”