Technologists believe artificial intelligence has the potential to radically transform everything from healthcare to education and transportation. But not everyone is convinced it's a panacea. The late physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have both warned about the possibility of AI destroying civilization. CGTN Reporter Mark Niu takes a look at what's behind the concern.

At tech conferences in Silicon Valley, around every corner, startups are working with artificial intelligence. Sensorscall uses AI to help these devices learn an elderly person's behavior to make sure they're safe. But the founder admits when it comes to mixing AI with robots, his anxiety grows.

FEREYDOUN TASLIMI FOUNDER & CEO, SENSORSCALL "The robots can definitely overtake us. Because the minute it comes to movement, hurting human beings, it's a little different."

Tesla founder Elon Musk has called AI a greater risk than DPRK and expressed fears that Google could accidentally produce AI robots capable of destroying mankind.

He's invested ten million dollars in the Future of Life Institute, which funds research projects that channel AI toward a safe and beneficial direction.

ANTHONY AGUIRRE CO-FOUNDER, FUTURE OF LIFE INSTITUTE "We control what happens on earth. If we create something that's much smarter than us, more effective than us, more capable at achieving its goals than us, then what is our place in that world."

A lack of consensus on when AI will match human intelligence is one reason why physicist Anthony Aguirre has created the website Metaculus. It allows engineers, scientists and anyone to make predictions on technology and the future, such as whether by 2026 the Turing test will be passed, that is, having a text conversation with someone without being able to tell it's a computer.

MARK NIU MOUNTAIN VIEW "As you can see from this leaderboard, the idea is to track who continuously makes the best predictions, so you know who to trust. Keep browsing Metaculus and you'll find some fascinating questions like this one: When will AI's program programs that can program AI's? At this very moment, the median guess is the year 2041.

ANTHONY AGUIRRE CO-FOUNDER, FUTURE OF LIFE INSTITUTE "If you imagine an artificial intelligence that designs a new version of itself that's a little better, you know maybe it takes a month to do that but then the next version it's better at designing AI so it can do the next one in maybe a week. Next one happens in maybe a day or an hour. And so you have a system that is getting much smarter and smarter and smarter on a time scale much quicker than humans can control it."

Omar Tawakol is the founder of Voicera, which has built a business AI assistant called Eva that takes notes and identifies action items for follow up.

OMAR TAWAKOL FOUNDER & CEO, VOICERA "People are getting more capable of learning how to scale-ably kill other people that people are still the threat to people and not robots. But the real problem is that the owners of robots are gonna get more wealth. That I can create a robot company here and take jobs in many, many places around the world, it's us, the human decisions we make that are the real threat."

Tawakoi believes talk of Terminator scenarios take away from the more imminent threat, AI wreaking economic and social havoc by changing the very fabric of the workplace. Mark Niu, CGTN, Mountain View, California.