Elon Musk is investing in lots of different ventures, whether it be internet on Mars, Hyperloop rail tests in Texas or the funding of artificial intelligence research.

The latter is part of a new crowd-sourced effort by the Future of Life Institute, looking for more research into AI systems, including the potential rewards and failures of AI.

Like Us on Facebook

Musk claims that AI could be the potential downfall of the human race, and without boundaries and failsafes humans are dooming themselves to a robot takeover

While it might seem like the plot of a sci-fi movie, the rapid progress of AI in the past five years leads researchers to believe by 2050, we will have human-like AI robots utilizing various parts of the human brain.

Musk's $10 million pledge will allow researchers to conduct new investigations into the advancement of AI and the potential upsides of autonomous systems.

Some are a little less pessimistic when it comes to AI compared to Musk, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who claims knowledge and other fields will heavily advance due to progress in AI.

However, more research seems to get a collective thumbs-up from everyone, including Google, DeepMind and Facebook engineers, who have signed the pledge of agreement over at Future of Life Institute.

AI is currently seen on virtual assistant services, where users are capable of asking for information and receiving timely updates and on smart home devices, where the device will learn from user's habits, applying changes to suit different schedules.

In the future, these virtual assistants may become much smarter, but AI may also take over the full workplace of a manufacturing floor or retail store, once systems learn the various techniques of the job.

TagsElon Musk, Space X, The Future of Life Institute