there's still massive hurdles to overcome
Are you talking about what he's talking about - "risk of something seriously dangerous happening" - or are you talking about AGI?
Because I can easily imagine how a narrow AI technology could do a lot of damage, particularly if humans intend it to.
Well, in terms of out-of-control software produced by an AI company, I feel the two risks, 'something dangerous' and AGI, are pretty closely linked.
Could more limited AI tech make a more damaging computer virus or cause an unexpected confidential data leak? Sure, but that's not the issue at hand.
The most advanced AI today takes input and creates output. It is strictly Oracle AI with nothing present in its architecture that could circumvent that. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Elon Musk submitted a comment to edge.org a day or so ago, on this article. It was later removed.
Now Elon has been making noises about AI safety lately in general, including for example mentioning Bostrom's Superintelligence on twitter. But this is the first time that I know of that he's come up with his own predictions of the timeframes involved, and I think his are rather quite soon compared to most.
We can compare this to MIRI's post in May this year, When Will AI Be Created, which illustrates that it seems reasonable to think of AI as being further away, but also that there is a lot of uncertainty on the issue.
Of course, "something seriously dangerous" might not refer to full blown superintelligent uFAI - there's plenty of space for disasters of magnitude in between the range of the 2010 flash crash and clippy turning the universe into paperclips to occur.
In any case, it's true that Musk has more "direct exposure" to those on the frontier of AGI research than your average person, and it's also true that he has an audience, so I think there is some interest to be found in his comments here.