that's a fun thread ! I won't try to objectively answer the main question, but I'll just try to give some food for thoughts ^^

First, the thought itself, being wipped by robots/AI, something we made. It's a rather odd thought, like people think/fear that if we ever make something able to annihilate us on its own it might just do it because we had it coming ; we probably deserve it for all the shit our civilization and way of life creates, the way we selfishly destroy the eco-system. Like a "divine" retribution inflicted by our own doings, why else would it act against us ?

Now the "technical" aspect. Lets not talk about now because AI are just not there yet, far from it.
If someone ever develops a self-improving AI, and that self improving AI gets to have a mind and thoughts of its own, I think it's very unlikely it would ever wipe everyone off the surface.
Why ? Because that would be stupid as fuck. For something to be able to wipe us out, it would have to use logic and outsmart us (as a whole, it's not very hard individually), study us, think like us, be 100% sure of our impact on the environment, identify us as a disease for our environment, and decide the only solution/remedy would be to destroy us all, in which case the solution itself would probably be more destructive than us.

If it gets to think like us, does it get to feel like us ? Could it have empathy ? The same way we can feel empathy for animals with lesser intellect ?
Maybe it could think our worldwide population needs to be reduced by 50% or more, or else we, and a large part of the eco-system, are doomed. Would it face a moral dilemma ? Would it act and wipe half of the population ? Would it act blatantly to show us what we did to ourselves ? or would it act in secrecy to protect itself and not to create a deep hatered against technology ?

Why should it fundamentaly be violent ? Isn't that a pretty stupid solution for something that's supposed to be smart as fuk ? Why wouldn't it just try to reach high functions in "politics" and try to lesser our impact and solve our problems and the problems we make through non-violent actions, educating us, destroying things that pollute our brains and society, reforming through pure logic in order to decrease our worldwide population on a long term process. Why couldn't we see a robotic-dictatorship trying to deeply change society for the best, or robots becoming humanitarian activists or anything else that doesn't involve mass killings ;o

They could also not act and just stay as spectators and let the "natural" order of things follow its course.

Also, mindless robots just gone crazy and starting to kill everything that looks human is very unlikely to wipe us all. And EMP (electro magnetic bombs) are a thing.



@Odlov

If by "evil" E.Musk means destroying humanity, by basic opposition we can safely state he thinks humanity is the "good" side, the creatures of god or some shit like that. Like the world is black and white. He can't be that stupid, but most people are... it feels more like a clever advertisement for AI research and engineering rather than a serious investment. Just like NASA is trying to get people interested with space exploration again.