Elon Musk on Monday, April 8, made a bold prediction regarding the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) by stating that it could be smarter than the smartest human before 2026. During a wide-ranging interview on X spaces, which was fraught with technical hiccups, the Tesla CEO also told Norway wealth fund CEO Nicolai Tangen that AI was constrained by the availability of electricity and that the next version of Grok, the AI chatbot from his xAI startup, was expected to be trained by May 2024.
"If you define AGI (artificial general intelligence) as smarter than the smartest human, I think it's probably next year, within two years," Musk, who acquired X in 2022, said when asked about the timeline for development of AGI. The billionaire, who also co-founded OpenAI, said a lack of advanced chips was hampering the training of Grok's version 2 model.
The tech mogul founded xAI last year as a challenger to OpenAI, which he has sued for reportedly abandoning its original mission to develop AI for the benefit of humanity and not for profit. The Microsoft-backed OpenAI denied the allegations.
Resource heavy
Musk said training the Grok 2 model took about 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, adding that the Grok 3 model and beyond will require 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips. However, he added that while a shortage of chips were a big constraint for the development of AI so far, electricity supply will be crucial in the next year or two.
Speaking about electric-vehicles, Musk reiterated Chinese carmakers are "the most competitive in the world" and pose "the most toughest competitive challenges" to his EV brand Tesla.
He has previously warned that Chinese rivals will demolish global rivals without trade barriers. The Tesla CEO also touched upon a union strike in Sweden against the company during the X spaces, stating "I think the storm has passed on that front."
Tangen said Norway's $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla's largest shareholders, had met with the EV company's chair last month and received an update on the situation.
Earlier today, media reported that Tesla setlled a case with the family of an Apple engineer who died in a fatal Autopilot crash in 2018.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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