Elon Musk is once again betting that artificial intelligence will outsmart us all — and he expects that to occur sooner than he initially thought.
"My guess is we'll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year," Musk said during a live interview with Norges Bank CEO Nicolai Tangen on X, formerly Twitter, earlier this week that's now an episode of his podcast "In Good Company."
The Tesla CEO added that the "total amount of sentient compute" — a concept that may refer to AI thinking and acting independently — will exceed all humans in five years.
The tech billionaire's timeline for AI exceeding human brainpower appears to have shortened as companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft race to build the best rival products. In March, Musk wrote on X that AI will be smarter than "all humans combined" by 2029. That same month, he shared another prediction on when machines will outpace human brainpower, pushing the year to 2030.
Now, the business mogul suggests that AI could surpass human intellect by 2026 partly because of the sheer number of talent in the sector.
He says that the "world's smartest people" such as physicists, have moved into AI because of how quickly the industry advances, which could speed up development. (Coincidentally, Musk says OpenAI has poached some of Tesla's AI engineers.)
"We're seeing a lot of the best talents going into AI," Musk says in the interview.
But the tech CEO says hardware constraints may get in the way of rapid advancement. Last year's constraint, Musk says, was the dwindling supply of chips needed to power AI training efforts. This year's challenge, he says, will be transitioning to a "voltage transformer supply" or getting the total amount of electricity needed to power AI systems which he implies may be less widely available in the next one to three years. And on top of that, companies are running out of quality data to train their models.
Musk expects to encounter these challenges in making Grok, an AI chatbot backed by his startup xAI, smarter than its rivals. While the tech leader claims Grok is better than OpenAI's ChatGPT, he says the current "limiting factor" to making his model even more powerful is the massive amounts of computing needed to train it.
He says he's trying to get his hands on roughly 20,000 GPUs, Nvidia's highly coveted AI chips, by May, which he claims is doable. But for Grok 3, which would be xAI's most advanced model, Musk says that 100,000 GPUs are required for additional training. That could be a major roadblock that data scarcity would amplify.
Musk pointed to synthetic and real-world video data as a potential alternative training source. But it's not just his company working to bypass data walls. OpenAI, a firm that the business leader helped start, is discussing feeding its upcoming model GPT-5 on YouTube video transcripts to prepare for a potential information shortage, sources told The Wall Street Journal. Google, too, appears to be hitting a wall. In February, the search giant struck a $60 million dollar-a-year deal with Reddit, a public forum, to train its AI models on user posts which critics say could lead to troubling outputs.
But despite the training obstacles, Musk seems convinced that AI is advancing at a fast enough rate to reach artificial general intelligence in the next few years, though some experts don't think that will happen anytime soon.
Daphne Koller, a former computer science professor at Stanford and MacArthur "genius," said on a January panel that machines won't be as smart as humans for a long time, as they still have a lot to learn.
"We're only starting to scratch the surface of the data that are available," Koller said.
Musk didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment before publication.
FAQs
"If you define AGI (artificial general intelligence) as smarter than the smartest human, I think it's probably next year, within two years," Musk said when asked about the timeline for development of AGI.
Did Musk predict AI will overtake human intelligence? ›
Musk added that the “total amount of sentient compute” — a concept that may refer to AI thinking and acting independently — will exceed all humans in five years. Some experts say that the kind of AI that could outperform humans is a far cry from some of the simple chatbot interfaces in use today.
What does Elon Musk say about AI? ›
Elon Musk says artificial intelligence will take all our jobs and that's not necessarily a bad thing. “Probably none of us will have a job,” Musk said about AI at a tech conference on Thursday. While speaking remotely via webcam at VivaTech 2024 in Paris, Musk described a future where jobs would be “optional.”
How long until AI is smarter than humans? ›
"By 2029, AI is probably smarter than all humans combined." Musk has been outspoken about his concerns regarding AI and the dangers associated with it, often calling for more regulation of the powerful technology. He has expressed fear that AI could lead to "civilizational destruction" if mismanaged.
Will AI exceed human intelligence? ›
Researchers predict AI will outperform humans in many activities in the next ten years, such as translating languages (by 2024), writing high-school essays (by 2026), driving a truck (by 2027), working in retail (by 2031), writing a bestselling book (by 2049), and working as a surgeon (by 2053).
Will AI take over the world by 2030? ›
By 2030, experts predict AI could automate jobs, erode privacy, transform industries, and disrupt society in many other intricate ways. This article dives deep into the monumental impacts AI may have on humanity's future.
Will AI wipe out humanity? ›
In a survey of 2,700 AI experts, a majority said there was an at least 5% chance that superintelligent machines will destroy humanity. Plus, how medical AI fails when assessing new patients and a system that can spot similarities in a person's fingerprints.
What did Bill Gates say about AI? ›
"If it's a problem that humans are not good at dealing with, then present techniques don't create some novel approach," Gates said. In other words, despite appearances, current AI models aren't magic — they're just a lot faster at performing well-documented tasks that humans do more slowly.
Is AI smarter than us? ›
Computers have the ability to process far more information at a higher pace than individuals do. In the instance that the human mind can answer a mathematical problem in five minutes, artificial intelligence is capable of solving ten problems in one minute.
Is AI a threat to humanity? ›
The report, released this week by Gladstone AI, flatly states that the most advanced AI systems could, in a worst case, “pose an extinction-level threat to the human species.”
We don't know whether AI could have conscious experiences and, unless we crack the problem of consciousness, we never will. But here's the tricky part: when we start to consider the ethical ramifications of artificial consciousness, agnosticism no longer seems like a viable option.
What comes after AI? ›
Artificial intelligence commands the attention of corporate giants and political leaders but a global race is underway to develop what some experts consider the next transformative technology: quantum computing.
How many IQ does AI have? ›
AI, does not have an IQ in the traditional sense. IQ is a measure designed specifically for humans to assess certain cognitive abilities like reasoning, problem-solving, and understanding complex ideas. It's based on standardized tests that are tailored to human thought processes and cultural contexts.
Can AI remove human intelligence? ›
Will AI replace humans? No, AI will not replace human intelligence, as it is humans who are developing AI applications through programming and algorithms. Automation makes it easier to replace manual labour, and today, in every sector, these AI technologies are making it easier to complete complex tasks.
Will AI rule the world? ›
By approaching AI development with caution and planning, we can unlock its potential to fuel innovation while keeping humanity in the driver's seat. As we teeter on the edge of an AI-dominated future, the decisions we make now will determine the shape of tomorrow's world.
Will AI replace human intelligence? ›
Will AI replace humans? No, AI will not replace human intelligence, as it is humans who are developing AI applications through programming and algorithms. Automation makes it easier to replace manual labour, and today, in every sector, these AI technologies are making it easier to complete complex tasks.
Will humans be taken over by AI? ›
The short answer to this fear is: No, AI will not take over the world, at least not as it is depicted in the movies.
Will artificial intelligence ever catch up with human intelligence? ›
AI will achieve human-level intelligence, but perhaps not anytime soon. Human-level intelligence allows us to reason, solve problems and make decisions. It requires many cognitive abilities including adaptability, social intelligence and learning from experience. AI already ticks many of these boxes.
Will AI replace human scientists? ›
No. there is no evidence that human experts will be replaced; what will most likely happen is an automation of basic tasks, that are already automated by libraries.
