Replies during an interview with Norway wealth fund CEO

Elon Musk, the CEO of American electric vehicle company Tesla, predicted that an AI Supremacy human intelligence could emerge within the following year. This outlook suggests a more rapid development of AI than the prediction made by Jensen Huang, CEO of leading AI chip manufacturer Nvidia, who expects artificial general intelligence (AGI) on par with human intelligence to appear within five years.

Musk revealed his views during an interview with Norway wealth fund CEO Nicolai Tangen on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on the 7th. “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. He pointed out the supply of transformers and securing power as constraints on AI development, noting that “our current power grid cannot keep up with the increased demand resulting from AI technology advancements.”

Musk also mentioned his AI startup, xAI, saying he hopes to “complete the training for the next version of Grok in May.” Grok is an AI chatbot like ChatGPT developed by xAI, an AI startup founded by Musk in July last year, based on the large language model (LLM) Grok-1 and launched in December of the same year. This means that he will improve the capabilities of the AI chatbot Grok. He also predicted that “China will not fall behind the U.S.” in the fierce AI technology development competition.

Earlier on the 5th, Musk announced that Tesla’s autonomous robot taxis (unmanned taxis) would be unveiled in August. He did not elaborate on the robo-taxis, only writing on his X account, “Tesla’s robo-taxis will be unveiled on August 8.” Musk has emphasized the robo-taxi project for several years, where Tesla vehicles drive autonomously using their self-driving technology, charge fares, and transport passengers like taxis. Tesla shares, which rose about 5% in after-hours trading on the New York Stock Exchange after the news broke, closed at $172.98 in regular hours, up 4.9% from the previous day.