According to Elon Musk, AI will likely surpass the intelligence of the most intellectual human by the coming year or 2026.
Elon Musk’s prediction came as part of a comprehensive discussion on X spaces, a platform that experienced several technical difficulties. In his conversation with Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway wealth fund, Musk noted that AI’s growth is limited by the access to electricity. He also revealed that the upcoming version of Grok, an AI chatbot from his startup xAI, is set for training by May.
“If you define AGI (artificial general intelligence) as smarter than the smartest human, I think it’s probably next year, within two years,” Musk stated when asked about the timeline for AGI’s development.
Musk, who is also a co-founder of OpenAI, indicated that a shortage of sophisticated chips is hindering Grok’s version 2 model training. Grok 2’s training requires about 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. For Grok 3 and subsequent models, Musk anticipates the need for 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips.
However, Musk believes that while chip shortage is a significant obstacle for AI’s evolution so far, the supply of electricity will prove crucial over the next year or two.
Musk’s conversation with Tangen also touched upon electric vehicles (EVs). Musk lauded Chinese car manufacturers as “the most competitive in the world”, posing considerable competitive challenges to Tesla. Musk has previously warned that Chinese competitors could outperform global rivals without trade barriers.
Musk also addressed the recent union strike in Sweden against Tesla, stating that “the storm has passed on that front.” Tangen revealed that Norway’s $1.5 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla’s significant shareholders, met with the EV company’s chair last month and received an update about the situation.
Last year, Elon Musk founded xAI as a competitor to OpenAI, a company he co-founded. Musk has accused OpenAI of straying from its original mission of developing AI for humanity’s benefit, not profit. OpenAI has denied these allegations.