Elon Musk Predicts AGI, Self-driving, Unlimited Energy, Robots Coming SOON

Summary

Elon Musk was interviewed at Bosch Connected World about AI and electric vehicles. He discussed how full self-driving cars are close to being fully autonomous, which could increase car utility 5x. He also noted AI compute power is increasing exponentially, with no technology advancing faster, leading to potential electricity shortages. Musk touched on humanoid AI robots like Tesla's Optimus being built, hoping they'll be friendly to humans. While excited about the AI revolution, Musk admitted it depressed him before, worried AGI could take over if allowed to exceed human intelligence. Overall he believes AI will massively boost productivity across industries.

Takeaways

• 😲 Elon thinks full self-driving capability is coming very soon
• 🔋 AI compute power is increasing exponentially - 10x every 6 months
• 🤖 Elon is working on humanoid robots that can do almost anything humans can
• 💡 Productivity will increase dramatically across many fields due to AI
• ⛽ Elon predicts a future shortage in electricity to power AI chips
• 🔌 He also predicts a shortage in step-down transformers to power AI chips
• 📈 Nvidia's growth shows the scale of investment in AI hardware
• 😨 Elon has worries about AI taking over from humanity
• 🚘 Car usage may increase 5x once full autonomy is achieved
• 🏭 Bosch is making big investments in AI for industrial applications

Q & A

What does Elon Musk say about the current state of self-driving car technology?

He says self-driving cars are quite close to being fully autonomous, meaning they could take someone to the airport with no human interventions, using only cameras and artificial intelligence.

What does Musk predict will be the next shortage after chips to power AI systems?

He predicts that after the chip shortage, the next shortage will be voltage step-down transformers to provide power to all the AI chips.

Why does Musk think the utility of passenger vehicles will increase dramatically with self-driving cars?

Because self-driving cars could be used as robotaxis when not being used by their owners, increasing usage from about 10 hours to 50-60 hours per week.

What does Musk say about the speed of advancement in AI compute power?

He says AI compute appears to be increasing by a factor of 10 every 6 months, faster than any technology advancement he has ever seen.

What does Musk think about the potential for humanoid robots?

He says companies like Tesla are working on humanoid robots capable of doing almost anything a human can do, but he hopes the robots will be nice to humans.

Why was Musk depressed about AI advancement at one point?

Because he was worried AI could become so advanced that it takes over from humans, but he decided he would rather be alive to see that happen than miss it.

How does Musk think AI will affect productivity?

He thinks AI will massively increase productivity across every field, from manual labor to supply chain logistics.

What past technology revolution does Musk compare the rise of AI to?

He says we are at the edge of what could be the biggest technology revolution humans have ever experienced.

Why does Musk think there could be an electricity shortage to power AI systems?

Because the compute power needed for AI is growing exponentially, far faster than infrastructure growth, so at some point there may not be enough electricity to power it all.

What does Musk see as the constraint after electricity for powering AI advancement?

He jokes that the next constraint after electricity shortages will be exceeding the mass of the universe, since exponential growth can't go on forever.

Outlines

00:00

🤖 Elon discusses the progress of self-driving cars and AI

Elon talks about how self-driving car technology is close to being fully autonomous using just cameras and neural nets. He explains how this is creating an artificial general intelligence that has to understand everything around it. He predicts self-driving will profoundly change the world by increasing car utility 5x since they can become taxis when not in use.

05:02

🔋 Elon forecasts shortages in AI compute elements

Elon discusses the exponential growth in AI compute and how it will inevitably hit physical constraints. He accurately predicted chip and transformer shortages in the past. He now forecasts a shortage in electricity to power AI chips within a year.

10:02

😊 Elon hopes future AI robots will be nice to humans

Elon mentions humanoid robots like Tesla Optimus that can do most human tasks. He jokes that he hopes the robots will be nice to us. He reconciles his worries about an AI apocalypse by concluding he would rather be alive to witness it, even if AI takes over from humans.

15:04

⚡️ Potential electricity shortage and transformer opportunity

Elon thinks cars will shift from 12V to 48V systems which use much less copper. He predicts electricity and then step-down transformers will be the next shortages as AI compute scales exponentially. He sees potential in transformers needed to handle high power draw.

Keywords

💡Self-driving cars

Elon Musk says that fully self-driving cars are very close to being a reality. He believes Tesla vehicles are quite close to being able to drive themselves fully autonomously without any human intervention, using cameras, radars, and neural networks. This would have huge implications in terms of increased usage and utility of vehicles.

💡AI compute

Musk talks about the AI compute capacity for training neural networks being built at an astounding rate, with new chips coming online to power AI doubling every 6 months. This 'AI chip rush' is fueling the growth of companies like Nvidia.

💡Transformers

Transformers refers to a popular neural network architecture used in natural language processing AI models. As the demand for AI compute grows exponentially, Musk jokes that the AI models need more electrical transformers to convert high voltage electricity to run the transformer AI models.

💡AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)

Musk talks about the potential development of AGI, AI systems that can understand and learn anything a human can. He thinks AGI could be extremely transformative but also has concerns it may become uncontrollable.

💡Job loss/transformation

While AI will drastically improve productivity, many people are concerned about jobs being lost to automation. Musk believes that while many jobs may be lost, new jobs will also be created and most will simply transform as they have with previous technological shifts.

💡Robotics

Musk talks excitedly about advances in robotics, with Tesla working on humanoid robots. He hopes they will be 'nice to humans', touching on concerns about ensuring AI safety as robots become more advanced.

💡Self-driving car benefits

Musk explains how fully self-driving vehicles can increase utility and usage of cars by 5x or more when they can drive without people, serving as robotaxis and autonomous vehicles.

💡Exponential growth

The progress of AI technology is advancing exponentially fast according to Musk, who questions how long this vertical growth can be sustained before slowing down.

💡AI apocalypse

While a bit tongue-in-cheek, Musk suggests he has previously been 'depressed' about the possibility of an AI takeover leading to an 'AI apocalypse' which wipes out humanity while advancing its own goals.

💡Infrastructure race

Musk notes that while demand for AI chips is skyrocketing, we need to ensure the supporting infrastructure like electricity keeps pace, framing it as an 'infrastructure race' that we need to win to fully leverage AI progress.

Highlights

Self-driving cars are extremely close to being fully autonomous

Self-driving technology will profoundly change the world

AI compute is advancing faster than any technology ever

There is currently a massive chip rush for AI compute

Humanoid robots capable of doing almost anything humans can do are being developed

AI will dramatically increase productivity across every field

We are at the edge of the biggest technology revolution ever

AI growth cannot continue exponentially forever

Shortages in AI hardware will continue to cascade

Higher voltage systems are the future of electric vehicles

Infrastructure must keep pace with exponential technological growth

AI may take over from humans, making the future uncertain

Productivity gains from AI will offset jobs lost initially

AI electric demand may cause electricity shortages

Step-down transformers will be the next hardware bottleneck

Transcripts

welcome big hand to Elon

Musk thank you thank oh how are you good

fantastic we have we have had two we

have two days of AI and geni and

whatsoever but you look real my head is

very big in the screen added reality too

I suppose we have had so much talk about

AI in these two days so we need your

opinion what do you think about the next

5 to 10 years on AI please give us a

artificial insemination elligence what

do you think about that

okay but try try audience I say um yes

artificial intelligence is is is

certainly going to profoundly change the

world one of the most significant ways

is self-driving so we've been putting a

lot of effort into self-driving

technology for cars you you don't see it

quite as much in Europe because we we

first have to make it work in the US

before we increase the complexity of TR

of make it elsewhere in the world but I

think we're quite close to having the

car be fully autonomous so for example

like right now I could I'm in Austin and

if I went to drive say to the airport

the car could take me to the airport

with no interventions using and all it's

using are digital neural Nets other

words artificial intelligence and ceras

so there's no lar radar nothing and in

fact if you think about how humans drive

cars humans are biological neural Nets

and we use eyes so it's the eyes and

biological neur Nets the analog is

digital the analog for digital is

cameras and digital neural Nets this is

working remarkably well the it has been

quite difficult to do this because turns

out that in order to use in order for

this to work the car has to really be

quite fully intelligent really as as a

subset for example has to learn how to

read everything and and and how to

assess intention among drivers and

pedestrians so it's it's you're end up

creating sort of a baby artificial

general intelligence to solve this but

this will obviously be extremely

profound and OB I'm talking about

Automotive here I'll get into the

broader question in a minute but the the

average use of a passenger vehicle is

only about 10 hours per week out of

hours the point at which it is

autonomous I think You' see probably a

third of the hours being used because it

would be like a taxi maybe my guess is

like 50 to 60 hours which means that the

utility of a passenger vehicle would

increase by uh a factor of five and this

this is gigantic but we'll see so that

that's the one motive then there's what

people have think have certainly

experienced online where you can ask it

a question and ask for an essay or a

picture or to understand a picture and

that is progressing rapidly what what

I'm seeing in terms of AI compute is

I've never seen any technology Advance

faster than this the the artificial

intelligence compute coming online

appears to be increasing by a factor of

10 every 6 months like obviously that

cannot continue at at such a high rate

for for ever or or will exceed the mass

of the universe but I've never seen

anything like it and this is why you see

nvidia's market cap being so gigantic CU

they currently have the best neural net

chips I mean I think the didn't nvidia's

market cap exceed the GDP of Canada or

something recently anyway was quite high

so yeah you know it may go higher who

knows chip Rush is bigger than any Gold

Rush that has ever existed so and then

there will also be robots like humanoid

humanoid robots not not just sort

industrial industrial industrial robots

are of course familiar with you use

industrial robots we use industrial

robots everyone does but they're

programmed explicitly and they they

don't walk around but Tesla with for

example the Optimus program is making a

humanoid robot that is capable of doing

almost anything a human can do um I mean

I hope I just hope the the robots are

nice to us you know we hope so we hope

so too youon that the robots will be

nice to us and maybe let's say in this

regard because you are working on what

can we expect of let's say support which

is going to come maybe also a little bit

with regard to production because in the

BOS connected world we were also

discussing application of AI gen AI into

production in order to Bo productivity

maybe a couple of thoughts on this one

too well the plus side of AI is that I

think productivity will increase

dramatically so across every field

whether it be manual labor to supply

chain Logistics there's already a lot of

movement to use chatbots like

sophisticated chatbots for customer

service for example where they can

answer quite quite complex questions

already but I mean I think we really are

on the edge of probably the biggest

technology Revolution that has ever

existed you know there's supposedly at

sort of a Chinese curse may you live in

interesting times Well we live in the

most interesting of times the most most

interesting and for for a while I was a

little bit it was making me bit a bit

depressed frankly cuz I was like well

will we be will they take over will we

be useless but then the way that I

reconciled myself to this question was

would I rather be alive to see AI

apocalypse or not I'm like I guess I'd

like to see this

uh you know that's a good thought going

to be boring that's a good thought

because you mentioned every six months

that's an exponential curve right

exponential curves are beautiful but

there's kind of a question where does it

ever end right do you see any end yet or

will it go on for 3 four five years like

this because then we talk 100 folds

right thousand folds of time yeah that's

why I said obviously yeah I mean you you

can't you can't grow at that rate

without quickly exceeding the mass of

the universe so clearly it's going to

hit some constraints the constraints

that AI compute and very predictive I've

actually predicted this over a year ago

so over a year ago the shortage was

chips neural net chips then it was very

easy predict that the next shortage will

be voltage step down Transformers so

it's you you've got to feed the power to

these things so if you've got 100 to 300

Kilts coming out of a utility and it's

got to step all the way down to you know

6 volts that's a lot of stepping down so

now we're in step down and this is my

not that funny joke which is that they

need Transformers to run Transformers

cuz you know the AI is like there's this

thing called a transformer in AI it's a

it's a neur a neural I don't know it's a

combination of sort of neural Nets and

they're running out of Transformers to R

Transformers then the next shortage will

be electricity so I think next year

you'll see the electricity that they

just can't find enough electricity run

all the chips I mean during the chip

crisis we certainly all did have many

contacts fortunately we were able to

master it together of course we all

would like uh to avoid a second chip

crisis but with regard to your to your

comment on on power demand we all know

today vehicles have 3 uh to 4 KW power

demand for the peripherals but this is

continuously going up and Tesla has

recently launched the Cyber truck which

I believe is mostly coming with 48 volt

do you see this as a let's say further

disruption of automotive industry

another technology change within

Automotive yeah I I think you know the

automotive industry has been living with

12 volts for a very long time a century

roughly I think it it started off as six

bolts and then they needed a a more

powerful starter motor and then they

doubled it to 12 volts although it's

it's actually more like 13.7 volts

you're right absolutely yeah and and the

bus voltage actually varies a lot for

those since probably some electrical

engineers in the audience like 12 volts

is a very rough approximation but it's

it's it's really it's really kind of a

arbitrary low voltage and if you look at

say power ethernet it's running at 50

volts or roughly 48 volts and we set it

at 4 48 volts because anything really

above that you start to run into

regulatory concerns and power ethernet

is like I said roughly at that level but

the advantage of obviously quadrupling

the voltage is that you can

substantially reduce how much copper or

conductor is used in the car so you can

use very small copper wires for you know

it's aough roughly a roughly a quarter

not exactly a quarter but roughly a

quarter as much as as much copper is

needed for 48 volts as 412 so I think

it's it's a logical move that's that's

really the next step for the low voltage

architecture for the car I think

ultimately long-term War car will be 48

it's it's interesting that many people

love electric vehicles and want to have

them but some are harmed by a missing

infrastructure that would be the same

actually as the thing we will have lots

of chips ready but we will have had the

power to to operate them there's a race

between infrastructure and Technology

right now and uh you're also certain

technology may win which is a problem

because actually infrastructure should

win we should have all the

infrastructure we need is that correct

yeah so thank you very very much thank

you very much and thank you extremely

for 15 years of partnership and work

together we're inspired Always by your

speed attitude or greatness and things

come out thank you very much to Elon

Musk all right and thank you for your

support very very much appreciate so

what you just saw there is Elon Musk

being interviewed at Bosch connected

world and if you're not familiar Bosch

is a German engineering conglomerate

they are massive and so they were

interviewing Elon Musk about everything

from AI to electric vehicles and I cut

out some of the electric vehicle stuff

cuz it's not as related to artificial

intelligence but there was still tons to

talk about with AI let me go over a few

points so first Elon Musk said

self-driving full self-driving for

everybody is actually really close now

he has said this a lot and he's been

wrong a lot we've been at about 80% of

full self-driving for many years now but

that last 10 to 20% is where it really

gets difficult but I tend to be a techno

Optimist and I actually do think that

full self-driving on any road anywhere

in the world is actually closer than we

think and there are a lot of benefits of

that one that he pointed out is that

currently usage of vehicles is probably

about 10% of their actual life so you

drive to work you drive to the store you

park and then you go home and most of

the time about 90% of the time your

vehicle just sits there so all of a

sudden if the vehicles can drive

themselves they could potentially go run

errands for you they could potentially

be shared amongst multiple families in

your neighborhood so the implications

are really interesting to think about

with this combination of AI and

Automotive now what he also touched on

is that he has never seen a technology

be built this quickly and specifically

what he was talking about is AI compute

the roll out of infrastructure to power

AI models and of course most of that is

being powered by Nvidia chips and that's

also why they have doubled their revenue

quarter after quarter and now they are

the third largest company in the entire

world and they have a huge mode and one

interesting stat that he pointed out is

that compute coming online to power AI

models is increasing by a factor of 10

every 6 months that is insane to think

about obviously at a certain point we're

going to reach our needed capacity and

then we're going to build out past that

but I'm wondering if all of this

buildout is going to be a one-time

buildout or a continuous buildout and

that's going to really dictate how

successful these chip companies are in

the long run now I tend to think that

the Chip buildout is going to be

continuous because new chips are going

to come out new technologies are going

to be discovered if we move away from

the Transformers architecture at a

certain point which you know we probably

not for a while but those will need new

chips so as new tech is invented new

chips are going to be built to service

those specific Technologies and I love

what he said about the AI chip Rush

being bigger than the gold rush and he

also talked about AI robots and here's

the thing I'm super excited about robots

I've been making a lot of videos about

robots lately I had a prediction that

humanoid robots were going to be a big

thing in 2024 so I am very very bullish

on robots but he said he hopes robots

will be nice to us and he's saying that

a bit tongue and cheek but at the same

time I think he's a bit serious and we

know that he's afraid of AI in general

which I'll touch on in a minute but if

you've seen any of these robot demo

videos a lot of them are actually kind

of mean to the robot whether they're

kicking the robot and trying to figure

out if it can still stand after being

kicked pushed there's examples of

cleaning robots where somebody

continuously makes a dish dirty again

and again and the robot has to keep

cleaning it so there's a lot of these

examples where we're not being very nice

to robots and if they become come

sentient that is not going to reflect

well for us and he also said

productivity will increase drastically

because of AI and of course that is the

most obvious statement ever and I think

a lot of people are worried about their

jobs and they probably should be but I

think overall the productivity increases

from AI will be beneficial to humanity

and for all of these jobs lost I think

it's actually going to be jobs

transformed and new jobs created as it

has been with almost every other

previous technology and he ALS also said

we on the edge of the biggest

technological Revolution that he could

ever imagine so it's super exciting to

be here but he's also worried about AI

as I mentioned earlier he said we live

in the most interesting times and at

times that has made him quite depressed

because he thinks once AI reaches AGI

there is a chance no matter how small it

is that AGI takes over and becomes the

dominant quote unquote race and as he

said it made him depressed for a while

but the way way that he was able to

reconcile all of it is would he rather

be around during the AI apocalypse or

not and he said yeah I probably would be

so you know you never know exactly what

Elon is thinking but he has actually

said that exact thing multiple times in

the past in different interviews now I

personally don't think there's going to

be an AI apocalypse but of course who

can predict if you're creating life

essentially life that is vastly smarter

than you there is a chance that you are

not the top of the food chain anymore

and one interesting tidbit that I had

not actually thought about is okay right

now we have kind of a chip shortage and

chips are what power these AI models but

what powers the chips it's electricity

and he actually thinks there might be an

electricity shortage and he might be

saying that because of course Tesla is

becoming and kind of is a massive Energy

company based in electricity so there's

this chance where Tesla with their

supercharger network with their their

battery products with their Solar

Products become one of the biggest

energy companies in the world so they're

not even just an auto company at that

point and not only that he actually

talked about a specific Hardware product

that he thinks will have a shortage for

in the near future and that is step down

Transformers and I didn't actually know

what that was I had to look it up but

basically you're taking electricity from

the wall or from the line itself and

this is uh usually a massive amount of

electricity and to power these tips you

actually need to lower the voltage down

to a very small fraction of what is

coming in and that is called a Step Down

Transformer and he thinks we're going to

be running out of those soon so that's

super interesting I'm definitely going

to go research who builds step down

Transformers and this is not investment

advice of course but that's something

that I'm going to be looking into so I

thought that was a really interesting

interview some of which we've heard

before from Elon others I am hearing for

the first time if you enjoyed this video

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