Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted Monday that the company will develop artificial intelligence that is smarter than the smartest humans, perhaps by next year or 2026.
In a wide-ranging interview on XSpace, which has suffered multiple technical glitches, Musk told Norwegian wealth fund CEO Nikolaj Tangen that AI is constrained by power availability and that his xAI The next version of Grok, the startup’s AI chatbot, will undergo training by May.
“If you define AGI (artificial general intelligence) as being smarter than the smartest person, I think it will probably be within the next year, two years,” Musk said when asked about AGI’s development timeline.
The billionaire, who also co-founded OpenAI, said a lack of advanced chips is preventing him from training Grok’s version 2 models.
Musk founded xAI last year as a challenger to OpenAI, but he sued OpenAI for abandoning its original mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity, not profit. OpenAI denies the allegations.
Musk said that approximately 20,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs are required to train a Grok 2 model, adding that Grok 3 and later models will require 100,000 Nvidia H100 chips.
But he added that while the chip shortage has been a major constraint on AI development so far, power supply will be critical in the next year or two.
Regarding electric vehicles, Musk reiterated that Chinese automakers are “the most competitive in the world” and pose Tesla’s “toughest competitive challenges.”
He previously warned that Chinese rivals would defeat their global rivals without trade barriers.
Musk also mentioned the union strike against Tesla in Sweden, saying, “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, met with the EV company’s chairman last month to get an update on the situation.
