Elon Musk plans Tesla, Twitter collaborations with xAI

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said Friday he plans to launch his latest venture, artificial intelligence startup xAI, to join the automaker on the “silicon frontier” and “artificial intelligence software frontier.” ” cooperation.

Musk also said during a live audio conference at Twitter Spaces on Friday that xAI will use Twitter data to train the “most curious” AI systems and products he hopes to build there. Musk did not specify whether or how much Twitter would charge xAI or its other companies for data.

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Twitter took on $13 billion in new debt when Musk spearheaded the acquisition of the social media business in October 2022. The company has struggled to boost subscription revenue and has been sued by former employees and suppliers for failing to pay for work done or severance pay.

Several other companies Musk founded or is CEO of, including Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Co., have collaborated over the years. Some of their dealings have been disclosed in Tesla’s financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Friday, Musk claimed, without citing evidence, that “every AI organization on the planet” had used Twitter data for training, “in all cases illegally.” It’s not clear which laws would be violated by the data scraping by others. Earlier this month, Twitter sued four unidentified groups for stealing data in Texas.

In recent weeks, Twitter has implemented a rate limit on the social media platform, Musk claimed, because it “was being scraped like crazy.” “We had multiple entities grabbing every single tweet that was ever posted and trying to do it in a matter of days. So — it crashed the system. So we had to take action,” he said. Sorry for the inconvenience caused by the speed limit.

Given the widespread use of Twitter data by AI software developers, Musk said, “I think we’ll also use public tweets (obviously not any private tweets) for training, just like basically everyone else.”

Twitter’s dataset calls for “text training” and “image and video training,” Musk said.However, he noted that AI systems need more than human-created data, and he hopes xAI will follow in AI’s footsteps letter– with DeepMind’s Alpha Zero, a computer program that achieved proficiency in the three games of chess, shogi, and Go after being trained by playing these games with itself.

Tesla fan and evangelist Omar Qazi (known as “Whole Mars Catalog” on Twitter) asked Musk a little bit about how he plans to get xAI to work with Tesla during the Spaces event. question. Among other things, he asked whether it was possible for xAI to use chips made by Nvidia or Tesla for data processing.

Musk said: “This is a Tesla problem. Tesla is making custom chips. I wouldn’t call anything Tesla makes a ‘GPU,’ although one could describe it with a GPU equivalent.” Then He talked about Tesla’s in-vehicle hardware that enables the company’s advanced driver assistance systems to work in its cars. The system is marketed in the U.S. as the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features.

Tesla has been promising self-driving cars to fans for years. At the time, Musk said that by the end of 2017, an off-road demonstration of a Tesla vehicle would be possible without any human intervention. In 2019, Tesla raised billions of dollars and pledged to deliver 1 million Tesla vehicles equipped with robotaxis worldwide. road within a year. So far, none of Tesla’s vehicles can operate without a human driver ready to steer or brake.

Musk said on Twitter Spaces on Friday that Tesla’s now-shipping Hardware 4 is “three to five times more powerful than Hardware 3,” and promised that “Hardware 5” will be out in a few years and be “more powerful than current hardware.” Versions are four to five times more powerful.

The CEO also discussed Dojo, the supercomputer Tesla is developing for artificial intelligence machine learning and computer vision training purposes. Tesla uses video clips and data from customer vehicles to improve existing software or develop new features.

Musk said that the artificial intelligence language model that xAI may eventually develop will not be “politically correct.” “I think our AI can give answers that people might find controversial, even though they’re actually true,” said the chief executive, who has repeatedly attacked “wokeness” or progressive values.

The Tesla CEO said xAI needs to develop technology that “understands the physical world and not just the internet,” and he thinks Tesla’s driving data will help in that regard.

Walter Isaacson, author of a biography of Elon Musk to be published later this year, asked Musk about Optimus, a humanoid robot Tesla is developing with the aim of using it in manufacturing. Musk said the bot is still in the “early stages” and his team needs to find a way for users to easily turn it off.

Tesla shows off a humanoid robot design called Optimus at its AI Day in September 2022. Tesla executives are expected to share an update on the matter and more on next Wednesday’s earnings call.

CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed reporting.

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