Elon Musk has expressed concerns regarding the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on electricity and transformer supplies.
Elon Musk: 'The Biggest Technology Revolution'
In a Q&A to close the Bosch Connected World conference, Elon Musk emphasized the urgent need for the industry to prioritize clean energy generation and increase the production of electrical transformers to suppress the supply crisis, which he said could happen next year, New Atlas reported.
The tech billionaire cited the fast growth of AI technology and electronic vehicles, noting that it appears to be increasing at an unprecedented rate.
The Tesla CEO compared the pace of technological advancement to historic gold rushes, indicating that the demand for AI-related technology surpasses any previous industry boom.
"The artificial intelligence compute coming online appears to be increasing by a factor of 10 every six months. Like, obviously that cannot continue at such a high rate forever, or it'll exceed the mass of the universe, but I've never seen anything like it. The chip rush is bigger than any gold rush that's ever existed," said Musk, according to News Atlas.
"I think we really are on the edge of probably the biggest technology revolution that has ever existed," he added.
While acknowledging the potential risks associated with AI, Musk expressed a desire to witness the developments firsthand rather than avoiding them.
"You know, there's supposedly a Chinese curse: 'May you live in interesting times.' Well, we live in the most interesting of times," Musk noted.
"For a while, it was making me a bit depressed, frankly. I was like, 'Well, will they take over? Will we be useless?' But the way I reconciled myself to this question was: Would I rather be alive to see the AI apocalypse or not? I'm like, I guess I'd like to see this. It's not gonna be boring," he added.
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Elon Musk Tackles Challenges Posed by Expanding AI System
Addressing the specific challenges posed by the expanding AI infrastructure, Elon Musk pointed out the predictable constraints on AI compute resources.
He highlighted the shortage of neural net chips experienced in the past year and predicted that the next bottleneck would be voltage step-down transformers, essential for powering AI systems. Musk also remarked on the irony of needing transformers to power the AI systems.
"My not-that-funny joke is that you need transformers to run transformers. You know, the AI is like... There's this thing called a transformer in AI... I don't know, it's a combination of sort of neural nets... Anyway, they're running out of transformers to run transformers," he noted.
"Then, the next shortage will be electricity. They won't be able to find enough electricity to run all the chips. I think next year, you'll see they just can't find enough electricity to run all the chips," he added.
Musk emphasized the interconnectedness of AI and electric vehicles (EVs), which both rely heavily on electrical power and voltage transformers.
As he predicted an electricity shortage to meet the demands of AI and EVs in the coming years, Musk warned that the simultaneous growth of these technologies would strain existing electrical infrastructure.
He suggested that by 2025, the electricity supply may become insufficient to power the ever-increasing number of AI chips. Musk's remarks ultimately underscored the critical need for an increase in clean energy generation to meet the demands of AI and EVs.
"The simultaneous growth of electric cars and AI, both of which need electricity, both of which need voltage transformers - I think, is creating a tremendous demand for electrical equipment and for electrical power generation," Musk said, as New Atlas reported.
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