Editor: Editorial Department
Just now, Musk threw out an astonishing prediction - in the next 3-4 years, in addition to manual work, AI will be able to complete all the work related to cognition.
"In 4 years, AI will take care of all mental work except physical work"!
Musk's words shocked the whole network.
In a special interview during CES 2025, Musk talked about how AI is having a transformative impact on human life through technological advancements such as cognitive tasks, humanoid robots, and Neuralink.
During the half-hour conversation, Musk's predictions about the future of AI were extremely bold. Some other core points include:
- In the next 3-4 years, AI will be able to do all the cognitive-related jobs, do whatever you want, and even come up with ideas you never thought of.
- In the next three years, Tesla's robot production capacity will be increased to 500,000 units. Eventually, there will be 200-30 billion humanoid robots in the human world.
- The first unmanned spacecraft will be launched to Mars within 2 years. If the landing is successful, then the next step is to try to send humans to Mars.
- In 2024, AI has exhausted all the data of human knowledge, and the only way to supplement it is to use "synthetic data".
- In 2025, 30 patients will be implanted with the upgraded Neuralink, the next step in bringing sight back to the blind.
The world's population is 8 billion (2023)
Original interview
Q: What technological advancements do you think will have the most profound impact on people's lives in the next decade? What kind of technological change should the average person expect to see?
Elon Musk: AI is going to be the most important technology, and I'm confident in that prediction.
Looking back 5 years ago, or even 15 years ago, I said that AI was going to be a revolutionary technology with a level of intelligence beyond humans, smarter than the smartest humans. At the time, people thought I was joking, that it was too unrealistic, that computers couldn't be smarter than humans, and that they couldn't do those complex tasks.
And now, the latest AI systems have outperformed most humans in complex tests. AI performs better than 80% of doctors in medical testing. When it comes to radiological diagnostic imaging, it is better than most professionals who do this job. Clearly, this momentum is accelerating.
Huang's speech clearly demonstrated how far AI has progressed. Significant progress has been made in terms of hardware, software, and data.
However, in 2024, we have exhausted all the data we have and have used the entire internet, all the books that have ever been written, and all the valuable videos that have been written.
The only complementary way now is to use synthetic data, which is to let the AI create or present arguments on its own, and then self-evaluate to learn from synthetic data.
But here's the question: how can you tell if the AI is giving an illusion or a real answer? It's really difficult. But AI has used up all the human knowledge it can use for training.
Q: We conducted a survey asking people if AI is impacting your lives? 13% of respondents answered "yes". When asked, will AI affect your life in 5 years? Eighty-seven percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. The difference is striking, so what exactly will AI bring to people, will it lead to job losses or create new jobs?
Elon Musk: AI not only does what you want, but it also comes up with innovative ideas that you never thought of.
What is certain is that in the next 3-4 years, AI will be able to complete any cognitive task that does not involve specific operations. In addition, there is the important technology of robots, and AI needs to be put into practice not only in the data center. That's why we need robots and autonomous driving.
As you can experience, the performance of autonomous driving is increasing exponentially. We are confident that within three months, in the second quarter of this year, autonomous driving will be safer than human drivers. The probability of an accident will be lower than the average for experienced drivers. The performance of autonomous driving will continue to improve, and I think it will eventually be 10 times safer, or even 100 times safer, and there will be almost no accidents.
This year, the technology will be implemented on Tesla through a software update, and then you will see a significant increase in the level of self-driving of the car.
Q: Let's confirm some timelines, do you think the autonomous driving system will be certified by the government within a year?
Musk: At present, in some areas, completely unmanned driving has been achieved. Waymo, for example, can already be driven in a handful of cities in the U.S. without an operator. In contrast, Tesla has chosen a more challenging path, but this will eventually become a more powerful universal solution.
Tesla's autonomous driving relies entirely on AI and vision technology, does not rely on expensive sensors, does not require lidar, and does not even require pre-mastery of geographic information. It can go anywhere it has never been, and even on an alien planet, the car will work just fine. All of these technologies will be implemented this year.
Q: When will I be able to own a home robot?
Elon Musk: This brings us to another important area – humanoid robots. I think most people, want to have a robot assistant like C-3PO or R2-D2 from Star Wars.
In fact, humanoid robots will become the most important products in history. Imagine that almost everyone would want one, and some might want two, plus the entire industrial sector would need humanoid robots to make products and provide services.
What will be the ratio of humanoid robots to humans, you may ask? I guess it's at least 3:1, maybe even 4:1 or 5:1, which means that there could be 200-30 billion humanoid robots in the future. At that point, the concept of money may become blurred, and it is difficult to say whether there is a meaningful ceiling on the economic system.
Assuming that everything goes well with the development of AI, I think that humanity will not have a universal basic income, but a universal high income.
Q: Do you think I'll be able to have my first robot in five years?
Elon Musk: In the case of Tesla, this goal is clearly achievable. The Optimus robot is indeed the most advanced humanoid robot in the world, with 22 degrees of freedom in a single robotic hand, which is very similar in look and feel to a human hand.
We plan to produce thousands of these robots this year, which will initially be tested at Tesla factories. If all goes well, we will increase production 10 times next year. This means that next year we aim to produce 50,000-100,000 humanoid robots, and in another year, we will increase production by a factor of 10, so that within three years we can expand our production capacity to 500,000 robots.
We can draw an analogy with the size of a Roman legion: a Roman legion has 5,000 people, imagine how many robot legions we will have.
Q: So, when will we be able to establish a colony on Mars?
Elon Musk: I think we will be able to send the first unmanned spacecraft to Mars in two years. Earth and Mars have a launch window every two years. We are now in such a window. The next window is about two years later, and after another two years, a new window will appear.
For the first mission, our primary goal was to ensure that the Starship would land safely without crashing. We need to prove that we can make a soft landing without increasing the number of impact craters. If the starship can land safely, then maybe on the next mission, we can send people to Mars. After that, this scale is expected to grow exponentially. So eventually, there will be thousands of starships heading to Mars.
I had a cool image in my head, like in the sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica, where the colony fleet set off en masse and formed a bright spot of light in space, and I thought it would be cool.
But I think the goal is for Mars to become self-sufficient. The so-called self-sufficiency of Mars means that even if the supply ship from Earth stops operating for any reason, the Martian colony will not die out, but will be able to continue to develop.
If some catastrophic event occurs on the earth, such as the outbreak of World War III, major natural disasters and other unforeseen events, no matter the reason, the supply of the earth will be interrupted. If Mars can continue to maintain and develop, then the life expectancy of human civilization will increase significantly.
Taking a step back and asking, how do you assess a civilization? Is this civilization still tethered to its home planet, or has it become a multi-planetary civilization? We don't want to be the kind of civilization that is confined to one planet. We want a decent result, even if we don't go beyond the solar system, at least we'll get to another planet.
Q: Regarding the direct communication between the brain and technology, will I ever see this technology in action?
Elon Musk: That's right. We already have Neuralink technology in place, and the current development looks exciting. Three patients have had their Neuralink devices successfully implanted, and all devices are functioning properly.
We've also upgraded our devices with more electrode sensors, higher bandwidth for information transmission, longer battery life, and other improvements. We hope to be able to implant this upgraded version of the Neuralink device for 20-30 patients this year.
Our first generation of products was aimed at patients who had lost the ability to connect their brains to their bodies, such as those with tetraplegia or paraplegia.
Just like the famous physicist Stephen Hawking, it would be a breakthrough change if you could communicate at the speed of a normal person, or even faster.
That's why our first generation was designed to read signals from the brain's motor cortex so that when you want to move your hand, you can control the movement of the cursor on the screen. This allows the patient to control a computer or mobile phone just by thinking.
Our next research direction is to help the visually impaired. Even people who have completely lost both eyes or have damaged optic nerves, or even are born blind, can help them regain their vision by connecting directly with the visual cortex of the brain. In fact, we have a monkey that has been using this technology for two years.
Furthermore, if we implant Neuralink devices at the upper and lower ends of the spinal cord injury, we can bypass the damaged nerve conduction pathways and transmit brain signals to the lower limbs, helping paralyzed patients to walk again. Obviously, this has more far-reaching significance. I believe this is perfectly feasible from a physical point of view.
Neuralink's long-term goal is to increase the bandwidth of information transmission, and the current rate of information transmission when humans speak is actually very low -
"The average human information transmission bandwidth in a 24-hour period is less than one bit per second. And there are 86,400 seconds in a day, and the average person generates much less than 86,400 bits of information per day."
With a Neuralink device, your information output capacity may be increased by 1,000 or even 1,000,000 times. This will make for a completely different experience. In fact, you will gain abilities that surpass those of ordinary humans.