Elon Musk’s xAI: Collaborating with Tesla and Twitter.
During a live audio session on Twitter Spaces, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed his plans to foster collaboration between his artificial intelligence startup, xAI, and the automaker.
Elon Musk emphasized that the partnership would encompass both the “silicon front” and the “AI software front,” indicating a comprehensive partnership. Moreover, he announced that xAI would utilize Twitter data to train its ambitious and inquisitive AI systems and products.
However, Musk did not provide explicit details regarding the potential cost or financial arrangements associated with accessing Twitter’s data for xAI or his other companies.
In October 2022, when Elon Musk led a buyout of Twitter, the social media company took on a significant debt totalling $13 billion.
However, Twitter has faced challenges in boosting its subscription revenue and has encountered legal issues, with former employees and vendors filing lawsuits claiming non-payment for completed work or severance.
Musk’s involvement extends beyond Twitter, as several companies he founded or serves as CEO, including Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, have engaged in business collaborations over the years. Some of these transactions have been disclosed in Tesla’s financial filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
During a recent Twitter audio session, Musk made an unverified claim that “Every AI organization on Earth” had unlawfully utilized Twitter’s data for training purposes.
It remains unclear which specific laws would have been violated through such data scraping activities. In a separate legal action, Twitter filed a lawsuit against four unknown parties in Texas for data scraping earlier this month.
As a result of the increased scraping activity, Twitter implemented rate limits on its platform in recent weeks. Musk alleged that the social media platform was being subjected to excessive scraping, with multiple entities attempting to scrape every tweet posted within a matter of days.
This intense scraping activity significantly strained the system, necessitating action to address the issue. Musk acknowledged the inconvenience caused by the rate-limiting and offered an apology.
Overall, the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, the financial challenges faced by the company, the ongoing legal disputes, and the claims regarding data scraping highlight the complex landscape surrounding the social media platform and its interactions with other companies in which Musk is involved.
During a Twitter Spaces session, Elon Musk addressed the widespread use of Twitter data by AI software developers, stating that xAI would also utilize public tweets (excluding private information) for training, similar to other developers.
Musk highlighted the appeal of Twitter’s data set for “text training” and “image and video training.” However, he emphasized that AI systems require more than just human-created data and expressed his hopes that xAI could follow the path of DeepMind’s Alpha Zero.
This Alphabet-owned computer program performed exceptionally in chess, shogi, and go-after self-play training.
One of Tesla’s avid supporters, Omar Qazi (Whole Mars Catalog on Twitter), posed several questions to Musk regarding xAI’s collaboration with Tesla during the Spaces event. Qazi inquired about using Nvidia- or Tesla-made silicon for data processing within xAI.
Musk responded that it was more of a Tesla-specific question, as the company is developing custom silicon. Although he refrained from categorizing Tesla’s products as “GPUs,” he acknowledged that they could be characterized as equivalent to GPUs.
Musk then shifted the discussion towards Tesla’s in-vehicle hardware, which enables advanced driver assistance systems like Autopilot and Full Self Driving to function in Tesla vehicles.
Tesla has long promised its fans a self-driving vehicle, with Musk initially stating that a Tesla car could autonomously travel across the United States without human intervention by the end of 2017.
In 2019, Tesla raised substantial funds intending to have a million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road within a year. However, Tesla’s vehicles still require a human driver prepared to intervene if necessary.
Musk mentioned that Tesla’s Hardware 4, which is currently being shipped, is three-to-five times more capable than its predecessor, hardware 3.
He further assured that “Hardware 5” would be introduced in a few years, boasting four to five times more capability than the current version.
The discussion also touched upon Dojo, a supercomputer Tesla is developing for AI machine learning and computer vision training.
Musk revealed that Tesla utilizes video clips and data from customer vehicles to enhance existing software and develop new features.
Addressing the topic of xAI’s future AI language model, Musk said it would not adhere to strict political correctness.
Given his previous criticisms of “woke” or progressive values, he believed that xAI could generate answers that might be considered controversial but are objectively true.
Musk emphasized the importance of xAI developing technology that understands the physical world, not just the Internet. He expressed confidence that Tesla’s driving data would significantly contribute to this endeavour.
Regarding Optimus, a humanoid robot showcased by Tesla during its AI Day in September 2022, Walter Isaacson, the author of an upcoming Elon Musk biography, they inquired about its progress.
Musk revealed that the robot is still in the early stages of development, and his team is working on ensuring that users can quickly turn it off.
Tesla executives are expected to provide updates on Optimus and other developments during an upcoming earnings call.
