Elon Musk's Multi-Faceted AI Ambitions: X.AI, Tesla FSD, Neuralink, and Regulatory Challenges

0:00What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future? When it comes to protecting what matters, Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience. Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona. Welcome to the ChatGPT podcast. I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer. Today on the podcast, we are going to be talking about some of the contributions to AI that Elon Musk has made, some of the things he said in the past, some of the things that I think were right and wrong, and also some big announcements he has made out of several of his big companies, Tesla and X.ai, which is working kind of with Twitter on what he's planning on doing with AI in the future.

0:53Today on the podcast, we're going to break that down. I think one of the biggest reasons why a lot of people in AI talk about Elon Musk kind of starts back to a lot of his pioneering days in AI altogether. We know that he was one of the early investors in OpenAI, which is obviously bringing about this entire AI craze right now. And so originally he actually invested or donated because OpenAI was a non-profit, about$100 million to OpenAI. And he went in along with the CEO of LinkedIn and a couple other prominent figures, including Peter Thiel. And they kind of put together this organization that was supposed to act as a counterweight to Google and DeepMind and Google's acquisition of DeepMind and essentially Google's acquisition of a majority of all of the AI talent on the planet at the time.

1:40So apparently Elon was having a conversation with Sergi Brin who was a co-founder of Google. He was crashing on his couch one day talking to him about AI and Sergi really had this vision for Google to become this like ultimate AI mastermind, really big on the idea of AGI, artificial general intelligence, and just getting AI as big and powerful as possible. Elon was talking about some of, you know, some of his concerns around AI and where you might want to have trust and safety and regulations around AI. And in that whole conversation, I guess there came a point where Sergi Brin accused him of being speciest against AI.

2:18and Elon was kind of taken back by the fact of being called Speciest. He says apparently there's other people, so there's receipts that actually was said. So he goes to his good friends or investors, acquaintances, I don't know if they're his friends. Anyways, they put together this group, OpenAI, which was supposed to kind of act as a counterweight to this massive AI dominance that Google was developing. They got Sam Altman, who was previously someone that ran Y Combinator, in the Silicon Valley. And also Sam Altman had run a couple other successful companies in the past, been the CEO. And so they had him come together.

2:58They all invested quite a big sum of money. Elon put in$100 million himself at the beginning and they started this company. So I think this is really relevant and important because Elon has been a very big proponent of AI and AI safety long before this was such a big thing in the news every day and a tool that everyone is using. Apparently back in the Obama administration, he went and talked to Obama and senators on both sides of the aisle and, you know, asked them to make regulations around AI and something that was broadly laughed off at the time. So with that, he then began implementing AI into Tesla.

3:33Obviously Tesla's original kind of mission was to become just an electric car company. And as that started to develop and unfold, he then started integrating self-driving in it, which is largely built on AI, neural networks. And it was, you know, back then, I remember seeing an article in 2019 that was, you know, it said Tesla's deep learning at scale using billions of miles to train neural networks. It's like, it was, you know, this really crazy, incredible technology back in, you know, 2019, which doesn't seem that long ago, but Tesla was really getting into kind of this whole movement. And so at the time, it was kind of Tesla against Waymo.

4:15They didn't know who was going to be more successful. Waymo is, I believe, backed by Google. And so it's kind of interesting to kind of look at where the two companies are now. I'm actually, I live in Arizona, so Waymo has a, there's a lot of kind of lax self-driving car laws here in Arizona, I guess, or so I'm told. And so a lot of these self-driving, Uber, Waymo, a lot of these other companies have their cars. I see them around a lot, driving around my neighborhood and whatnot, and in all these like self-driving cars. And because of this, Phoenix is actually the first place that Waymo has now.

4:48I'm looking at their website. They've launched and you can actually call a Waymo car to come and pick you up. There's no one driving it. It's a self-driving taxi and it will take you where you're going. Only in Phoenix at the moment. And I believe one of the reasons for this is because we have a really consistent weather. There is, you know, sort of rainy monsoon season every once in a while, but traditionally Arizona has clear skies, it's pretty hot, the roads are, got a grid system for most of the cities, it's pretty straightforward, and so I think it was a good place for that. All that being said, looking at Waymo today, they have launched in Phoenix, they say next is San Francisco if you want to get on their wait list, and after that they might launch in LA, but that being said, they have a very small number, right, this was a company that was, you know, touted as perhaps the Tesla killer, it was going to partner with all the car companies, Everyone was going to use it.

5:37No one was going to, you know, Tesla's technology wasn't that impressive. And if you see a Waymo car today, I will also note it has massive sensors all over the car. It looks like a cyborg. And so people have debates over whether that's better. Tesla, on the other hand, was looking at it now. It looks like they have over 400 ,000 customers on their full self-driving, which is, you know, obviously a, some people call it misleading. It's not full self-driving yet. It can drive on the road. it can get off the highway, it can do a handful of different things without a lot of human intervention, but it's definitely not full self-driving.

6:13That being said, it is one of the, it is the most advanced AI car driving technology today. And with over 400 ,000 people using it, that is pretty impressive for this AI. And that being said, one really interesting thing I would also bring up that Tesla is currently doing. So up until this point, they were, they've been a really big proponent of neural nets and using that to help train their car. But that being said, when it comes to decision making and driving input, so that's like steering, accelerator, brakes, all that kind of stuff, it has to date, Tesla's essentially just relied on regular programming for those kinds of decisions.

6:52But recently they announced that Tesla won't, will actually be using AI for that part and pretty much everything that it will be doing. and integrating, they said, well, this is actually a tweet from Elon, I believe, said, arguably, V11.4 should be V12, as there are so many major improvements. V12 is reserved for when full self-driving is end-to-end AI, from images to steering brakes and acceleration. So, literally, at some point, Tesla full self-driving will be 100 % AI and neural network driven. Apparently, this is what they believe is the best way to achieve full self-driving in vehicles and it will be the best technology.

7:35So, you know, all of that to say Elon Musk is really integrated in the AI space. He's going up against companies like Google and some of their technology in full self-driving and cars and that sort of artificial intelligence. And they're making some really big progress there, right? I mean, people can debate whether LiDAR or Image, which is what Tesla is using is the best AI car technology, but a lot of really big steps there. So I think another reason why Elon is kind of talked a lot about, talked about a lot by different AI people is because he's really beyond just, you know, having companies that integrate AI and working with it, he's also very influential in the space.

8:18Like I said before, you know, he talked to Obama and a lot of senators, his connections there, really, he's one of the big spokespersons that are actually going and talking to politicians and regulators about this technology and some of the fears he has around it and trying to come up with solutions. Even just recently, I believe a few weeks ago, he went and spoke with our with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer about AI and about really making sure that America can stay ahead of China, for example, on that sort of technological advancement and making sure that AI is safe and there's safeguards set in place.

8:59So I believe that's another reason why he is kind of touted. Now, one reason that I think is just, it kind of just like creeps me out, to be honest, but is a really big advancement in AI that Elon is quite focused on and integrated in as well is Neuralink. So for those that don't know, and I'm sure a lot of people do, but Neuralink is essentially a computer chip that they are working on implanting directly into people's brains. And, you know, when I first heard of this, I was like, man, this is such a, like, it seems like an impossible technology, right? Like, how does your brain connect to a computer?

9:34That would seem impossible, right? This is a silicone chip that runs on electricity and your brain, well, I guess there are electrical brain waves, right? So then you kind of start to see the connections. But how essentially it works is that they run brain scans, they run a neural network to scan your brain, and they have worked out using a neural network, a way for this chip to communicate with your brain based off of different brain waves and signals that your brain emits. In any case, all of this sounds horribly dystopian and very, I would just say like, I don't know, it sounds like just gross to me.

10:04I don't want to chip in my brain. That being said, I guess the original launch and plan for this product is for paraplegics, people that have disabilities, people that are missing limbs, people that have different disabilities to be to have this so that they can communicate and do a lot of different things that were before impossible. And so, you know, putting it in that light, obviously, if there is a solution for those people and this is something they want, I definitely think that this could be something that is very helpful. Would I personally want a chip implanted in my brain? No. But if someone chopped my, if, you know, I lost my arm and I would like to be able to put a new arm on and be able to communicate it with my brain, yeah, I would actually consider it in that case.

10:49So I do understand where that's going. That being said, he gets a lot of criticism for this, and I think rightly so. This is definitely an area that you would want to have a lot of scrutiny. He recently tweeted, we are now confident that the Neuralink device is ready for humans, so timing is a function of working through the FDA approval process. To which Jordan Peterson replied, Elon, I hope you know what you are doing. And obviously, you know, a little bit of concern there. This was back in November. And he said, compared to AI, progress with Neuralink will be slow and easy to assess as there is large regulatory apparatus, approving medical devices, there's no regulatory oversight of AI, which is a major problem.

11:31I've been calling for AI safety regulation over for over a decade. So obviously, you know, even even with the AI integrated into Neuralink and that tool in particular, Elon is, you know, really bringing up the fact that the device isn't necessarily what's the scary part. The scary part is the regulatory oversight that is needed in AI. And the reason I bring this up is because I believe Neuralink and other devices that inevitably, if this is successful, will come after it will be integrating AI. Like, let's be honest, it's a matter of time if people are able to implant a chip in their brain and become smarter and more effective at whatever they do because of AI, then inevitably they are definitely going to do it and people that don't are going to be at a disadvantage.

12:15And I can imagine a horribly dystopian world where if you don't get the latest Neuralink update, you're going to have an IQ of half that of the next person and you won't be able to function at the same level and there'll be these disadvantages, yada yada, and maybe there'll be like financial or wealth disparities, richer people will get better ones. Actually, not maybe, definitely that will be a case. In any case, this sounds horribly dystopian and not like a world I would like to live in. So I think, you know, I would obviously urge the utmost caution with these devices and the direction and really thinking about where we want to go as a society with all that being said.

12:47So that is something that Elon is very actively involved in. The last thing I wanted to bring up as just some different areas that Elon Musk is involved in AI, why he is important in the space and pretty relevant, you'll hear me mention him on the show from time to time, is because he is now starting something called X .AI. So there's not a lot we know exactly about what X.ai is and everything it will be doing, but there is a list that Forbes put together that I thought was pretty interesting that gives you some hints and ideas at where the company is going. And I'll break down why these are important and relevant in a second.

13:23But the first thing is it's incorporated in Nevada in March. So this is pretty new. And this is the same place where Twitter's parent X Corp is registered. So obviously it would appear that there's going to be an overlap between x.ai and xCorp. So I would say what's interesting, Elon is listed as a sole director on the filing. And Jared Burchall is listed as the secretary. So he is also the CEO of Neuralink, which is very interesting. And he's, you know, he's served on the board of the boring company, Elon Musk's like tunneling company. And he's also helped with Elon Musk's family office and a bunch of different areas.

14:01They're obviously pretty integrated. The other thing we know about it is that Igor Bushkin is a Silicon Valley AI senior research engineer from Google's company DeepMind, and he has also been hired to head the efforts of this new corporation. So obviously Elon is hiring some people with really deep integrations into the AI space, a lot of talent. But Bushkin worked at OpenAI during the pandemic, and prior to that he was part of the DeepMind London team. So he also interned at the Reserved International Research Institute, the Revered International Research Institute, which is CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

14:41The other thing we know is that deep mind engineer Manuel Croas is another key player in this. He co-authored the 2021, the famous deep mind paper, which was Launchpad, a programming model for distributed machine learning research. search. A lot of people are speculating that Elon is planning on using Twitter data to help train X.ai's large language model. It is a massive amount of data on there with current events and a lot of really key people, a lot of important decision makers. And so it could be a very powerful tool for language learning. And it might help offset the fact that he bought it for $40 billion and it's now only worth$20 billion.

15:23So that would inevitably be a good way he may be looking to recoup some of his costs there. And this is also interesting because back in December, Elon tweeted that he learned OpenAI had access to Twitter's database for training, and he put that on pause, I'm assuming because he wanted to launch some sort of competitor. But at the time, he put that on pause and said that, you know, they weren't able to access it. But up until that point, they had it. So that is obviously a lot of data. Another interesting point is that Elon recently purchased roughly 10 ,000 GPUs, which are typically used for large language models.

15:59I mean, he purchased those for Twitter, which is not for Tesla, who has a lot of AI technology and training stuff. So in a recent Twitter spaces with BBC last week, where I believe more than 3 million people listened, Elon neither confirmed nor denied the report that he was going to be using those to start a company based on Twitter data. Instead, he said that Tesla and Twitter are buying GPUs like all other companies and gave a shout out to Tesla's Dojo supercomputer platform, which he said has a lot of potential. So he isn't really making any announcements with this, but still 10 ,000 GPUs, it is significant and you would, you know, I guess he doesn't really want to toot his own horn before he gets into it.

16:42Maybe they try to build something and it's not compatible or it's not comparable, I guess I should say, to ChatGPT and so he would be afraid of launching that. But in any case, I think one problem that Musk is going to face is just the massive amount of electricity and water that these models are using. I talked about it in a recent episode, but AI uses a ton of water. And right now he's got his companies based out of Texas and Nevada who do not have massive bodies of water. And so that is going to be an interesting area that he will be struggling with. So to fund X.ai, the company authorized 100 million shares for sale and is getting interest from SpaceX and Tesla investors.

17:27So the more powerful the AI models and the more expensive is obviously going to cost. I recently talked on a podcast about the fact that OpenAI estimated its 2022 losses to be around$544 million. dollars. So this is obviously a very expensive area that you can spend a lot of money on. So all that being said, it's going to be really interesting to see what is announced out of x.ai, what Elon Musk plans on doing with all of the data. I think it's important to note that Sam Altman, who is the CEO of open.ai, he actually used to be the CEO of Reddit, which is one of the massive, they took the entire site of Reddit and fed it into OpenAI.

18:12And now Reddit is saying, you know, hey, we're going to charge if anyone wants to use our data, OpenAI, if you want to use our data, you got to pay us for it. But I'm assuming because he was the CEO, he worked out a deal at the head of OpenAI to get that content for free. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens there. But inevitably, you know, having access to all of the content at Twitter, like Elon does is going to be a very valuable asset. Obviously something OpenAI had at one point does not have anymore. So it's gonna be interesting to see what Elon continues to do in the future, what role he plays in the trust and safety in AI in helping push forward regulation and help warning people about kind of some of the dystopian effects of AI in the future.

18:52This is something he's been talking about for over a decade. So it will be interesting to see what are some of the areas that he got right and hopefully some of the areas he can help push for progress forward in the right direction. So it's definitely gonna be an area we're watching out for. Again, a really big shout out to all the people on our Facebook group for bringing up this topic and having some really great insightful conversations around AI and some of the things that are happening out of some of these companies founded by Elon Musk. So thanks so much for listening to the podcast. Make sure to join our Facebook group, Get the weekly newsletter.

19:31There's a link in the description. And I will see you on the next podcast.