Musk: The number of robots will exceed humans, and fully automatic driving will be achieved this year!

**Source:**Wall Street News

On July 6, 2023, the 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC for short) kicked off in Shanghai.

At the opening ceremony, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk "appeared" in video and delivered a speech.

Musk said that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence is having a very profound effect and impact on human civilization. With the explosive growth of digital computing power, the ratio of machine computing power to biological computing power is constantly expanding, which means , The computing power gap between machines and creatures is further widening. After a period of time, the proportion of artificial intelligence will become lower and lower. This will be a fundamental and profound change.

He believes that the number of robots in the future will exceed the number of humans and replace humans to complete many tasks. But since robots will be far more productive than humans, caution is needed about this profound change.

Musk predicts that with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, fully autonomous driving will be realized around the end of this year, and Tesla is willing to share autonomous driving technology with automakers:

I have made many similar predictions before, and I admit that the previous predictions were not completely accurate, but this time, I think the prediction is relatively close.

Musk believes that the process of autonomous driving that makes driving tedious for people will disappear completely, and the usage rate of cars will also greatly increase: under normal circumstances, the use time of family cars is about 10 to 20 hours a week, and most Part of the time is parked in the parking lot. But for fully autonomous vehicles, they might be used 50 to 60 hours a week, for a total of 168 hours a week. As a result, the adoption rate of fully autonomous vehicles will increase five times faster than that of non-autonomous vehicles.

However, compared with the "limited artificial intelligence technology" of autonomous driving, Musk believes that AGI is more difficult to define, and some regulatory measures are needed to supervise it to ensure that the development of this deep artificial intelligence will not cause negative effects on humans. Impact.

Musk also expressed his belief that China will have strong artificial intelligence capabilities:

Once China has made up its mind to do something, it will be able to do it well. This is the case in every industry, including artificial intelligence.

The following is the Chinese transcript of the full text of Musk’s speech:

I think artificial intelligence will play an important role in the evolution of human beings in the future and have a profound impact on civilization.

We have witnessed an explosion in digital computing power. A key metric is the ratio of the computing power of a digital computer to that of a biological brain. This means that the ratio of computing power between humans and machines is increasing, thus widening the computing power gap between machines and creatures.

Over time, artificial intelligence will gradually decrease as a proportion of overall intelligence, which will be a fundamentally profound change relative to machine intelligence. Although its impact is difficult to fully understand now, this may be one of the most profound periods in human history. Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot is still in early development, but we'll see more of it in the future.

Therefore, we need to consider another question of ratio, namely, what is the ratio of robots to humans?

At present, this ratio will exceed 1:1, which means that the number of robots in the world will exceed the number of humans. There seems to be a growing trend for robots to far exceed the computing power of humans. This will have positive effects, but also some negative effects.

The positive is that we will enter an era where there are no shortages and almost anything you want is instantly available. Since there will be a large number of robots in the future world, their production efficiency will far exceed that of humans, which is a very profound change. Therefore, we need to be careful to ensure that the end result is beneficial to humans.

Trends in humanoid robotics from companies like Tesla suggest that we will see more and more robots that are intelligent enough to perform repetitive, tedious and dangerous tasks that humans are unwilling to do. this is our target. Optimus humanoid robots are aimed at taking on jobs that are out of favor with humans, so they could be very useful. However, I don't want to be overconfident or overly optimistic that Optimus' role in this must be very important. But Tesla is very interested in self-driving technology and is willing to share and license it with other automakers.

We think it's a very valuable technology.

I think the process of making driving tedious for people will disappear completely and the use of cars will increase significantly. Typically, a family car is used between 10 and 20 hours per week, most of which is parked in the parking lot. But for fully autonomous vehicles, they might be used 50 to 60 hours a week, for a total of 168 hours a week. As a result, the adoption rate of fully autonomous vehicles will increase five times faster than that of non-autonomous vehicles. Tesla wants to be able to provide this technology, which is why we are willing to license Full Self-Driving technology to other automakers.

So where is our current state of autonomous driving?

Tesla thinks we are very close to fully autonomous driving with no human intervention. We've tested it on U.S. roads, and human intervention is rarely needed now. So when I'm driving a Tesla with the latest FSD beta technology system, basically going from point A to point B doesn't require a lot of human control, this is just speculation, but I think Achieving fully autonomous driving, or L4 to L5 fully autonomous driving, may be possible later this year.

Some of the predictions I've made in the past have been wrong, but I think the ones I make now are closer to reality than ever before. So we need to be very cautious about the need for this kind of deep and comprehensive artificial intelligence, especially for fully self-driving cars. For example, in our case, fully autonomous driving with limited artificial intelligence is challenging. But we believe that this problem can be solved soon, I have predicted.

Probably later this year, fully autonomous driving is possible, although not 100% guaranteed, but the trend is towards fully autonomous driving later this year.

However, this limited artificial intelligence is quite different from artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is difficult to define.

AGI is a type of intelligence that surpasses humans in any field. Tesla is not doing research in this area, other companies are working on AGI. But I think it's an important question that we need to think about, very important right now.

We need some regulation to oversee it to ensure the development of this deep AI. When I say deep artificial intelligence, I mean the intelligence approaching tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of high-performance computers, and sometimes even millions of high-performance computers. State-of-the-art computers collaborate through data centers to form a super-intelligent combination.

Such a superintelligence has capabilities far greater than humans. It's a dedication and a worry. It may lead to a positive future, but there is also a certain probability of a negative future. We want to do our best to ensure that these negative futures don't happen, but positive ones.

China is home to many bright and intelligent people, and I have always had a deep admiration for the wisdom and drive of the Chinese people. Once China is determined to do something, they will be able to do it very well, no matter in various economic fields or industries. Of course, the artificial intelligence industry is no exception. Therefore, I believe China will have a strong capability in artificial intelligence, this is my prediction.

Thank you very much for inviting me to participate in today's virtual event and express my views. I hope you find these points meaningful. Thanks again to all my friends in Shanghai, and to Secretary Chen. I look forward to being able to attend in person next time.