Elon Musk warns that the world is running out of data to train artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk expresses his concern about having reached the limit of available human knowledge for training artificial intelligences. As a possible solution, he suggests that AI could invent new information.
Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk has expressed his concern about the increasing difficulty of training artificial intelligence models solely with human-generated data. According to Musk, it seems there is no longer enough real-world data to support the training of AI, including his chatbot Grok AI. During a live interview on X, Musk asserted that "we have practically exhausted the cumulative sum of human knowledge... in training artificial intelligence," a situation he claims occurred last year.
These statements align with those of Ilya Sutskever, a former researcher at OpenAI, who announced last December that the AI industry had reached what he called the "data peak." To address this challenge, Musk proposes the use of synthetic data, a trend already being adopted by companies like Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. "The only way to complement [real-world data] is with synthetic data, where AI generates [training data]," Musk explained. He added that with this data, AI could self-assess and engage in a self-learning process.
Although the use of synthetic data could offer significant cost savings, some studies warn about the risk of over-reliance on it, which could result in model collapse, leading to less creative and more biased responses over time due to repetitive training with recursively generated data.
Despite the scarcity of human-derived data, X has launched its Grok AI feature as a standalone application for iOS. This chatbot and image generator, which was originally available only to subscribers of X's premium accounts for $8 a month, is now accessible for free to all users.
In a recent event, Musk also unveiled a prototype of a robo-taxi called "Cybercab," which was revealed at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California. This electric vehicle features a futuristic design, lacks a steering wheel and pedals, and charges inductively.
