The billionaire businessman and CEO of the spacecraft manufacturer attended the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday (06.05.24), where he was asked if Artificial Intelligence "can accelerate your efforts in space?"
To which he replied: "I mean, oddly enough, one of the areas where there's almost no AI used is space exploration.
"So SpaceX uses basically no AI, Starlink does not use AI. I'm not against using it. We haven't seen a use for it."
The Tesla and xAI boss insists there is a "long way to go" before AI is capable of answering complex questions.
He added: "With any given variant of or improvements in AI, I mean, I'll ask it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry — and so far, the AI has been terrible at all those questions.
"So, there's still a long way to go."
Meanwhile, Meta and OpenAI recently teased new AI models that will be skilled at "reasoning and planning".
Mark Zuckerberg's firm - the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp - teased Llama 3 is due to start rolling out shortly,
Joelle Pineau, vice-president of AI research at Meta, said: “We are hard at work in figuring out how to get these models not just to talk, but actually to reason, to plan . . . to have memory."
OpenAI - which is in receipt of a billion dollar investment from Microsoft - has also teased GPT-5 is on the way.
OpenAI’s chief operating officer Brad Lightcap told the Financial Times: “We’re going to start to see AI that can take on more complex tasks in a more sophisticated way.
“I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface on the ability that these models have to reason.”
These are all important components for creating AI with human capabilities.
However, Musk previously raised concerns that “out of control” artificial intelligence advances could “pose profound risks to society and humanity."
He has since predicted that superhuman AI will outsmart us all by next year.
Musk had previously suggested super intelligent robots would emerge in 2029, but since warned it could be as soon as 2025.
During a live-streamed interview on his X platform, he said: “My guess is that we’ll have AI that is smarter than any one human probably around the end of next year.
“Last year it was chip-constrained.
“People could not get enough Nvidia chips. This year it’s transitioning to a voltage transformer supply. In a year or two, it’s just electricity supply.”
