Elon Musk said during the xAI conference that Tesla is developing its own processor that won’t be called a GPU or have a typical naming scheme like 100s or H100s. Musk also confirmed that Tesla is aggressively pursuing the development of the Dojo supercomputer. Musk hopes that Dojo will eventually be able to handle larger models, although its current focus is on computer vision and machine learning training for artificial intelligence.
The Dojo supercomputer, which Musk originally planned to unveil in 2020, will be one of the fastest machines in the world. Its main purpose is to process massive amounts of visual data, which will accelerate the development of Tesla’s Autopilot and full self-driving systems. Tesla’s processing power is expected to reach world-class levels by January 2024 and an astonishing 100 exaflops by October 2024 with the production deployment of Dojo. Tesla’s artificial intelligence models will benefit greatly from this increased processing power during model training.
Dojo will also be essential in supporting Tesla’s Optimus intelligent robot. Unveiled earlier this year, Optimus is a humanoid robot designed to perform tasks that are tedious, dangerous, or monotonous.
Elon Musk’s concerns about artificial intelligence have long been known to the general public. He has written an open letter calling for a halt to the development of AI and has frequently voiced his concerns about the potential risks of the technology. These efforts have sparked controversy, including clashes with OpenAI and threats of legal action against Microsoft.
However, it has been revealed that Musk has been actively recruiting AI specialists since February this year and is planning to open a new AI research and development facility. The lab’s primary goal is reportedly to outperform models such as ChatGPT.
In addition, records from the US state of Nevada show that Musk founded X.AI on 9 March. The team, led by Musk, is made up of 11 people from prestigious companies such as DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto. The crew comprises mainly young people from places such as Silicon Valley, Canada, the UK, and other countries.
