Elon Musk's Bold Predictions: Mars Colonization by 2026, AI Surpassing Human Capabilities by 2028

Introduction

In a conversation with XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis, Musk outlined his views on the emerging influence of AI and shared his timeline for SpaceX's first unmanned and manned missions to Mars, along with much more.

Elon watch: Skip this bit if you've been paying attention lately

The past couple of months have been quite eventful for the world's richest known individual. SpaceX achieved a historic milestone by successfully capturing the massive Super Heavy booster of its Starship with "Mechazilla" chopstick arms integrated into the launch tower. This innovation allows the rocket to return from orbit and land directly on top of its booster, facilitating rapid turnaround for subsequent launches. This advancement is poised to revolutionize the space industry once again, dramatically reduce launch costs per weight, and support Elon Musk’s long-term vision of establishing a sustainable human colony on Mars.

In comparison, Tesla’s launch of the Cybercab/Robovan was more of an entertaining showcase, but it did outline the company’s plans for fully autonomous robotaxis in detail. Meanwhile, Neuralink has installed its second brain implant in a patient named Alex, who is now using the chip to play video games and operate CAD software hands-free.

Additionally, X.AI has assembled the world's most powerful AI training supercomputer cluster, known as Colossus, by building the necessary infrastructure and connecting 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs in an impressive 122 days. This places X.AI in possession of more GPUs than Google AI, OpenAI, Meta AI, Microsoft, or even NVIDIA itself. Musk has stated that they will double their processing power in a few months by adding another 50,000 GPUs.

If his team employs the right strategies, Musk is well-positioned to propel X’s Grok AI language model ahead of OpenAI's GPT models, potentially making it the global leader in AI technology within the next one to two years.The past couple of months have been quite eventful for the world's richest known individual. SpaceX achieved a historic milestone by successfully capturing the massive Super Heavy booster of its Starship with "Mechazilla" chopstick arms integrated into the launch tower. This innovation allows the rocket to return from orbit and land directly on top of its booster, facilitating rapid turnaround for subsequent launches. This advancement is poised to revolutionize the space industry once again, dramatically reduce launch costs per weight, and support Elon Musk’s long-term vision of establishing a sustainable human colony on Mars.

Yesterday, Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis had a discussion.

Elon Musk is known for his busy schedule, but he took some time to join Peter Diamandis via video link for a discussion about the future of AI during a Future Investment Initiative Institute event at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh yesterday. You can watch the full 22-minute video here, or check out some key quotes from the discussion below, complete with timestamped links.

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/@FII_INSTITUTE; SPECIAL CONVERSATION: THE FUTURE OF AI took place at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh on October 29, 2024, during the 8th edition of the Future Investment Initiative. #FII8

On the pace of AI improvement

(1:38) “It can be challenging to put an exact number on the improvements we're seeing, but I feel quite certain that the advancement is happening at a remarkable pace—about tenfold each year. If this trend continues over the next four years, we could realistically expect a total enhancement of around 10,000 times compared to where we are today. In fact, if the current trajectory persists, we might even witness improvements that reach up to 100,000 times better. This accelerating rate of development highlights the extraordinary progress being made and the potential for even greater innovations in the near future.”

When AI will overtake the output of humanity

(2:07) "I think it'll be able to do anything that any human can do, possibly within the next year or two. How much longer than that does it take to be able to do what all humans can do combined? I think not long. Probably only, I don't know, three years from that point. So like 2029, 28, something like that."

On AI as an existential threat to humanity

(3:05) "It's most likely to be great. There's some chance, which could be 10 to 20%, that it goes bad. The chance is not zero that it goes bad, but overall one could say the cup is 80% full, maybe 90% ... I think AI is a significant existential threat and something we should be paying close attention to. It's probably the most significant near-term threat."

On global population collapse

(4:08) "The longer-term threat is global population collapse. Birth rates have been collapsing pretty much worldwide, and we're headed for a situation where, for example, based on current birth rates, South Korea would have about a third of its current population, Europe would have about half its current population – much less.

"And I should say, those numbers are if the birth rate were suddenly to return to 2.1 per woman, which is the stability point. If this effect continues, you would see many countries become 5% of their current size or less within three generations."

On the future of energy

(9:15) "There will be a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for digital intelligence, and also for the electrification of transport. Those two things are a big deal ... In the long term, almost all the energy that we get is going to be from the Sun ... One way to look at civilization is progress on the Kardashev scale ... It's not clear to me we're above 1% on the Kardashev scale one, which means you've harnessed all the power of a planet ...

"Kardashev scale two is where you've harvested all the power of your sun. The Sun is overwhelmingly the largest source of energy in the solar system, everything else amounts to maybe a trillionth ... So almost all energy long-term will be solar. It rounds up to 100%, that's how much of the energy in the future will be solar."

On the state of humanoid robotics by 2040

(13:48) "I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people ... I'm often optimistic on timing, although the press will report when I'm late, but not when I'm early – for example, our Shanghai factory, we thought it'd take about a year and a half, and we did it in 11 months. Our Giga Nevada factory took two years, but we did it in 18 months. The Colossus cluster ... So I've been early actually, many times ...

"But once you get out to 2040, that's a long time from now, going on 25 years, I think there'll be at least 10 billion humanoid robots. The price point will be, I think, quite low, probably $20-25,000 for a robot that could do anything ..."

In a future of abundance

(15:25) "Assuming we're on the good path of AI, I think we'll be in a future of abundance ... anyone will be able to have any goods and services they want. The actual marginal cost of goods and services will be extremely low in the future."

On the Super Heavy booster catch

(16:00) "Not bad for humans! ... No AI was involved in that whatsoever, I'm glad to say we did that entirely with human brains and without AI. I think in the future, the AI might look at that and say 'Not bad for a bunch of monkeys!'"

On when SpaceX will get to Mars

(16:33) "I think we'll be able to launch some Starships to Mars in two years. So the next Mars window is in about 26, 27 months ... We're at the beginning of a Mars transit window now and they occur every 26 months. So in just over two years, we'll be sending our first uncrewed Starships to Mars. And then if those work out, and we don't increment the crater count on Mars, we'll send humans two years after that."

"I feel more optimistic about it under a Trump White House than a non-Trump White House, because the biggest impediment to progress that we're experiencing is over-regulation ... It takes longer to get the permit to launch than to build a giant rocket ... America and a lot of countries are getting slow strangulation from over-regulation. Unless something is done to push back on that, it'll eventually become illegal to do almost any large project, and we won't be able to get to Mars."

On Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot production schedule

(20:59) "Optimus starts limited production next year in 2025, and then should be in volume production in 26, and then will grow to, I think, ultimately be the biggest product of any kind, ever ... I kind of agree with Ark Invest and Cathie Wood that autonomy – like, sort of robotic taxis – makes Tesla kind of like about a $5 trillion company. The Optimus robot, I think, makes Tesla a $25 trillion company ...

"It's not even clear what money means in that future ... It does become kinda post-capitalist ... Looking at the most likely bright side, we're headed for an age of abundance ... It won't be universal basic income, it'll be a case of universal high income, is the most likely outcome."

It's always hard to know how to treat Elon Musk's visions of the future, so you'll have to administer your preferred grain of salt to the statements above.

Musk is unquestionably the most fascinating figure of our time in the field of technology, controlling a dizzying array of companies, many of which are pushing boundaries and making astonishing progress in cutting-edge fields. Space travel, advanced AI, humanoid robotics, electric and autonomous transport, brain-computer interfaces, social media ... He may be the single best-placed human to tell us what the future will bring, because (ironically for the world's biggest proponent of self-driving vehicles) he might just have his hands on the steering wheel to a greater degree than anyone in history as humanity moves into a hyper-technological era.

He's also incredibly divisive, and unlike most billionaires, lives his life very much in public. His companies' achievements are thus near-impossible to separate from his increasingly right-wing "Dark Gothic MAGA" politics, his incendiary X feed, his frequently childish sense of humour, his flirtation with conspiracy theories, his ... complicated family and family history, his naked contempt for unions and regulators, his notorious temper, his well-known tendency to demand "hardcore" commitment and crazy hours from his employees, and any one of a thousand other things that have earned him 57th place on Ranker's current list of most-hated celebrities.

He's certainly leaving future historians no lack of material to work with.

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