Elon Musk recently explained that AI systems could actually be sent to space. In fact, he actually also mentioned that this isn’t a far-fetched thought because it can happen within the next 30 months itself. The tech mogul has never been shy about making big predictions, and his latest claim belongs right there. In fact, this time, his beliefs about the future of technology and exploration seem to have actually pushed artificial intelligence beyond the bounds of Earth itself.
Elon Musk talks about AI going to space
The Tesla CEO recently sat down for an elaborate interview with Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe co-founder John Collison.
During this episode of the the Dwarkesh Podcast, Elon Musk covered everything about his business and the future of technology. The topics he covered included orbital AI data centers and humanoid robots, xAI’s future, and his experiences running SpaceX.
Furthermore, Musk made a statement about Artificial Intelligence, which has added another page to his long list of forward-looking bets. Discussing this in detail, he explained, “Mark my words, in 36 months, probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be in space.”
Explaining how scaling power for AI systems is “harder to scale on the ground than it is to scale in space,” Musk stated, “You’re also going to get about five times the effectiveness of solar panels in space versus the ground, and you don’t need batteries.” This is because space doesn’t “have a day-night cycle, seasonality, clouds, or an atmosphere. The atmosphere alone results in about a 30% loss of energy.”
Moreover, the 54-year-old entrepreneur shared how building AI systems in space is far more cost-effective. “So any given solar panel can do about five times more power in space than on the ground. You also avoid the cost of having batteries to carry you through the night. It’s actually much cheaper to do in space.”
Elon Musk further shared that hardware failures and servicing won’t be issues, as if there are recent Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and once they are past the initial debug cycle, they can be “quite reliable.”
Notably, this happened right after SpaceX and xAI officially merged. In an official statement, SpaceX shared, “global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions.” Instead, “in the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.”
