During an exclusive investor event at J.P. Morgan headquarters, in a live conversation with Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk revealed what the true bottleneck for artificial intelligence advancement will be. The answer lies not in a lack of engineers or algorithm complexity. The absolute limit of our near future is the physical infrastructure for data transmission and extreme power generation.
The Data Transfer Abyss
Musk got straight to the point in explaining that a future dominated by autonomous agents and robots will require much more bandwidth than we currently use. To put this in perspective, he compared our biological limitations with the capabilities of machines.
The maximum peak information transfer rate of a human being is just a few hundred bits per second. On the other hand, a computer's bandwidth can easily reach a trillion bits per second. Artificial intelligence and robotics' appetite for data transfer will simply be gigantic.
The End of Terrestrial Power Plants
To process this absurd amount of data, the world will need an equally colossal amount of electricity. The big problem is that it has become increasingly difficult to build new power plants on our planet. As the SpaceX founder himself pointed out during the interview, very few people are willing to accept a power plant being built in their backyards.
If the United States decided to double its electricity use today, which averages approximately five hundred gigawatts, the country would need to build twice the existing number of power plants. This idea would face extreme resistance from local communities and derail technological advancement at the necessary speed.
The Absurd Scale of Solar Power
The definitive solution to sustain this advancement lies beyond Earth. Musk explained to investors that if we take this infrastructure to space, we can go far beyond any electrical generation capacity our planet could support.
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