Elon Musk says we're in the "intelligence big bang" — after warning that a power crunch could kill the AI revolution this year

As generative AI scales greater heights and becomes more advanced, the technology seems to increase the chances for scientific breakthroughs, with executives like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claiming that superintelligence will trigger a 10x surge in scientific AI breakthroughs, making a year as revolutionary as a decade.

However, there are critical concerns about the threat the technology poses to humanity. According to AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy, there's a 99.999999% probability AI will end humanity. He claimed that the only way around this is not to develop the technology in the first place.

Even Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis says we're on the verge of achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence), but society isn't ready for everything that it entails. The executive added that the prospects keep him up at night.

Interestingly, Elon Musk, who's particularly vocal about all things AI, recently shared a different account during xAI's Grok 4 Live Demo event. The billionaire claimed that we're at the beginning of an immense explosion of intelligence. "The intelligence Big Bang," Musk added (via vitrupo on x).

According to Elon Musk:

"Ultimately, the thing that will make the biggest difference is being able to interact with the real world via humanoid robots. So we combine Grok with Optimus, and it can actually interact with the real world and figure out if it is a formulate hypothesis and then confirm if that it is true or not."

The executive claims that we're currently in the most interesting time in history to be alive. However, he insists that key players must ensure that we have "good" AI, reiterating the importance of safety as the technology continues to advance. He added that it's paramount for AI to be maximally truth-seeking.

For context, Musk painted a picture of a super genius child, who will ultimately outsmart you, but you can still instill the "right" values and encourage them to be truthful and honourable.

It is increasingly becoming apparent that there's a dire need for regulation and elaborate measures to prevent these sophisticated AI systems from spiralling out of control and potentially causing harm to humanity.

Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims that these threats won't be experienced during the AGI moment. The executive predicts that we could hit the coveted benchmark within the next 5 years, but it will simply whoosh away with surprisingly little societal impact.

While Musk admits that he has never seen anything advance as fast as AI has, he believes that the technology has yet to realize its full potential, citing insufficient electricity to power its sophisticated advances. He warned that there might not be enough power by 2030 to support the technology.

In 2023, a study revealed that Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT could consume enough to power a small country for a year by 2027. And in that context, OpenAI's GPT-3 model consumes four times more water than previously thought, while GPT-4 consumes up to 3 water bottles to generate a mere 100 words.

It'll be interesting to see if the firms chasing down the AI hype will be able to come up with a solution for the technology's exorbitant demand for electricity amid safety and privacy concerns in this "big bang".