At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Elon Musk delivered a bold prediction during a fireside chat with BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink: artificial intelligence could become smarter than any human alive by the end of this year.
"We might have AI smarter than any human by the end of this year, I would say no later than next year," Musk stated. He identified electrical power as the primary bottleneck for AI advancement, noting that chip production is growing faster than power generation capacity. "Very soon, we'll be producing more chips than we can power," he warned.
Other tech leaders at Davos shared mixed views. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggested AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs, while DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis remained optimistic, predicting "new, more meaningful jobs being created." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that energy infrastructure costs will determine winners in the AI race.