Elon Musk believes human knowledge has been “exhausted” for AI training purposes, the Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX founder has revealed.
During a livestream on his social media platform X with Stagwell chair Mark Penn, Musk said all available human-generated data, including books, articles, and videos, was used during 2024.
“The cumulative sum of human knowledge has been exhausted in AI training. That happened basically last year,” he said.
Musk's comments reflect a growing consensus among AI experts, including former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who suggested that the AI industry has reached "peak data."
He suggested that technology firms should turn to synthetic data, which is information generated by AI systems themselves. Musk explained that this approach allows AI to create its own training material, effectively enabling a self-learning process.
“The only way to then supplement that is with synthetic data, where … it will sort of write an essay or come up with a thesis and then will grade itself,” Musk said.
He cited AI models’ habit of generating “hallucinations,” referring to inaccurate or nonsensical content, as a risk for the synthetic data process.