In one in every of my favourite motion pictures of all time, The Matrix, people change into the facility supply that retains machines alive.
Elon Musk will need to have watched that film just lately, as a result of he simply pitched an analogous thought. Besides he desires idle machines to energy the way forward for intelligence, not the opposite approach round.
On Tesla’s current third-quarter earnings name, Musk floated this wild thought:
Really, one of many issues I believed, if we’ve received all these automobiles that possibly are bored, whereas they’re kind of, if they’re bored, we might even have a large distributed inference fleet and say, in the event that they’re not actively driving, let’s simply have a large distributed inference fleet.
Translation: each idle Tesla might quickly act as a node in an enormous AI community. Tens of tens of millions of parked automobiles, considering collectively.
However how would Elon’s cell supercomputer work?
That’s the place issues get actually attention-grabbing…
A Fleet That Thinks
Estimates differ, however as of 2024, there have been round 5 million Teslas on the highway worldwide.
Elon Musk has a lot greater plans, predicting the fleet may ultimately complete 100 million automobiles.
Right here’s what he stated throughout Tesla’s current earnings name:
In some unspecified time in the future, should you’ve received tens of tens of millions of automobiles within the fleet, or possibly in some unspecified time in the future 100 million automobiles within the fleet, and let’s say they’d at that time, I don’t know, a kilowatt of inference functionality, of high-performance inference functionality, that’s 100 gigawatts of inference distributed with energy and cooling taken, with cooling and energy conversion taken care of. That looks like a fairly important asset.
In different phrases, 100 million Teslas, every able to about one kilowatt of high-performance inference.
That works out to roughly 100 gigawatts of compute energy.
To place that in perspective, 100 gigawatts is near the mixed output of 100 nuclear reactors or sufficient electrical energy to energy 75 million U.S. houses.
A single hyperscale knowledge heart from Amazon Internet Companies or Google Cloud can draw 50 to 100 megawatts of energy. You’d want round 1,000 of these to match Musk’s theoretical 100-gigawatt community.
And all that potential computing energy would already be constructed, paid for and sitting in driveways.
Picture: Tesla
Tesla’s full-self-driving pc — often known as {Hardware} 4 — is designed to method the form of efficiency seen in high-end knowledge heart chips.
And a next-generation system referred to as AI5 is in growth that would ship a number of instances extra processing energy, giving each Tesla the form of onboard compute as soon as reserved for knowledge facilities.
What’s extra, every automotive already accommodates a high-performance processor and energy system able to working complicated AI duties. Every one already has a built-in thermal-management system that retains chips cool and batteries balanced. And each car is related to Tesla’s cloud by way of the identical over-the-air replace community that pushes new software program and maps.
The distinction is, not like a server rack, these programs spend most of their time doing nothing. As a result of the typical automotive sits parked 95% of the day.
So Musk’s pitch is straightforward. Let’s put these idle processors to work.
When you might borrow just a little little bit of power and compute from each parked Tesla, you would type a world computing grid that might make right this moment’s cloud networks look far too centralized and inefficient by comparability.
Have to run an image-recognition mannequin, simulate an autonomous-driving situation or course of video knowledge?
Tesla might parcel out these jobs throughout tens of millions of automobiles in a single day.
This may give Tesla a possible moat that no different automaker — or cloud firm — might simply match.
In spite of everything, GM and Ford don’t have proprietary chips just like the AI5 of their automobiles. And Amazon doesn’t have 5 million related automobiles plugged into its cloud.
It could additionally assist shift AI from centralized supercomputers to distributed inference. That’s the identical form of edge computing mannequin that powers smartphones, drones and industrial robots right this moment.
As a result of on this situation, the community wouldn’t must exist in a single central place.
It could dwell wherever a Tesla is parked.
Right here’s My Take
If Musk can really execute on this wild thought, Tesla’s fleet might rival the most important AI compute clusters on Earth.
However there are hurdles to unravel earlier than it might change into actuality.
Working inference jobs on car batteries might shorten their lifespan in the event that they aren’t managed rigorously.
Some homeowners may refuse to permit their automotive for use for Tesla’s compute work, even when they’re compensated. And data-privacy legal guidelines in Europe and California would require consent and transparency.
However Tesla already has expertise orchestrating huge distributed programs. Each time it updates Autopilot or trains new imaginative and prescient fashions, it collects and processes video knowledge from tens of millions of automobiles worldwide.
The distinction right here is that Musk would need the Tesla fleet not simply to coach AI, however to run it.
On this future, Tesla’s automobiles would cease simply being automobiles and begin performing as cell computing belongings. House owners may choose in by way of software program, permitting their automobiles to hire out compute cycles whereas parked, which might earn them credit or money in return.
For Tesla, it might be a wholly new income stream layered on prime of the present fleet. And like Musk’s robotaxi enterprise, it might scale mechanically.
As a result of each new automotive bought would develop the community’s computing energy.
It’s a radical thought. And it might symbolize a radical shift for the corporate. If Tesla can pull it off, Musk might find yourself working the world’s strongest, most distributed AI community…
With out ever constructing a knowledge heart.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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