Indeed, Musk suggested that synthetic data — data generated by AI models themselves — is the path forward. “The only way to supplement [real-world data] is with synthetic data, where the AI creates [training data],” he said. “With synthetic data … [AI] will sort of grade itself and go through this process of self-learning.”

Once friends and business partners, and now rivals, Elon Musk and Sam Altman are dueling it out in a California federal courtroom. Their personal animus may impact the course of generative AI model development,

Elon Musk has been testing the limits of his political influence ever since Trump was elected, but he may stop short of using the full force of the White House.

Elon Musk, owner of AI firm xAI, has agreed with other AI experts that the pool of real-world data to train AI models is almost empty. Speaking during a live-streamed discussion with Stagwell Chairman Mark Penn, Musk said, "We've now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge... in AI training. That happened basically last year."

Geoffrey Hinton is known for his work developing artificial neural networks, the foundation for AI, and won the 2024 Nobel Prize in physics in October.

The youth advocacy group Encode is supporting Musk's lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction that would stop OpenAI from becoming fully for-profit.

“We’ve now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge …. in AI training,” Musk said during a live-streamed conversation with Stagwell chairman Mark Penn streamed on X late Wednesday. “That happened basically last year.”

The OpenAI CEO recently published a blog post reflecting on AI progress, as well as his brief ouster from the company.

OpenAI said it needs “more capital than we’d imagined” as the Sam Altman-led artificial intelligence pioneer outlined plans for revamping into a for-profit company.

For an increasingly large swath of technology and politics, Elon Musk is the uber-powerful elephant in the room. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a rare person with the tech-industry clout to speak on Musk’s antics — and thwart his aims.