Takeaways from Elon Musks xAI all-hands meeting: Ancient aliens, corporate structure, space catapults
In the wake of xAI losing two of its co-founders and other prominent employees, Elon Musk held an all-hands meeting at his his AI company, which recently merged with SpaceX.
And in an unusual move, xAI posted the entire 45-minute meeting online.
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No time to watch or listen? We've got you. Here are the main takeaways:
xAI splits into teams
The most consequential news from the meeting: xAI is splitting into four different teams.
"Grok Main & Voice" will handle the Grok chatbot. "Coding" will maintain the apps's backend systems. "Imagine" is all about AI-generated video capabilities.
And then there's "Macrohard," which is a new Musk project seeking to "simulate" software companies with AI. Macrohard is a play on Microsoft's name, just in case you couldn't tell.
X updates and stats
There was also some news about Musk's social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, which was itself merged with xAI.
X product head Nikita Bier said that the company has 1 billion users, and brings in $1 billion in annual revenue from X Premium subscriptions. Users also spend 55 percent more time on the app than they did 6 months ago, Bier claimed, adding that January was the platform's best month ever for user engagement.
X plans to launch a standalone app for X Chat, the site's new private messaging system. X Money, the platform's cash-sending app, will also begin testing in the coming months.
Bier also stated that X does not have plans to display ads on Grok. OpenAI began rolling out ads for ChatGPT this month.
Musk's predictions — and aliens
Naturally, Elon Musk had plenty to say — and a few grand predictions regarding the combined SpaceX and xAI company.
Musk said he'd like Earth to utilize one million times more of the sun's energy than it currently does. In order to do that, Musk said, we need to move "the next step beyond Earth data centers" which are "Earth orbital data centers."
When SpaceX acquired xAI, Musk's reasoning was that it would help his plan to send AI data centers into outer space.
The next step beyond that, Musk said: AI satellite-building factories on the moon, and a sci-fi-esque system to launch those AI satellites into deep space. Essentially, Musk was talking about building a giant catapult on the moon.
The combined company would then build a civilization on the moon, then Mars (which is 20 years away, Musk now says, after having previously claimed we'd get there by 2025).
This may all culminate into humans meeting aliens or discovering ancient alien civilizations, Musk concluded.
"Maybe we’ll meet aliens. Maybe we’ll see some civilizations that lasted for millions of years. And we’ll find the remnants of ancient alien civilizations. But the only way we’re gonna do that is if we go out there and we explore. And this is a path to making it happen," Musk said.