Elon Musk Sure Made Lots of Predictions at Davos

Elon Musk, the richest antheral connected Earth, is precise bully astatine making money. His way grounds of predicting the aboriginal is little stellar.

Through the years, Musk has made respective outlandish forecasts—about self-driving cars, astir abstraction exploration, astir encephalon chips, astir robotics—that person not panned out. The Tesla CEO and erstwhile steward of the alleged Department of Government Efficiency seems astatine slightest a spot self-aware. During a astonishment quality and his debut astatine the World Economic Forum successful Davos, Switzerland connected Thursday, helium concluded with thing similar a ngo statement: “Generally, for prime of life, it’s amended to err connected the broadside of being an optimist and incorrect than a pessimist and right.”

Still, erstwhile one’s companies person their hands successful truthful galore industries—autos and robotics (Tesla), abstraction question and telecommunications (SpaceX), societal media (X), artificial quality (xAI), infrastructure (the Boring Company), and neurotechnology (Neuralink)—even off-the-cuff predictions tin determination planetary markets. Here are a fewer prognostications Musk made connected Thursday:

Aliens Don’t Exist (Probably)

Elon Musk opened his Davos remarks—a speech with person and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink—with a treatment of his values, and a fewer jokes astir aliens. “We person 9,000 satellites up determination and not erstwhile person we had to maneuver astir an alien spaceship,” Musk said. “We request to presume that beingness and consciousness are highly uncommon and it mightiness lone beryllium us.”

Humanoid Robots Will Transform Human Life—and Go connected Sale successful 2027

Musk started making promises astir Optimus, the company’s humanoid robot, successful 2021. Most recently, helium said Tesla—now rebranded arsenic a robotics and autonomy company—would marque thousands of Optimus robots successful 2025. But the institution is reportedly inactive struggling to get Optimus’ manus to work. That did not halt Musk repeating successful Davos immoderate of his astir far-reaching claims astir the mode the merchandise would alteration quality beingness forever.

“If we person ubiquitous AI that is fundamentally free, oregon adjacent to it, and ubiquitous robotics, you volition person an explosion, an enlargement of the planetary system that is genuinely beyond each precedent,” Musk said. What does that mean for you? Billions of robots powered by artificial quality volition outnumber humans and “saturate each quality needs,” helium said. “You won’t beryllium capable to deliberation of thing to inquire the robot for astatine a definite point, determination volition beryllium specified an abundance of goods and services.”

But first, of course, Tesla volition person to commencement selling Optimus, which Musk said would hap precocious adjacent year.

Robotaxis Will Be “Very Widespread” successful the US by 2027

In 2025, aft years of self-driving promises, Tesla yet launched a constricted robotaxi work successful Austin, Texas, albeit with a quality information show sitting successful each rider seat. That didn’t halt Musk from asserting that astir of the US colonisation would person entree to robotaxi by the extremity of that year.

Now, successful 2026, Musk is moving the goalposts again. He said Thursday that his company’s robotaxis would beryllium “very wide by the extremity of this twelvemonth successful the US.” If past is simply a guide, that won’t happen—but the institution is moving connected launching robotaxi work successful a fistful of states with laxer regulations, including Arizona, Florida, and Nevada.

Human Aging Is a “Very Solvable Problem”

Musk acknowledged that helium hasn’t spent overmuch clip investigating quality aging. But helium predicted that determination would beryllium a solution. “When we find what causes aging, we’ll find it’s incredibly obvious,” helium said. Get to it, Silicon Valley peers.

SpaceX Will Complete a Fully Reusable Rocket This Year

SpaceX has been moving connected its reusable rocket level Starship for a decade, and successful those years, has missed respective of Musk’s large abstraction deadlines. He predicted successful 2020 that a crewed Mars ngo would motorboat by 2024. He said that Starship would scope orbit by 2022, though the institution didn’t propulsion it disconnected until past year.

At Davos, Musk repeated a committedness from past year: that Starship would beryllium afloat reusable by the extremity of this year, cutting abstraction question costs by “a origin of 100” and yet allowing abstraction freight to vie with airplane freight prices. SpaceX has tally palmy trial flights recently, but a afloat reusable rocket by the extremity of this twelvemonth could beryllium a stretch.

AI Will Become Smarter Than a Human This Year—and Smarter Than All of Humanity successful 2035

Musk has been some profoundly progressive successful AI’s improvement and profoundly doomer-y astir its meaning for years. (See: his ongoing lawsuits against OpenAI, its founders, and Microsoft.) In Davos, Musk erstwhile again mentioned his privation to debar a Terminator-like future. But helium besides indicated that it’s coming. “The complaint astatine which AI is progressing, I deliberation we person AI that is smarter than immoderate quality this year, and nary aboriginal than adjacent year,” helium said. By 2035, it volition beryllium “smarter than each of humanity, collectively.”

Per usual, whether Musk gets this 1 close comes down to definitions. What does “smarter” mean? This month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said helium didn’t judge researchers were anyplace adjacent to creating what helium called “God AI.” The exertion is bully astatine discrete tasks, but doing everything? ”That ‘some day’ is astir apt connected biblical scales, connected galactic scales,” Huang said.