Elon Musk is a very successful businessman and is widely known for his achievements in founding companies that develop futuristic and sustainable inventions such as Tesla, Starlink and The Boring Company. As for this year’s World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, he was invited as one of the most reputable speakers. He gave his opinions on artificial intelligence and connected vehicles boosted by digital technologies. However due to the pandemic, he attended the summit virtually. He was asked a few questions regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and the developments about his company, Tesla.
He gave his opinion on AI as he said that AI is probably pushing human to go towards digital civilization. He said that human will most likely be having a symbiotic or cooperative relationship with AI. The widespread use of humanoid robots has given impact towards physical work. AI has helped in covering up works that are dangerous, repetitive and boring.
He was asked on future trends of Tesla and the impact of it. He said that his company (Tesla) doesn’t only make electric cars but also manufacture completely self-driving vehicles together with practical and vision-based artificial intelligence. This includes the development of chip on both interference level and training level. He emphasizes that Tesla believes that autonomous driving can be achieve wholly by vision neural nets as humans are the beings that run a biological vision neural net in order to drive. Thus, it makes sense that computers can drive using a silicon camera neural net. Tesla is considered to be the biggest robotics company as the cars that they produce are similar to semi-sentient robots on wheels. He said that the economy is basically made based on labor and will have significant impact as capital equipment enters the labor market.
He also gave his perspective on data security intelligence and connected vehicles (ICV). He said that the core of accomplishment of intelligent and connected vehicles is the data security.
This is not limited to an individual’s interest but the society as a whole. It is a relief for the electric car company to know that some laws and regulations have been let know in strengthening data management. He said that Tesla has set up a data center in China in limiting all the developed data from their business in China and this includes production, sales, service and also charging. All private identifiable information is strongly secured in China without being transferred overseas. However, rare cases might happen such as arrangement of orders for spare parts. This case will allow the data to be transferred internationally.
He believes that data protection needs to have “a mutual effort for all industry players” and Tesla are working to find the best resolution for data security. In addition to that, he observed China on being vigorously involved in implementing digital technologies regardless of industry that makes China as the world leader of digitalization. He said that Tesla will keep on investing in research and development in China and hope to share on “developing digitized future of shared benefits, responsibilities, and governance.”