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Tesla Dojo was going to alter the world. It was Tesla’s secret sauce to assist remedy Full Self Driving, and basic AI. Then we stopped listening to about it. It form of simply pale into the background. I figured, effectively, there’s a lot to speak about and a big laptop simply isn’t flashy sufficient and goes to do its job within the background.

Nevertheless, proper on the finish of the This autumn 2023 Tesla convention name for traders a few weeks in the past, a query was requested about Dojo, and the reply stunned me. “As a followup, your launch doesn’t point out Dojo, so if you happen to may simply present us an replace on the place Dojo stands, and at what level you count on Dojo to be a useful resource at bettering FSD, or do you suppose that you simply now have adequate provide of NVIDIA GPUs wanted for the coaching of the system?”

I anticipated some large flowery phrases there about Dojo and the way revolutionary it’s. As an alternative, we acquired this from Elon Musk: “I imply, the AI {hardware} query is — that could be a deep one. Um, so, we’re clearly hedging our bets right here with vital orders of NVIDIA GPUs — GPUs are the flawed phrase, there actually must be … there’s no graph—, you possibly can’t, like, produce graphics. It’s not a graphics processing unit — neural web processing unit or one thing like that. Um, yeah, GPU’s a humorous phrase — like vestigial. Um, so, um, and a whole lot of our progress in self-driving is coaching restricted. Um, one thing that’s essential with coaching — it’s very similar to a human: the extra effort you set into coaching, the much less effort you want in inference. So, identical to an individual — if you happen to prepare in a topic (you realize the form of traditional 10,000 hours), the much less psychological effort it takes to do one thing. In the event you keep in mind if you first began to drive, how a lot of your psychological capability it took to drive. You needed to be centered utterly on driving. And after you’ve been driving for a few years, it solely takes just a little little bit of your thoughts to drive. You’ll be able to take into consideration different issues and nonetheless drive safely.

“So, the extra coaching you do, there extra environment friendly it’s on the inference degree. So we do want a whole lot of coaching. Um, and um, and we’re pursuing the twin path of NVIDIA and Dojo. However I might — consider Dojo as … a protracted shot. Um, it’s a protracted shot price taking, as a result of the payoff is probably very excessive, however it’s not one thing that could be a excessive chance — it’s not like a positive factor, in any respect. It’s a higher-risk, high-payoff program. Um, Dojo is working, and it’s doing coaching jobs. So, and we’re scaling it up. And we now have plans for Dojo 1.5, Dojo 2, Dojo 3, and what not. So, you realize, I believe it’s acquired potential. [Elon Musk sighs at this point.] However, we will’t emphasize sufficient: excessive danger, excessive payoff. So, I believe it nonetheless is smart, given the — you realize, even when it’s a low chance of success, however a really excessive — anyway, I’m belaboring the topic! It’s a really fascinating program. It has the potential for one thing particular. There’s additionally our inference {hardware} within the automotive … [and he then went on to talk about that for a couple of minutes].”

Say what?!?!? This isn’t how Elon Musk was speaking about Dojo a pair years in the past! However much more than what was stated, how Elon Musk talked about this — seemingly resigned to lower than superb outcomes with this — was in all probability a fair greater deal. It was under no circumstances what I anticipated. It didn’t sound bullish. Have a pay attention and tell us what you suppose.