What Is Going On With Tesla’s Dojo?

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Tesla Dojo was going to alter the world. It was Tesla’s secret sauce to assist clear up Full Self Driving, and normal AI. Then we stopped listening to about it. It form of simply light into the background. I figured, nicely, there’s a lot to speak about and a huge pc simply isn’t flashy sufficient and goes to do its job within the background.

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

I anticipated some massive flowery phrases there about Dojo and the way revolutionary it’s. As a substitute, we received 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 improper phrase, there actually must be … there’s no graph—, you possibly can’t, like, produce graphics. It’s not a graphics processing unit — neural internet processing unit or one thing like that. Um, yeah, GPU’s a humorous phrase — like vestigial. Um, so, um, and lots of our progress in self-driving is coaching restricted. Um, one thing that’s vital with coaching — it’s very like a human: the extra effort you place into coaching, the much less effort you want in inference. So, identical to an individual — in the event you prepare in a topic (you recognize the form of traditional 10,000 hours), the much less psychological effort it takes to do one thing. For those who 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 a bit little bit of your thoughts to drive. You may take into consideration different issues and nonetheless drive safely.

“So, the extra coaching you do, there extra environment friendly it’s on the inference stage. So we do want lots of coaching. Um, and um, and we’re pursuing the twin path of NVIDIA and Dojo. However I’d — consider Dojo as … an extended shot. Um, it’s an extended shot price taking, as a result of the payoff is doubtlessly very excessive, but it surely’s not one thing that could be a excessive chance — it’s not like a certain 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’ve plans for Dojo 1.5, Dojo 2, Dojo 3, and what not. So, you recognize, I feel it’s received potential. [Elon Musk sighs at this point.] However, we will’t emphasize sufficient: excessive threat, excessive payoff. So, I feel it nonetheless is smart, given the — you recognize, even when it’s a low chance of success, however a really excessive — anyway, I’m belaboring the topic! It’s a really attention-grabbing 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 wonderful outcomes with this — was in all probability an excellent greater deal. It was by no means what I anticipated. It didn’t sound bullish. Have a pay attention and tell us what you suppose.