Elon & Jensen today...amazing

On the topic of AI in space - is it possible?

Elon: "Yes. If civilization continues, which it probably will, then AI in space is inevitable. You always have to preface that - we shouldn't take civilization for granted - we need to take care to ensure that civilization has an upward arc. Any student of history knows that civilization does not always have an upward arc, and in fact, civilizations have life cycles, so hopefully we are on a strong upward arc - I think we are for now, but we don't want to take that for granted or be complacent. The way to think of AI in space is that in order to achieve any meaningful percentage of a Kardashev 2 scale civilization, where you're using even a millionth of the sun's energy you must have solar powered AI satellites in deep space. Once you think in terms of a Kardashev 2 scale civilization, which is what percentage of the sun's energy are you turning into useful work, then it becomes obvious that space is overwhelmingly what matters. Overwhelmingly. Earth only receives roughly one two-billionth of the sun's energy. So if you want to have something that is say one million times more energy than earth could possibly produce you must go into space. This where it's kinda handy to have a space company I guess."

Jensen: "Easier to cool chips in space too."

Elon: "Yes, there's definitely no water in space so you're gonna have to do something that doesn't involve water."

Jensen: "Just hang out."

Elon: "You just gotta radiate. My estimate is that the cost of electricity - the cost effectiveness of AI in space will be overwhelmingly better than AI on the ground - long before you exhaust the potential energy sources on Earth, long before, even perhaps in the four or five year time frame, the lowest cost way to do AI compute will be with solar powered AI satellites. I'd say not more than five years from now."

Jensen: "And just look at the supercomputers we're building together - let's say each one of the racks is two tons, out of that two tons 1.95 of it is probably for cooling."

Elon: "Right."

Jensen: "Just imagine how tiny that little supercomputer is - each one of these GB300 racks would be a little tiny thing."

Elon: "And electricity generation is already becoming a challenge. If you start doing any kind of scaling for both electricity generation and cooling you realize that space is incredibly compelling. Let's say that you wanted to do two or three hundred gigawatts per year of AI compute, it's very difficult to do that on earth. The US average electricity usage, last time I checked, is around 460 gigawatts per year average usage. So something like, say, 300 gigawatts per year, that's something like two-third of US electricity production per year. There's no way you're building power plants at that level. And if you take it up to a terawatt per year - impossible. You have to do that in space. There just is no way to do a terawatt per year on Earth. In space you've got continuous solar, actually you don't need batteries because it's always sunny in space and the solar panels become cheaper because you don't need glass or framing and the cooling is just radiative."

Jensen: "That's the dream. That's the dream."

Elon: "Yes."