What Is Going On With Tesla’s Dojo?

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Tesla Dojo was going to vary the world. It was Tesla’s secret sauce to assist resolve Full Self Driving, and normal AI. Then we stopped listening to about it. It type of simply light into the background. I figured, properly, 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.

Nonetheless, proper on the finish of the This fall 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 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 simply now have ample provide of NVIDIA GPUs wanted for the coaching of the system?”

I anticipated some huge flowery phrases there about Dojo and the way revolutionary it’s. As an alternative, we bought 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 unsuitable 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 variety 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 type of basic 10,000 hours), the much less psychological effort it takes to do one thing. For those who bear in mind while you first began to drive, how a lot of your psychological capability it took to drive. You needed to be targeted utterly on driving. And after you’ve been driving for a few years, it solely takes a little 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 a variety 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 value 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 have now plans for Dojo 1.5, Dojo 2, Dojo 3, and what not. So, you recognize, I believe it’s bought potential. [Elon Musk sighs at this point.] However, we are able to’t emphasize sufficient: excessive threat, excessive payoff. So, I believe it nonetheless is sensible, 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 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 mentioned, how Elon Musk talked about this — seemingly resigned to lower than superb outcomes with this — was most likely an excellent greater deal. It was in no way what I anticipated. It didn’t sound bullish. Have a hear and tell us what you suppose.