Sam Altman calls Elon Musk's plan to run AI from space 'ridiculous' — says 'we are not there yet'
Elon Musk is working towards his idea of having AI data centres in space, but OpenAI founder Sam Altman is just not buying it. Altman believes that while data centres in space would make sense in the future, they are not going to boom within the next decade. That is simply not where technology has evolved to just yet. Musk, on the other hand, believes that space-based data centres are going to be the most cost-effective.
"I honestly think the idea with the current landscape of putting data centers in space is ridiculous," Altman said as per a Fox Business report. He then went on to add, "It will make sense someday. We are not there yet. There will come a time. Orbital data centers are not something that's going to matter at scale this decade." Musk is all set to be the first to test space-based data centres after SpaceX's acquisition of xAI.
Despite his skepticism, Altman believes that space-based AI is the only way to scale up in the long term. "My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space," he said. Interestingly, Altman is not the only one who has expressed skepticism about the Tesla boss’s ambitious plans. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman also echoed the same opinion. He said that "there are not enough rockets to launch a million satellites yet, so we're, like, pretty far from that."
"If you think about the cost of getting a payload in space today, it's massive," Garman added, "It is just not economical." Musk had said some ambitious things, one of which was when he claimed that saving up for retirement would not be relevant thanks to AI. “One side recommendation I have is: Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won’t matter," The Tesla CEO had said.
He claimed that everyone would have a universally high income, adding that "If any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant." Musk further explained that robots will supercharge productivity, which will create a "good future where anyone can have whatever stuff they want." He also claimed that AI would improve medical care for everyone.
"No scarcity of goods and services. You can learn anything you want about anything for free," Musk had said. However, he claimed that such a shift would not be smooth, as people would need time to adapt to the change. “Now, if you actually get all the stuff you want, is that actually the future you want?" he asked. '"Because it means that your job won't matter. We’re at the top of the roller coaster, and it’s about to go down. I think we’ll hit [artificial general intelligence] next year in ’26.”
More on Market Realist:
Sam Altman wants to hire a person who can predict the dangers of AI — and the pay is great
OpenAI just issued a major warning about AI threats — should you be worried?
Elon Musk makes a bold prediction for 2026 defying concerns about the US economy
