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Musk Plans Tesla Mega AI Chip Fab, Mulls Potential Intel Partnership 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on May 6, 2024. (AFP)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on May 6, 2024. (AFP)
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Musk Plans Tesla Mega AI Chip Fab, Mulls Potential Intel Partnership 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on May 6, 2024. (AFP)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at the 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on May 6, 2024. (AFP)

CEO Elon Musk on Thursday said Tesla probably will have to build "a gigantic chip fab" to make artificial intelligence chips and publicly mused the EV maker could work with Intel.

Tesla is designing its fifth-generation AI chip to power its autonomous ambitions, and Musk at the company's annual meeting laid out potential manufacturing plans.

"You know, maybe we'll, we'll do something with Intel," Musk said to a cheering crowd of Tesla shareholders. "We haven't signed any deal, but it's probably worth having discussions with Intel."

Struggling US chipmaker Intel has its own chipmaking factories, but has lagged far behind Nvidia in the AI chip race. The US government recently took a 10% stake in Intel, which needs to find an external customer for its newest manufacturing technology. Intel shares popped 4% in after-hours trading on Musk's remarks.

Intel declined to comment.

Musk scored an important victory on Thursday as shareholders approved a $1 trillion pay package over the next decade, endorsing his vision of morphing the EV maker into an AI and robotics juggernaut.

Musk has teased the AI5 chip before and reiterated that Tesla was also partnering with Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung. The AI chips power Tesla's autonomous driving systems, including the Full Self-Driving software. Tesla is currently on its fourth-generation chip.

A small number of AI5 units would be produced in 2026, with high volume production only possible in 2027, Musk said in an X post on Tuesday, adding that AI6 will use the same fabs but achieve roughly twice the performance with volume production mid-2028.

"Even when we extrapolate the best-case scenario for chip production from our suppliers, it's still not enough," he said on Thursday.

"So I think we may have to do a Tesla terafab. It's like giga but way bigger. I can't see any other way to get to the volume of chips that we're looking for. So I think we're probably going to have to build a gigantic chip fab. It's got to be done," he said.

Musk, who often talks about his vision for the company in abstract terms, did not offer details of how such a fab would be built, but he said that it would make at least 100,000 wafer starts per month. A wafer start is the measurement of the output of a semiconductor wafer plant.

He did say the chip would be inexpensive, power-efficient and optimized for Tesla's own software. This chip would probably consume about a third of the power used by Nvidia's flagship Blackwell chip, at 10% of the cost to make, Musk said.

"I'm super hardcore on chips right now as you may be able to tell," he said. "I have chips on the brain."

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Technology

Ping-Pong Robot Ace Makes History by Beating Top-Level Human Players

Sony AI autonomous robot Ace returns a shot back against its human opponent, table tennis player Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025, as seen in this photograph released on April 22, 2026. (Sony AI/Handout via Reuters)
Sony AI autonomous robot Ace returns a shot back against its human opponent, table tennis player Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025, as seen in this photograph released on April 22, 2026. (Sony AI/Handout via Reuters)
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Ping-Pong Robot Ace Makes History by Beating Top-Level Human Players

Sony AI autonomous robot Ace returns a shot back against its human opponent, table tennis player Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025, as seen in this photograph released on April 22, 2026. (Sony AI/Handout via Reuters)
Sony AI autonomous robot Ace returns a shot back against its human opponent, table tennis player Yamato Kawamata, during a match in December 2025, as seen in this photograph released on April 22, 2026. (Sony AI/Handout via Reuters)

An autonomous robot ping-pong player dubbed Ace has achieved a milestone for AI and robotics in Tokyo by competing against and sometimes defeating top-level human players at table tennis, a feat that could presage an array of other applications for similarly adept robots.

Ace, created by the Japanese company Sony's AI research division, is the first robot to attain expert-level performance in a competitive physical sport, one that requires rapid decisions and precision execution, the project's leader said. Ace did so by employing high-speed perception, AI-based control and a state-of-the-art robotic system.

There have been various ping-pong-playing robots since 1983, but until now they were unable to rival highly skilled human competitors. Ace changed that with its performances against human elite-level and professional players in matches following the rules of the International Table Tennis Federation, the sport's governing body, and officiated by licensed umpires.

"Unlike computer games, where prior AI systems surpass human experts, physical and real-time sports such as table tennis remain a major open challenge due to their requirements for fast, precise and adversarial interactions near obstacles and at the edge ‌of human reaction ‌time," said Peter Dürr, director of Sony AI Zurich and leader for Sony AI's project Ace.

The ‌project's ⁠goal was not ⁠only to compete at table tennis but to develop insights into how robots can perceive, plan and act with human-like speed and precision in dynamic environments, Dürr said.

"The success of Ace, with its perception system and learning-based control algorithm, suggests that similar techniques could be applied to other areas requiring fast, real-time control and human interaction - such as manufacturing and service robotics, as well as applications across sports, entertainment and safety-critical physical domains," said Dürr, lead author of a study describing Ace's achievements published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

In matches detailed in the study, Ace in April 2025 won three out of five versus elite players and lost two matches against professional players, the top skill level in the ⁠sport. Sony AI said that since then Ace beat professional players in December 2025 and last ‌month.

Companies worldwide are making advances with robots. On Sunday, for instance, robots outran human ‌runners in a half-marathon race in Beijing.

'A BLUR TO THE HUMAN EYE'

AI systems already have excelled in digital domains in strategy games such as ‌chess and Go and at complex video games.

While video games take place in simulated environments, table tennis requires rapid decision-making, precise ‌physical execution and continuous adaptation to an unpredictable opponent, Dürr said. The ball moves at high speeds with complex spins and trajectories, pushing humans and robots to operate at the limits of sensing, prediction and motor control, Dürr said.

Ace's architecture integrates nine synchronized cameras and three vision systems to track a spinning ball with exceptional accuracy and speedy processing time.

"This is fast enough to capture motion that would be a blur to the human eye," Dürr ‌said.

The researchers developed a custom robot platform featuring eight joints. This was, Dürr said, the minimum number necessary to execute competitive shots: three for the racket's position, two for its orientation ⁠and three for the shot's speed ⁠and strength.

Mayuka Taira, a professional table tennis player who lost a match to Ace last December, said in comments provided by Sony AI that the robot's strengths "are that it is very hard to predict, and it shows no emotion."

"Because you can't read its reactions, it's impossible to sense what kind of shots it dislikes or struggles with, and that makes it even more difficult to play against," Taira said.

Rui Takenaka, an elite-level player who has won and lost matches against Ace, said in comments provided by Sony AI: "When it came to my serve, if I used a serve with complex spin, Ace also returned the ball with complex spin, which made it difficult for me. But when I used a simple serve - what we call a knuckle serve - Ace returned a simpler ball. That made it easier for me to attack on the third shot, and I think that was the key reason why I was able to win."

Ace has room for improvement, Dürr said.

"Ace has a superhuman ability to read the spin of incoming balls, and superhuman reaction time. As it learns to play not from watching humans play, but is trained by itself in simulation, it also reacts differently from human players and creates surprising situations," Dürr said. "At the same time, professional human athletes are very good at adapting to their opponent and finding weaknesses, which is an area that we are working on."

Technology

ICAIRE Launches Global ‘AI Glossary Challenge’ to Promote Responsible Innovation

The initiative aims to promote the ethical use of modern technologies across international contexts
The initiative aims to promote the ethical use of modern technologies across international contexts
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ICAIRE Launches Global ‘AI Glossary Challenge’ to Promote Responsible Innovation

The initiative aims to promote the ethical use of modern technologies across international contexts
The initiative aims to promote the ethical use of modern technologies across international contexts

The International Center for AI Research and Ethics (ICAIRE), a Riyadh-based UNESCO affiliate, has launched the AI Glossary Challenge, inviting researchers, students, and practitioners to develop knowledge tools that support a responsible AI ecosystem.

By standardizing concepts and establishing a shared knowledge base, the initiative aims to promote the ethical use of modern technologies across international contexts.

The challenge comprises three specialized tracks: AI Glossary Tools for developing digital applications such as APIs and governance dashboards; Dataset Creation for building high-quality, bias-free cultural datasets; and Cultural Hallucinations Tools to detect and interpret contextual errors in large language models, enhancing their global adaptability.

Hosted on the Kaggle platform, the competition offers prizes to winning teams to foster a specialized community dedicated to AI ethics.

Technology

Florida Launches Criminal Probe into OpenAI and ChatGPT Over Deadly Shooting

This illustration photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2025, shows the logo of OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. (AFP)
This illustration photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2025, shows the logo of OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. (AFP)
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Florida Launches Criminal Probe into OpenAI and ChatGPT Over Deadly Shooting

This illustration photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2025, shows the logo of OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. (AFP)
This illustration photograph taken in Mulhouse, eastern France on February 11, 2025, shows the logo of OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. (AFP)

Florida ‌Attorney General James Uthmeier said on Tuesday the state was launching a criminal probe into OpenAI and its artificial intelligence app ChatGPT over a deadly shooting last year that killed two people at Florida State University.

A gunman killed two people and wounded six others at Florida State University in April last year before he was shot by officers and hospitalized. The suspect was charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted ‌murder.

"The chatbot advised ‌the shooter on what type ‌of ⁠gun to use, on ⁠which ammo went with which gun, on whether or not a gun would be useful at short range," Uthmeier said in a press briefing.

"If it was a person on the other end of that screen, we would be charging them with murder."

Uthmeier's ⁠office said the investigation will determine whether "OpenAI ‌bears criminal responsibility for ‌ChatGPT's actions in the shooting."

The Office of Statewide Prosecution subpoenaed OpenAI ‌for some information and records, it added.

The rise ‌of AI has fed a host of concerns ranging from worries that electricity demand by data centers could raise power prices for consumers, to fears that the technology could cost ‌workers their jobs or be used to disrupt the democratic process, turbocharge fraud ⁠or help ⁠people plan criminal activities.

An OpenAI spokeswoman told US media that the shooting was a tragedy, but the company had no responsibility. The spokeswoman said that after learning of the incident, OpenAI identified a ChatGPT account believed to be associated with the suspect and "proactively shared this information with law enforcement."

"In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the internet, and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity," the OpenAI spokeswoman said.