Elon Musk Admits Getting Past FSD Predictions Wrong But Says Tesla Closer To It 'Than We Have Ever Been'

The 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference kickstarted in Shanghai on Thursday, with Tesla Inc TSLA making its presence felt despite the absence of other U.S. AI players like Open AI.

What Happened: Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined the opening ceremony via video and praised China’s potential in various sectors, including artificial intelligence. He expressed confidence in China’s strong AI capabilities.

“The Chinese can be great at anything if they set their minds to, not only in many sectors of the economy but also in artificial intelligence,” he said, as per a tweet posted by Chinese news outlet Yicai Global on Twitter.

See Also: Everything You Need to Know About Tesla Stock

Musk also discussed Tesla’s progress in achieving full self-driving capability, stating that it is “very close” to reaching autonomy. He highlighted the latest version of FSD Beta, which allows users to drive a Tesla car without touching the controls. 

“I have been wrong about this prediction in the past, but I feel we are closer to it than we ever have been,” Musk said.

Tesla shared images from the conference on Twitter, showcasing its vehicles and a robot on display. The conference will continue until Saturday at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center.

Why It’s Important: Tesla said in 2016 that its vehicles would come equipped with hardware to support full self-driving capabilities through future software updates. However, despite multiple updates, Tesla’s FSD software still requires active driver supervision. This year, Tesla and its CEO faced a lawsuit from shareholders who claimed that the company had exaggerated the effectiveness and safety of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving technologies.

While Tesla attended the Shanghai conference, other prominent U.S. companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft also participated. However, the number of U.S. sponsors has declined since 2019, with Qualcomm being the sole U.S. company sponsoring the event this year, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

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(Image with artificial intelligence on MidJourney and Mike Mareen on Shutterstock)