Was it merely a diversionary tactic? Elon Musk has previously been considered a major admonisher as far as artificial intelligence is concerned. He recently even described it as "the greatest risk to our civilization". At a party on the sidelines of NIPS , an AI conference, he has now apparently confirmed that Tesla is working on their own AI chips . Jim Keller , who previously worked as a chip designer at AMD and for Apple, is said to be responsible for the development. According to the IT website theregister.com , Musk says Keller is developing specialized AI hardware that will be the best in the world. He is also said to have predicted that about half of all vehicles will be driving autonomously in ten years.

The competition does not sleep: Apple recently unveiled how far the company has progressed in terms of autonomous driving. According to wired.de , the technology is showing "impressive image recognition capabilities, especially in poor conditions." Among other things, it can apparently detect and track cars and pedestrians and predict their movement, even if image quality is impaired by problems such as drops of water on the camera lens. The report goes on to suggest that the fact that the corporation is so open about its plans during a workshop could indicate that it is trying to attract talented developers.