Elon Musk To Partner With Google? X Owner's To-And-Fro Conversation With Sundar Pichai Over Willow Chip Hints At Collaboration

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told Elon Musk, “We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day." X owner responded by saying, “That will probably happen."

Elon Musk is impressed by the prowess of Google's new Willow quantum computing chipset.

Source : PTI

Google recently unveiled the new 'state of the art' chip that has practical applications in areas including drug discovery, fusion energy, and battery design. It holds the potential to reduce errors exponentially when scaling up. X owner Elon Musk was left impressed by the prowess of Google's new Willow quantum computing chipset.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, while announcing Willow, wrote, “Introducing Willow, our new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits, cracking a 30-year challenge in the field. In benchmark tests, Willow solved a standard computation in <5 mins that would take a leading supercomputer over 10^25 years, far beyond the age of the universe."

Musk, while reacting to this, wrote, "Wow."

Wow

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024

Pichai responded to Musk's comment by saying, “We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day." Musk did not shy away from this and replied, “That will probably happen. Any self-respecting civilization should at least reach Kardashev Type II. In my opinion, we are currently only at <5% of Type I. To get to ~30%, we would need to place solar panels in all desert or highly arid regions."

Elon Musk & Sundar Pichai's Relationship Taking A Turn For Good?

Earlier, Musk reportedly listened to Sundar Pichai's congratulatory message to Donald Trump after his 2024 election win. During the campaign, Musk criticised Google for search bias, alleging that searching for Donald Trump brought up articles about Kamala Harris instead.

Musk’s relationship with Google has been far from amicable, particularly regarding its AI endeavors. He openly criticised Google’s acquisition of DeepMind and even attempted to purchase the AI startup himself. This acquisition partly motivated Musk to co-found OpenAI, aiming to create an AI alternative to counter Google’s growing influence. However, Musk later had a fallout with OpenAI and subsequently launched his own AI venture, xAI.

Musk has also expressed sharp disapproval of Google’s Gemini AI. He has labeled it "racist" and "anti-civilization" and, earlier this year, cautioned that AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT could pose existential risks to humanity. Now, Musk responding to Pichai seems a bit unusual, which has made some people raise their eyebrows at this sudden change in events.