Tesla has considered an arrangement that would license AI models from CEO Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, according to WSJ.
It would be the latest in a number of conflicts of interest that have cropped up related to Musk’s channeling of resources from Tesla, a public company, to xAI, his own privately-held company, though Musk denied the report without reading it.
For many years now, Tesla and Musk have promised that Tesla cars would have full self-driving capability in the near future. Deadlines have been constantly pushed back, suggesting that the problem of self-driving is harder than Tesla originally thought it is.
But that hasn’t stopped the company’s public optimism, with Musk promising just over a month ago that he would be shocked if Tesla doesn’t have unsupervised full self-driving next year.
Musk has also talked up Tesla’s AI efforts, with the company hosting “AI Day” events in 2021 and 2022. Both events came before xAI was founded …