Elon Musk Predicts AI to Surpass Human Intelligence by 2026

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, X, SpaceX, and Neuralink, has made a bold prediction regarding artificial intelligence. Following the release of Grok-4, xAI's most advanced AI model, Musk stated that AI chatbots are on track to become more intelligent than a single human by 2026.

In the 'All-In' podcast, Musk mentioned that his team at xAI is preparing to release a more powerful version of the Grok chatbot next year, moving towards Agentic AI. He further claimed that by 2030, AI could be as intelligent, if not smarter, than the collective intelligence of all humans.

Musk believes AI will surpass the average human's intelligence by 2026. As the head of xAI, he has insight into the development of the next major version of Grok, which has already demonstrated its capabilities in creative tasks. The upcoming iteration may include more agentic functions to simplify life.

Concerns about AI becoming smarter than humans next year are understandable, but Musk is known for making bold claims with optimistic and skeptical timelines. The rapid pace at which tech firms are advancing AI could lead to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) soon.

Currently, Musk's focus is on Grok-4, xAI's latest AI model. Grok-4 emphasizes first-principles reasoning, providing more logical and accurate responses while reducing hallucinations compared to previous models. It is available in two versions: a standard single-agent model for everyday tasks and a more powerful multi-agent architecture called Grok 4 Heavy.

Grok-4 features a massive 130,000-token context window, enabling it to handle and remember large amounts of information in a single conversation. The model also supports vision and image generation, making it multimodal.