Is Data The New Gold? Elon Musk Counters Salesforce CEO's Claim About What 'Breathes Life' Into AI: 'Reality Itself And Synthetic Data Ftw'

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on Monday exchanged views about the future of artificial intelligence.

What Happened: Benioff took to X, formerly Twitter, and responded to a post stating that the real value of AI lies in the data and metadata that describe the data to the model, likening it to oxygen for humans.

"AI’s true gold isn’t in the UI or model—they’re both commodities," he said, adding, "The future’s fortune lies in our data. Yes, Data is the new gold!"

Benioff’s tweet came in response to a post by The Browser Company's CEO Josh Miller, who suggested that foundation models might become commoditized, leaving the value in AI to accrue to the interfaces.

Miller also pondered on the AI interfaces that people are actually using, identifying them as the big prize of 2024. "If so, then value in AI will accrue to the interfaces. But which AI interfaces are people *actually* using? ChatGPT, Github Copilot, and…?"

Musk replied to Benioff, saying that the competitiveness of AI is defined by the vector sum of humans on the team, usable compute and unique access to data.

He also noted the rapid depletion of human-created data, suggesting that reality itself and synthetic data are the way forward. "It is remarkable how quickly we run out of human-created data. Reality itself and synthetic data ftw," the tech billionaire concluded.

Why It Matters: Last year, it was reported that Musk was behind the decision to sever ChatGPT-parent OpenAI's access to Twitter's data.

As per the report, OpenAI had been using Twitter’s data under a licensing agreement to build its AI chatbot, but the tech mogul felt that the annual payment of $2 million was inadequate.

In December 2023, India's Union Technology minister stated that they are only allowing trusted AI models to access its datasets.

Meanwhile, despite some Tesla investors’ misgivings about the billionaire's way of management, Benioff has been praising him.

In an interview last year, the Salesforce CEO said, "Every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, ‘Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?'"

Check out more of Benzinga's Future Of Consumer Tech by following this link.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs