A little girl, no older than eight, walked up to Elon Musk and asked, “Why did Jesus die for us?” Her voice was soft but clear, catching him off guard. Elon blinked, surprised—of all the questions he had been asked, this was one he wasn’t expecting. He smiled gently, trying to hide his surprise, and said, “Well, that’s a deep question.” As he tried to think of a simple way to explain, the girl stood there, waiting for an answer. There was something in her eyes that told him this wasn’t a random question—it meant something much more.
Elon felt his heart pound. He glanced at the girl. Why would she, of all people, ask him such a serious and profound question? She didn’t seem merely curious. No, there was something more behind it. He shifted in his seat, looking closely at her. “I’m not sure I can answer that,” Elon admitted after a long pause. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just the beginning of something important.
“Do you know why she asked?” the girl asked again, her eyes not leaving his. Elon hesitated. This wasn’t a question that could be easily answered, and he didn’t know why she was asking him. Finally, he invited her to sit beside him, “Let’s talk about it.”
As they sat together, Elon felt something shift in the air—a feeling he couldn’t explain. “Why is this question so important to her?” he thought. He leaned back on the park bench as the girl sat beside him, her legs swinging freely as she clutched her stuffed bear tightly. He asked gently, “Why do you want to know?”
She looked down, and for the first time, Elon saw something in her face—a shadow of sadness. “My mom talks about it a lot,” she said quietly. “She says Jesus died because He loves us, but I don’t understand. Why did He have to die if He loved us?”
Her words were simple, but the depth of her confusion was clear. Elon felt his chest tighten. It wasn’t just a religious question; there was something personal here. This little girl was struggling to understand. He nodded slowly. “It sounds like your mom believes Jesus’s death was an act of love,” he said carefully, “but why does that confuse you?”
The girl was quiet for a moment, staring at her bear, and then she whispered, “If He loved us, why did He have to leave?” Elon’s heart ached. Why would this girl be wondering about being left behind? Was something wrong with someone she loved? Gently, he leaned forward. “Did something happen to someone you love?” he asked.
The girl nodded, her lips trembling. “My daddy… he left,” she said softly. “He said he loved me, but then he didn’t come back.” Elon was silent. He now understood. This wasn’t just about faith or religion. This was about pain, about loss. This little girl was trying to make sense of why people who say they love you can leave.
For a moment, Elon didn’t know what to say. Her question hung in the air, heavy with grief. He thought back to his own life—his losses. People saw him as a billionaire, the tech genius, the man who was changing the world. But few knew the losses he carried within him, the people he had loved and lost.
“Sometimes, people leave even when they love you,” Elon said softly, his voice filled with a sadness he hadn’t expected. “It doesn’t mean they didn’t want to stay. Sometimes life takes them away.”
The girl looked up at him, her eyes filling with tears. “But why?” she whispered. “Why do they have to leave? Why can’t they stay?” Elon’s throat tightened. He thought of his own father and the pain of his absence.
“It’s hard to explain,” Elon said quietly. “Sometimes, love isn’t enough to keep someone here. Sometimes, even though they love you, they can’t stay.” The girl wiped her eyes quickly, trying to be brave, but Elon saw the same pain in her eyes that he had felt when he was younger.
“Does that mean they didn’t love me enough?” she asked, her voice small and broken. Elon shook his head, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “It doesn’t mean that at all. Sometimes people leave because they have to, not because they want to.”
The girl was silent, absorbing his words, then softly said, “But it still hurts.” And Elon knew exactly what she meant.
As they sat together, the park around them seemed to fade away. It was just Elon and the little girl, both caught in the weight of the conversation.
“I know it hurts,” Elon whispered. “I’ve lost people too. People I loved.” For the first time, Elon felt his voice crack. He had never spoken about this side of his life before—not in interviews or speeches. But now, sitting with this little girl, the truth came out.
“My dad left when I was young,” he said softly. “And for a long time, I didn’t understand why. I thought maybe he didn’t love me enough. But that wasn’t true. It took me years to understand that sometimes people leave because they don’t have a choice.”
The girl looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Did it hurt you too?” she asked. Elon nodded, his voice barely above a whisper. “Yes, it hurt. It still does sometimes.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything. The weight of shared pain hung between them, unspoken but deeply felt.
The girl broke the silence. “My mom says Jesus died for us because He loves us. But why did He have to leave? Couldn’t He have stayed if He loved us?” Elon blinked, surprised. Her question mirrored his own thoughts about his father.
“I don’t have all the answers,” Elon said slowly. “But sometimes, leaving is a way of showing love. I know that sounds strange, but think about it. When Jesus died, He didn’t leave forever. He left to show people how much He loved them. Maybe He had to leave because there was something bigger He was trying to show us.”
The girl’s eyes filled with a new curiosity, as if Elon’s words were unlocking something inside her.
“But why does leaving hurt so much?” she whispered, hugging her stuffed bear tighter. Elon sighed deeply. “Because love is powerful. When we love someone, we want them to stay forever. But sometimes, when they leave, it’s not the end of their love. It’s just a different way of showing it. Like Jesus. Maybe He had to leave so people could understand how much He loved them.”
The girl’s eyes shimmered with tears, but there was a hint of understanding. “So my daddy didn’t leave because he didn’t love me?” she asked. Elon’s heart ached at her words.
“No, sweetie,” he said softly. “I’m sure your daddy loved you very much. Sometimes people leave, and it’s not because of anything we did. It’s just life. But that doesn’t mean their love goes away.”
The girl sniffed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “But I miss him.” Elon felt a lump rise in his throat. “I know you do,” he whispered. “And it’s okay to miss him. It’s okay to feel sad. But know that his love for you is still there, even if he’s not.”
The girl looked up at him with wide, teary eyes. “Do you miss your dad?” Elon swallowed hard, feeling the sting of unshed tears. “Yeah,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I miss him every day.”
As the afternoon sun dipped lower in the sky, the little girl leaned closer to Elon, as if his presence comforted her. “If love stays even when people leave, why does it still hurt so much?” she asked softly.
Elon thought for a moment. “I think it hurts because love is something we feel with our whole hearts. When someone leaves, it feels like a piece of that love is missing. But even though it hurts, it’s also a reminder of how important that person was to us.”
The girl seemed to be thinking hard, her small brows furrowed. “So it’s okay to hurt?” she asked softly.
Elon smiled gently. “Yes, it’s okay to hurt. It means you love deeply. It means that person mattered. And sometimes, the hurt is what helps us grow stronger.”
“How can hurt make us stronger?” The little girl looked up at Elon, her eyes full of wonder. “Did it make you stronger?”
Elon smiled gently. “Yes, it did. When I was younger, I didn’t understand why my dad had to leave. But over time, I realized it taught me how to be strong on my own. It taught me that even though people leave, we can still carry their love with us.”
The girl’s face softened as if something was finally starting to make sense to her. “So even if my daddy isn’t here, his love is still with me?”
Elon nodded. “Exactly. And even though it hurts, you’re stronger because of it. You’re carrying his love with you every day, and that love will help you through the tough times.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, hugging her bear tightly.
For a moment, Elon felt a lump rise in his throat as he looked at this brave little girl. Her simple question had opened up wounds in his heart he hadn’t realized were still there. But in answering her, he had also found some healing for himself.
As the sun set behind the trees, casting a warm glow over the park, Elon felt the tears finally spill over. He quickly wiped them away, not wanting the girl to see, but she noticed.
“Are you crying?” she asked softly, her voice full of innocence.
Elon smiled through his tears. “Sometimes even grown-ups cry,” he said gently, “especially when we talk about the people we love.”
The girl reached out and patted his arm as if to comfort him. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re strong too.”
In that moment, Elon realized something important. It wasn’t just about answering the girl’s question; it was about understanding that love—whether it comes from a parent, a friend, or even from someone like Jesus—never really leaves. It stays with you, shaping you, even after the person is gone.
As the little girl stood up to leave, she looked back at Elon with a smile that seemed to hold all the wisdom of her young years.
“Thank you,” she said again before turning and walking away.
Elon watched her go, his heart full of emotions he couldn’t quite explain. He had come to the park to escape the pressures of his life, but instead, he had found something much more meaningful.
He sat there for a long time after she left, thinking about her question. Why did Jesus die for us? He realized that maybe the answer wasn’t in words but in the way love continues, even after someone is gone.
And for the first time in a long while, Elon felt at peace.
Elon Musk says all human data for AI training ‘exhausted’
Tech boss suggests move to self-learning synthetic data though some warn this could cause ‘model collapse’
Artificial intelligence companies have run out of data for training their models and have “exhausted” the sum of human knowledge, Elon Musk has said.
The world’s richest person suggested technology firms would have to turn to “synthetic” data – or material created by AI models – to build and fine-tune new systems, a process already taking place with the fast-developing technology.
“The cumulative sum of human knowledge has been exhausted in AI training. That happened basically last year,” said Musk, who launched his own AI business, xAI, in 2023.
AI models such as the GPT-4o model powering the ChatGPT chatbot are “trained” on a vast array of data taken from the internet, where they in effect learn to spot patterns in that information – allowing them to predict, for instance, the next word in a sentence.
Speaking in an interview livestreamed on his social media platform, X, Musk said the “only way” to counter the lack of source material for training new models was to move to synthetic data created by AI.
Referring to the exhaustion of data troves, he said: “The only way to then supplement that is with synthetic data where … it will sort of write an essay or come up with a thesis and then will grade itself and … go through this process of self-learning.”
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has used synthetic data to fine-tune its biggest Llama AI model, while Microsoft has also used AI-made content for its Phi-4 model. Google and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, have also used synthetic data in their AI work.
However, Musk also warned that AI models’ habit of generating “hallucinations” – a term for inaccurate or nonsensical output – was a danger for the synthetic data process.
He said in the livestreamed interview with Mark Penn, the chair of the advertising group Stagwell, that hallucinations had made the process of using artificial material “challenging” because “how do you know if it … hallucinated the answer or it’s a real answer”.
Andrew Duncan, the director of foundational AI at the UK’s Alan Turing Institute, said Musk’s comment tallied with a recent academic paper estimating that publicly available data for AI models could run out as soon as 2026. He added that over-reliance on synthetic data risked “model collapse”, a term referring to the outputs of models deteriorating in quality.
“When you start to feed a model synthetic stuff you start to get diminishing returns,” he said, with the risk that output is biased and lacking in creativity.
Duncan added that the growth in AI-generated content online could also result in that material being absorbed into AI data training sets.
High-quality data, and control over it, is one of the legal battlegrounds in the AI boom. OpenAI admitted last year it would be impossible to create tools such as ChatGPT without access to copyrighted material, while the creative industries and publishers are demanding compensation for use of their output in the model training process.
