One quiet evening, as the soft hum of his house’s AI system filled the background, Elon Musk found himself alone, his thoughts racing with a sense of unease. Despite his many achievements and the groundbreaking innovations he had spearheaded, there was something missing, a void he couldn’t quite define. His mind, ever the logical engine, tried to brush it aside, but a strange feeling gnawed at him, urging him to find the source.

Suddenly, the silence was broken by a sharp metallic sound—a wrench falling to the ground. It was a small noise, but it felt monumental in the stillness of the moment. Elon froze. His mind quickly dismissed it as a coincidence, but something deeper, something in his gut, told him to investigate. He quietly followed the sound, his bare feet cold against the marble floors of his home. As he moved down the corridor, he felt the hum of the AI system, but there was something different in the air, something charged with an unseen energy.

He arrived at his private observatory, surprised to see a faint glow emanating from within. The lights shouldn’t have been on; no one else was supposed to be there. Curiosity overcame him as he cautiously pushed open the door. The air inside felt thick, almost electric, as if the room itself was alive with energy. The glow was brighter now, forming a vague, glowing figure against the window that overlooked the stars.

“Who’s there?” Elon called out, his voice calm yet cautious.

The figure didn’t answer right away but turned slowly toward him, and as it did, the light became almost blinding. The presence of the figure grew stronger, a force that seemed both familiar and foreign.

“I have questions,” Elon spoke aloud, still unsure of what he was witnessing.

A calm, steady voice answered him, cutting through the air. “I have answers.”

The voice didn’t feel like a mere sound; it vibrated through the very air around him. Elon’s mind raced for an explanation, but none seemed to fit. “Are you real?” he asked, his voice faltering as he tried to make sense of it all.

The figure, whose form still shimmered and shifted, replied with a clarity that was almost unsettling. “I am as real as you are.”

As the light dimmed slightly, Elon could make out a face—familiar, yet unlike anything he had seen before. It radiated a calm that seemed to slow his frantic thoughts. “I have come because you are searching,” the figure continued, its voice soft but undeniable. “You are searching for something bigger than the stars themselves.”

Elon hesitated, unable to fully process the words. His instinct to question everything overpowered the awe he felt. “Searching for what?”

The figure’s gaze deepened, and a gentle, knowing smile crossed its face. “Innovation alone cannot fulfill you. You’ve built bridges to the stars, yet you feel a void. Do you know why?”

For the first time, Elon admitted the truth to himself. “Maybe I don’t,” he said, his voice quieter than usual.

“You began with a dream,” the figure said, its voice like a soft challenge. “Not of wealth, not of fame, but of helping humanity. Along the way, you forgot why you started. Why you dreamed of reaching the stars.”

Elon’s thoughts raced, but he couldn’t deny the truth in those words. He had become so caught up in the “how” that he had forgotten the “why.”

“How do you know all this?” Elon asked, his skepticism rising again. “Are you some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence, a figment of my imagination?”

The figure’s smile softened, almost amused. “I am called by many names,” it said. “But tonight, you may call me Jesus.”

The name hit Elon like a thunderbolt. He recoiled, his mind struggling to reject the notion. “Jesus Christ?” he asked, his voice filled with disbelief.

“Yes,” the figure answered simply.

Elon stood frozen, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening. Why him? There were billions of people on Earth, why come to him—a businessman and engineer? “Why me?” he demanded. “Why not someone else, a theologian, someone who actually believes in you?”

Jesus stepped closer, his presence all-encompassing. “Because you stand at a crossroads. Your actions shape the future of humanity. The path you choose will determine whether you save it—or doom it.”

Elon’s mind reeled. He had spent his life striving to help humanity with technology—space exploration, renewable energy, and more. “I’ve been working my whole life to help humanity,” he said defensively. “Isn’t that enough?”

Jesus’s expression softened, yet his words remained firm. “What you do matters, but so does why you do it. Progress without purpose is hollow.”

The words hung heavy in the air. Elon felt his defenses begin to crumble as the figure’s words pierced through him. “Do you ever ask yourself why you dream of Mars?” Jesus asked. “Why you strive to push the boundaries of science?”

Elon was silent, the question forcing him to confront a truth he hadn’t fully acknowledged. Why Mars? What was he truly seeking?

“You are searching for meaning in the infinite,” Jesus continued. “But meaning doesn’t come from the stars. It comes from within.”

For the first time, Elon felt a weight settle on his chest—one that made him want to listen, really listen.

“You have built remarkable things,” Jesus said, his voice a mixture of compassion and authority. “But if you only build with your mind, you risk losing what makes you human.”

Elon’s heart pounded. He had always seen his work as a path forward, a way to solve the problems of humanity. But now, he wasn’t so sure.

Jesus gestured around them, and suddenly, the room dissolved, leaving Elon standing in a vast, infinite space. Before him were two paths. One was lined with sleek, towering structures, humming with machines. But the people beneath them were lifeless, mechanical, their faces devoid of joy. The other path was simpler, less technological, but the people were vibrant, laughing, and filled with purpose. They moved together, not bound by technology, but by connection.

“This is the test,” Jesus’s voice rang out, steady and clear. “You have the power to guide humanity down one of these paths. The choice is yours.”

Elon was gripped by the enormity of the decision. He understood, deep down, the stakes. “Are you saying my work could destroy humanity?” he asked, his voice trembling.

Jesus did not answer immediately but placed a hand on Elon’s shoulder. “Your work can elevate humanity,” he said gently, “or it can reduce it to mere machines. The choice is yours.”

As the vision began to fade, Elon was left standing in the observatory, the weight of the encounter pressing down on him. He could no longer ignore the deeper truth behind his work—the impact it would have not just on the world, but on the souls of humanity.

Days passed, and Elon reflected deeply on what he had experienced. He began to see his work differently—not as a pursuit of progress for progress’s sake, but as a means to connect people, to elevate humanity. His public statements began to change. He spoke not just of technology, but of purpose, of the heart behind it. He started to emphasize that true progress comes not from reaching the stars, but from lifting each other up here on Earth.

Over time, his companies shifted their focus. Tesla focused on clean energy for all, not just for the rich. SpaceX redefined its mission, not as a way to escape Earth, but as a means of international collaboration. Neuralink shifted toward helping people with disabilities rather than just pursuing speculative enhancements.

Elon Musk had once been a visionary driven by technology, but now, he was a leader driven by purpose. The world noticed, though he never publicly spoke of the encounter in his observatory. Instead, he continued his work, but with a new clarity: progress is a tool, not the goal. And the heart of that progress lay in humanity.

The crossroads had been real, and Elon had made his choice. The future, as he now saw it, depended on one thing: how we use our progress, and why we pursue it.

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.