Elon Musk Answers Your Questions! | SXSW 2018

We met several years ago, part of the time I was writing a film. I was going to pitch a movie called Interstellar at the time when Steven Spielberg was the director and I wanted to make a movie based on the future of space travel, so I came. My speech was very short. I said the movies will be 10 minutes long because it's not happening. It was about 10 years ago. We won't go, there's no money left. This is no longer a priority for us. And then, in the course of and somehow. I got the job while writing the movie working with Kip Thorne, a physicist invited me to a physics conference one night and I sat next to Ilana.

We have been friends since, ironically, I ended up becoming friends. a guy who I personally believe is moving the needle in the other direction and up on his own at this point more than anyone else. It occurs to me that the net result is: I think we're going back to the Moon. I think we're going to go to Mars, and I think a lot of that is because of you. So, one of the

questions

we have here today. One of the

questions

. that you have sent the night that I love is simple Mars how can we help?

What I see? In the short term, Mars is really about building a spaceship. We are making good progress on this on the ship and the booster codenamed PFR. What is this tan for? Well, it's kind of like a roar. shy, yeah, a form of acronym and it's very big and I gave a presentation on this at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia last year and that design is evolving rapidly, we're actually building it. That should, but that ship right now. I'm thinking about it right now. That is the most important. Just general support and encouragement and goodwill would be helpful.

I think once we build it there will be a proof point, something that companies and countries will be able to do in a way they don't currently believe. It's possible, so if we show them that it is, I think they'll complete their game and build interplanetary transport vehicles as well. Now, once it's built, there will be a way to get it. I will go and bring people to and from Mars, as well as from the Moon to other places in the solar system, and I think that is where you really need a business resource issue because you have to build the entire Industry base of everything that allows for human civilization to exist and it will be much more difficult in a place like Mars or the Moon.

We need some volunteers to be settlers. Do we have any comments on pollen tears here? I haven't actually raised many hands because of the way I mean, the moon of Mars that is often thought of is like it's a ski escape hatch for rich people, but it won't be that at all, it's in anyone looking for the Only people who go to Better Mars. It will be much more dangerous. I mean, it really reads like the whole Shackleton Antarctic Explorers ad, you know, it's like Hard, Dangerous, Good Chance You'll Die. Excitement for those who survive. That kind of stuff and I think there aren't many people who really want to go at first. because all those things I said are true, but there will be those who will, for whom the excitement of the frontier and exploration outweighs the concern for danger and they will begin to build the first elementary infrastructure, just a base to create propellant, a power plant .

Exploding domes to farm in All the kinds of foundations that we cannot survive without and then there will really be an explosion of opportunities for entrepreneurs because the most will need everything from iron foundries to pizzerias and similar pizzerias. Like oh, I should really have cool bars The Mars Bar, right? I would love dad. What do you think the timeline is for this? So I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the timeline, although I can't be a bit sometimes my timelines are a bit. You know, people have told me that my schedules have historically been optimistic and so I'm trying to recalibrate to some extent here.

But I can tell you what I know currently in this case is that we are building the first spacecraft, the first Mars Orange interplanetary spacecraft. Right now, I think we'll be able to do short flights, short flights up and down, probably sometime in the first half of next year. This is a very large booster on the ship, the takeoff thrust would be about twice that of a seven-five. Therefore, it is capable of generating 150 metric tons to orbit and be completely reusable. Therefore, the expendable payload is approximately double. So the amazing thing about the ship, assuming we can make wool traction and rapid reuse work, is that we can reduce the marginal cost per flight?

Dramatically by orders of magnitude compared to what it is today. But this question of reusability is so fundamental to rockets that it is the fundamental advance that is needed if we consider airplanes, for example, the. You can charter a 747 and fly back. By Cal Bullock. Oh, to go from California to Australia for half a million dollars, that's what it cost Lisa to take the entire 747 round trip to Australia, which is far away. Buying just one agent to have a good propeller plane would be like a million and a half dollars. , and that can't even get to Australia and it's small compared to a 747, so what that means is that it costs less to use a giant plane with a huge load for a long trip than it does per night. much less than buying a small plane for a short trip in the world of airplanes and the same goes for rockets: being a VFR flight will actually cost less than our Falcon flight today, which cost around five or six million. marginal cost in dollars per flight, they were confident that the VFR will be less than that.

So that is profound and that is what will allow the creation of an affirmative base on the moon in any city on Mars. And that's the equality of like Union Pacific Railroad or or having ships that work across the oceans. Until you can get there, there's no way all the business energy will do it. You can't, you can't do anything, there's no way the flowers will bloom. Once you can get there, the opportunity is. immense and so we will do everything we can to get it there, and then make sure that there is an environment where entrepreneurs can Laura, SH and And then I think it will be amazing, a big part of that and We have talked about this to inspire people to look like that again.

You know, we talked about this yesterday. It was our grandparents who went to the moon, and we haven't been back since you know, in my life. Nobody has gone to the moon. You and I were talking last year about what to put in Falcon. Heavy? and and the type of What is the load? And the idea was to use that as an opportunity to inspire people again. Carl Sagan had a beautiful idea many years ago: if we can get enough people to look at the Earth from a distance, if we can get them to focus on the problems. here and about the possibilities of space exploration.

I was lucky enough to be with you at launch control when Falcon Heavy? It was released a few weeks ago and we made a little movie. We have called it a trailer. That sums up that experience. We have it here. We thought we'd play it again, guys. These are two minutes that do a good job of giving you the feeling of what it was like to be there when everyone gets fucked. Yes, we really want the public year to have a guarantee. to get excited about the possibility of something new happening in frontier space, the point of this was to inspire you and make you believe again.

Just like people believed in the Apollo era that anything is possible. That image at the end is a picture of one of the circuit boards inside the Roadster's window. But we tried to confuse the aliens as much as possible. If you look closely, there is also a little heat. Wheeled version of the Roadster Featuring a little astronaut in the Hot Wheels roadster on the dashboard. How was he just standing next to a basketball? Nora Norse, just that, and if you have any suggestions, let us know. I think for myself seeing those two thrusters. Coming down from side to side felt like a transformative moment, it felt like oh, we can do anything and that's the culmination.

I was really amazed by the culmination of, you know, a singular vision and hundreds or thousands of very talented people working together to ensure that each session. in launch control and observing the large number of variables that you are timing in those moments before launch. The wind speed at different altitudes and the status of the different 27 engines and then how do they manage? You're very hands-on with the details, but you're also looking at the bigger picture. How do you manage

your

time? How is it analyzed? Know? How do you zoom in and out and make sure all these things come together?

Well, at SpaceX almost all my time is spent on engineering and design, it's probably between 80 and 90%. And then Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer, runs the business operations of the company, which allows me to do that? Yeah, I think to make the right decisions you have to understand something you need to understand something you add a detailed level You can't make a good decision So, but I would like to probably like to know where you saw there as a result of an incredible team and that's the basis X super talented people who really work like crazy.

They make that happen. You know, I think my role is to make sure that they have an environment where they can really, where the talents can really come to light, and you know, but I can't express how honored and grateful I feel. I'm going to work with such a fantastic team. Everyone in this room is inspired by you. Who are you inspired by and obviously Kanye West? Today Me too fred astaire fred astaire. You know you should see my dance moves. We might see some dance moves unless you love Fred Astaire. It's amazing if you haven't seen his movies.

They are incredible. Yeah, I think when I look at all the things that you've set out to do, what's in common is that with Tesla, with SpaceX, now with the boring company, it feels like you're looking at a mature, firmly established industry. That's ripe for a kind of quantum shift and there's an opportunity there, you know, in the case of cars, their electrification, what changes dramatically? Do you know the complexity of a car and potentially in the future? The cost of rockets is their utility. With solar energy it is a firmly established energy system. This is about to undergo massive disruption.

This is having And with boring business it's about looking at infrastructure projects that would normally take decades and billions of dollars and trying to reduce Complexity, I mean, what's it like? You know that's how you see the world. Do you see the things that don't work and that can be improved? No, but I mean I don't like looking at the things they say. Well. What is the ordered range? You know, a business opportunity. From a financial point of view or something. That's really how there are some things that don't seem to be working that are important for our life and for the future.

Well, and I've said that if you're ahead of me to say where is the only way to do it or a suggestive rate or a return estimate on various industry opportunities, I would put arrows like basically building rockets and cars, pretty close to the background. from the list But there would have to be the dumbest things to do just because you know, look at the auto industry and In the US auto industry, the only two companies that haven't gone bankrupt At least at some point are Tesla and Ford all another company went bankrupt, or was failing and was acquired.

There are only two companies that went bankrupt, and there is a large graveyard of companies that did and faced entrenched competitors. There is no III that basically gave both SpaceX and Tesla a chance from the beginning. less than 10% chance of success So why do it? Well, in the case of SpaceX, I kept wondering why we weren't making progress on sending people to Mars. Why didn't we have a base on the moon. Here, where we are, in the kind of space hotels that were promised in the 2001 movie. It's like you know it's uh. Him. It just wasn't happening year after year.

Yes, I was getting depressed. I looked at NASA's website and thought: Where does it say we're not going to Mars? So initially for SpaceX, for example, I thought well. The genesis of SpaceX was not to create a company. But I really had it, how do we get NASA's budget to be larger than it was initially going to be? I came up with this little philanthropic mission, what would it be to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars? It's called Mars oasis and they were on a landing, the seats were dehydrated, nutritional gel, it was hydrated upon landing, and then you have this little greenhouse.

And then the injection of money would be, you know, green plants in the right background. I recently learned that the money injection has a meaning that I didn't know about, but you know, I think that would get people excited about Reigniting a Follower's Spirit essentially and as I thought about it more about what it would take to do , I learned that. The fundamental problem is actually that the cost ofaccess to space. The rockets were super expensive and the cost per pound per kilogram to orbit had actually gone up over the years, not down, and it was like, okay, well, it won't matter if we're able to do this philosophical mission and it generates a lot of will. to go to Mars.

That's not going to matter if there's no way. So on my second or third trip back from Russia I thought, "wow, there's got to be a way to build rockets." There has to be a way to solve the rocket crash. I missed our reading of many books and rockets and they are better. from a first principles analysis of a varrock. He just broke down the materials that are in a rocket, how much it would cost to buy those materials compared to the price of the rocket and there is a gigantic difference between the cost of the raw materials of the rocket and the cost of finishing the rocket, so it must be happening something wrong. in Going from the constituent atoms to the final form and I found that that's certainly true and then, and then why do people trying to make reuse work?

It was very difficult to make rocket reusability work and then unfortunately the space shuttle ended up being a counterexample to not trying to make reusability work because space data ended up costing more per flight than an expandable vehicle of equivalent capacity. So for a long time people used the space shuttle as an example of why reuse is nonsense. You can't take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it, so I have no doubt that if you could read the Rockets effect, it has to be a true reuse, which means quick and complete reuse.

The problem with space shows. only part of the system returned, such as the large orange tank, which was also the main fuselage, which was scrapped each time and the parts that were used were incredibly difficult to restore. So, in a way, they achieved the only reuse in the country that matters is whether it is fast and complete. It is that the only thing you change between flights away from scheduled maintenance is the propellant. So we embarked on that journey to create SpaceX in 2002 and at first I wouldn't let my friends invest because I wouldn't. I don't want to lose

your

money.

I thought it was like you know I really lose my own money, so and then we almost died at SpaceX, so we budgeted for four or three flights. I mean, technically I had a plan where I had to get the money from PayPal. I had like 180 million in PayPal. I thought you knew I'll allocate half of that to SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity and that should be fine. I will have 90 million Lexus parcels. You know, but then what happened is things cost more and took longer than I thought, so I had the choice of putting in the rest of the money or their companies are going to die and it's like setting up putting in all the money and Fire money or renting to friends in 2008 was brutal yes.

Yes, in 2008 we had the third consecutive failure of SpaceX's Falcon rocket. Tesla almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing around 6 p.m. m.. Christmas Eve 2008 was the last hour of the last day on which it was possible. Otherwise we would have risen again two days after Christmas. And I got divorced. I was really tough, man. Governor Scott, yes. Wait for it. Ask a question or maybe just answer the question of why no one else does these things. What is your pain threshold? Yes, well, it's very tall. So yes, SpaceX is alive, but it's kind of at sea, just like Tesla.

If things just happened. If it had gone slightly the other way, both companies would be dead and I would like to make one of the most difficult decisions. Have I ever been faced with it in life, it was in 2008 and I think I had, I think maybe thirty million dollars, thirty or forty-one dollars left in 2008. I had two options. I could put it all into one company, and then the other company definitely. die Or divide it between the two companies and, but if I divide it between two companies, then both could die. And you know when you put your blood, sweat and tears into creating something, a bully.

It's like a child. And then it's like, who am I going to let die of hunger? I can force myself to do it surprised. I divided the money between two. Fortunately, thank God, they both made it through. We have a question for the audience that builds on that. What was your biggest failure and how did it change you? What was your biggest failure and how did I change you? I have to think a lot about that flaw. There's your answer, there are plenty of failures along the way, that's for sure. As I said as support for SpaceX, the first three launches failed and we could barely gather enough parts and and money to do the fourth launch, both launches should fail, who would have been dead, so there were multiple failures along the way.

I tried really hard to get the right experience for SpaceX. I tried really hard to find a great chief engineer for the rocket, but in the sense that the good chief engineers didn't join and the bad ones, well, there was no point in hiring him, so I ended up being the chief engineer for the rocket. So if I could have found someone better, then maybe we would have had less than three failures. How do you plan a business where you know? The rocket business, you know, some of these things will explode on the launch pad. How does the business plan work?

I don't really have a business plan Yeah, I haven't, but I had a business near her two days ago. But these things are always wrong, so after that I just followed my father's business plans. Yes. I mean, I think you know for sure that illusions are a source of many problems and in many areas of life it is business or personal business or personal illusions that cause a lot of problems, you really have to ask yourself if something is like that. true or not, that doesn't make sense and if it ever seems too easy, it probably is.

You know, yeah. But for the SpaceX drama, I think Tesla has actually passed probably 2,000, it could be a small problem, a dose of overtime. Practice a drama magnet, it's crazy How do you mean? Many people want to know that you know that you are running three or four companies, each of them trying to do something revolutionary, each of them a business that has historically been considered impossible to challenge or disrupt. How do you prioritize? How do you prioritize between them? How do you prioritize different companies? How do you spend your time? Yes, I might actually bother you for a water.

I have a bit of a cult, my voice is a bit hoarse. It also says a top priority. For business time, almost everything is really dedicated to SpaceX and Tesla, it may seem like I have a lot of different endeavors, but it is overwhelmingly SpaceX and Tesla in terms of allocation intent. So it's a and then for non-commercial stuff, it's almost entirely kids stuff. My children are here today and they were actually taken to the South. Southwest everything was a good time But they went to the Western World Exhibition or it's just amazing. I haven't seen the Western World exhibit.

What is it called exhibition or I don't know what it is called? It is a thematic park. It's really incredibly well made, and yesterday I took the kids to spend some quality time together. I think probably one of the things that stands out the most about us is that I'm not really an investor, but more of a field investor. inverted things. I'm not really missing anything, the only public security I would have of any kind is Tesla and then the next biggest is SpaceX and then the boring Hennis Tata company. It's more like a joke because there will be a funny name for a company.

You know, we put, we put the zero and we bring. I mean, it's like. It does not make any sense. When we talked about everyone, you first told me what you were thinking. about tunnels And that's what I have to tell you about years ago, okay, it was like a long time ago. Like I thought you were joking, yeah. I was joking, but it's not because of some epiphany I had one day. Driving on the 405. That's what it's called translated, so now I was talking about four tunnels for years and years for probably five. years or four years at least.

Every time I gave a talk and people asked me what opportunities they see in the world, I said tunnels, can someone build tunnels? So after four or five years of begging people to build tunnels and there are still no tunnels. I was like okay. I want to build a tunnel. I'm missing something here. So yeah, I was basically talking about fuel for Arizona for tunnels for several years, and then I said, well, let's figure out what it takes to build a tunnel and yeah, so I started digging the tunnel I wanted. to start the tunnel From where I could see it from my office at SpaceX, that's it.

I said, well, let's just walk through a part of the parking lot across the street so we can see if anything is happening or not. And then we called our first drilling machine Godot because I kept hoping that no, it arrived. Finally we did it and arrived. Everything is going and now we are making good progress and we are finding the company to sell merchandise. So thanks to anyone who bought a flamethrower. You won't regret it or maybe you will. It won't be boring. I think we have a video here. From the last vision of the boring company Howard becomes.

You know this great attitude. I think you know when we first talked about the concept, you know that tunnels feel like a decidedly old-school solution to addressing that. I invented tunnels. And I always tell you, keeping hope in the flying car, that you asked me a simple question that answered the question about flying cars forever. What was if you would like your neighbor to have a flying car? Yes, exactly? This is exactly the question: Oh, you want to fly in a car, what if everyone around you also has a flying car? Oh? That doesn't sound so good.

Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things about tunnels is that it's one of those things where you know there's not a lot more competition there. It's not a you know. It is something that is suitable for change, so how do you do it? You talked about the philosophy with Godot being to just keep running. Basically, until you realized. Why can't it work faster? Yes. The point that becomes clear is that it is literally 2 percent of my time. It's probably 20 percent of my tweets. Tweets do not correlate with actual time spent. I mean, I just have fun with boring company.

But my time allocation is especially 2%. Talk about your time allocation. I think one of the things that you spend a lot of time thinking about, I know, is artificial intelligence and something that you and I have a shared interest in and it's something that our audience is also interested in. The question here is that many experts in AI do not share the same level of concern about the danger of swimming pools as you do. What are your last words? What specifically do you think isn't? Well, the biggest problem I see with so-called AI experts is that they think they know more than they do and they think they are smarter than they really are in general.

We are all much smarter than we think, but much less intelligent. Dumberer than we think, so this tends to affect smart people like you, they just can't define themselves by their intelligence and don't like the idea that a machine could be much smarter than them. so they throw out the idea, which is fundamentally flawed, that's the wishful thinking situation that I'm actually quite close to. I'm very close to the cutting edge of AI and it scares the hell out of me. It's capable of doing a lot more than almost anyone knows and the Rate of improvement is exponential.

But you can see this in things like alphago, which went from, in the span of maybe six to nine months, going from being unable to beat even a reasonably good go player to then beating the European world champion who was ranked. 600 and then beat Lisa Doll by five. What was world champion for many years, then beat the current world champion, then beat everyone while playing simultaneously. Then there was alpha zero who crushed alphago one hundred to 0 and alpha zero just learned by playing alone and You can play basically any game that you set the rules for if you give it the rules you give it.

Just read the rules literally. Play the game with each superhuman for any game. No one expected a big improvement to guess them, so those same experts who think AI is not. Progressing at the rate I'm saying? I think you'll find that your predictions for things like Go and other AI advancements have therefore your batting average quite a bit. Weak. It is not good that we see this also with autonomous driving. I think probably, when combined, autonomous driving will essentially encompass all modes of driving and will be at least one hundred to two hundred percent safer than a human by the end of next year.

We're talking about next year, maybe 18 months from now. Netsertive's study of version 1 of Tesla's relatively primitive Autopilot found that there was a 45 percent reduction in road accidents. And that is despite. What a driver being only version 1 Version 2. I think he will be at least 2 or 3 times better. That is the current versionthat is running right now. So the rate of improvement is really dramatic. We have to find some way to ensure that the advent of digital superintelligence is symbiotic with humanity. I think that is the biggest existential crisis we face. expensive and the most pressing And how do we do that?

I mean, if we assume that it's inevitable at this point that some version of AI is reaching 1, how can we navigate our way through them? I am not normally a fan of regulation and supervision. I mean, I think it's usually about minimizing those things once you get inside. But this is a case where there is a very serious danger to the public and therefore there needs to be a public body that has knowledge and then oocytes to confirm that they are all? Develop AI Safely This is extremely important. I think the danger of AI is much greater than the danger of landlocked nuclear warheads, and no one would suggest that we allow anyone to build nuclear warheads if that were the case.

That would be crazy and would make fun of my words. AI is much more. Dangerous than nuclear weapons. So why? We have no regulatory oversight, this is crazy. Question you have been asking for a long time. I think it's a question that's come to the fore over the last year and where you're starting to realize that not necessarily. I think we have all focused on the idea of ​​artificial superintelligence, which is clearly a danger, but maybe you know a little further? What's happened over the last year is you've seen the artificial what I would call artificial stupidity.

You're talking about algorithmic manipulation of social media like we are now. It is starting. It's starting to happen. How do we do it? What is the intervention at this time? I'm not really that worried about short-term things like narrow AI not being a species-level risk. It will result in dislocation in lost jobs and you know, that kind of better weaponry and that kind of thing. but it is not a fundamental risk at the species level, while digital superintelligence is? So it's really about laying the groundwork to ensure that if humanity collectively believes that creating digital superintelligence is the right step, then?

We should do it very, very carefully, very, very carefully. This is the most important thing we could do. Leveraging that, in addition to AI and the other topics you're addressing. Transportation, energy production, aerospace. What issues should our next generation of leaders focus on in solving what else lies ahead? Well, I mean there are other things that are on a longer time scale. Obviously, the things I believe in, like extending life beyond Earth, making life multiplanetary. I'm not a big believer in some sort of Asimov's Foundation series or the what-you-really-want principle. You know, I recommend reading the Foundation series, but it's like you know there's probably something you don't know.

But there will probably be another Dark Age, which I think is the downfall that will happen at some point. I'm not predicting that we are about to enter a Dark Age, but there is some chance that we will, especially if there is a third. world war So we want to make sure there is enough seed of human civilization somewhere else to recover civilization and perhaps shorten the length of the dark age. I think that's why I said it's important to get a self-sustaining foundation. Ideally on Mars, because Mars is far enough from Earth, I understood that a ground base that the Mars base could survive is more likely to survive than a moon base.

But I think a lunar base and a Mars base could perhaps help regenerate life. here in the earth. It would be really important, and it would do it before a possible Third World War. You know, that's the century we had two massive world wars. Three if you count the Cold War. I think it's unlikely we'll ever have another one. It will be at some point or if we have another one it will be the last. Yes it is. It could be radioactive debris. Yes, again, I'm not predicting. This seems fine, if you say that if given enough time, it will most likely be given time because this has been our pattern in the past, so you really believe in the zeroth law.

From Asimov's zeroth law, the set of actions most likely to support humanity in the future is taken. But I think sustainable energy is also obviously very important, that is tautological, if it is not sustainable it is unsustainable. Yes, how soon are we to solve that problem? Well, I think the core technologies are there, with wind energy, solar energy, batteries. The fundamental problem is that there is a raw allocation of its own in the cost of CO2. The market economy works very well, if things are priced correctly. But when there are things that are not priced correctly and something that is priced has a real cost that has zero cost, then that is where distortions occur in the market that inhibit progress. other technologies, so essentially anything that produces police, and will push cotton into the atmosphere, which includes rockets, by the way.

I'm not excluding rockets from this. There has to be a price and then you cut it with a low price, but then that price and then depending on whether that price has any effect on the last million Possibility of CO2 in the atmosphere, you can adjust that price up and down But in the absence of a price, in a way we pretend that extracting billions of tons of fossil fuels from the depths and subsoil and putting them into the atmosphere, those who claimed that this had that there is no probability of a bad result And the entire scientific community is saying it's obviously going to have a bad outcome, obviously you're just changing the chemical components in the atmosphere, so it's really up to people and governments to put a price on carbon. and then automatically the right thing happens It's really simple What do we do with the Carbon Center?

In fact, I think we can manage at the current carbon level or even a little higher. It is and this is going to sound. It seems I'm going backwards. but there's actually an argument that more carbon in the atmosphere is actually good, but up to a point. Arguably we might actually have been a little carbon starved if we went back 200 years and said, well, rage on like we did. like converting 890 parts per million carbon, we're probably a little carbon now that we're around 400, just after the 400 mark. I think somewhere in the 400s is probably fine. We don't have to worry about questioning carbon or anything like that.

But Now, if this momentum continues and we start to go up to six hundred eight hundred thousand thousand five hundred. That's where things get really worrisome and the global energy infrastructure big push is taking us in that direction. It is very important that the public and the governor are pushing to ensure that the right price for carbon is paid. Then that will be what matters. Yes, our audience is very interested in knowing how many hours you slept last night. Oh, I don't know about six five or six. I think it s true. I feel like we know part of the answer because you were stuck in West for a while.

But what do I mean? On a normal day for you, you're either sleepy or not sleeping. very true damn, do I look that bad? You look great. Well, imagine with the amount of responsibilities, with the amount of knowledge you have, with what you have to do and these problems that still keep you awake at night, or do you think we are on the way to solving it? Well, right now, the only things that are really stressing me out a lot or the AI, obviously, are the guys who are there and working very hard on the production of the Tesla Model 3 and who are making good progress, but generally it's a I work hard, but those are both.

Most stressful things in my life right now Yes Our audience really wants to know What do you expect the world to be like for children born today when they are your age? Well, what do you expect the world to be like? What is the best case scenario? Do we solve these problems? What is that world like? Let's see, I think it would be a good image. You know, we're really moving substantially to sustainable generation and consumption of electricity so that the CO2 risk and the ocean rise risk are mitigated. And we're not considering that, as you know, Florida and large portions of the world underwater, it would be great not to, but to have addressed the risk that will be there.

Do you know us? For us to have a base on the moon, we're dealing with a big mirage exploring the solar system, so the welding industry essentially has a human civilization coming out and has something that anyone can? go to the moon of Mars or the solar system if they want to make it really affordable. I think it's important that this competition of your multiple companies doing this is not just one sex and that risk is that I assume that there is some kind of benign AI and that they were able to achieve a symbiosis with that AI.

Ideally, AI. Is there anyone who can name the members, but did you have a good suggestion on what the AI ​​optimization should be, what is its utility function? You have to be careful with this because you say maximize happiness and the AI ​​concludes that happiness is a function of dopamine and serotonin. Then just capture all the humans and feed your brain with large amounts of dopamine and serotonin. Okay, so holy shit. It sounds pretty good though. . I'll do it to you dear Well, I like the definition of I should try to maximize the freedom of action of humanity Maximize the freedom of action maximize freedom essentially I like that definition But we want to tighten the coupling between collective human intelligence Digital intelligence And a link Newer is trying to help in that regard by creating a high-bandwidth interface between the AI ​​and your human brain.

We're already a sidewalk in the sense that your phone and your computer are kind of an extension. of you Simply low bandwidth I/O exactly. It's simply low bandwidth. In particular, the output, I mean basically two thumbs. So how do we solve that problem? Give him the bandwidth, the bandwidth, it's a bandwidth problem. And we've all come to that now. We are all, we are all cyborgs, we were just low efficiency cyborgs, so how can we improve it? I think we have an opposite interface. As if we didn't evolve to have a communications connector. You know, there will be essentially a large number of tiny electrodes that, of course, will be able to read correctly for your brain. .

You know that safety is quite important in this situation, to say the least. I was just saying I'm not coming, I'll keep my brain isolated. Yeah, well, I think a lot of people will choose to do that. But it's a bit like if Ian Banks is new or fits, but no, but in the case of a relationship that's either there from birth or it's not. kind of sorry to back them up, back off, this would be this, there's a digital extension of you. That is an AI, the extension of your AI, a tertiary layer of intelligence.

So, you have your limbic system, your cortex, and and the tertiary layer. What is your digital AI extension and what is that high bandwidth connection? achieves mediation and meiosis. I think that's the best result. I hope that if you know he has better ideas and talks about another project you're working on, his audience wants to know a little more about Sterling. Oh, can you tell us something? Making Skynet, hopefully not Skynet, your Internet in the sky. Well, we don't talk much about StarLink, but essentially its goal is to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency Internet connectivity around the world.

That won't actually be enough cognitive processing. The car on board satellite system to be somehow a Skynet thing like it's digital AI requires a lot of super intelligence, it requires a lot of big servers on the ground just to power the intensity, but this antenna has to provide people who don't . Do you have any internet connection with internet connectivity? and is very good for sparsely populated and sparsely populated areas in moderate, moderate and mostly quiet, and allows people in cities to choose from their choice of low-cost Internet access. But I think it will be important for the Starling system to provide the funding needed for SpaceX to develop interplanetary spacecraft.

And at the same time, yes, helping people who have even more expensive connectivity and giving people in urban areas a more competitive option. Very good, I have to ask you because it is question number one. Returning to Mars, what type of government do you imagine for the first Martian colony? Blitzer and what is your title? Yes, exactly Emperor. Oh, damned friar? I don't know It might be too much If you're the one who should take care of my jokes, yeah, not everyone understands irony, I have to remember that. So I think it's most likely that the form of government on Mars would be something like a direct democracy in whichvote on issues where people vote directly on issues rather than going to representative government.

When the United States was formed, representative government was the only thing that was logistically feasible. Because there was no way for people to communicate instantly, many people didn't do it. I didn't even have access to mailboxes or there wasn't even a post office. It's very primitive, many people couldn't write. So you had to have some form of representative democracy or things just wouldn't work at all. I think it's most likely my mas. People will vote on each issue and that's how it works. I have some things. I would recommend that blowers keep laws short and long, that's how it is.

Something suspicious is happening if there is a lot of time. You know, if the size of the law exceeds the word count of The Lord of the Rings. Which it does surprisingly, so it's like something is wrong. So there should be a limit on the size of the law so that I can digest it, like, how can you read the Constitution and all the amendments, like can you read them and maybe an hour, and and we govern like this. much of a civilization for that and yet modern law is this obtuse? Super boring tome. That is indecipherable to almost anyone, so I think direct democracy reduces the minimums that are understandable.

I think having some kind of hysteresis should be easier to eliminate a law than to create one because things just don't present themselves, you have to have something that is inertia will come So I probably don't want the right number of you, maybe it's like 60 /40 It may take 60% to implement a law, but any number above 40% can be shaved off a bit. Otherwise, the casualties accumulate over time, they heal over time, and it's kind of like Gulliver, where you get trapped by all these little threads and you can't move. The arteries harden. of civilization with laws with rules and rules rules rules So it should be easier to get rid of the rules then let's put a Maybe they should even have some kind of sunset clause so that they automatically expire unless there is enough momentum to keep them around I know that There is a yes answer, it's just that I'm interested in hearing a little more about the early days with Tesla and how I joined.

Brother Kimble is here, I thought I'd get him out. You could talk a little about it. Maybe they'll get lucky tonight, I noticed they have a guitar. I'm going to ignore that he had a good guitar, but I suppose there are a good number of entrepreneurs here today and a good number of people interested in looking at Tesla, whose extraordinary success. Do you know how this came about? And when you guys were watching, do I know him famous? You know, and you were looking for problems that you could solve? What are those conversations like? Yes, the C2e was fine again.

Thank you. About the things I thought would be most important to work on for a long time. We'll remember the college days and electric cars are something I've been here since 1819, just like 1819. When do you first remember here when we talk about electric cars? That's right, the first time was good, you talk about it a lot. We used to do it. Random brainstorming even when we were in our 20s 20s and the first thing. I remember our brainstorming was to figure out connectivity between doctors and we were on a road trip from We were a lot of doctors in the family, so we had the information.

But the idea was really to solve that problem that we were in from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia. he. This is before the Internet, so we know it in our minds designing networked computers, doctors talking. All of this happened, of course, over 25 years, but it's one of the first times I remember we really tried to solve a global problem and unless it was a global problem. That was really important. Him. They just weren't that interesting to us the electric cars that you talked about for a long time, but I remember walking into your house one time, this was in Polly 2002 or 2003 and you had these plans in place that the Tesla team had or before .

The guys had basically said, "You know we're going to take this Lotus Elise, we're going to turn it into an electric car and you know, we sat down and talked about it for a while and there wasn't that much that could be done." I think we all believe it can be done. It was more of the attitude that it had to be done And then from there Yeah, well, the first internships I had that were interesting were on ultracapacitors that were used in electric cars, which is why I first came to Silicon Valley in Como in 93 or done for something I was going to work at a company called policy research on advanced ultracapacitors with the idea that this could be a solution to the problem of energy storage in electric vehicles and then when I graduated from Penn, I was going to be doing a PhD from Stanford in materials science and physics invention.

Trying to figure out if there's a way to solve an ultra high density solid state capacitor that has enough range to power an electric vehicle so I said impact it so that's a that's a 95 and then I wasn't sure there was one of those things where you could work on it for a long time and find out there isn't one. Not really. A good solution is to publish a paper and get a PhD in a lab, but its value would be academic, so in '95 I had the option of working on this energy storage system for electric vehicles or trying to play a role in construction.

Internet But Internet stuff was happening at that very moment. While electric vehicle technology was going to progress slowly on its own? Whether I was there or not, I thought I'd put the rat studies on hold and do something to help out on the Internet or do something useful on the Internet and that's when I talked to Kimbo. You're working in Canada at the time and I said, Hi. Why don't we try to do this with this company in Silicon Valley? great We bought that we were the first to see maps and door-to-door directions. It had been created by a Knapp tech company that had never burned down, had never been on the Internet, and it was great to be the first. two humans to see it.

You can draw a map, write an address, get directions. Things that probably all died about 50 times today each. And we were the first to see it and put it on the Internet. It was really great. She pioneered maps and directions, yellow pages and white pages on the Internet, yes, and then we ended up helping put a lot of publications online. So, as investors and customers, the New York Times Company Knight-Ridder or Hearst. in several others? and Yes, but I always wanted to go back to electric vehicles because that was one of my main interests from the undergraduate and graduate days, and so after us, we still took one more Internet company because I thought it was up to you I had not achieved its objective.

Its Full Potential We built this amazing technology, but customers weren't using it the right way. It's a little bit like building, you know, F-22 fighter jets and then selling them to people and they roll them down the hill. to each other That's not the way to use it, okay, I think that's where you decide you really want to go. The end consumer, if they have great technology, wants to reach the end consumer. Don't tell it to some outdated company that doesn't understand how to use it. So yes. So, with Excel Comb. which became PayPal. That's what we try to do something meaningful with the Internet.

And it got part of the way to its goal after PayPal went public and was bought by eBay in 2002. That actually freed me and a bunch of other people up, so you go and start companies and I start debating between the car solar electric or space. I thought the space was the least likely to have anyone, but at least attract entrepreneurs. I don't like it as no one is going to like it. I'm crazy enough to make room, so I better make room. So I started with space first and then about a year and a half later in 2003.

I had lunch with JB Straubel and Hal Rosen and it was like a fish restaurant in El Segundo and Hal Rosen had been involved in space and electric vehicles and Jb he had just graduated from college and I was working with him and the conversation turned to electric vehicles. Because Howard had done something called Rosen Motors, which was like an attempt at evie. startup, and I said well, I've always been very interested in electric vehicles. I was going to do my PhD on advanced and reduced energy storage. I was going to do graduate studies on advanced energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and then JB said, Have you heard of this company called AC propulsion because they had created it? zero electric sports car as a prototype.

I thought, wow, that's cool, like lithium-ion batteries have actually reached a level of energy density that for the first time could allow you to have significant range in an electric car. And they had a sports car that went from zero to 60 in less than four seconds over a 250-mile range. And it's cool, and that was just done because it was just a kit car, so it had no roof or airbags or thermal control system, and it was extremely unreliable. It wasn't produced, but it was a proof of concept. So I got the AC Repulsion test drive and thought, "Wow, you guys should really market this.

This would show people what electric cars can do." I tried for months to get the AC propulsion to work. in production with the T 0 and they just weren't interested in doing that. Surprisingly they wanted to make an electric Scion, you know, like that boxy car. But the problem is that the electric saundra could cost $70,000 or you could build a sports car for $100,000. Okay, but no one is going to buy the electric silencer. But the fuel could fight electric sports cars, so after harassing them for months. Finally I said, look, if you guys aren't going to market the T zero, would you mind if I did?

They said no, no problem. Forward. It's great. So I'm going to do that with JV, and I said, but if you're going to go and try to produce t zero, there are other teams you should talk to as well. interested in doing that So that's where Which Hard Macht Hopping and Ian Wright came in and no, I think that was probably the biggest mistake of my career, frankly. I think whatever you think, you might as well have your cake and eat it. Something you're probably wrong about So I thought I could keep running SpaceX. I'll dedicate 20% of my time to Tesla and that will be fine, but it really wasn't.

Things really fell apart. We went through hell, we need to recapitalize the company, Kimmel was there singing So, Silicon Valley, accurate or not, that's the show, yeah. It starts to get very precise around episode four. So it took me a few episodes to stabilize, the first few episodes felt like Hollywood was making fun of me. of the Hollywood idea of ​​Silicon Valley, which is like no, you don't know, it's not true. But then about the fourth or fifth episode of the first season it really starts to get good and then in the second season it's an amazing reality.

But the truth is stranger than fiction. the crazy things you see on that show Silicon Valley, reality is much crazier than that Yeah, you've seen both right, yeah, I'm like wow What will have to be a story for another time? They asked us to finish. I have one last question for the audience. What is your favorite song from the movie Three Amigos? Well, we don't need to, we don't need to do it if you guys are willing to sing. OK. So, is Jonah actually the dancer of the three? Of Us we have been playing, singing and dancing to this song since we were kids.

So we'll do it on stage and you guys can sing well. We will do the first verse and then you can sing. in the second verse This is going to be really bad Yes, I said terrible. I'm mixing up the dance thing. Come with me when the moombas hit the sky. You will walk with me throughout the biome. Bye bye. Okay, now all together. Goodbye, little ship. Smile my little buttercup, what do you say for a while? Bin it's me to the sky And you and I walk wild well, this is really winning you over