People don't underpla is one of the biggest threats of the future of human civilization,
and that is what it's going on right now, which is not great.
I mean, we really want to wake up the morning and look forward
to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen,
and and life cannot simply be about sort of solving one miserable problem after another.
I read At the same time, I want to want to caution against
complacency, so I can't epsize that that're not As long as we push hard
and are not complacent. Um, the future is going to be great.
Don't worry about it. I'm curious about your timelines and how you predict and
how comes. Some things are so amazingly on the money, and some art
so when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, you
were scoffed in twenty fourteen because no one since Henry Ford with the Model T
had had come close to that kind of growth rate for four cars. You
were scoffed, and you actually hit five hundred thousand cars and five hundred ten
thousand or whatever. Pretty but five years ago, last time you came to
Ted we Um, I asked you about full self driving and you said,
yep, this very year where I am confident that we will have a car
going from LA to New York without any intervention. Yeah. I don't want
to blow your mind, but I'm not always right. UM. So talk
talks between those too. Why why why has full self driving in particular been
so hard to predict? I mean, the thing that really got me and
I think it's going to get a lot of other people, is that there
are just so many false storms with with self driving. Um, where you
think you think you've got the problem, I have a handle on the problem,
and then nope, it turns out you just hit a ceiling um and
uh, because what would if you if you would applied the progress? The
progress looks like a log curve. So it's like, yeah, a series
of log curves. So most boil in our log curve business, suppose.
But it goes it goes up sort of you know, it's sort of a
fairly straightway, and then it starts tailing off and and and you start getting
diminishing returns. Yeah, and you're like, oh, this it was trending
up and now it's sort of curving over and not and and you you start
getting to these what I call local local maxima where you don't realize basically how
dummy were that's and then and then and then it happens game so um and
ultimately um these things you know in retrospect they seem obvious, but in order
to solve full self driving properly, you actually just you have to solve real
world AI. Um. Yeah, because you see, like what other road
networks designed to work with the designed to work with a biological neural net our
brains, um, and with vision our eyes, and so in order to
make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real world AI and
vision because because we need we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to
have to have self driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and
biological neural nets, you know we need I guess when you put it that
way, sort of like quite obvious that the only way to solve for self
driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision. Or what do you
feel about the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where
where there is a chance for the logrithmic curve not to tail off any any
time soon. Well, I meantally these these maybe an infamous last words,
but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year, that we
will exceed Uh, you're like, what the probability of an accident? At
what point do you exceed that of the average person? Right, I think
we will exceed that this year. But but you but but but you're behind
the scenes looking at the data. You're seeing enough improvement to believe that this
year timeline is real. Yes, that's what it seems like. I mean,
like I say, you know, we could be here talking again in
a year. It's like, well, another year went by and it didn't
happen. But I think this, I think this is the year. And
so in general, when when people talk about elon elon time, I mean
it sounds like like you can't just have a general rule that if you predict
that something will be done in six months. Actually what you what we should
imagine is it's going to be a year or it's like two x or three
x. It depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess,
things involving software at you know, AI whatever are fundamentally harder to predict
than others. Is there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines
to drive people to be ambitious. Without that, nothing gets done well.
I generally believe in terms of internal timelines that we want to set set the
most aggressive timeline that we can UM, because there's sort of like a low
of gases expansion, where for schedules where whatever time you set, it's not
going to be less than that. It's very rare that will be less than
that. UM. And as far as my predictions I concerned. UM,
what what has to happen in the media is that they will report all the
wrong ones and ignore all the right ones right UM. And or you know
when when when writing an article about me, I've had a long career in
multiple industries. If you if you list my sins, I sound like the
worst person on earth. But if you put those against the you know,
the things I've done right, it makes much more sense. You know.
So essentially, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that that that
you will make cumulatively, which if you sum up those mistakes will sound like
I'm the worst predictor ever. But for example, for it tells La vehicle
growth. I said, I think we're doing fifty percent, and we've we've
done eighty percent. Yes, so, but they don't mention that one.
So, I mean, I'm not sure what my exact track record is on
predictions. They're more optimistic than pessimistic, but they're not all optimistic. Some
of them are exceeded, probably more or later, but they they do come
true. It's very rare that they do not come true. It's sort of
like, you know, uh, you know, if there's some radical technology
prediction. But the point is not that it was a few years late,
but that it happened at all. Yeah, that's the that's the more important
part. So it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing
the progress on understanding that the AI, the Tesla AI, understanding the world
around it led to a kind of an Ahlm moment. It does, because
you really surprised people recently when you said, probably the most important product development
going on at Tesla this year is this robot Optimus. Yes, many companies
out there have tried to put out these robots, have been working on them
four years, and so far no one has really cracked it. There's no
mass adoption robot in people's homes. There are some in manufacturing, but it's
like I would say that no one's kind of really cracked it. What is
it something that happened in the development of full self driving that gave you the
confidence to say, you know what, we could do something special? Yeah,
yeah, exactly. So you know, it took me a while to
sort of realize that in order to solve self driving, you really needed to
solve real world aim and the point of which you save real world AI for
a car which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize
that to a robot on legs as well, the two hard parts. I
think it's obviously companies like Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make quite
compelling, sometimes alarming robots. Right. Um, you know, so this
is from a sensor is an actualator standpoint, it's certainly been demonstrated by by
many that it's possible to make a humoroid robot. The thing that the things
that are currently missing are enough intelligence, enough intelligence for the robot to navigate
the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed. So the missing
things are basically real world intelligence and scaling up manufacturing. Those are two things
that tells LA is very good at and so then we basically just need to
design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for a humanoid robot. People
have no idea this is this is going to be bigger than the car.
So let's dig into exactly that. I mean, in one way, it's
actually an easier problem than full self driving because you instead of an object going
along at sixty miles an hour, which if it gets it wrong, someone
will die, this is an object that's engineered to only go what three or
four or five marks in our walking experience, and so a mistake is that
there aren't lives at stake. There might be embarrassment at stake. It doesn't
take it over and right and now sleep recently a right, but but so
talk about I mean, I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably going
to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for people
at home. If you had a robot that really understood the three D architecture
of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed
to be, and could recognize or those objects. I mean that's kind of
amazing, isn't it. Like like that the kind of thing that you could
ask a robot to do would be what like tidy up? Yeah, absolutely,
or make make dinner, I guess the lawn, take take a cup
of tea two grandma and show her family pictures and exactly take care of my
grandmother and make sure, yeah, exactly when it could recognize obviously, recognize
everyone in the home. Yeah, could play catch with your kids, yes,
I mean, obviously we need to be careful, just doesn't become a
dystopian situation. Like I think. One of thinks that's going to be important
is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over
the air, where if you, for example, we're to say stuff soft
stop, that would if anyone said that, then the robot would stop,
you know type of thing, and that's not updatable remotely. I think it's
going to be important to have safety futures like that. Yeah, that sounds
wise. And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI.
I've said this for many years. I don't I don't love being regulated,
but I you know, I think this is an important thing for public safety.
Let's come back to that. But I'm just I don't think many people
have really sort of taken seriously the notion of, you know, a robot
at home. I mean at the start of the computing revolution, you know,
Bill Gates said a computer in every home, and people at the time
said, yeah, whatever, who would even want that in our pocket?
Do you think there will be basically like in say say twenty fifty or whatever,
that like a robot in most homes is what there will be on people
will I think they probably them account on them. You'll have your own butler
basically, yeah, you'll have your sort of buddy robot. Probably yeah,
I mean how much of a buddy do you like? Do you do?
How many applications you thought? Is there? You know, can you have
a romantic partner, sex part I mean probably inevitable. I mean I did
promise the Internet that I would make catgirals. We could make a robot catgal
that, So yeah, I guess it'll be what what whatever? People want?
Really? You know, So what sort of timeline should we be thinking
about of the first the first models that are actually made and sold, Well,
you know, the first units that that we tend to make are m
for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive, and things that people don't
want to do. And you know, I think we'll have like an interesting
prototype sometime this year. We might have something useful next year, but I
think quite likely within at least two years, and then we'll see rabbit growth
year over a year of the usefulness of the humor wid robots, an decrease
in cost, and scaling out production initially just selling to businesses or when when
do you picture you'll you'll sell You'll start selling them where you can buy your
parents one for Christmas or something i'd see I listened ten years. Yeah,
how how how help me on the economics of this? So what do you
picture the cost of one of these being? Well, I think the cost
is actually not going to be crazy high, um, like less than a
car. Initially, things will be expensive because it'll be new technology at low
production volume. The complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of
a humanoid robot, so I would expect that it's going to be less than
a car, or at least equivalent to a cheap car. So even if
it starts at fifty k. Within a few years it's down to twenty K
or lower or whatever, and maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still book,
But thinking about the economics of this, if you can replace a thirty
thousand dollars forty thousand dollars a year worker which you have to pay every year,
with a one time payment of twenty five thousand dollars for a robot that
can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs.
How worried should the world be about that? I want to worry about the
sort of putting people out of a job thing. I think we're actually going
to have and already do have a massive shortage of labor. So I think
I think we will have not not people out of work, but actually still
a shortage labor even in the future. But this really will be a world
of abundance. Any good and services will be available to anyone who wants them.
That it will be so cheap to have goods and services will be ridiculous.
And presuming it should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services
that can't profitably be made now but could be made in that world. Courtesy
of legions of robots. Yeah, it will be a world of abundance.
The only scarcity that will exist in the future is that which we decide to
create ourselves as humans. Okay, so AI is allowing us to imagine a
differently powered economy that will create this abundance. What are you most worried about
going wrong? Well, like I said, AI and roboducts will will bring,
um, bring out what might be termed the age of abundance. Other
people affuse this word um and and that this is my prediction, will be
an age of abundance um for everyone. Um that that. I guess.
There's the the dangers would be the artificial general intelligence or digital superintelligence d couples
from a collective human world and goes into direction that for some reason we don't
like, of whatever whatever direction might go. Um, you know, that's
sort of sort of The idea behind neuralink is to try to more tightly couple
collective human world to the two digital superintelligence and also along the way solve a
lot of brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So even
if it doesn't succeed in the greater goal, it will I think it will
succeed in in the goal of alleviating brain and spine damage. So that the
spirit there is that if we're going to make these ais that are so vastly
intelligent, we ought to be wide directly to them so that we ourselves can
have these superpowers more more directly. But that doesn't seem to avoid the risk
that those superpowers might ten ugly and unintended. I think it's a risk.
I agree, I don't. I'm not saying that I have some certain answer
to that risk. I'm I'm just saying, like, like, maybe one
of the things that would be good for ensuring that the future is one that
we want is to more tightly couple human world, collective human world, to
digital intelligence. UM. The issue that we face here is that we're already
a sidewalk. If you think about it, the computers are an extension of
ourselves, and when we die, there's like we have like a digital ghost
all of our text messages and social media and emails. And it's quite eerie
actually when someone dies and there but everything online is still there. But but
you say, like, what's what's the limitation? What is it that UM
in him? It's human machine symbiosis. It's the data rate. When you
communicate, especially with a phone, you're moving your thumbs right very slowly,
so you're like moving with two little meatsticks right at a rate that's maybe ten
per second, optimistically one hundred pers per second. And computers are are communicating
at the gigabit level beyond. Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually
working that you've got You've got a richer sort of higher bandwidth connection, if
you like, between external electronics and a brain than has been possible before.
Yeah. So the I mean, the fundamental principles of reading neurons sort during
rewrite on neurons with tiny electrodes have been demonstrated for decades. So it's not
like this is the concept is near. What the problem is that there's no
product that works well that you can go and and buy. So it's it's
all sort of in research labs. Um, and it's it's not it's uh
like there's there's always like some chords sticking out of your head and it's it's
quite gruesome, and it's it's really, um, there's there's no good product
that that that actually there's a good job and is high bandwidth and safe and
something you'd actually that you could buy and would want to buy. So um.
But but in it the way to think of the neural device is kind
of like a fitbit or an Apple watch. Um that's uh, where we
take out a sort of a small section of skull about the size of a
quarter. Um replace that with what, in many ways really is very much
like um uh, a fitbitt, Apple watch or some kind of smart watch
thing. Um uh and um and and but but with with tiny tiny wires,
very very very tiny wires tied to wires so tiny it's hard to even
see them. And it's very important to have very tiny wires that you when
they're implanted, they don't they don't damage the brain. How far are you
from putting these into humans? Well, we have put in our FDA application
to have the aspirationally do do the first human implant this year. The first
uses will be for neurological injuries are different kinds, yes, But running the
clock forward and imagining when when people are actually using these for their own enhancement,
let's say, ahead, for the enhancement of the world. How clear
are you in your mind as to what it will feel like to have one
of these inside your head. Well, I do want epsides we're out of
at an early stage and so m it really will be many years before we
have anything approximating a high bound with neural interface that allows for AI human symbiosis.
UM. For many years, we will just be solving brain injuries and
spinal injuries from probably a decade UM. This is not something that will suddenly
one day it'll will have this incredible sort of whole brain interface. It's going
to be, like said, at least a decade of really just solving um
of brain injuries and spinal injuries. And and really I think you can solve
a very wide range of brain injuries including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep
perchancely schizophrenia, like a lot of things that cause great stress to people,
restoring memory in all the people. If you can pull that off, that
is that that's the APP I will sign up for. I wouldn't please hurry.
Actually yeah, I mean the emails that we get at neural link or
heartbreaking, UM, I mean that they'll send us just fragic you know,
you know where where someone was was sort of in the prime of life and
and and they had an accident on a motorcycle, and and and someone who's
twenty five is you know, it can't even feed themselves and this is something
we could fix. Um. But but you have you have said that AI
is one of the things you're most worried about, and that neuralink may be
one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it. Or yeah,
it's it's there's there's the short term thing, which I think is helpful on
an individual human level UM with injuries. And then the long term thing is
an attempt to address the civilizational risk of AI by bringing bringing UM digital intelligence
and biological intelligence closer together. I mean, if you think of the hell
the brain works today, they're really kind of two layers to the brain.
There's the Olympic system and the quartet seek about the kind of animal brain where
it's kind of like the fun part really must have Twitter operates by the way.
Yeah, I mean we're I think, like to Imban said this,
like we're like we're like somebody's you know, stuck a computer on a monkey.
Um, you know, so we're like, if you gave a monkey
a computer, that's our cortex. But we still have a lot of monkey
instincts, right, So which we then try to rationalize it's no, it's
not a monkey instinct. It's something more important than that. But it's often
just really a monkey instinct. We're in this, we're just monkeys with a
computer STU stuck in our brain. Um so um. Even though the cortex
is sort of the smart or the intelligent part of the brain, the thinking
part of the brain. UM, people are quite I've not yet met anyone
who wants to delete the olympic system or their cortex. They're quite happy having
both. Everyone wants both parts of their brain and um. And people really
want their phones and their computers, which are really the tertiary the third part
of of of your intelligence. It's just that it's it's like said that it's
band with the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is slow. Um.
And it's just a very tiny straw to those tertiary layer. And we want
to make that tiny straw a big highway. UM. And I'm definitely not
saying that this is going to solve everything, or this is you know,
it's the only thing. It's it's it's something that that that might be helpful.
Um. And And in worst case scenario, I think we solve some
important brain injury spinal injury issues, and that's still a great outcome. Right
best case scenario, we may discover new human possibility telepathy you've spoken of in
a stal collection with With With with the loved One. You know, full
memory UM and and much faster thought process than maybe all these things. It's
very cool if AI were to take down Earth. We need a plan.
B Let's let's shift to space. We spoke last up to about reusability,
and you're just demonstrated that spectacular for the first time. Since then, you've
gone on to build this monster rocket, Starship UM, which kind of changes
the rules of the game in spectacular ways. Tell Us, tell us about
Starship. Yes, Starship is extremely fundamental. So the holy grail of of
rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been achieved.
The closest that UM anything has come as our Falcon Rand rocket, where
we are able to recover the prey the first stage the boost age, which
is probably about sixty percent of the cast of the vehicle, um of the
whole launch maybe seventy percent, and we've now done that over one hundred times.
So with Starship we will be recovering the entire thing. That's or at
least that's the goal, right um. And and and more of recovering it
in such a way that it can be immediately reflown. Whereas with Falconline we
still need to do some amount of refurbishment to the brewster and to the firing
one nose cone so um. But with Starship, the design goal is immediate
reflight, right, So you just you're just refill propellant and go again.
And the this is gigantic, It just just as it would be in any
other mode of transporting. And it's and the main design is and is to
basically take what one hundred plus people at a time, plus a bunch of
things that they need to Mars. So talk first of all, talk talk
about that piece. What what is your latest timeline? One for the first
time a starship goes to Mars, presumely without people but just equipment. Two
with people, three the sort of okay, one hundred people at a time,
let's let's go. Sure we and I just put the cost thing into
perspective. Um. The the cost of the expected cost of Starship putting one
hundred tons into orbit UM is significantly less than what UM it would have cost,
or what it did cost to put out our tiny Falcon one rocket into
orbit. UM. Just as the cost of flying a seven forty seven around
the world is less than the cost of a small airplane, you know,
a smaller plant that was thrown away. UM. So it's really pretty mind
boggling UM that that the giant thing costs less, way less than the small
thing. So it doesn't use sort of exotic propellants or things that are difficult
to obtain on Mars. UM. It uses methane's fuel and it's primarily auctions.
It's sort of roughly seventy seven seventy eight percent oxygen by weight UM.
And Mars has a AR two atmosphere and has water ice which is ER two
plus H two. Oh, so you can make thh four methane and O
two oxygen on Mars. There's manly. One of the first task on Mars
will be to create, yes, a fuel plant that can create the fuel
for the return trips of many starships. Yes, and actually it's mostly gonna
an oxygen plant. But but it's it's because it's um. It's it's cool,
it's seventy eight percent oxygen twenty two percent fuel. UM. But but
but the fuel is a simple fuel that is easy to create on Mars Um
and and and many other parts of the Solar systems. So basically um and
it's all propulsive landing, no parachutes, UM, nothing's thrown away. UH
has a heat shield that's capable of entering on Earth or Mars. Um.
We could even potentially go to Venus. But it's not you don't want to
go there. It's Venus is hell almost literally, Um, but you you
could. It's a generalize a method of transport to to anywhere in the Solar
System because the point which you have a pellent deep on Mars, you can
then travel to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter and then to
the Saturn and ultimately anywhere in the Solar system. Right, but your man
for your main for focus and SpaceX's main focus is still Mars. Like that
that is that is the that is the mission, that is that is where
most of the effort will go. Yeah, or you are you actually imagining
a much broader array of uses even in the coming you know, the first
decade or so of use is of this where we could go, for example,
of the places and Solar System to explore. Perhaps NASA wants to use
the rocket for that reason. Yeah, now so, now so it is
planning to use a starship to return to the Moon, to return people to
the Moon. Um and so we're very honored that NASA has shown us to
do this. Um so. But I'm saying is it is a generalized it's
a it's a general solution to getting anywhere in the Greater Solar System. It's
not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution
for transport anywhere in the in the Solar System. Before it can do any
of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit, you know,
around what what's what's what's what's what's your latest device on the on the
timeline for that, it's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt
in in a few months UM. So we're actually integrating the we'll be integrating
the engines into the booster for the first orbital flight starting in about a week
or two UM and the launch complex itself is ready to go. So,
assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have a an orbital launch
attempt within a few months, and a radical new technology like this, presumably
there is real risk on those early sept that yeah, yeah, yeah,
Like I mean, the joke I make all the time is that excitement is
guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is. But the last
less on your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put the
first human on Mars till twenty twenty nine. I want to say, yeah,
I mean, so, let's see, I mean, we are we
have built a production system for starships, so we're making a lot of ships
and boosters. How many of your planning to make? Actually, well,
we're currently expecting to make a booster and a ship roughly every well, initially
roughly every couple of months, and hopefully by by the end this year,
one every month. So it's it's giant rockets, but a lot and a
lot of them. Just in terms of talking in terms of rough orders of
man. In order to create a self sustaining city on Mars, I think
that you will need something on the order of a thousand ships, and we
just need we just need a helen of Sparta. I guess on the Mars
this is not in most people's heads. The planet that launched a thousand ships.
That's that's nice, But this is not in most people's heads, this
picture that you have in your mind that so there's there's there's basically a two
year window. You can only really fly to Mars conveniently every two years.
Yes, you are still you were picturing that during during the twenty thirties,
every couple of years, something like a thousand starships take off, each containing
one hundred or more people. I mean that that picture is just completely mind
blowing to me, that that sense of this armada of humans going Battlestar Glad
together fleet departs, and you think that that it can basically be funded by
people spending maybe a couple hundred grand on a ticket to to Mars. Is
is that price about where where it has been? Well? I think it
say like, what's what's what's required in order to get enough people and enough
cargo to Mars to build a self sustaining city UM. And it's where you
have an intersection of sets of people who want to go, because I think
only a small percentage of humanity will want to go UM and can afford to
go or get sponsorship in some manner that intersection of sets I think needs to
be a million people or something like that. Um, and so it's what
what what can a million people afford or get sponsorship for or because I think
governments will also pay for it, and um, people can take out loans
and a. But I think at the point in which you say, okay,
okay, like if if moving to Mars costs are fragments, take um,
one hundred thousand dollars, then I think, um, you know,
almost anyone can can work and save up and and and eventually have one hundred
thousand dollars and be able to go to Mars if they want. We want
to make it available to anyone who wants to go. Yeah, So it
and and very important. Tom says that Mars, especially in the beginning,
will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard
work. It's kind of like that Shackleton app for going to the Antarctic,
which I think is actually not real bit but it sounds real and it's cool.
It's sort of like the sales pitch we're going to Mars is it's it's
it's dangerous, it's cramped. You might not make it back. It's difficult,
it's hard work. That's the sales pitch. Right, you will make
history. Bet it'll be glorious. Right. Also, on that kind of
launch rate you're talking about, over two decades, you could get your million
people to to Mars. Essentially, whose city is it? Is it NASAs
City? Is it Space exus? It's the people of Marsas City. The
reason for this, I mean I actually like what we feel like, well,
why why? Why do this thing? It's I think this is important
for Max mice and the probable lifespan if of humanity or consciousness, human civilization
could come to an end for external reasons like giant meteor or super volcanoes,
or extreme climate change or World War three, or you know, anyone of
a number of reasons. Um and and but the probable lifespan of of civilizational
consciousness as we know it, um, which we should really view as this
very delicate thing, like a small candle in a vast darkness. That's that's
caught that that is what appears to be the case. Um. We're in
this vast darkness of space. Um, and there's this little candle of consciousness
that's only really come about after four and a half billion years and it could
just go out. I think that's powerful and I think I think a lot
of people will be inspired about that vision. And the reason so the reason
you need the million people is because they has to be enough people that to
do everything that you need to survived. It's really like the critical threshold is
um, if the ships from Earth stopped coming for any reason? Right?
Um? Does it? Does the Mars city die out or not? Right?
And and so we have to pass that. That's you know, people
talk about like these sort of the great filters, the things that perhaps um,
you know, we talk about the Fermi paradox and where are the aliens
and like, well, maybe the aliens didn't There is various great filters that
the aliens didn't pass, and and so they eventually just cease to exist.
And one of the great filters is becoming a multiplanet species. So we want
to pass that filter. Um. And And I'll be long dead before this
is, you know, a real real thing, before before it happens.
But I'd like I'd like to at least see us make a great progress in
this direction, given how tortured the Earth is right now, how much we're
beating each other up. Shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone who is
dreaming about Mars to try to say, we've got a once in a civilization's
chance to make some new rules here is that it should someone be trying to
lead those discussions to figure out what it means for this to be the people
of Mars's city. Well, I think ultimately this will be up to the
people of Mars to decide what how they want to rethink society. Yeah,
there's there's certainly a risk there, and hopefully the people of Mars will be
more enlightened and will not afflight amongst each other too much. I mean,
I have some recommendations, but which people of Mars may choose to listen to
or not. And I would advocate for more of a direct democracy. You're
not a representative of democracy seeum and laws that are short enough for people to
understand um and where it is harder to create laws than to get rid of
them. Coming back a bit nearer term, I'd love you to just talk
a bit about some of the other possibility space that's Starship seems to have created.
So given given suddenly we've got this ability to move one hundred tons plus
into orbit. Yes, so we've just spent We've just launched the James Webb
telescope, which is an incredible thing. It's unbelievable, happens exiit piece of
technology, exquisite piece of technology. But people spent two years trying to figure
out how to fold up this thing. It's a three ton it's a three
ton telescope. We can make it a lot easier if you've got more volume
and mass. Well, so let's let's ask a different question, which is
what what what? How much more powerful a telescope could someone design based on
using Starship for example? I mean roughly, i't it's probably in order of
magnitude, more resolution if you've got a hundred tons and a thousand cubic leaders
volume, which is roughly what we have. And what about other explorations through
the Solar system. I mean, I'm you know, Europa, well,
Europa, good question, Mark, Right. So there's an ocean there,
right, and what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into
the Maybe there's like some squid civilization under the cephalopod civilization under the ice of
Europe that would be pretty interesting. I mean, you know, if you
could take a submarine to Europa and we see pictures of this thing being devoured
by a squid. That will honestly be the happiest moment of my life.
Very well, yeah, that would be. What what are the possibilities are
out there? Like? It feels like if you're going to create a thousand
of these things, they can only fly to Mars every two years, what
are they doing the rest of the time. It feels like there's this this
explosion of possibility that I don't think people are really thinking about. I mean,
I don't know if we've certainly got a long way to go, has
you alluded to earlier, We've we still have to get to orbit, and
then after we get to orbit, we have to um really prove out and
refine full and rapid reusability. That will take a moment um and but but
I do think we will solve this. I am I highly confident we will
solve this. At this point, do you have a wake up with the
fear that there's going to be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where we've had many
Hindenburg Well, we've we've never had Hindenburg moments with people, which is very
important big difference. We've blown up quite a few rockets, so there's we
have a there's a whole compilation online that we've put together and others put together.
It's showing rockets are hard. Um. I mean, the sure amount
of energy going through rockets boggles the mind. So yeah, you know,
getting out of both gravity well as difficult. We have a strong gravity and
a thick atmosphere, and and Mars which is less than forty percent. It's
like a of both gravity and has athan atmosphere. The ship alone can go
all the way from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth, whereas
getting two Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling soon. So I think
more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with. I keep seeing
these synergies, to use a horrible word, but between them. You know,
for example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy
on Mars doing some of the dangerous work and so forth. I mean,
maybe there's a scenario where you're city on Mars doesn't need a million people,
it needs half a million people and half a million robots, And that's a
possibility. Maybe the boring company could play a role helping create some of the
subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need. Yeah, back on planet Earth,
it seems like a partnership between Boring Company and Tesla could offer an unbelievable deal
to a city to say we will create few a three D network of tannels
populated by robotaxis. Yeah, that will offer fast, low cost transport to
anyone. You know, full self driving mail may not be done this year
and then, and in some cities like someone like Mumbai, I suspect won't
be done for a decade, are more charging than others. But today today,
with what you've got, you could put a three D network of tannels
under there. It's just an internel. That's the sold problem exactly. Full
self driving is itself problems. So so to me, there's there's an amazing
synergy there. Um you're with with with Starship. You know quinchotwell talked about
by twenty twenty eight having from city to city, you know, transport on
planet This is a real possibility. It's a Yeah, the fastest way to
get from one place to another it's a long distance is a rocket. It's
it's basically I CBA, right, with the but it has to learn learning,
delete new because it's a nice CBM, it has to land probably offshore,
yes, lou So, So why not have a tunnel that then connects
to the city and neural Link. I mean, if you're going to go
to Mars having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home, even if there's
a time delay, I mean, if these are not intended to be connected
by the way they just but there should certainly could be some synergies. Yeah,
surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things
together into one company and just just have a company devoted to creating a future
that's exciting and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you have you been thinking
about that? I mean it is tricky because Tellsla's a publicly traded company,
and the investor base of Tesla and SpaceX, and certainly Boring Company and neural
Link are are quite different company our tiny companies just right, the audience may
yeah, it tells us got one hundred and ten thousand people. SpaceX I
think is around twelve thousand people. Boring Company and neural Link are both under
two hundred people. So there are little, little, tiny companies, but
they will probably get bigger in the future. They will get bigger in the
future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things. Traditionally,
you've said that for SpaceX especially, you don't you wouldn't want to public because
public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever,
and you want to making life multiplanetaries is outside of the normal time horizon
of Wall Street analysts say the least, I think something's changed, though.
What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and so big and throws off
so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here, just tell the
public that X billion dollars or whatever your number is, will be diverted to
the Mars mission. I suspect you'd have massive interest in that company, and
it might. It might unlock a lot more possibility for you. Now,
I mean, I would like to give the public access to ownership of SpaceX,
But I mean the thing that, like the overhead associated with a polar
company is high, so I mean it's a poll company. You're just constantly
sued. It does occupy like a fair butt of you know, time and
effort to deal with these things, right, but you still only have one
public company. It would be bigger and have more things going on, but
instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one. I'm actually not
even on the neural link of warring company boards. Well yeah, and I
don't really atta and the space x board meetings, we only have two a
year, and I just stopped buying chat for an hour. Um, So
the boarder overhead for a public company is much higher, right. I think
some investors probably worry about how your time is being split, and they would
be they might be excited by you know that, that's anyway I am.
I just I just work up the other day. I think I think it
just there are so many ways in which these things connect, and and you
know that just the note, the simplicity of that mission of building a future
that is worth getting excited about might might appeal to um an awful lot of
people. Um elon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else's as now
you know the worlds, which is person that's not a sovereign, you know,
I think it's fair to say that if somebody is like the killing or
the facto king of a country, they're wealthier than I am. So,
but it's just harder to measure. But what people do so three hundred million
dollars, I mean, your your net worth on any given day is rising
or fall late by several billion dollars. How say, yeah, I mean
does that? How do you? How do you handle that? Psychologically?
There aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that.
I actually don't think about that too much. But the the thing that is
actually more more difficult and that does make sleeping difficult, is that, you
know, every good hour or even minute of thinking about TISLA and SpaceX has
such a big effect on the company that I really try to work as as
much as possible, you know, to to the edge of sanity, basically,
because the tela's getting to the point where probably we'll get to the point
later this year where every good, every high quality minute of thinking, um
is a million dollars to impact on Tesla. So, which is insane?
Um so UM? I mean the basic you know, if if Tesla's doing
you know of a sort of two billion dollars a week, let's say in
revenue, is sort of three hundred million dollars a day, seven days a
week. You know, it's if you can change that by five percent in
an hour's brainstorm, that that those those ant be valuable. That's a pretty
valuable hour. I mean there are many many instances where a half hour meeting
I was able to improve the finacial account of the company by one hundred million
dollars in a half hour meeting. There are many other people out there who
who who can't stand this world of billionaires like they are hugely offended by the
notion that's an individual can have the same wealth as as say billion of or
more of the world's porous people if they examine sort of the sort of I
think there's some axiomatic flows, um, that that are leading to them to
that conclusion. If for sure, it would be very problematic if I was
consuming you know, billions of dollars a year in personal consumption. But that
is not the case. Um. In fact, I don't even own a
home right now. I'm literally staying at friends places. I if I travel
to the Bay Area, which where most subtails and engineering is, I stayed
in my I basically rotate through friends spare bedrooms. Um, I don't have
a yacht. I really don't take vacations. So, UM, it's not.
It's not as though there's um that that my personal consumption is high with.
I mean, the one exception is a plane. But if I don't
use the plane, then I have less hours to work. So UM,
I mean I personally think you have shown that you are mostly driven by really
quite a deep set some moral purpose, Like you've tried your your your your
attempts to solve the climate problem have been as powerful as anyone else on the
planet that I'm aware of, And I actually can't can't understand personally. I
can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism from the left about oh
my god, he's so rich, that's disgusting, when when climate is their
issue. Um, philanthropy is is a topic that some people go to.
Philanthropy is a hard topic, like how how do you think about that?
Um? I think if you if you care about the reality of goodness instead
of the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult. Um. SpaceX,
Tesla neural linked boring company are philanthropy. If you say philanthropy is love of
humanity, they are philanthropy. There. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This
is a love of full entropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure the long term
survival of humanity with multiplied species. This is love of humanity. Um,
you know, neural Link is to help solve rain, injuries and existential whisk
with ai love of humanity. Boring Company is trying to solve traffic, which
is health most people. And that also it's not a humanity. It's how
how upsetting is it to you to hear this constant drum beat of billionaires?
My guard elon musk, Oh, my god, like is that do you
do? You do? You just shrug that offer? Does it? Does
it actually hurt? I mean, at this point, it's water off a
duck's back. You know, I'd like to as we wrap up now,
just pull the camera back and just think you're a father and I have seven
surviving kids, and and well, I mean, I'm trying to say a
good example, because the birth rate on Earth is so low that we're facing
civilizational collapse unless the birth rate returns to a sustainable level. Yeah, You've
talked about this a lot. The depopulation is a big problem and we we
yes, people don't. Understulation is one of the biggest threats of the future
of human civilization. And that is what it's going on right now. How
what what drives you on a day to day basis to do what you do?
I guess like I really want to make sure that there is a good
future for humanity and that we're on a path to understanding the nature of the
universe, the meaning of life. Why are we here? How do we
get here? And in order to understand the nature of the universe and all
these fundamental questions, we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness. Certainly
it must not diminish or go out. We certainly we weren't understand this.
So I always say, I'm motivated by curiosity more than anything, UM,
and just desire to think about the future and not be sad. You know,
and and are you? Are you not sad? I'm sometimes sad,
but mostly I'm I'm I mean not feeling I guess relatively optimistic about the future
these days. UM, there are certainly, UM, some big risks that
humanity faces. I think that the population collapse is a really big deal that
I wish more people would would think about, UM, because the birth rate
is far below what it's needed to sustain civilization as current at its current level.
And ye know, there's obviously we need to take action on climate sustainability,
which is being done UM. And we need to secure the future of
consciousness by being a multiplane of species. UM. We need to address the
Essentially, it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to address the
existential risks that affect the future of consciousness. There's there's a whole generation coming
through who seem really sad about the future. What would you say to them,
Well, I think if you want the future to be good, you
must make it so take action to make it good and it will be Yellen,
thank you for all this time. That is a beautiful place to end.
Thanks for all that you're doing. You're welcome.