Why are you skeptical to connecting? Let's playing with the soundboard here. Okay,
Now, what's your take on where we are in the AI race?
Just now? Wow, that's a long answer. There's so much happening in
AI is the fastest advancing technology that I've ever seen of any kind. And
I've seen a lot of technology. Barely a week goes by without some new
announcement. So, and if you look at the amount of AI hardware,
the computers coming online that are dedicated to AI, that is increasing what looks
like at least by a factor of ten every year, if not every sixty
nine months. So when you combine the hardware coming online, really order of
magnitude increase every you call it, at least every nine months, many many
software breakthroughs. If you look at that, that COVID looks insane. So
I think, well, my guess is that we will have AI that is
smaller than any any one human probably around the end of next year, and
then AI, the total amount of sort of sentient compute of AI, I
think will probably exceed all humans in five years. What is the race about?
Just now? Is it ALGORI is a people? Is it computing power?
What is it about? Just now? Is it the supply of chips?
Just what is it? Yeah? Last year it was chip constraint and
the hardware deployment to break it down into the three areas of people, data,
and hardware are starting with hardware. Last year it was about a chief
supply who could not get enough video chiefs. Particularly this year is starting to
transition to a voltage transformer supply, so actually getting enough voltage transformers put in
place. So my sort of very niche joke is transformers for transformers, because
a lot of the AI that's around is called a transformer, need transformers to
run transformers. And then next in the if you look out a year or
two or certainly three years, it's just electricity availability, so that those are
those constraints on the hardware side. So many of the smartest people are doing
AI. People that would have done physics before, in fact have done physics
for example, have moved into AI because it's just the fastest moving field.
So we're seeing a lot of the best talents, a lot of the smartest
humans going into AI, and then we see along with that algorithmic breakthroughs,
and then then you start hitting the wall with the data problem. So the
you know, you can fit all books ever written just a text, the
text in compressed form on one hard drive or called on one computer. So
when you're when you're looking at like called tokens to train on, and you
because you still give like all the books ever written in every in all languages,
by all humans, sounds like a lot. Certainly is far more than
any one human could could ever read. It actually is a small note.
It's a small number of training tokens. It's just not enough. So then
you start having to look at all the videos that are created, you know,
all the podcasts, all the everything, and and you start even running
out of data there. Well, hopefully hopefully they will include these podcasts.
Definitely will include this podcast. What's the biggest challenge you have with X Well,
I say, it is still relatively new, so it's not you know,
like the limiting factor right now is just training our GROC version two model,
which should be we think better than GPD four and that's we're hoping to
complete that in May. So that's that's training right now. So it's just
really we're just trying to get enough GPUs online to train it fast enough to
get that done in May, which I think probably will happen. And then
and that's with roughly twenty thousand, h one hundreds and I'm doing I think
very efficient training. Then the next step would be for GROCK three, which
should be I guess GPD five or beyond. Would you know requires one hundred
thousand in video h one hundreds training coherently, So that's you know, half
order of vangetude basically more training. And then you really start to have running
into this data problem where you have to either create synthetic data or use real
world video. Those the two sources of kind of like unlimited data synthetic data
and real world video, which I should say Tesla has a pretty big advantage
in real world. It'll has my father's most real world video of anyone.
Yeah, you've got a huge library. So when do you think, so
when you think we'll see proper AGI, Well, in terms on how you
define a GI, if you define a GI as smarter than as mouse human,
I think it's probably any next year, within two years. But that's
that there's still there's still a pretty big leap beyond that, to say smarter
than the machine augmented human collective so like, is it smarter than all humans
working together who are also using computers to augment their output, and that that
I think is probably five years away. One way to look at it is
is to try to assess, like, roughly, what is the ratio of
digital to biological compute and so biological computer all the human brains that are thinking
and I don't know, we have you back online here, Yeah, I
think somebody. I think somebody hacks us. We must have, we must
have some enemies. Last question on on AI, any new thoughts on regulation
and how we should be stretured. Well, I think we probably do need
some sort of regulatory authority to look at the safety of AI, just as
we have regulatory authorities and other arenas to oversee aircraft and the safety of aircraft
and cars and other things, you know, medication. So another rat which
AI is progressing as fast as faster than probably any regulatory agency can keep up
with. But I do have a comment on what I think is very important
for achieving safe AI, which is that it's very important to train the AI
to be as truthful as possible and not to Yeah, just to be as
truthful as possible. I think you can get some very dangerous things when you
program an AI to be politically correct. I think that things that may seem
relatively innocuous now but will not be so in the future if AI has immense
power. You can take the Google Gemini example, where it refused to publish
to produce a picture of George Washington as a white man, and any in
fact, any historical figure would automatically be made diverse because it's been programmed to
insist on diversity, which sounds, you know, perhaps okay at first,
but not if the AI has so much power that it can actually enforce diversity
and decide there's too many of one kind of people or too many of one
sex and kill off, just just kill off enough until the diversity number is
what is programmed to believe is correct. But don't you think this will be
sorted out in the next version? No, where is China? Where is
China relative to the next question? Now they'll make it more subtle and less
obvious, but it will still be there. Okay, well, we'll see,
But where where is China? Where do you? Where is China in
a relative to the US? I don't know exactly what China is, except
there are a lot of very smart people in China, and they it won't
be They won't be far behind the rest of the world or far behind the
US. I mean, the air right now is very concentrated in San Francisco,
in London, and then you know, there's there's a lot happening in
China. But I don't have insight into what they're doing, except that I'm
confident they will not be far behind what it's developed in the West. So
but but but mark my words, if we do not program an AI to
be as truthful as possible, that that is where it will go awry.
That is where the danger lies. Moving moving tach here, moving to tesla.
Is the EB conversion now going slower than you had expected? Just where
is the speed of commercional relative to your expectations. I think it's going quite
fast actually, especially Noway, absolutely well, it's pretty much all there is
is your teslas. Yeah, there's a lot of teslas noise. It's crazy.
I'd once again like to think no way for the support of electric vehicles
so much appreciate it. So I think it's we will that electric, that
all vehicles will go fully electric. It's only a matter of time. That
includes aircraft ultimately and both obviously trains. The only thing that is ironically difficult
to where you can't really make it electric is rockets because you need you can't
get away from having to expel mass sort of Newton instead law. But all
cars will be electric only amount of time. And we'll look back on combustion
cars in the same way that we look back on steam engines that it was
it was inevitable that there would be internal combustion cars, and it's just as
inevitable that all cars will go electric. And there will be some ev you
know, so like it's going to be a completely straight up line. There
will be some ebb and flow in how how far electric cars go. But
that but the ultimate victory of electric cars is inevitable, and I think the
sooner we get there the better. How do you see the Chinese competition here?
Now, we generally find that the companies in China the most competitive in
the world, and to me, in electric vehicles or cars in general,
the Chinese car companies by far the most competitive. That's where we find the
most toughest, toughest competitive competitive challenges. That they make great cars and they
work very hard so when you write in one of the Chinese cars, what
do you think? I mean, you're an engineer, you know, what
about it? What do you what do you think? I haven't written it.
I have not ridden in one lately. But because they're not all available
here, you know, in the US, very very few are available in
the US. Some are available in Europe, but from what my team tells
me, they are very good. Oh, you are moving into India hair
as well TESL protection. What are your what are your faults there moving into
a to India? Oh, Indieah, yeah, yeah, I think it's
you know, in India sort of. India is now the most populous country
in the world, you know, the biggest population, and I think we
India just should have electric cars, just like every other country has electric cars.
And yeah, so it to natural progression to provide electric TESL electric vehicles
in India. Moving moving out out in space? What what would it take
to be self sufficient at Mars? To be selfufficient on Mars, it's really
about the total tonnage that is delivered to the surface of Mars. So you
can say, like I think it's probably on the order of a million tons,
maybe maybe more. But somewhere between probably a million tons and ten million
tons are needed to make Mars self sufficient. And how many rockets is that?
Well, I gave a presentation on this recently. If you've looked at
my recent space X talk. If you if you have really if you have
one hundred tons per flight, you need ten thousand flights you get to a
million a million tons, and that's one hundred times landed to the surface of
Mars. So in order to get a hundred land to the surface of Mars,
you need five hundred times five times that number in Earth orbit. So
we do a lot of orbital refilling, so launching sort of rockets tanker ships
over and over again. That that would replenish the propellant of the ships that
would go to Mars. And then you'd need it roughly a lolder of ten
thousand of them to get to a million tons. And but we we plan
to do that that we're that's uh, that's what we think we can get
that done within twenty years. Really, so and when do you think so,
when do you think will be there for the first time, first starship
that will land on Mars, which obviously will not have people at first.
I think it's probably within about five years, and then it would probably launch
several ships and just confirm that they can land okay on Mars. We'll also
be doing the Moon simultaneously with that, So I got taking I think,
well, I think we'll get people back to the Moon I should say within
five years, and we'll get uncrewed ships landed on Mars within five years,
and then we'll be building up the production rate and approving the design of the
booster and the ship. So the in the first people on Mars I think
with in seven years or so seven to nine years, and from there we
need to rapidly increase. We need massive numbers of ships going and Earth in
Mars only are in the same quadrants of the Solar System roughly for six months
every two years, or at least, it's only possible to really transfer efficiently
from Earth to Mars. I say every six months, but really there's about
a couple of months where it's ideal every twenty six months, so every two
years that you would see a basic a fleet to part Mars. I think
we're quite a spectacular thing to see a thousand ships depart from Mars all at
once, like battlestock Galactica, a kind of new technology we need before will
be self sufficient there. Actually, I think we have all the tech wordy,
you know, all the technology that's necessary for that. It just needs
to we just need to build. No new physics is needed for this.
Why is it so important for you? I think it's important for consciousness in
general. So if wish to maximize the lifespan of consciousness, then being a
multiplanet species will result in a much longer existence of consciousness consciousness than if we
are on one planet. If you're on one planet, we're simply finding our
time until there's eventually a calamity. It could be soon, it could be
a long time, but eventually something will happen. It could be a global
throm in nuclear war. It could be simply that civilization really subsides. Our
civilization may not die with a bag, It may die with a whimper,
just just gradually falling into obsolescence. But if we're a multiplanet species, then
we've got two planets and yeah, and they can support each other, and
we can go beyond two planets, ultimately to the moons of Jupiter, to
the to the beyond, to the outer parts of the Solar System and ultimately
to other star systems. So this tiny, this tiny candle of consciousness that
we have in this bottle starkness can be extended and amplify it, and we're
just far more likely to survive as for full consciousness to survive. If we
are a multiplanet species, you don't think it'd be better to use all these
resources and trying to sort out Earth. Well, just to put this into
perspective, the amount of resources I'm talking about for making life multiplanetary would be
less than one percent of all resources on Earth, So I really can think
of it as resource allocation. Do you think it's worth spending half a percent
of Earth resources to ensure that we have redundancy and consciousness and that we extend
consciousness beyond Mars to other planets, to Mars and other planets and ultimately other
star systems. And then also take into account the fact that there are certain
inevitable that there's certain things we simply cannot avoid on Earth, Like is it
within your power of mind to stop World War three? I don't think so.
If it happens, and if we have global dominical warfare, our technology
level will drop to the stone age, and we may never spive. And
then there are we maybe get maybe it hit like by a comet like the
dinosaurs. And you know, if the dinosaurs had spaceships, they they'll probably
still be around. So and then if if you wait long enough the Earth,
that the Sun will continue to expand and eventually engulf Earth and destroy it
and destroy all life. So just give it amount in a certain amount of
time, no matter what you do on Earth, no matter how careful you
are, Earth well, life of all life on Earth will die. That
it will happen is a certainty. Gloom is is now, so it's slightly
less gloomy oat X Twitter, Yeah, what is your vision now? What
do you how do you see the visional mix? I go access to be
the best source of truth on the Internet, and I think we're bringing a
good, good progress there. I mean that's we're gonna be like I'll call
everything up like an if anything you want to do you can do on the
X platform, whether it's text, audio, video, payments, financial stuff,
communications of all kinds. And then but then also where there's publicly to
seven eighty information is to be the best source of truth and I think it
I think it already is that. And people may say, oh, there's
some piece of misinformation, disinformation. I said, yes, but look look
at the replies, the replies correct that misinformation, and look at community notes
and the and how good the batting average of community notes is. It's extremely
good. It's by far the best fact checking system on the internet. So
and and and a lot of people still labor under the illusion that the can
that the legacy newspapers that they read are actually true. There's so much nonsense
in them. I mean, how many times when do you read an article
in newspaper where you know the circumstances of what that article is, and how
often is it spot on? No, of course it's normally it's not.
Of course we will know it's normally wrong. But how do you get how
do you look at the situation now, for instance, with with Russia.
You know the work Russia does in Germany with fake accounts on, it's pretty
pretty huge activity, right, I mean, we don't see a lot of
Russian activity, to be frank on the system, so we see very little.
We do we do you see a lot of a lot of terms to
influence things, but they seem to be coming from from the west, not
from from Russia. Right, what about what about things like the latest developments
in in Brazil and so yeah, so the uh we kept getting these demands
from uh this uh judge Alexander that's his that's his name on Twitter at Alexander,
and there would be to suspend accounts immediately. We're given typically two hours
to suspend an account or face massive fines. And the final storye we were
being given demands to suspend sitting sitting members of the parliament and major journalists and
moreover, we could not tell them that this was at the behest of zider
morales. We had to pretend that it was due to our rules of service,
and that was the final straw. And we said, no, mm,
now, when you when you bought Twitter now renamed x, did you
expect that you would end up in these type of situations Always it's all unexpected.
I knew it wouldn't be just a total bed of roses, you know,
and it's talking. I wouldn't. No, I mean I thought it
would be since Look, we're just like rigorously trying to pursue the the the
goal of being the most accurate and truthful place in the Internet. And that
that doesn't mean that what is said is always true or accurate, but it's
it is perhaps another way to frame it is as the least inaccurate place on
the Internet. Do you do you secretly? Do you secretly think this is
a bit fun? It's fun? Yeah, Yeah, it's fun at times.
It's stressful at times, and it's fun at times. But in overall,
we're trying to serve the people of Earth and and and this is sort
of an est sort of maybe an estratarkic way of viewing it, but to
try to be of like the group consciousness of Earth. So you can think
of like if each person is like a neuron contributing to like the collective brain
of Earth, and you want to try to minimize the noise and maximize the
signal of every neuron that's connected to the X network. That that's basically what
what is what is the collective will of humanity? And and how and and
and how to Yeah, just serve the collective will of humanity and so serve
the greater good. That that's our goal. Now, you know, there's
there's definitely going to be people who want to manipulate that information and so ratify
that and try to have a you know, be the most accurate place as
far as the best of our ability, and have it be kind of a
marketplace of ideas where people can propose ideas and you know, debate them.
And I think so far it's working recently well in that regard. Now,
people that don't like the truth will not like X or if they want to
manipulate things, they will not like it. But only, but only a
few years ago you were you were a guy producing electric vehicles. Now you
are, you know, through Starlink, you've had some you know, I
mean some big impact in Ukraine with Twitter, you are kind of into some
issues in you know, Brazil, India, Turkey. You know, you're
becoming like a real geopolitical force and a really important one. How do you
how do you look at that? Well, like I said, I'm really
I'm trying to take the set of actions that maximize the public The future is
good. I mean, we have to keep civilization going onward and upward as
much as possible, and and trying to minimize the civilizational threats that occur.
Like you know, we we can't get to Mars if somevilization collapses. It's
not gonna happen. So you know, we've got to we've got to keep
keep civilization going. And I think we should view our civilization as being much
more fragile than we think. We kind of take for granted it's always going
to be there. But actually, if you study history, you realize that
there are rise. You know, there's a rise in full civilizations. I
mean, I was reading in depth about the ancient Samerians, who were arguably
the first civilization if you call civilization like writing and stuff. You know,
they're the first to develop writing, and but eventually they died out and they
were gone, so and then nobody could read the writing at all, and
they're just faded out as a civilization. But they're pretty impressive in their time.
And the ancient Egyptians the same thing thing, and you know, one
sort of one after another. Ancient Greek had as reset a stay. China
and India had will have incredibly impressive populations, but there's been ebbs and flows
in the China and Indian civilizations over the the AONs, you know, the
Blendia as well. So you know, I guess I'm just trying to take
this instead of just the steps that increase, uh, the scope and scale
of consciousness. That's that's what I'm trying to do. It's not like it's
not that I'm trying to have a put a political thumb on the scale or
anything like that. But I think I'm trying to have the political will go
where the people wanted to go. You know, you mentioned some some really
smart people here and kind of just moving back a bit here into corporate culture.
Now, you manage a lot of geniuses in your in your companies.
What is the key to manage really smart people? Do you think? I
don't. I don't think I managed smart people. They manage themselves. I
think, well, I guess with really smart people, you know, I
don't really think of it like managing them. I think that if somebody is
very smart and talented, they can go anywhere and do anything anytime. Like
they they don't have to work with me, They could go anywhere. So
I really just say, like, look, this is the goal we're after,
and this is what we're trying to achieve, and do you agree with
this goal? And if you do, then let's try to get it done.
And you know, provide my opinion along the way. But it's very
rare for me to actually sort of insist on a particular thing once in a
while, I say, look, guys, just got to trust me on
this one. We've got to do this thing, and if it turns out
to be a bad decision, you can all hold that against me in the
future. But you have an incredible life for deten right. I mean,
when we read the Isaac book, it's pretty clear that you mean you really
are deep into detail. I know what you talk about. So how do
you how do you balance this kind of micromanagement of some areas and then delegate
others. I wouldn't I wouldn't call it micro management. It's just insisting on
attention to detail. That's if you're trying to make a perfect product, you
must have attention to attention to details essential. And I haven't actually read the
Isaacson book. You should. It's very good. Actually, I love it
well. I asked authorizing and if I should read it, and he said
I shouldn't. Okay, So okay, well, I'll ask you some questions
from the book. Then they do you talk? He talks about, you
know, you're the kind of a hardcore and ultra hardcore culture. What is
an ultra hardcore culture. I guess it's work. I mean it's working culture,
right, I mean how how I mean ultra hard work? How hard
is that? Well, when things get really intense, you're basically just working
every waking hour. And how and how long can you do that for?
I've done that for well, continuously for sometimes like a few years. What
does it? What does it do to you? It? Really it's pain
and every waking out. Maybe it is an exaggeration because there are a few
hours obviously with friends and family and critical other things. Uh, but one
hundred hour weeks would be I've done many, many stretches of one hundred hour
weeks, like true hundred hour weeks where roughly six hours per day is sleeping.
I would not recommend that this is not that's for emergencies, you know,
it's not all the time. You know, during very difficult times at
Tesla, I've had to do that, and sometimes at the beginning of my
earliest startups, I did that where I just wouldn't leave the office. I
would a sleep under my desk and just work seven days a week. Sometimes
it's necessary for success or to avoid failure. But but do you you do
you enjoy being in this crisis mode. No, I don't. It sucked.
No, I don't want to be there. That's pain m hm.
But sometimes it's that between success and failure. When you make decisions? How
important is speed? He just gave me an idea, which is I'm going
to invite the judge Alexander Raala to do a spaces and then he can explain
why what I'm doing is bad. And maybe he's right I challenge. I
challenged him to a spaces sounds good, Yeah, but what about speed?
When do you make when you when you make decisions, how important is speed?
And how do you how do you balance analysis with your good field?
I think the the best offense and defense is speed. If you think it's
something like the SR seventy one Blackbird, it really had almost no defenses except
accelerate and it was never shot down even once. Like I think over three
thousand missiles were shot at the SR seventy one Blackbird and none hit and and
really what it did was just go faster. So the the power of speed
is underappreciated as a competitive dimension. Is that why in all space expenses being
so successful? Because you've been mean and lean as an organization and fast.
I think speed is definitely a factor. Now I should say you want to
go in the case of the company, you you need to be a vector,
not a scaler, So it can't be you need to go at high
speed in the right direction. So so and no company is going to be
going in the right direction all the time, so you have to do course
corrections like a guided missile recorded course corrections and uh. But in the case
of SpaceX, it's like, Okay, our goal is to extend humanity beyond
Earth. And we didn't even know how to even frame the question correctly,
like what which knew that that was a general goal. We didn't know what
pealant we would use, or what the raw materials would be, or for
the how would the rocket be built, how would it be designed? What's
actually important? And you know, so for example, going from our Falcon
architecture, which is users refined jet fuel and liquid oxygen in a open cycle
gas generator architecture engine to a two starship, which is a liquid methane like
liquiduction a propellant in a staged combustion, very high pressure engine. That that's
a that's a big architectural change. But we didn't know that we needed to
make that architectural change until we're pretty far down the road, like about halfway.
But because about ten years to figure out that was even the right architecture,
now we're confident it is. I think SpaceX is one of the best
example I know about what we call failing well right, learning from mistakes and
moving on generally, how do you how do you look at mistakes? I
mean, which which ones do you tolerate and which ones don't you tolerate?
I do really think of that way. You know, the first three flights
of SpaceX failed, the fourth one succeeded, and if the fourth one had
not succeeded, we would have gone bankrupt. We would have had no money
left. So it was very close call. But since then SpaceX has done
very well. It's now the Falcon nine. You know, knock on Wood
is the most reliable rocket in the world and launches about every two to three
days. But if you take a game like, for example, Civilization,
it's actually quite a good It tells you how how civilizations are formed. I
remember playing the original Civilization with a technology tree, and how you invent different
things. You'd like invent literacy, and invented democracy and invent gunpowder, all
these things that like, and you start to realize, oh wow, there's
there are stages two technology. You can't actually get to democracy without literacy,
these stages of technology development or stages of ideas that you know, that's a
helpful framework for a company. In recent years, there's a game I play
that was actually developed in Sweden called Polytopia, which is actually quite a good
game. Like a lot of people like playing chess, but I think chess
is not a great There's not a lot of transfer learning from chess to the
real world because in chess, you've got only sixty four squares. It's a
set piece battle, same pieces every time. If there are no terrain differences,
there's no technology tree, there's no fog of war. But say a
game like Polyatopia has all of those things, random train generation, differences in
attacking defense bonuses depending on type of train. You've got sixteen tribes, I
think, each with different abilities. You've got a technology tree that you can
choose to develop in different ways, and you've got, of course fog of
war. So that I think is much more much closer to reality. I
was playing Diablo for a while pretty fun, Diablo as high levels gets very
complicated. You could call it like a spreadsheet with a game attached. And
I briefly got for about a day the world record in this avatar of zero
on a four person team of clearing the hardest level. You know, not
bad for someone who's like fifty three. Basically will be fifty three soon.
There is still some twitch element to it, and it's hard to be because
at games with a twitch element. But yeah, I like if I find
these games interesting. If you can be fully immersed in a game, it's
great. What is a score now? In terms of the union in Sweden
and the collective bargaining, I think the storm has passed on that front.
I think things are reasonably good shape in Sweden. I think things are good
overall. Yeah, I feel pretty good about the future. I mean,
you know there's going to be bumpy quarters from you know, here and there,
but I think the long term future of Tesla is extremely strong. For
example, so I didn't hear the answer because I was out, but we
have covered this with with your chair. But just the last question, what
do you want your legacy to be? I don't I don't mind if my
legacy is accurate or inaccurate, provided that I've I dive feeling that I've done
the right thing for the future of consciousness. So just trying to trying to
have this slide of consciousness lasts as long as possible, and maybe understand more
about the nature of the universe or stimulation or whatever this is. I have
a philosophy of curiosity, which is to understand the they understand the universe,
understand the nature of the universe, or even what questions to ask. Kind
of like that, I would say I would subscribe to the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's
Guys, to the Galaxy school of philosophy that we're trying to understand what questions
to ask about the answer that is the universe. Okay, I think that's
a good place to end. For sure, the life and life on this
planet would have been a lot more boring without you, and so I'm Graham
glad to spice it up a little totally. All right, good talking