It is refreshing to hear such optimism. I think people need. I think
people need a positive mindset. I think it's self fulfilling prophecy to a large
degree. You know, if you're pessimistic, and we can talk about how
the news media just decimates our minds constantly. Yeah, the news is so
negative. I mean it makes me sad to read the news. Frankly.
I well, let me ask you a question. I don't watch I don't
watch network news, and I don't read any newspapers. They couldn't pay me
enough money. Yeah to do that. I'll accidentally read the news and I'll
just be sad. It's insane. Well, I mean, as you know
that the news, the daily news really really attempts to answer the question,
what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today? It is? And
let me let me show it to you every five minutes in your living room,
over and over and over again. Yeah. And it's a big world.
There's eight billion people on Earth, so you know, somewhere something horrible
is happening every single day. There's also great things happening every single day.
And you know what I call CNN, the Crisis News Network, or the
constantly negative news network. And the problem is that if they've got to scare
you otherwise, you know, if they say, hey, it's been a
pretty good day. Overall, we're you know, violence is an all time
low. We've got more access to food, I nergy, water, healthcare,
education on the plant than ever before. I mean, people would just
start watching horror movies. I think it's dead. Yeah. Yeah. The
challenge is it's it's our neural nets, the wiring of our brains, you
know, evolved in a world of constant danger, and so we're sort of
just wired for fear and scarcity constantly. Yeah. Well, yeah, I
think you've made this point. Maybe others have, but it sort of makes
sense as an evolutionary asymmetry that we would respond more to danger than to reward
in that like the consequences of danger could be fatal. Like it could be
like, well, if you go over there, there's a lion that's going
to eat you, or some neighboring tribe that's going to kill you, and
it's game over. Your genes are out of the gene pool. Yeah,
you're out. Whereas say, like, uh, news that there's there's a
there's a nice bush with berries over there is it's nice to have. It's
it's optional, but it's there. In one case, you die, innother
case you're you're hungry, but death is worse than hunger. So so that's
why it's basically we're any anyone who did not respond more to negative news than
positive news didn't make it. They were selected, they were selected against for
sure. That's yes. I mean, anyone who was complacent about where the
lion was even by the line. And and you know, the reality is,
you know, the news media has one job to deliver your eyeballs to
their advertisers. And when we pay ten times more attention to negative news and
positive news, that's all we get twenty four to seven. So I mean,
listen, it's yeah, it is. I mean I do get my
my news invariably you know, on my on my feed on X but I
also get all the great things happening in the world because I can selectively choose
to watch that. But when you're watching TV or you know, in the
newspaper, some editor someplace or some producers deciding what gets fed into your mind,
and it can really screw with your mindset. Yes, exactly. So
I mean, this this space is called it the coming Age of Abundance.
And you know, you were really when my first book came out, Abundance
the Future is better than you think. You were super supportive and and I
appreciate that was twelve years ago, and I think the story whoawelve amazing.
Yeah, and it's gotten so much better. So I it is in so
many ways, not every way, I mean, I mean, do we
go back aways. I remember where we were at a data's party in Brazils.
Yeah, how long ago? I know he was it was his fortieth
or was it his thirtieth? It was it was thirtyeth like, wow,
when it was just when Yeah, it was just when I was forming space
Yeah, it was it was two thousand and three there, but it was
just before the Xprize was one. Right, I was trying to convince you
not to build rockets twenty one years ago, like like you could have a
kid that has legal or legally of kids. Yeah, yeah, so tw
twenty one years ago. Yeah. So, and you know, I think
things things are mostly better. You know. I want to give everybody listening
a dose of hope and optimism on the abundance side, because the world has
gotten better in so many ways. All you hear about is the negative constantly,
and I think that's going back to our sort of core dystopian mindsets from
you know, evolving one hundred thousand years ago. But if we just look
at some of the look at some of the areas, right, so like
global extreme poverty, right, I mean, what's more, what's what's a
more important metric? You know, here are the numbers. Ninety percent of
the world was in global extreme poverty in eighteen hundreds. In nineteen eighty one,
it was forty two percent. Today it's under ten percent of the world.
Right, Well, yeah, hunger. Hunger is actually rare, and
it used to be common exactly. And another one is, obviously one hair
that you're leading the charge on is energy. You know, we used to
kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights, and we ravaged mountain
sides and we drilled kilometers into the ground. Uh. And what's the figures
like eight thousand times more energy hits the surface the sun. Is there a
surface of the Earth from the Sun than we consume as a species. I
mean, what's the rate at which batteries and solar is increasing? It's it
must be massive, yes, I mean, I mean tell them we've we've
made a couple of presentations, what one sort of simplistic and then one in
extreme detail on how to make Earth completely self sustaining from an energy standpoint,
and demonstrating that there that there is no that if you break down all of
the raw materials for latium ion battery and for solar, you can easily make
Earth. Uh, I mean, there's no shortage materials. It's easy.
It's a lot of work, obviously, but but there's not like some critical
material that we don't have enough of in order to make Oh, it's fully
self sustaining. Even if the only way that you powered all of industry on
Earth and all power including heating and transport electrically, you could do that with
solar and left mine batteries and and not come anywhere close to depleting the resources
of Earth. Yeah. My favorite, My favorite example there was back in
the eighteen hundreds, the most precious metal on the planet was aluminum. It
was more precious in gold and platinum. And even though the Earth's crust is
you know, eight percent box site, you know, basically aluminum, it
was just so energetically difficult it wasn't that it was scarce, it just wasn't
a usable form yet. And that's what technology does. It takes something which
is scared and not usable and makes it usable. Right So yeah, yeah,
except alumino oxide is extremely common and but but it is it is a
low energy state. In fact, thermite thermite. Thermite is just iron oxide
rust and and and pure aluminum and the the energy difference between iron oxide and
aluminum oxide is so great that it generates an incredible and enough heat to melt
through steel. So that's what thermite is. So yeah, you do need
a lot of energy to turn aluminum oxide into aluminum. But but but yeah,
it in World War Two there was a massive scarcity of aluminum aircraft and
uh that In fact, in Britain, the Mosquito, uh sort of fiber
bomber was made of mostly of wood, but it was it was done with
it was basically an early form of composites, but using stuff wood on the
outside and lightwood and like balsa as a sandwich structure. It's pretty clever.
And now the whole thing was intended to address the shortage of and that and
then then we get technology, we get better, better mechanisms of extracting the
aluminum from the from the lunaroxide from the box side, and this happens over
and over again. In fact, that's just what we do. I mean,
I think the number was last year in twenty twenty three or maybe in
twenty two, we had more elect new electricity production from solar than from any
other form. And and you've done an extraordinary job on battery production. Yeah,
and the backery production is growing actually almost well at several times the rate
of vehicle production. So you know it's a this is almost ten x the
rate of vehicle production. So so yes, there's a massive amount for batteries.
And you know, as the world uses more electricity, uh, there's
actually a lot more capability that the grid has if you can buffer the energy,
uh than without it, because the vast majority of electric electrical grid it's
wasted. Assume no, they assume no buffer. So they have to size
the power plants for for peak output peak power output, which is typically a
hot summer day, and and and then for at night you can have anywhere
from half optimistically half power output to sometimes one tenth of the power output.
So so basically the grid almost everywhere the grid is sized for excess electrical power
output, and if you just buffer it with batteries, you can increase the
output of the grid by you know, two or three times. I mean
to make to make the point here on the abundance theme, there is no
limitation energy. Right. We are increasing the amount of energy per capita.
And there's a direct correlation between the GDP of a nation and its energy production,
right, and the direct correlation between health and education and energy. Everything
scales as you increase the energy per capita of a nation. Yeah. Yeah,
it's about another category communications, another area that you're revolutionizing. I think
the number right now, I just was checking it earlier. It's like six
point nine billion smartphone users in twenty twenty three, eighty six percent. And
that's what I got when I when I googled it. No, no,
what it's six point nine Yeah, it's sixty eight million others go there that
My my twelve year olds would say the same. It's like eighty five eighty
five percent of the planet's got a smartphone. And and well, I mean
if you if you add up the total number of smartphones may ever made,
it exceeds Yeah. Oh, I think so it's a it's amazing. So
we've gone from like zero telephony to the majority, vast majority of the planet
in under a century. You know, global internet is well the same thing.
And did I your your next iteration of starlink spacecraft have gone up the
director cell phone? Okay, yes, that just went up. So you
know, we still have to prove that it works in a little bit.
We we're confident that even if he if these early satellites don't work, were
competent from a physics standpoint, that it can work. It's it is a
challenge because we have to emulate a cells cell tower on the ground in order
for the phones to accept the signal. So we have to do double compensation
for example, and and and and do some sort of because because you've got
a speed of light limitations. Tell, if we were easy, you would
have been done already. Yeah, speed of light limit stations. You know
this this like life is so fast and yet so slow, And you know,
I think, yeah, A good way to think about light, at
least in the space context. Uh, for the Lowes context is it travels
about three hundred kilometers every mileisecond in error or in in space. And then
and then around just over two hundred kilometers for mo second in fiber. You
know, another abundance area is health. I hear some some kids in the
background there, so interestingly enough, you know, child mortality, I mean
probably, I mean this is one that hits me the most in terms of
increasing abundance. Child mortality under the age of five was forty two percent a
couple hundred years ago. It was a coin flip of whether your kids survived,
and it's decreased now to under five percent, and it's gone down by
fifty percent in the last thirty years. So just childhood mortality and women dying
in childbirth, all of these things people don't think about when they're listening to
all in use in all the issues, and then life expectancy, my favorite
subject, has gone up from you know, thirty years old to seventy five
plus. I still disagree with you on longevity though, that that we should
solve it or not that like we should you think we should? Well,
I listen, I'm not necessarily saying live forever, but I'd like to make
it to one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty. Yeah, I sort
of wonder if we should not solve the toon your presidential elections first, and
do you really want them to get that life expectancy you first? And do
you really want them to get that life expectancy first? Well? Uh,
you know, you know, I I think we uh, I think being
able to have the vitality, the cognition, the physical prowess, uh,
you know that you have when you're in your forties or fifties through the trip
one hundred, that's my goal. I mean, you don't want to,
you don't want to, you know, you want to make it to at
least one hundred dollion. Well, I guess it does depend on whether I'm
you know, have dementia. I don't think I'd want to be a Boudon
on society or have dementia not know what's going on. I prefer to be
dead. Well, yeah, I think that's that's for sure. But let's
assume that you had, you know, all the cognitive power you have today
in your physical strength. Is there any reason why you wouldn't want to,
you know, have an extended lifespan or health span. Yeah, sure,
I guess I think we are. End up, there's such a strong forceing
function for life extension or health span extension that I think we will see uh
it masters in that area, whether I want them to be there or not.
And actually my opinion on the subject is that it's I think it's actually
not that hard to solve because the if you just consider argumentsive symmetry that are
quite quite helpful, the the cells O body all age agent basically almost exactly
the same speed. Like what like, I've not seen anyone who has an
old left arm and a young right arm. I've never seen that, not
even once. Yes, so, how how are the cells communicating and how
what is keeping them? What is synchronizing their behavior something? There's there's a
very clear mechanism for synchronizing aging among the thirty to forty trillion cells in your
body, Like depending on your body mass, you're typically going to have thirty
to forty trillion. That's that's correct, you know, yeah, I mean
keep you know, in sync. I mean the other the other the other
reference proof point is you know, bowhead whales from the largest mammals can make
it to two hundred years repeatedly. Greenland sharks can make it to five hundred
years and have babies at two hundred years old. I remember when I was
in medical school hearing that, I said, you know, why can they
why can't we said, it's either an engineering problem or software problem. Hardware
problem or software problem. And I think, I think this is one of
the biggest areas AI is going to give us is a real understanding. And
then to your other point about your left arm and right arm. You know,
when you have a baby, women's thirty thirty five, you're forty forty
five, your baby starts out at zero. Yeah. I do find it
remarkable that we decompressed from a single cell to an adult human and then and
then we you know, to appro create compressed back down to a single cell.
This fascinating, you know what I mean. Look, you sort of
look look at yourself as this sort of you know blast as system, say
like I haven't changed a bit. Here we go again, let's recycle.
It's like the Big Bang. It's like rand the Big crunch. You know,
one of the things people argue about on extended health span. Uh and
you know, increasing the population getting to one hundred, one hundred and twenty
one hundred and fifty and there's a constant co longevity escape philosity, right that
there's going to be a point at which for every year you're alive, science
is extending your life for more than a year. And that's an interesting idea
to think about, in which case, you know, accidents become really a
thing to be concerned about. They concerned about overpopulation and you've you've hit this
multiple times, right, and I saw you tweeting about it or sorry you're
xing about it today. Sorry, but it's you know, overpopulation sho is
one of the biggest myths and biggest population. Yeah, you know, and
and you know it's it's such nonsense. The Earth is underpopulated, not overpopulated.
We can look out the window when you're flying across the country, it's
empty, absolutely exactly. It's like if you said, like if your goal
was food, like flying from Elliott in New York to drop a bowling ball
on a human, you would fail. So you know, I think one
of one of my goals. I think the greatest gifts we can give people
in this abundance world is increased health span. I mean, when you think
about what people want, they want happiness and they want health. Right,
no one wants to die in a painful cancer or or dementia, So yeah,
and you know I have extended to you many times, my friend,
come down to Fountain Health. Let me put you through our program. The
world needs you around for another thirty thirty years. Okay, well, well
what do you have any what should I do? Let's say, well,
I mean, so there're two what access can be taken? They're two quiements
could be helpful. There are two on the discussion. Yeah, so there
are two. There are three things you need to know. Number one,
is there anything going on inside your body that you don't know about? So
the body is amazingly good at hiding disease. So we found in our seemingly
healthy adults two percent have a cancer they don't know about two and a half
percent two and a half percent of an aneurysm. Fourteen point four percent either
have metabolic disease, coronary disease, neurogenerative disease, and and so your body
is incredibly good at hiding disease. Right, so you don't actually feel any
cancer until stage three or stage four. Seventy percent of all heart attacks have
no precedents. Your body is compensating constantly, and you know, for most
of us, we know more about what's going inside our cars or airplanes than
we do our bodies. Yea, I have a question for you. How
many how many sensors are going up on starship when you're launching? How many
start sensors are going are on board that vehicle? Rough order magnitude getting back
data? Well, I guess this. When you count everything up, there's
several thousand sensors. And if I were, I mean they're are thirty three
engines, so they count for the bulk of sure, but you also have
stress sensors and looking what's going on in the structures and ibionics and communications across
all the subsystems. And if I ask you, how may nine engines including
the up stages. So so yeah, there's several thousand sensors and way more
answers than Yeah, I was gonna say if you, if I asked you,
how many sensors do you have in your body? And so we don't
look, which is insane because we do have the technology now and look to
determine is there anything going on I need to know about and when's a good
time to find out about like now? Or what's likely to break, what's
likely to undergo failure cycles? And then what's the most extraordinary therapeutics available to
extend the human life span. So I mean for me, that's that's uh,
that's a that's a big one. Let me ask you another another abundance
theme, which is education. Do you think any of our schools today,
middle schools or high schools are preparing any of our kids for the future.
Well, none that I know of. They might, I mean they might
be. Probably are a few schools that are doing it, but probably ninety
nine percent of schools or not. Yeah. Uh, schools are rice loads
floated change. And I think that they're there there. There is these things
you move away from teaching the fundamentals you know of writing well and math and
history. You know, I'm concerned about the whole world agenda and ideology permeating
through education, agreed, and actually being destructive to education. Agreed. I
mean, you know, how do you think do you have these thoughts?
I mean, so at the end of the day, I think our best,
our best healthcare, and our best teachers are going to be ais right
that understand everything, and they demonetize and they democratize every aspect. I mean,
the AI knows your your kid's favorite color, sports star, movie star,
what they know, the languages, they know, what they did today.
I mean, it's a way of giving every child on the planet the
best educator. I mean, you you funded back years ago. If you
remember the Global Learning Xprize that we did. We did that. We demoed
in times in THEA with ais on tablets. It was the earliest days of
ai. Emi Mustock, you know, was one of the winners of that
competition who went on out to create stability, I mean, the challenges.
I don't think the educational systems are going to give up that control anytime soon.
Sure well, I mean if I look at how my kids are educated,
they seem to be mostly educated by YouTube and redded and x as well.
I know, but they're constantly on the internet. That seems to be
and I guess a lot of kids these days TikTok unfortunately. Yeah. So
I think the education situation is problematic. That's what to do about it.
I think I think ultimately, you know, kin Academy is one step in
the right direction, but I think part of it is getting our educational institutions
to first realize they're not preparing kids for the world that's coming. I mean,
this hits another point. We are such linear thinkers, right, we're
projecting what we have and putting it out four or five years. I don't
think people let me ask you, do you think people are ready for what
the world's going to be like in twenty thirty. No, I don't know
what the world's going to be like in twenty thirty, so probably I wouldn't
say that. I'm yeah, we definitely live in the most interesting time.
You know. It's like it's legedly this Chinese thing that may live in interesting
times is a not a good thing. But I mean, I think personally
I would like to live in the most interesting of times, and this is
the most interesting of times. I also think it's the best time to be
alive. Ever, the only time more exciting than today is I mean,
uh uh, you know by what measure? Yeah, we have environmental issues,
but I think we have the best chance of solving those environmental issues with
the technology we have now versus technology we had ten years ago. Yeah.
Well, I generally think it's as a as a general sort of rule of
living, it is it is better to err on the side of being optimistic
and wrong than pessimistic and right. If you're gonna make if you're gonna err
one side or the other. But it's just a higher quality of life to
ear on the side of being optimistic and risk being wrong than than pessimistic.
You know, and you know and right, I mean, it's it's better
to be You'll just have a just enjoy life. Yeah, what a optim
optimism is is gonna make you happy. There was a study of fourteen thousand
people. It was fourteen thousand women and fifteen hundred guys, and it showed
that those with an optimistic mindset lived fourteen to fifteen percent longer than those were
the pessimistic mindset. I mean, mindset's a powerful thing and I think undervalued
by almost everybody. One of my one of my favorite examples of this was,
do you know what the environmental disaster of the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties
was. I'm sure you know. Is this back to whales? No?
No, no, no, it's it's another form of life. It's the
horseman or disaster, the horseship. Yes, yeah, what what is well?
Yeah, no, no, you're right. I mean New York what
was basically a horse manure and and and you're in uh and and carcass it
was. It was terrible. People brought their motive power. I mean,
like if you think if you think, I think New York Subways is thinking
right now, wait, I mean try it everywhere. You know, people
every people, people moved from people moved into downtown New York, Detroit,
Chicago. They brought their motive power with them. And and the articles in
the eighteen eighties and nineties and into the nineteen hundreds, as you as you
read this, the projection was disaster. It was going to be disaster because
horse horse maneuver was like grow. They had like special parking lots for horseship
at the corner Very Street. Well, it seems like there's also a challenge
because I think a horse lives, you know, for on the order of
fifteen years. That means one fifteenth of all horses are kicking the bucket every
year. You just got. And so so if you've got like three hundred
thousand horses, it means you've got twenty thousand horses dropping dead every year.
And then you need a horse to move the horse or or just cover it
with horsemen or letter decompose. Yeah, I mean it's gonna be like decomposing
horse caucuses throughout ratri cities. But then and then and then like it's like,
well, who's horn, who's dead horse? Business people are probably taking
to claim a lot, but they're not rushing to claim it. But then,
but then innovation came along and here comes the car and solves the problem.
And I think that's the problem that we keep on forgetting. We we
forget that we are incredibly innovative at solving problems. That's what humans are amazing
at. Yeah, yeah, true, true. Actually, on the whale
front, I don't know. Back to the whales, it's a whale of
a tail, whale tails. Okay. The so a lot of people think
that the low point on whale population was was in the eighteen hundreds, because
you know, whales were being hunted for for whales whale we yeah, but
actually the low point by far was in fact in the mid twentieth century because
of a bureaucratic in the Soviet Union. Okay that I have the year they
can so that they would always have these five year plans and quotas for for
howp for whale tonnage. Now didn't they didn't actually have even a whether the
whale tonnage was usable tonnage in any way, they just had a quota for
whale tonnage, and what they were doing in servi units, they would just
keep increasing the quota of everything every year, every five years. So that's
the whale tonnage just got a higher and higher and hire and if if you,
if you're a captain, and you and you and you had a high
wald tonnage, you'd get a medal and a raise. And if your whale
tonnage was low, you'd be sent to do you get you get what you
incentivized, babe? Yes? And does matter? And and so it got
to to it just got to absurd levels, and you had Soviet whaling ships
like going into h you know US and Australian wars to desperately trying to find
whales, and then they were they were catched the whale, weigh the whale
and then dump the cause. Go ahead. I mean, there's there's a
there's a whole internet rabbit hole that you can go out on the and which
is basically a lesson in the follies of central planning. So and this is
the problem of keeping laws on the books way way after they're useful to society.
Well, We do actually have a fundamental issue with the accumulation of laws
and regulations because they are immortal and humans are mortal, as we were just
discussing, you know, life extension, so so naturally, every year you're
going to have this accumulation of laws and regulations until eventually everything is illegal.
I mean, I mean everything is illegal, every everything. Everything is illegal.
Yes, nothing, nothing is allowed because you're overlapping laws regulations in some
of which are in fact contradict each other. That whether you go left or
right, they're both left and right, you know, like SpaceX. I
mean, shame on, you know, the d o J in this respect,
in this particular case where it DJ, as you may know, is
suing SpaceX for hiring only a permanent residence and citizens of the US. The
reason that we did this was because we were told very clearly that if we
did not hire permanent residence of the United States that that would constitute a violation
of international trade track Traffic in Arms regulations. IAR and the entire executive team
of SpaceX and the board would go to prove sounds like a good motivation,
yes, And so we we're literally told us by the government in very clear
terms, and I mean well aware of items I am. Yes, it's
it's a nightmare, and we would like to which which by the way,
puts us in a non competitive world against other nations. Yes, it's it's,
it's it's it's pretty bad. So but but then then then the d
J, you know, it's issuing SpaceX for not hiring asylum seekers. An
important point here, not asylum, those who have been granted asylum, those
who are seeking asylum. There's a lot of those. There's a lot of
people seeking asylum. Yes, so we're damned if we do and damned if
we don't. So if we hire someone who's not a poet residence, we're
breaking the law. And if we don't hire someone he's not a resident,
we're breaking the law. So this is, this is an example of the
madness that we're facing. But I want to compliment you on something which and
I've seen I've known you for long enough to have seen you gone through this
where you have bet everything over and over again. You bet your entire fortune,
got into debt to do the things that you believe in. And I
have a question to ask you, which I've been dying to ask, and
I'm going to start making this this known. There are so many billionaires on
the planet who have tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars who are
effectively sitting on it and not changing the world, not putting it in,
you know, other than for increasing its return, which is not a bad
thing. I think the more wealth and free energy there is out there to
do things. But can you speak to that, I don't know if you're
willing to. But there are a few people like Mark Benioff and Eric Schmid
and your sell yourself top of the list, who invest on making the world
a better place, solving global grand challenges. Thoughts on that open. Sorry,
I just have some some kids and stuff around problem, sort of family
noises in the background, so let's see. Yeah, well yeah, I
mean I do think that, uh it's smart. People with resources should care
about the good of civilization, the future of civilization, even if there is
not even if they're not particularly altruistic, because you can't really cannot you cannot
exist absent civilization. If civilization collapses, it's all over. You know.
There's like people have got like these sort of bunker other countries or why or
whatever. I'm like Listen, do you really think that you're gonna make it
in in an apocalyptic situation like they'll they'll they'll come and find you in that
bunker and they probably will pry you out and get your stuff, and and
and and it's it's gonna suck anyway. So really, uh, small feel
with resources, any small personal resources. They just have some long term perspective.
I mean, listen, it's you, it's you, and it's you
and and Jeff Bezos right now, Who've got the biggest long term perspective.
And I see I uh, you know, Uh, I'm just curious about
how do you incentivize other people to really help the world accelerate, uh,
you know, and and make the world a more productive place. Right.
The best way to become a billionaire's help a billion people, the world's biggest
problems, the world's biggest business opportunities. Uh do you believe that? Well?
I guess maybe it's just talk to people more. I guess, see,
just towing to them. And you know, I think it's perhaps just
raising conscious awareness the fact that there is no living without civilization. One you
like, one doesn't actually have to make an ultimistic augment. You can actually,
you know, make a even if it's purely self seeking argument like,
but life would be miserable without civilization. And if you want to know what
life is like without civilization, just go try living in the forest naked for
a day and you will be naked and afraid and quickly realized civilization is awesome.
I just eat bugged and get eating by bugged. And it's we're so
independent upon each other to enable the state of technology and capability we have today.
You know, I'm curious, is there anything that you think that isn't
becoming more abundant out there, or anything that we have an abundance constraint on
you? I'll just mention, well, answer that first. I don't want
to come and talk about the carbon removal experisee that you funded. One second.
You know we're we're creating abundance of food, energy, water, healthcare,
education. Are you constrained in any way? No? Not really,
No, I mean no, I think I agree with you that the future
most likely has abundant We shouldn't be complacent about the future. Complacency and entitlement
are not arrested for success, but most likely outcome is one of abundance of
business services. That is something where we're headed. Uh yeah, when I
when I saw you last, that's mighty likely where we're headed, very likely.
When I when I saw you last, you said, you know,
definitely abundance after a g I and I saw you know when you were talking
about optimists, which is awesome by the way, let's just start with that.
Congratulations. Well thanks optimist. I need to make sure the optimist is
it is it doesn't add to civilizational risk, you know, because you don't
want like a billion of these things or with centralized control unless unless has anyone
made a movie, unless they obey you. Well, I don't think there
could obey any anyone. Yeah, Like I think you have to have local
control, but it has to be decentralized because any central control it's going to
be problematic because you just can't be like it could be the a rogue AI
takes I mean listen, literally a movie, a rogue you know, terminator
H takes over somehow gains control of the mothership of that controls all the you
know, the Optimus robots or something like that. That is uh, basically
it needs to be it needs to be impossible for that to occur. Let
me ask you. I always love combining your companies because it's like you know,
you know, it's like uh a Reese's peanut butter Cup, you know,
starlink and and and uh and uh and Starship together. How about Optimists
neuralink? When can I plug into an Optimist with my neuralink connection? Well,
hopefully the first neural links will the first link, and a human will
hopefully be soon within the next maybe this month or next. Now this is
really just at first, it's just trying to give your quadriplegic, partaplegics and
tetraplegics the ability to control their phone and computer. It's it's basically like the
first the first product is te telepathy essentially or telekinesis and uh. And then
the second product uh so tentatively cooled blind sight where we can restore site even
if somebody is has lost both eyes and their optic notes. Amazing, go
straight to the visual detect Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now these things will
already work in monkeys, and I'd just like to reempasize no, no monkey
as has ever died because of a neural link, and we treat these extremely
well. Last time, I last time I spoke to you about this.
You were playing, You were playing Pong against Pager. I think that's right.
Actually, it turns out monkeys love playing the beer. They're they're really
just like us. I mean they they they love eating, eating snacks and
playing video I tell my twelve year old boys about that. Yeah, I
mean, you see the video of Pager playing you know, my monkey mind
pong, you know, just a telepathic paying punk telepathically. He's not restrained
in any way. He's just sitting on the sort of tree brand drinking smoothies
and drinking smoothies, drinking smoothie and playing pong. Yeah, he's not held
down, you know. In fact, he gets upset when we take a
video game away, just like human, just like our kids. It's awesome.
And the stuff I mean, giving sight to the blind, I mean,
it's biblical stuff. And this is again coming back to the original,
you know, kicking off the new year with a positive mindset, with an
abundance mindset, with an exponential mindset, with a moonshot mindset, right which
I think, and I think I hope you agree that. I think for
entrepreneurs and people listening, like the single most important thing we have is our
mindset how we see the world. I mean, would you agree with that?
Yeah, yeah, I mean you could choose to be I mean,
happiness is I think is a decision. I mean it's likely. I mean
there's other obviously, people that have chemical embalansis. But for most people,
the difference between being happy and unhappy is deciding to be happy. Amazing and
I want to take a second for everybody listening to point something out. You
know, Elando was twenty twenty one. I was texting with you and I
said you should fund another exprize. You funded an exprize years ago on teaching
kids in the middle of Tanzania, reading, writing, and arithmetic without any
adults, no schools around, just on a tablet. They were handed and
the software had to teach them and it was an amazing success. And then
in twenty one I asked you if you do an ex prize on carbon removal
and you said yes almost instantly, and we launched it three months later.
It was like the fast yes to an X Prize launch ever, So thank
you for that. I want to give you a quick update on it if
I could. You're welcome to absolutely well. I hope the education X prize
and the Cotton Remove X Prize or resultant. I'm sure we had six thousand
teams enter the Carbon Removal Prize. We have thirteen hundred active teams in the
competition right now as we down select about thirty six percent four hundred and sixty
are focused on carbon air capture, four hundred and thirty are land related capture,
two hundred and forty or ocean related capture. And the we've given away
twenty million of your money already, five million to students and fifteen million to
a million to the top fifteen teams. And the finals are coming up in
two years in the Earth Day of twenty twenty five. And interestingly enough,
you know, the winning team needs to demonst right uh mega ton level capture
that can scale to gigoton level capture. And so just the final competition is
going to capture for megatons of carbon, which is twice what's being done on
an annual basis today. So good progress, so far. Great. That's
that's good here. Well, as we as we uh, as we begin
to wrap up, what other thoughts for people on abundance, what other mindset
thoughts do you have for folks? Here is hmm. Well, I do
think that the birth rate is too low for human as I'm always going on
about that. That's the longevity, baby, I'm solving it with longevity,
going to keep people alive longer. Okay, well and robot and ai,
sure, but I mean it's just the current situation is is grammats grammat Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of countries are you know,
if you say Korea, Italy, yeah, yeah, they're losing roughly half
their population per generation. Yeah, that means three generations, they're one tenth
of their current size, and with the one tenth that remains being very old.
Yeah. The numbers for folks that replacement numbers two point one children for
family on average, and Europe is at one point five. Asia dropped from
five point seven in the nineteen fifties to one point nine today, which is
crazy. North America dropped from about three to one point six, were below
the replacement level of the United States. And it's it is an issue.
I mean, we need smart people on the planet. Yeah. Well,
I mean if we don't make new humans, we won't have humanity. And
even with longevity, we'll live longer, but we're not lived forever. So
I think we just need it's you know, I'm concerned that, like a
lot of people think that the panel planet is overpopulated, and that's one of
the things contributing to a low birth rate. In fact, some people have
encountered think they're basically being martyrs for not having kids, and that's just it's
just not true. I think we should take the position that we actually have
a civic responsibility to have kids to at least keep the human population constant.
Ideally we should grow it, but we should at least not have population collapse,
which is what we currently have. I think people people fear the future,
and I mean the conversations I've heard is I don't want to bring children
into this world. It's too dangerous. AI is going to destroy humanity,
the environment, you know, we're destroyed the environment, and so forth.
So I think part of it is getting people to be optimistic about the future
versus pessimistic, which is one of as you said in the beginning of this
this space is one of my one of my missions. If people think the
world is getting better and they have a hand in making it a better place,
you most definitely do. Yeah, I think people should be optimistic about
the future. They can handle far more humans than currently exist, and the
danger is not a population explosion but population collapse. So I would just encourage
as may feel as possible to have kids and ideally have a lot of kids,
because they you're going to make up for those who by a extra bottle
of wine tonight, folks. Yeah, it's a big deal. So what
do you do you let's let's close out on a conversation of AI and AGI,
which I know a lot of people always interested in and and and there's
a real fear about AI. What would you say to dissuade people? I
mean, it's you've you've I've heard you say eighty percent probability we make it
through and we need to protect the downside. Can you speak to that?
What? How? How can people walk away more optimistic than pessimistic on on
this front? And how do you how do you think about you know,
is is it containment? Is it shaping how we train our AI systems?
How do you think we navigate super in digital superintelligence? Well, the rate
which AI is growing is it really buggles his mind. So it currently seems
as though the amount of compute dedicated to artificial intelligence is increasing by a factor
of ten roughly every six months. It's it's faster than annual, that's for
sure. M h. I mean, I've I recently heard today about a
gigawatt class AI is compute cluster that's I think it's been being built in Kuwait
or something of that effect. And it's like seven hundred thousand B one hundreds,
which is a couple of generations above two generations in production. So this
is a staggering amount of compute. And there are many such such things that
that's just the biggest one I've heard of so far. But there are there's
a five hundred megawatt installation happening, there's and there's there's there's multiple hundred,
one hundred megawatt installations in the works. That's not including me. What what
you do with that much compute? Because when you when you actually add up
all human data ever created U, you really just run out of things to
train on quite quickly. Like you you know, if you've got maybe I
don't know, twenty or thirty thousand, one hundreds, you can train on
synthetic data almost everything. Yeah, basically you have to have to have synthetic
data because perstantly, well under one hundred thousand, one hundreds, you can
train on all human data ever created, including video. Uh. And it's
not and it's not just the compute, which is the major scarce resource,
but it's also the number of entrepreneurs focusing in this area, the amount of
capital that's going into this area, the amount of data available. I mean,
it's all increasing, and it's all feeding on itself. And then so
it's just you know, hitting your point about the speed at which it's progressing
is is I think the word awesome is comes to mind. Or staggering,
Yeah, it's really staggering and for sure, so I'm just trying to give
a sense of scale. It's I've never seen anything move this fast of any
technology. This is the fastest moving thing. So in terms of aiming for
AI safety, my my best guess of my sort of primitive biological neural is
is that we should aim for maximum truth seeking and and curiosity. That that's
that's that's my gut field for this for how to make AIS safe as possible.
If the danger with programming morality and explicit with an explicit morality program is
what it's sometimes referred to as the Waligi problem. If you create Luigi,
you automatically create Wallwigi by inverting Luigi. So so I think we have we
have to be careful about programming, and you know, sort of an arbitrary
morality. But but if we focus on maximizing truth with acknowledged error, that's
that's probably I think that's the way to maximize safety and and also to have
the A. I be curious because I think that you know, Earth is
much more interesting to you an advanced AI with humans on it than without humans.
But I agree with you. Now an interesting question of do you think
vast intelligence? With vast intelligence comes significant empathy and respect for life? Yeah,
I think so, because that's the that's the hope at the end of
the rainbow here that I don't want to use the word a G. I'll
use a SUPERG digital superintelligence as a as a term with a digital superintelligence that
is able to be more benevolent and support us, because sometimes I'm not sure
us squishy meat sacks can make it through our own, our own horseshit problems
that we put together. So maybe there's a value there, you know.
I think on the whole AI is the single most important technology ever invented,
and it is going to uplift all of humanity. I think it's what you
said, you know, after post Agi comes abundance. I think it's the
interim issues in the next one to four years, right, It's it's not
artificial intelligence, it's human stupidity. Yeah. Well, I mean one way
that AI could go wrong is if the extinctionist philosophy is programmed into the AI,
whether implicitly or explicitly. I mean, probably not explicitly, but there's
a strong danger of it of an implicit extinctionist philosophy being programmed into AI.
You know, And what would that look like? What would that look like?
Well, like, there's this guy on the front page of New York
Times, think about a year ago. He's said of the extinctionist society,
and he was literally quoted as there are eight billion people on Earth. It
be better if there were none. Oh my god. Yeah. So uh
and if you if you take the extreme environmentalist argument, especially like the implicit
extreme environmentalist argument, they they there's an implicit conclusion that humans are a plague
on the surface of the Earth. So I think we have to be quite
careful about and implicit like like if the extinctionist movement was somehow programmed into AI
as as the optimization, that would be obviously extremely dangerous, you know,
just say the least. Yeah, but you know, there's there's that.
There are people, quite a few people actually who view humanity as as a
blight on the fis of the earth. And we're we are coming down to
There is the you know, accelerationist movement, the de cl racist movement,
the boomers and the doomers. But I think people forget to realize or they
don't realize, forget the fact that, you know, we romanticize the past,
and the past life was short, brutish, and you were dead by
forty. You know. The life that we enjoyed today is a result of
the extraordinary technology that we brought to bear. Yeah, so the like you
know, Hobbs life is nasty version. Yeah. I actually I had a
little yorkshiteria one who was a nasty verish and short and kept biting people.
So I called them hobbs perfect. I would tell friends that that that came
over and watch out for the dog, and they look at the moon for
York and laugh, and then they would fight them on the end, and
I said watch I said, watch out. Uh you know that extinctionist meme
is the same sort of you know you discounted until it starts being a mind
virus h in part as you've called it, and it starts disrupting us.
Yeah, if you convince people that you know we're running out of resources on
Earth, that there are too many people in the world and the only way
to survive is to have far fewer people, which a lot of people are
believed to be the case. And like I said, if that, if
that somehow gets programmed into AI, and that AI becomes the most powerful AI,
then we're in deep trouble. Ah. Yeah, we need to counterforce
the population bomb. I mean, what an extraordinary disservice to humanity. Yeah,
Alex's book was terrible nightmare. Maybe the most anti anti human book ever.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. The but get people hope.
On the flip side, here, those who are saying again going back to
I don't want to bring up my children because I hear this all the time,
and I'm sure you do too, in an age where AI is going
to descry us. So short term problems, long term problems, short term
solutions, long term solutions. You said, make it curious, make it
maximum truth seeking one hundred percent. Is it okay to say that we're going
to have issues in the short term and we're gonna have to deal with them
or do you think there want be there? There will be, There will
be some issues at this point. No way to stop AI. It is
accelerating, whether people like it or not. I mean that's what that's uh
the why. Together with a number of really small people, we created x
AI and you know, hopefully you know, some really small humans will continue
to join x AI and and build what is intended to be maximally truth seeking
and maximally curious AI. Anyway, I think that's that's really important. So
elon listen on behalf of of those of us and I think everybody here listening
who are pro humanity and pro uplifting humanity and making us a multiplanetary species and
living a longer, healthier life. And I the one place I disagreed with
you on on on x is on uh, you know, having people live
longer. You don't. People don't need to die for there to be new
ideas. You know that the CEO of Ford and GM enough to die for
Tesla to come into existence, so we're uh, yeah, you know,
I want to just say thank you for what you're doing and and setting a
model for other other industrialists and entrepreneurs out there to take on and solve big,
huge problems. Well, thank you. And I would encourage people to
be optimistic about the future. Like we're on the side of optimism. You
will be happier for it, and and that, as you put it out,
probably live longer. So I'm not I'm not totally against life extension.
I think we did we you know, we want to be I'm not.
I don't think we want to necessarily have people live forever that's or look for
a very long black thousands of years that I think that would potentially lead to
ossification of society. It would, I think lead to ostigation of society.
But I mean solving dementia and you know, caring cancer I think are good
things obviously. So so I'm not sure we're actually that far apart on the
life extension thing. You're probably mostly in agreement. We just don't want to
have like, you know, can you live for a like do you want
Kim john on living for a thousand years now? But I'd like I'd like
Elon Musk Competer demand is living for one hundred and fifty years, and a
few other thousand amazing entrepreneurs out there. Sure, So it's it's uh,
you know, there there is a a challenge that like a lot of people
that really never changed their mind, they just die. And this this is
actually I'm not sure who originally said this, but even in physicists where which
is extremely rigorous, that that you know, that you know, physics in
a lot of cases has advanced one death at a time. Yeah, my
my friend Brian Keating was a astrophysicist, reminded me of that and and maybe
it was true. But in this world of entrepreneurship, I think we do
live in a meritocracy to a large degree, and the best ideas can bubble
up to the top faster than ever before, especially with with AI now where
you can build companies, you know, extraordinary companies with a couple of people
in a lot of tech. So yeah, I have one last question and
then uh it's I know it's dinner time. There the future of x x
AI. What's your vision there? Hell well, yeah, I was saying
I think the path AI safety it's above MAI that is maximally truth seeking with
acknowledged error, that is maximally curious. And I think that I think that
that that is most likely to lead to a good outcome for humanity because we
are we are much more interesting than than than not humanity like that obviously.
You know, I'm a big fan of Mars, but Os is much less
interesting because there's no human civilization there. And you take humans for example.
We we we could hunt down all of the chimpanzees and kill them, but
we don't, and in fact, we make efforts to preserve their habitats.
We would so anyway, I think that that's that is the path to a
great future, and a maximally positive AI is to be rigorously truth seeking,
always acknowledging some amount of error, and and maximally curious. That's and that's
that's the goal of x C I S and you know, the company might
I always understand the universe. Uh. And that's a it's a it's a
good mission and one that's going to take a bit of time. I can't
wait till the first AI is able to come up with you theories of physics
and I ME innovations that's going to be. I mean, I don't think
that's far away, and I think that's gonna be one of the most awesome
times ever to be alive. True, like we we definitely live in the
most interesting times. And I actually, for a while I was kind of
depressed a bout AI, But then I kind of got fatalistic about it and
said, like, well, even if even if AI was gonna, you
know, and all humanity, would I prefer to be around to see it
or not? I guess I would prefer to be around to see it,
just out of curiosity, but obviously hopefully AI is extremely beneficial to humanity.
But the thing that sort of reconciled me to be less anxious about it was
to say, well, I guess even if it was apocalyptic, I'd still
be curious to see that. It's like to you know, be curious to
see it. I remember I was at your birthday party at one of your
homes here in LA before you sold them, and Larry Page was there and
Sergei was there, and we were having a conversation about living in a simulation,
and the notion was this is where then ninety ninth level of the gameplay
and this has got to be a simulation because you couldn't. Why would be
why would we be alive right now in this single most interesting time. And
then the only comment was don't poke the simulation or the whole end. Yeah.
Yeah, Well, if we are in a simulation, the way to
keep the simulation going is to keep being interesting. So, like humans run
lots of computer simulations because we don't know what the outcome is going to be
and we're curious to see, we will run lots of simulations like in La
Testa will run crash simulations and Spacelex will run you know, rocket flight simulations.
And we're only stop doing the simulations when the when the outcome is extremely
predictable and boring. Yes, so if we're in some that's a great argument
that it is perfect, right, it's absolutely known if we're not, if
we're not, if we're not entertaining enough to the digital gods or the universe gods,