Everybody, Thank you so much for being with us throughout the day. And
I couldn't be more pleased to sit with Elon Musk as our final interview of
this remarkable time we've all had together. He doesn't need much of an introduction,
but I want to say a couple of things. He's the richest person
in the world. He may very well be the most console, most consequential
individual in the world right now. He runs the most innovative companies in the
world Tesla SpaceX, Starlink, which is part of that Neurolink, the boring
company X, and his X dot Ai and he's disrupted each of these lanes.
He's moved a breakneck speeds, but he's facing us from controversy in the
process. He joins us today following and visited, as you all know so
well, and we discussed earlier on Monday to Israel, where he met with
the Prime Minister there and the President of Israel. And we're going to talk
about everything, and my hope is that we can talk about how he thinks
about his influence, about his power, about all of it. And we're
going to talk about innovation and everything else. I want to say just two
other things real quick. We met each other for the first time sixteen years
ago. Time, it's been a long time, and all the kids were
three when we first met. I think you're just you're about to deliver your
first roadster. I don't think you had yet. Larry Page was still waiting
to get like seven, two and seven and eight, and I remember it
was a little in two thousand and eight. I remember going back to the
newsroom and saying, I think I just met the next Steve Jobs and I'm
going to hold to that. I'm going to hold to that. But a
lot has happened between when I first met you and now you came to deal
Book and Boring that's for sure. Actually, technically I do to have a
boring company. Twenty twelve, you came to deal Book and sat on this
stage, and we're thrilled to have you back. But there's been so much
that's happened between now and then, and there's been so much that's happened in
the past week, week and a half, and a lot of folks,
and I want to tell you this, A lot of folks called me up
and said, you really you're really going to host elon musk here can you
believe what he just said on Twitter one x X no idea? What this
Twitter? Should you platform him? That's what they said, should you platform?
And then I said that I think it's our role. And I know
you have issues with journal I have a platform, and I know you have
an issue with journalist oftentimes, But I said, it's our role to have
conversations and to inquire and to and sometimes even interrogate ideas. And that's I'm
hoping we can do that. So I want to start just so we can
begin this conversation and just level set, take us through everything that happened.
If you could everything, no over the past week and a half long.
If you're God, we're gonna We've got the time. Okay, you send
out, you send out a post or X or a tweet whatever. As
I'm trying to say, you like when things were just one hundred and forty
characters, that made says to call my tweet because it's like a bunch of
little boasts chopping. But when you know point which you can put like three
our videos on, it's like it's a very long tweet. So here we
are. This is more descriptive, I think, and at some point I
don't know where you were, but you write in responding to another tweet,
yes, this is the actual truth, and it's set off a firestorm of
criticism all the way to the White House. Right, and then you make
this trip to Israel. You have advertisers who left the platform, people calling
well, the trip to Israel is independent of it wasn't something like apology to
our clear that was. Let's talk about that. So just but just take
us back to the moment at which you write that trip to israelative to indepenitive
in response to that at all, well, let's do We'll do israelan in
a moment. I have no problem being hated by the way I hear it
away. Well, but you know what, let's go straight to that then
for a second. Sure, because there is an idea and you could say
that I think it's a real weakness to want to be liked, a real
weakness. I do not have that. Well, let me ask you this.
Then there's a difference between saying I don't care if anyone likes me or
they hate me. But given your power and given what you have a massed
and the importance you have, I would think you want to be trusted.
I would think maybe you don't need to be liked or hated, but trusted
matters. If X is going to become a financial platform where people going to
put their money, where people where, where the government's going to give you
money for rockets, where people are going to get into the they need to
ultimately decide that you are. Maybe they don't have to say that they love
you, but that you are ultimately a decent and good human being. Yes,
I mean I think I am, but I'm certainly not going to do
some sort of tap dance to prove to people that I am. So.
As for trust, I mean, I think you break that down in a
few ways if you want. If you want satellites cent to orbit reliably,
SpaceX will do eighty percent of all master orbit this year. China will do
twelve percent. The rest of the world will do eight That includes Blowing Locke
Eat and everyone else. So the track record of the rocket is the best
by far of anything. You could hate my guts next you could not trust
me. It is relevant. The rocket track records speak for itself. With
respect to Tesla, we make the best cars. Whether you your hate me,
likely or indifferent. Do you want the best car or do you not
want the best car? So? Uh so I will certainly not pander and
Jonathan like, the only reason I'm here is because you are a friend,
Like what was my speaking fee? You know you're not making any First of
all, I'm Andrew, but yeah, sorry, it's okay. Second of
all, we've known each other for a very long time, smoking yes,
and listen, you know, uh what, I'm trying to illustrate us that
sometimes I say the wrong thing. I think there are a lot of people
who are tired. But let me, let me, let me go back.
You should hear the sketches that SNL wouldn't post. By the way,
those are really good. And I would say, unfortunately or fortunately or unfortunately
whatever friendship we have not great. We don't talk to you other that much.
But let me ask you this true, that's true? Where am I?
That doesn't matter long calls. Yeah, I'm here because you're you're a
friend, not because I mean paytable, because I need any validation or anything.
Is that we've been friends for sixteen years and I promise you i'd be
here, and that's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate you being here
for other reasons. But let me ask you this this then just go go
at it. Just tell me what happened. You write this tweet that says
that this is the actual truth. People read that tweet, yes, and
they say Elon Musk is an anti Semite. That he is. He is
riling up this base. You're hearing it from, as I said, the
White House, You're hearing it from Jewish groups all over. I think Jonathan
green Black from the ADL is here. There's there's lots of people who say
this. And by the way, it's not just that read the whole thing
I did. And that's why I want I ask the responses. Excuse me,
I said more more responses? Yeah, I said more. I said
more than what you just read. Yes, there was absolutely more. Yes,
But I'll tell you the thing that struck me. It wasn't and I'm
an American Jew, It wasn't just the people who who had that view.
It was actually people who really are anti Semites who said, oh my goodness,
go Elon, this is fabulous. And that actually was the thing that
really really set me back. I said to myself, what's going on here?
And I want to know how you felt about that? In that moment
when you when you saw all of this happening. Yeah, well, first
of all, I did clarify almost immediately what I meant. I would say
that that was you know, if I could go back and say, I
should, in retrospect not have replied to that particular person, and I should
have written in greater length as to what I meant. I did subsequently clarified
in replies, but those topifications were ignored by the media, and essentially I
handed a loaded gun to those who hate me, and arguably to those who
are anti Semitic too, And for that I'm quite sorry that that is not
that was not my intention. So I did, you know, post on
my primary timeline to be absolutely clear that I'm not anti Semitic, and that
I, in fact, if anything, am filo Semitic, and the trip
to Israel was planned before any of that happened. It was neither handle there.
Do you see you see this thing? You know what it is?
I do because I actually followed your entire trip to Israel, right, what
do you tell everybody? This is this says, says bring them home the
hostages. It was given to me by the parents of one of the hostages.
And I said I would wear it as long as there was a hostage
store remaining. And I have what was that trip like? And obviously you
know that there's a public perception that you're clarifying this now, but there's a
public perception that that was part of a apology tour, if you will,
that this had been said online. There was all of the criticism, There
was advertisers leaving. We talked to Bob, I stop, you hope don't
advertise. You don't want them to advertise? No, what do you mean
if somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing with money,
go fuck yourself, but go fuck yourself? Is that clear? I hope
it is. Hey, Bob here in the audience, Well, well let
me ask you. Then that's how I feel. Don't advertise? How do
you think that about the economics of of x if if if part of the
underlying model at least today, and maybe it needs to shift. Maybe the
answer is it needs to shift away from advertising. If you believe that this
is the one part of your business where you will be beholden to those who
have this view, what do you do why? I understand that, but
there's a reality too, right, Yes, no, no, I mean
Lino Yakarino's right here and she's got to sell advertising absolutely, so no,
no, tell you so no, Actually, what what this advertising boycott is
is going to do. It's it's going to kill a company. And you
think that that and the whole world. Well, no, that those advertisers
killed the company, and we will document it in great detail. But there
are those advertisers, I imagine are going to say. They're going to say,
we didn't kill the company. They're going to say to tell it to
Earth. But they're going to say that they're going to say, Elon that
you killed the company because you said these things and that they were inappropriate things
and that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. Right, That's that's what
they're to say. And let's see how Earth responds to that something. Okay,
this then this goes back to well, we'll both make our cases,
right, and we'll see what the outcome is. What are the economics of
that for you? I mean, you have enormous resources, so you can
actually keep this company going for a very long time. Would you keep it
going for a long time if there was no advertising? I mean, if
the company fails because of advertised boycott. It will fail because of an advertised
boycott, and that will be what bankrupt of the company. And that's what
everybody on earth will know. What do you think then, of the against
This goes back to the idea of trust though it I'll be gone, and
it will be gone because of an advertised boycott. But you recognize that some
of those people are going to say that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform,
and I want I just wonder and ask you and think about that for
the judge. But the judge is going to be the judge of the public.
And you think that the public is going to say that that Disney is
making a mistake. Yeah, and they're going to boycott Disney. There already
are well, there are some that are for lots of different reasons. But
you think that this is going to that you have? This goes actually the
interesting of power and leverage. Let the chips fall where they may, let
the chips full where they may can. I ask why that is the approach.
I ask it because you've been very approached well, you've been very particular
about the approach to Tesla. When you think about the engineering involved in that
the approach to SpaceX, the approach to some of the stuff you're doing with
AI has been very specific. Right, there's not a let the chips fall
where they may approach to those businesses. I don't think we're focused on making
the best products and Tells THO has gotten to where it's gotten with no advertising
at all. I understand that Tells the currently sells to twice much in terms
of electric vehicles as the rest of electric carmakers in the United States combined.
Tells has done more to help the environment than all of the companies combined.
Be fair to say that, therefore, as a leader of the company,
I've done more for the environment than everyone else, any single human on earth.
How do you feel about that? I feel about that. Yeah,
No, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that? Because this goes
We're talking about power and influence, and I'm saying I'm saying what I care
about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what
I see all of the place is people who care about looking good while doing
evil. Fuck them. Okay, let me ask you this because I think
part of this, By the way, there's some people who said, look
owning X to begin with has just created problems that You've created so many amazing
things that are changing our world. And and and I know you want to
uh make X this fabulous town square free speech platform, but that unto itself,
that that has created such a distraction of all of these things. This
is the conversation we're having. We're not focused, or we're not not talking
at least yet, and we will on Tesla. You have your cyber truck
deliveries tomorrow and everything else that you're doing. But is there any will be
the biggest product launch of anything by far on Earth this year? Is there
any part of you though? It just says, you know what, I
just shouldn't have done this, or maybe I should sell it or give it
away or do something else with the with the X piece of it, given
given, given the propensity for some of the things that you do and say
on that platform to create these these issues. Yeah, of all the posts
I've done on the platform, I think there might be thirty thousand or something
like that. Right, Once in a while I will say something foolish,
and I have and I would certainly put to that comment, as you said,
the after truth among perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the
most foolish thing I've ever done on the platform, and I did do my
best to clarify afterwards that, you know, I certainly do not mean anything
anti Semitic in that the nature of the criticism was simply that the Jewish people
have been persecuted for thousands of years. There is a natural affinity therefore for
persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations that essentially promote any
persecuted group or any group with the perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic
groups. Everyone here has seen the massive demonstrations for Hamas in every major city
in the West that should be jarring. Well, a number of those organizations
received funding from prominent people in the Jewish community. They didn't expect that to
happen. But if you generically, without condition sort of fund, if you
fund persecuted groups in general, some of those persecuted groups unfortunately want your annihilation.
And what I meant by that, when I subsequently clarified, is is
that it's unwise to fund organizations that support groups that want your annihilation. Is
this coming across really? Yeah? It was. I question to you,
though I think logically this makes a lot of sense. Is there any part
of you? I mean, just tell me what happens though, when once
all this happens. Let's say you fund a group and that group supports the
mass who wants you to die. Perhaps you should not fund them, but
you but you do, thank you, you do appreciate that when you wade
into these very delicate waters at these very delicate times. Yes, that it
can create a real I mean, as it created headlines for the past two
weeks and economic impact. What I'm just so curious what happened in your brain
when you see all this happening. I think, are you sitting there going,
oh my god, I stepped in and I wish I didn't do that.
Are you saying threw them I hate these people day after me? But
all of that, Yeah, there's all of that. I mean, I
mean, look, I'm sorry for that that tweed or post. It was
foolish of me. Of the thirty thousands, it might be literally the worst
and dumbest to post that I've ever done. And I try my best to
clarify six raceist Sunday, But you know, at least I think over time
it will be obvious that, in fact, far from being anti Semitic,
I'm in fact philo semitic, and all the evidence in my track record would
support that there are people who say crazy things on x as. You know,
maybe you think they're crazy, maybe they're not. The aspiration FRACS is
to be the global town square. Now, if you were to walk down
to let's say Times Square, right, do you occasionally hear people saying crazy
things? Yes, but they're not that they don't have the megaphone, right,
And that's that's the conundrum. No, they can only stay to the
fifty one hundred people that are that are sitting standing there in Times Square.
They don't have a mega. I mean, look, the joke I used
to make about old Twitter was it was like giving everyone in the psych ward
a megaphone. So, you know, I'm aware that things can get promoted
that are negative beyond the sort of circle of somebody simply screaming crazy things in
Times Square, which happens all the time, you know, So the it's
actually it's pretty rare for something frankly that is hateful to be promoted. It's
not it's not it's not that it never happens, but it's it's fairly rare.
I mean, I would encourage people to look at for those that use
the system, when you look at the sort of the feed that you receive,
how how often is it is it hateful? And over time hasn't gotten
more or less hateful? And I would say that if you look at the
X platform today versus a year ago, I think it is actually much better.
I mean, what is your perponce? Are you surprised? I'm just
curious you use this. I use the platform religiously. I not being an
addict you and I use it for you, and I will I will say,
now the problem is because I'm a journalist, I go looking for stuff.
Well I'm not. I'm just saying and because I and I also think
the algorithm for me personally because I'm looking for stuff also is feeding the others
things. Well, this this is actually a challenge in that like sometimes people
will say like why is it showing me h, you know post from this
person that I hate? And then we're like, well, did you interact
a lot with this person that you hate? Well? Yes, well therefore
thinks that you want to interact more with this person that you hate. That's
like a reasonable you know you kind of want to have an argument tweet.
Yeah, do you ever post, let's say, post when you post listen,
I'm over. If anyone cannot come up with a better word, that
would be great. When you post though, but the least bad way I
can think of his post? When you post though? Do you are you
trying to rile up either a base or an audience? Do you do you?
Do you recognize the power you have in that? And and also,
by the way, not just up rile up one version of Saturday, but
also rile down, which is to say, as I said, there are
people who are demonstrably anti Semitic on the site who I get jew boy things
and all sorts of things that come my way. For a while I thought
I was dosh, so they would you know, I get it to but
but no. But the question is do you ever think to yourself, you
know what, I'm going to go online and I'm going to say these people.
I condemn these people that are on my site saying these things because you
say I've condemned as sims it. But do you ever go I said,
I can condemn I literally I literally posted I condemn anti Semitism in all its
forms. That is a literal, I believe literal post that I've made.
I mean, I'm like, listen, if I can get out the phosaurus,
if you you know, and we could you know, let me ask
you a different question. You're you're you composed it, I'll post it.
Okay, let me ask you this. You you're a You're on a podcast
about a month ago, and you said something that struck me, and it
struck me as accurate came out of your mouth, so hopefully it is.
But I'm hoping to go deep on this. Just because it came out of
my mouth does not mean it's true. But you said, you said,
you said, my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would
want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but
they don't know, they don't understand. What did you mean by that?
What was what your mind being a storm? And I think it, I
mean I have known you for quite some time. I think it is a
bit of a storm. Yes, yeah, I mean in as much as
a whey that metaphor makes sense. My mind is often feels like a like
a like a very wild storm. I mean, I have a fountain of
ideas. I mean, I have more ideas than I can possibly execute,
So I have no shortage of ideas. Innovation is not the problem. Execution
is the problem. I've got a million ideas. I mean, I've got
an entire design for an electric supersonic vertical takeoff jet. But I mean,
I just if I just can't do that as well. I've had that for
ten years. I know there's a million things. Does your storm a happy
storm? Yeah, it's not a happy storm. Tell us about that,
because I think that that actually, when people try to really understand you,
I think that there's a lot of this comes from some other place, and
I want to talk about that. What do you think that is? It
should really need like a psychiatrist catch here or something. You know. I
think there's some degree I was born this way, but and then I was
amplified by a difficult childhood. Frankly so, but I can remember, even
in happy moments when as a kid that there's just it just feels like there's
just a a range of forces in my mind constantly. But now this,
you know, productively manifests itself in technology and building things for the most part.
So and I think on balance, the output has been very productive.
I think the results as we you know, discussed earlier with SpaceX, Tesla
PayPal, which is you know, still going today. The first yearnet company
that I started, in fact, the first internet company I started, it
too was funded by New York Times company Hurst Night, Writter and Remberked.
We wrote some of the software for the New York Times website and we helped
bring online several hundred newspapers that previously were only in print. Now this is
in the nineties, which at this point is like like a Grandpa plack.
But basically, you know, the nineties and internet feels like a pre Cambrian
era when there were only sponges. So anyway, so you know, I
feel like a lot of productive things have been done. And you can also
look at at Tesla's being sort of many companies in one, like our supercharging
network is if it were if the Tells a super talking network where its own
company, it would be a fortune five hundred company by itself, just just
the supercharging system. We also make the seals, We build the paralylectronics in
the power train for Scratch. We have the most innovative structural design, the
largest castings ever used. We have the best manufacturing technology at Tesla, better
manufacturing technology than companies that have been doing it for one hundred years. So
these these demons of the mind, you know, for the most part,
harnessed to productive ends. That doesn't mean that once in a while they you
know, go wrong. But and this is a question, I think a
lot of people, you know, are always trying to figure out about not
just you, but sometimes themselves, Meaning, what is driving all of this?
You're doing all of these things. Do you think it's Do you think
that you would be as successful, whatever success is, if it wasn't being
driven by some I think that there's something you're trying to prove, either to
yourself or to somebody. I don't know. We're all trying to prove that.
We're trying to prove to my mother. I don't know. No if
I were describe my philosophy as a philosophy of curiosity, I mean I did
have this existential crisis when I was around twelve about what's the meaning of life?
Isn't it all pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist?
I read the religious texts, I read the philosophy books that well, especially
the German philosophy books made me quite depressed. Frankly once you'd not read Schopenhauer
Nietzsche as a teenager. But then I read Douglas Adams Hitdack Guide to the
Galaxy, which is a book and philosophy in the form of humor. And
the point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions
to ask. That's why I said that, you know, the answer is
forty two, Like, basically, it was a giant computer and it came
up with the answer forty two. But then to actually figure out what the
question is, that's the actual hard part. I think this is generally true
also in physics. At the point of which you can properly frame the question
the answer is is actually the easy part. So my motivation then was that,
well, my life is finite, really a flash in the pan and
on a galactic time scale. But if we can expand the scope and scale
of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask
about the answer that is the universe, and maybe we can find out the
meaning of life or even what question to what what the right question to ask
is? You know, where do we come from? Where are we going,
Where are the aliens? Are there aliens? You know? These these
questions you know? And is there new physics to discover? Or is this
because this is real questions about dark matter and dark energy. And so the
purpose of SpaceX is to extend life beyond Earth on a sustained basis, so
that we can at least pass one of the Firmi great filters, which is
that of being a single planet civilization. For your single planet civilization, then
we are simply waiting around for some extinction event, whether that is man made
or natural. But if you're a single planet civilization, eventually you will something
will happen to that planet and you will die. If you're a multiplant civilization,
you will live much longer. Also, a multiplanet civilization is that's the
natural stepping stone to being a multi stellar civilization and being out there among the
stars. So now this I think has two. This is not simply a
defensive motivation, but it is also one that you know that gives meaning.
Man search for meaning. Let me finish this philosophy point. Even though it
may seem rather esoteric, it may resonate for a few people. We must
get past this Firmi filter. Of being a straight filter of being a single
planet civilization, and if we do that, we're more likely to understand the
nature of the universe and what questions to ask. If you believe her in
the philosophy of curiosity, then then I think you should support this ambition.
And but it's more, there's being a multipliant species is more than than simply
you know, life, life insurance for life collectively. That's a defensive reason.
But but I think also that that that life has to be more than
simply solving one sad problem after another. You know, there have to be
there be reasons where you wake up in the morning and you're happy to be
alive. There have to be reasons that you have to say, why are
you excited about the future? Like what gives you hope? And if you
if you're if you'ren't sure, ask your kids. And and I think the
idea of us being a space faring civilization and being out there among the stars
is incredibly inspiring and exciting and something to look forward to, and there need
to be such things in the world. Let me ask you a different question
about confidence. We were having a conversation here earlier, but people and where
where people get their confidence from. Some people have great and security, other
people have great confidence. And I was thinking about you because you have a
very interesting history where people have told you over and over again that you're wrong.
Well sometimes they're right. Well sometimes they are, But I would say
that when it comes to Tesla, when it came to SpaceX, people told
you that you were crazy, You're out of your mind. This was never
going to happen. This is never going to work. And so I ask
you this, though, is now, when people say you're wrong, this
isn't right, do you look at that and say, you know what?
That's like a red flag for me because you know, I've been told so
often that I'm wrong that I know that and I know I'm right because I've
had that experience. Or are there people in your life when they say,
you know what, Elon, this is not this is not right. Do
you know what I'm saying? I mean, I think what you start trying
to say, is that to do at this point? Think because I've been
right so many times for others I said I'm wrong, that now I passed
believe I'm right when I in fact I'm wrong. You did very well.
What do you think no, I'm right, so uh yeah, No.
Look, here's the thing. Physics is unforgiving. Physics is unforgiving. So
I mean, I have, you know, these various little sayings that I
have come up with that physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation
in the sense that you can break any law made by humans, but try
breaking a law made by physics. That's much more difficult. So if you
are wrong and persistent being wrong, the rockets will blow up and the cars
will fail. So this is we're not trying to figure out what flavor of
ice cream is the best flavor of ice cream. Like if there's a thousand
things that can happen on a rocket flight and only one of them gets the
rocket to orbit, and so being wrong results in failure when dealing with physical
But that's the interesting part. So now you've built this these great companies that
physically the physics of them are enormously successful, so successful arguably that you have
leverage over everybody else. Right, there's nobody else can do starlink, nobody
else can get nobody else can get the rockets in space. Yet Amazon and
Jeff Bezos are trying, but they haven't yet I hope he does. You
hope he does? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think you know,
but I actually agree with with with a lot of Jeff's motivations. I mean,
I think you know he's so they're put this way. If there was
a button I could press that would delete blue argin, I wouldn't press it.
So I think it's good that he's spending money on making rockets too.
You know, it's just peraps you spend more time on it, but you
know it's up to him the the But I should make a point here,
So nothing, nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition.
In fact, we've done the opposite. So at Tesla we have open
sourced our patents. Anyone can use our patents for free. How many companies
do you know who've done that? Can you name one? I can't.
At SpaceX, we don't use patents, So I mean, she said,
once in a while, we'll file a patent just so some patent trol doesn't
cause trouble. But we're not stopping any we've done. We've done nothing anti
competitive. We've done nothing to stop I always want to clarify for the audience
because some companies have done anti competitive things. I think the strange thing,
the unusual thing about SpaceX and Tela is that we've done things that have helped
our competition. So at Tesla, we have made our supercharger system open access.
We've made our charger technology available for free to the other manufacturers. The
reason that no wall of garden. We could have put a wall up,
but instead we invited them in. The reason I mentioned this though, is
because you've had the success in the physical physics world, you now have these
very difficult decisions that have huge impacts on the world that are not physical decisions
at all. They're decisions of the mind, the decisions that you and others
have to make. It there's a question whether you should be making these decisions
at all. And I think about it in the context of starlink. Obviously,
there was the report about how it's being used in Ukraine and the Russian
War. There's questions about Taiwan, whether Taiwan should use it or will use
it. I believe they're not right now because they're worried that at some point
maybe the Chinese will tell you that you have to they have leverage over you,
and you're going to have to turn that off, right, I mean,
these these are very difficult decisions, and I'm so curious how you think
about that, and not just the decisions, the fact that you have that
power. I just I think it's important for they order to understand that the
reason I have these powers not because of some anti competitive actions. It's simply
because we've executed very well. Oh, I'm not dismissing that. I think
there's so many people, by the way, who work huge supporters of what
you. There are are satellites out there, you know, but they're but
they're not as good as yours and the same and we can say that maybe
make the same argument of the cars and everything else. But as a result,
that gives you enormous leverage. Right with the exception of that, By
the way, these advertisers who aren't on X in every other instance, everybody
needs you, I mean, nobody's them. They use our product if it's
better than use somebody else's product, if it's the other products better, And
I accept that it maybe one days also better products, Like you know,
how is it a bad thing to make better products than other companies? Well,
and I want to go back to this, to the starlink piece of
it, though, because that has sort of a geopolitical ramification in terms of
your power and how you think about that specific power, and then the power
that the US government might have either over you or not over you, the
power that Chinese government might have over you or not over you, and how
those things get used. I mean, what are you suggesting. I'm asking
the question around this very idea of how these satellites are going to be used,
whether you think that you should have control of them, whether the government
should have control of them. How's the government? Well, that's there's a
lot of people who don't trust the government exactly. But then this goes back
to the trust of you, right, I mean, like I said that,
we're not the only company who has communications satellites. AL satellites are just
much better than theirs, So it's not like we have a monopoly. Right.
Do you feel like anybody has a products? It's not like do you
feel anybody has leverage over you? I mean, I think at the end
of the day, if we make bad products that people don't want to use,
then the users will vote with their resources and do something else. Pivot
the conversation for six. I mean certainly me and my company's overseen by regulators.
And while you know once since SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla are overseen by
you know, cumulatively over one hundred regulators in actually more than that few hundred
regulators, because you've got we're fifty five countries. If you sum up all
the times that I had an argument with regulators of hundreds of regulators over decades,
it can sound really terrible, except for they forgot to mention that there
were ten million regulations we complied with and only five that I disagreed with.
But it was still the five and it sounds like, Wow, this guy's
a real maverick. I'm like, yeah, but what about the ten million
we complied with? Do you let me let me one related thing on this
and the leverage of countries and things over you and regulators X is this free
speech platform? You do business in China, lots of business China. That's
an important part of your business, I imagine, well, not SpaceX.
How do you think about the leverage that the Chinese have over you? And
do they have leverage over you? And how do you feel about some people
say is it hypocritical for you to be doing business in China or frankly in
other countries as it relates to X and other things that don't follow this free
speech path that you have his spoused. The best that the platform can do
is adhere to the laws of any given country. Do you think there's something
more we could do than that? I think it would be very hard.
But I just wonder, given the sort of strong philosophical approach that you've you've
you've you've been vocal about whether you say to yourself, you know, maybe
I shouldn't be doing business in that country. Well, first of well,
Starlink and SpaceX do our no business in China whatsoever. Tesla has one of
four factories for vehicle factories in China, and China is you know, I
don't know a quarter of our market or something like that, and so it's
a quarter of the market of one company. The same is true, by
the way, of all the other car companies. They also have something on
that order of a quarter of their sales in China. So if you if
that's a problem for Tela, it's a problem for every car company. I
mean, I think one has to be careful about not conflating the various companies
because I can only do things that are within the bounds of the law.
I cannot do beyond that. My aspiration is to do as much good as
possible and to be as productive as possible within the bounds of what is legal.
More than that I cannot do. I want to pivot and talk about
AI for a moment. We had Jinsen Wong here, who's a big fan
of yours, as you know. Yeah, Jensen's awesome talk about talked about
bringing you the first box by the way, with Ilia. Interestingly enough,
back in twenty sixteen, I think there's a video of Jensen and me unpacking
the first AI computer at open AI. So I'm so curious what you think
of what's just happened over the past two weeks while you were dealing with this
other headline series of headlines, there was a whole other series of headlines and
so forth at open AI. What did you think, Well, you founded
it, co found it, found it. Yeah, I'm well. The
whole arc of Opening I, frankly, is a little troubling because the reason
for starting Opening I was to create a count counterweight to Google, Google and
deep Mind, which at the time had two thirds of all AI talent and
basically infinite money and compute, and there was no there's no counterweight. It
was unipolar world. And Larry and Paige and I used to be very close
friends, and I would stay at his house and I would talk to Larry
until the late hours of the night about AI safety, and I became imparent
to me that Larry did not care about AI safety. I think perhaps the
thing that gave it away was when he called me a specist for being pro
humanity, as in, you know, like a racist, but for species.
So I'm like, wait a second, what side are you on,
Larry? And then I'm like, okay, listen to this guy calling me
a specist. He doesn't care about AI safety. We've got to have some
counterpoint here, because this seems like we could be this is this is no
good. So open I was actually started and it was meant to be open
source. I named it open AI after open source. It is in fact
closed source super closes it should be it should be renamed super closed source for
maximum profit AI. So because this is what it actually is, I mean,
fate loves irony. I mean, in fact, a friend of mine
has this says like the way to predict outcomes, is the most ironic outcome
is the most It's like this oukhomes Razor, like the simplest sort of explanation
is most likely. And my friend Jonah's views that the most ironic outcome is
the most likely. And that's what's happened with open AI. It's gone from
an open source foundation of five one, two three to suddenly it's like a
ninety billion dollar full profit corporation with closed source. So I don't know how
you go from here to there, but that seems like a I don't know
how you get I don't know if is this legal. It's like, so
as you saw Sam Waltman get housted by somebody you know, Ilia, and
Ilia was somebody who was a friend of yours. Yes, you brought him
there. Your relationship with Larry Page effectively broke down over you recruiting him away.
I think that's correct. That was the fact that was the Larry refused
to be present to me after I recruited Elia. And so here's Ilia apparently
saying something is very wrong. I think we should be concerned about this because
I think Ilia actually has a strong moral compass. He thinks about it,
you know, he really sweats it over questions of what is right and if
Ilia felt strongly enough to want to you know, fire Sam, Well,
I think the world should know what was that reason. Have you talked to
him? I've reached out, but he doesn't want to talk to anyone.
Have you talked to other people behind the scenes? Is this all happening?
I've talked to a lot of people as nobody. I have not found anyone
who knows. Why have you? I think we are all still trying to
find out. I mean, look, one of two things. Either it
was a serious thing and we should know what it is, or it was
not a serious thing and then the Portraite resign. What do you think of
Sam Altman? I have mixed feelings about Sam. I do you know the
ring of power? You know can corrupt and here is the ring of power?
Are so you know? I don't know. I think I want to
know why Eliot felt so strongly as the fire Sam. This sounds like a
serious thing. I don't think it was trivial, and I'm quite concerned that
that there's some you know, dangerous element of AI that they've they've discovered.
Yes, you think they've discovered something that'll be my guess. Where are you
with your own AI efforts relative to where you think open AI is, where
you think Google is, where you think the others are, I mean on
the AI front them in somewhat of a quandary here, because I've thought AI
could be something that would change the world in a significant way since I was
in college, I mean like thirty years ago. But the reason I didn't
bull AI right from the get go was because I was uncertain about which which
edge of the double edged sword would be sharper the good edge of the bad
edge, So I held off on during anything on a I could have created.
I think the leading a company kind of opening eye actually kind of is
that because I was just uncertain, if you make this magic genie, what
will happen? You know? Whereas I think building sustainable energy technology is much
more of a single edged sword, that is, single edged good, making
like multiplanetary I think single edged good, you know, Starling mostly single edged
good. I mean giving people better connectivity to people that you know don't don't
have connectivity or too expensive. I think it's very you know, very much
a good thing. Starling was instrumental, by the way, and halting the
Russian advance, and the Ukrainians said, so, so you know, I
think there's But with AI, you've got the magic gene problem. You may
think you want a magic Jenny, but one season that genie's out of the
bottle. It's hard to say what happens. How far are we away from
that genie being out of the bottle? You think we think it's already out,
when the genie is certainly poking its heat out. AGI the idea of
artificial general intelligence, given what you now are working on yourself, and you
know how easier hard it is to train to create the inferences to create the
weights. I hope I'm not getting too far in the weeds of just how
this works, but those are the basics behind the software end of this.
It's funny, you know, all these weights, they're just basically a number
is in a common separated value file, and that's our digital god, a
CESP file. Not that funny, but that's kind of literally what it is.
So I think it's coming pretty fast, you know, is that?
I mean you famously have admitted to overstating how quickly things will happen, But
how quickly do you think this will happen. If you say smarter than the
smartest human at anything, Yep, it may not be been quite smarter than
all humans old machine augmented humans, you know, because we able got computers
and stuff as a hire bar. But you say smarter than any you know,
you can write as good a novel as say J. K. Rowling,
or discover new physics or invent new technology. I would say that we
are less than three years from that point. Let me ask you a question
about XAI and what you're doing. And because there's an interesting thing that's different.
I think about what you have relatives to some of the others which you
have data, you have information, You have all of the stuff that everybody
in here has put on the platform to sort through. And I don't know
if everybody realized that initially. What is the value of that? Yeah,
I mean data is very important. You could say that data is probably more
viable than gold. But then maybe you have actually maybe you have more.
Maybe you have the gold in x in a different way in a way again
that I don't know if the public appreciates what that means. Yes, excess
the that might be the single source of data. I mean it is they're
more you know, people links that go to feel click on, more links
to X than anything else on Earth. As sometimes people think Facebook or Instagram
is a bigger thing, but actually there are more links to X than anything
you can there's public information. You can google it. Okay, let me
ask you a So it is. It is where you would find what is
happening right now on Earth at any given point in time. The whole open
Air drama played out in fact on the X platform, so it is one
of the it's not there. You know. Google certainly has a massive amount
of data, so does Microsoft. So it's not like but it is one
of the best sources of data. Can ask you an interesting IP issue,
which I think is actually something I can say as somebody who's in the creator
business and journalistic business and whatnot or care about copyright. Right. So,
one of the things about training on data has been this idea that you're not
going to train or these things are not being trained on people's copyrighted information.
Historically that's been the concept. Yeah, that's a huge lie. Say that.
Again, these as are all trained on copyrighted data obviously, so you
think it's a lie when when open AI says that this is not None of
these guys say they're training on copyrighted dat. That's a lie. It's a
lie, straight up lie. Okay, it's been trained on appropriated data.
Okay. So the second question, which is all of the people who have
been uploading, all of the people who have been uploading articles, the best
quotes from different articles, videos, two X, all of that can be
trained on. And it's interesting because people put all of that there, and
those quotes have historically considered fair use. Right, people are putting those quotes
up there and individually on a fair use basis, you'd say, okay,
that makes sense. But now there are people who do threads. And by
the way, there may be multiple people who've done you know, an article
that has a thousand words. Technically all thousand words could have made it onto
X somehow and effectively. Now you have this remarkable repository. And I wonder
how you think about that again, and how you think the creative community and
those who were the original IP owners should think about that. I don't know,
except to say that by the time these lawsuits are decided, we'll have
digital God. So that's digital God. At that point, these lawsuits won't
be decided before on a timeframe that is relevant. Is that a good thing
or a bad thing? I think we live, you know, there's that
I don't know if it's actually a real Chines saying or not, but maybe
live an interesting times. It's apparently not a good thing, but I would
prefer to personally, I would prefer to live in interesting times, and we
live in the most interesting of times. I think for a while I was
like really getting demotivated and losing sleep over the sort of the threat of AI
danger, And then I finally sort of became fatalistic about it and said,
well, even if I knew it was annihilation, was certain, would I
choose to be alive at that time or not? And I said, I
probably would have choose to be alive at that time because it's the most interesting
thing, even if there's nothing I could do about it. So then,
you know, then basically sort of a fatalistic resignation helped me sleep at night
because I was having trouble sleeping at night because of AI danger. Now what
to do about it? I mean, I've been the biggest, the one
banging the drama the hardest, by far, the longest or least one of
longest for AI danger and these regulatory things that are happening. The single biggest
reason that happening is because of me. We think we're ever going to get
their arms around it. We talked to the Vice President this afternoon. She
said she wants to regulate it. People can try to regulate social media for
years and have done nothing effectively. Well, there's there's regulation around anything which
is like a physical danger, a danger to the public. So like cars
are heavily regulated, communications are heavily regulated, rockets and aircraft are heavily regulated.
The general will us be about regulation is that when something is a danger
to the public, that there needs to be some government oversight. So I
think, in my view, AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, which
we regulate. Nuclear bombs, you can't just go make it your clear in
your backyard. I think we should have some kind of regulation with AI.
Now, this tends to cause the AI accelerations to get up in arms because
they think AI is sort of heaven basically, but you typically don't like regulation.
You've pushed back on regulators for the most party in the world of Tesla,
and so many instances where we read articles about you pushing back on the
regulators. I'm so curious why in this instances now you own one of these
businesses. As I said a moment ago, one should not take what is
viewed in the media as being the whole picture. There are literally hundreds like
this is not an exaggeration. So there are probably one hundred million regulations that
my companies comply with, and they're probably five that we don't. And if
if we disagree with some of those regulations, it's because we think the regulation
that is meant to do good doesn't actually do good. But that is not
the applying regulations. But the question if there are laws and rules, whether
the idea is that you're making the decision that the law and the rule shouldn't
be the law on the rule, and then right, isn't I'm saying you're
fundamentally mistaken, and you should be obvious that you're mistaken. My companies,
UH automotive is heavily regulated. We would not be allowed to put cars on
the road if we did not comply with this vast body of regulation. Now
you could you could fill up a stage with literally, you know, six
foot high with the regulations that you have to comply with to make a car
would make you could have a room full of phone books. That's how many.
That's how big the regulations are. And if you don't comply with all
of those, you can't sell the car. And if we don't comply with
all the regulations for rockets or for starlingk they shot a stack out. So,
in fact, I am incredibly compliant with regulations. Now, once in
a while, there'll be something that I disagree with. The reason I would
disagree with this is because I think the regulation in that particular case, in
that rare case, does not serve the public good, and therefore I think
it is my obligation to object to a regulation that is meant to serve the
public good. If it doesn't, that's the only time I object, not
because I seek to object. In fact, i'm incredibly rule following. Let
me ask you a separate question is social media related question. We've been talking
about TikTok today ahead of the election. TikTok is what do you think of
TikTok? Do you think it's a national security threat? I don't use TikTok
vidin you don't. I don't personally use it, but for people that for
teenagers and people in their twenties, they seem almost religiously addicted to TikTok.
So people, we'll watch TikTok for like two hours a day. I stopped
using TikTok when I felt the AI probing my mind and I don't it made
me uncomfortable, so I stopped using it. And in terms of anti smitty
content, I mean, TikTok is rife with that. It has the most
viral anti Smittic content by far. But do you think the Chinese government is
using it to manipulate the minds of Americans? No? Is that something that
you think we should worry about. I mean, you have different states that
are trying to ban it. I don't think this is some Chinese government plot,
but it is. The TikTok algorithm is entirely AI powered, so it
is really just trying to find the most viral thing possible. But it's what
is going to keep you glued to the screen. That's it. Now.
The on sher numbers, there are on the order of two billion Muslims in
the world, and I think you know much smaller number of Jewish people for
twenty million something, many orders of magnitude few are so if you just look
at content production just on sher numbers basis, this is going to be overwhelmingly
anti Semitic. Let me ask you a number. Let me ask your political
question. And I've been trying to square this one in my head for a
long time. Yeah, in the last two or three years, you have
moved decidedly to the right, I think have I Well, we can discuss
this. I think that you have been espousing and promoting a number of Republican
candidates and others. You've been very frustrated with the Biden administration over I think
unions and feeling like they did not respect what you've created. Well, I
mean without any doing nothing to provoke the Biden administration. They held an electric
vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. This
was in the first six months of the administration, and we required, like,
we literally make more electric cars than everyone else combined. Why are we
not allowed? Why are you only letting your for GM, Chrysler and UAW
and you're specifically disallowing us from the ev summit at the White House. We've
done nothing to provoke them. Then, Biden went on to add insult injury
and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car revolution. This was in
the same quarter that Tesla made three hundred thousand electric cars and GM made twenty
six Does that seem fair to you? So tell me this thing. It
doesn't seem fair. And I've asked it repeatedly and you've probably seen it.
Although I had a great relationship with Obama, so this is not a but
then there's for Obama seven hours for six I certain line for six hours to
shake Obama's head. Okay, okay, So let me just ask on a
personal level. I can see it in your face. This this hurt you
personally, and I hurt the company too, and it was an insult to
you. Know, Tesla has one hundred and forty thousand employees, okay,
of the half of them are in the United States. Tells us created more
manufacturing jobs than everyone else combined. Soon, I asked, this thing.
You've devoted at least the last close to twenty years of your life, if
not more, to the climate climate change, trying to get Tesla off the
ground in part to improve climate You talked about that. Yeah, a real
right wing motive. Is repeatedly got far right. If I stand that,
and then it's guys reverse psychology next level. Well no, but so here's
then the question, which is, how do you square the support that you
have given. I believe you were at a fundraiser for Viva Gramaswami, for
example, who says that the climate climate issue is a hoax. Right,
I disagree with him on that. I but I would think that that would
be such a singular issue for you. I would think that the climate issue
is such a singular issue for you that actually it would disqualify almost anybody who
didn't take that issue seriously. Well, I haven't endorsed anyone for president.
I mean I wanted to hear what Vic had to say because I think some
of his things are That's some of the things he says I think are pretty
solid. You know, he is concerned about government over each about government control
of information. I mean, the degree to which old Twitter was basically a
soft puppet of the government was ridiculous. So, you know, it seems
to me that there's a very severe violation of the First Amendment in terms of
how much a government control, how much control the government had of an old
Twitter and it no longer does, so you know, there's a reason for
the First Amendment. The reason for the First Amendment, for the freedom of
speech is because the people that immigrated this country came from a place is where
there was not freedom of speech, and they were like, you know what,
we've got to make sure that that's constitutional because where they came from,
if they said something that would be put in prison, whether it be you
know, something bad, what happened to them. So and freedom of speech
you have to say when is it relevant. It's only relevant when when someone
you don't like can say something you don't like or it has no meaning.
And as soon as you sort of, you know, throw in the towel
and concede to censorship, it is only amount of time before someone censors you.
And that is why we have the First Amendment. Could you see yourself
voting for President Biden if it's if they Biden Trump election, for example,
I think I would not vote for Biden. You'd vote for Trump. I'm
not saying i'd vote for Trump, but I mean this is definitely a difficult
choice. Yeah, you know, we would you would you vote for Nicki
Haley? Nicki Haley, by the way, once all social media names to
be exposed as you know, no, I think that's outrageous. Yeah,
no, I'm not going to vote for some pros and censorship candidate, Like
I said, I mean, I think these you have to you have to,
you know, consider that there is a lot of wisdom and these amendments,
you know, I mean the Constitution and uh, you know a lot
of these a lot of things that we take for granted here in the United
States that don't even exist in Canada. There's not no constitucial rights to freedom
of speech in Canada, so you know so, and there's no Miranda rights
in Canada. People like think like you know, you have the right to
romancean you don't actually in Canada, so you know have Canadian I can say
these things both, but you know so, so like you just got,
the freedom of speech is incredibly important even when people say and like I said,
it's it's actually especially important. In fact, it is only relevant when
people you don't like can say things you don't like. And do you think
right now as the meaningless do you think right now? The Republican candidates or
the Democrats are more inclined. I mean, this is where you go to
I assume to to woke an anti woke in the mind virus issue that you've
talked about, which party do you think is more pro freedom of speech?
Given all the things you've seen, we also see you know, desantus,
uh, you know, preventing people from reading certain things. Maybe you maybe
you think that's that's that's correct. No, Look, we actually are in
an odd situation here where on balance the Democrats appear to be more pro spensor
censorship than the Republicans. And that used to be the opposite. It used
to be, you know, the left position was freedom of speech, you
know, ugly at one point the ACL you even defended the right of someone
to claim that they were Nazi or something like that, you know, so
like they were there really were, Like the left was free of us.
Each is fundamental, and I mean, my perception, perhaps it is inaccurate,
is that the pro censorship is more on the left than the right.
We certainly get more complaints from the left than the right that way. So,
but my aspiration for the X platform is that it is the best source
of truth, well the least inaccurate source of truth. And well, you
know, I don't know if people are believing or not. But I think
honesty is the best policy, and I think that the truth will win over
time and the you know, We've got this great system and it's getting better
called community notes, which is fantastic. I think it correcting falsehoods or adding
context. In fact, we make a point of not removing anything, but
only adding context. Now that context could include that this is completely false and
here's why. And no one is immune to this. I'm not immune to
it. Advertisers are not immune to it. In fact, we've had community
notes, which has caused us some loss in advertising, speaking of lots of
advertising revenue. If a community note, if this false advertising, the community
note will say this is false and here is why. I mean, there's
one specific example that is public knowledge, so I'll mention it, which is
at one point, Uber had this ad which said earned like a boss,
and it was community noted if by a boss you mean twelve dollars and forty
seven cents an hour. This did cause at least a temporary suspension of advertising
from Uber. I got to ask you a question that might make everybody in
the room got uncomfortable or not uncomfortable. It goes to the free speech issue
the New York Times company and the New York Times newspaper. It appeared over
the summer to be throttled. What did the New York Times? Well,
we do require that that everyone has to buy a subscription, and we don't
make exceptions for anyone. And I think, if I want the New York
Times, I have to pay for a subscription, and they don't give me
a free subscription. So I'm not going to give them a free subscription.
But were you But were you throttling the New York Times relative to other news
organizations, relative to everybody else? Was it was? It? Was it
specific to the to the Times, they didn't buy a subscription only costs like
a thousand dollars a month. So if they just do that, then then
they're back in back in the settle. But but but you are saying that
it was throttled. You know what I'm saying. I mean, was there
a conversation that you had with somebody you said, look, you know,
I'm unhappy with the Times. They should either be buying the subscription or I
don't like their content or whatever whatever. Any organization that refuses to buy a
subscription is not going to be recommended. But then what does that say about
free speech? And what we'll say about amplifying voices. It costs a little
bit, right, But that's it. But that's an interesting you know,
it's it's like an South Park when they say, you know, freedom isn't
free. It costs a bucko five or whatever. So but it's pretty cheap.
Okay, it's low cost, low cost freedom. I got a couple
more questions for you. You're heading back to Texas after this to launch the
styber truck. Yeah, it's going to be a big launch. But I
wanted to ask you right now more broadly, just about the car business and
what you see actually happening, and specifically, the government put in place lots
of policies, as you know, to try to encourage more evs. And
one of the things that's happened uniquely is you have now a lot of car
companies saying, actually, this is too ambitious for us, these plans or
too ambitious four thousand dealers. I don't know if you saw just yesterday sent
the letter of the White House saying this has gone too far. You're going
too far. You had this ev it was this is going too fast,
too far, and that there's not enough demand. Underneath all this is his
idea that maybe there's not enough demand for evs, that the American public has
not bought into the I mean they bought it into with your company, but
they haven't bought into it broadly enough. Well, I think if you make
a compelling electric car, people will buy it, no question about it.
I mean electric car sales in China are gigantic. That's my father the biggest
category, right, and I think that would be the case, you know,
I mean it's worth noting. Okay, So the probably the best reputation
of that is that the Tesla model why will be the best selling car of
any kind on Earth this year of any kind, gasoline or otherwise. Is
there another car company that you think doing a good job with these? I
mean, I think the Chinese clock companies are extremely competitive. By far,
our toughest competition is in China. So I mean there's there's a lot of
people who out there think that the top ten clock companies is going to be
Tesla followed by nine Chinese clock companies. I think they might not be wrong.
So China is super good at manufacturing, and the work ethic is incredible.
So you know, like, if we consider different leagues of competitiveness at
Tesla, we consider the Chinese League to be the most competitive. And by
the way, we do very well in China because our China team is the
best China. How worried are you that the unionized unionization effort that just took
place at well, I shouldn't say effort, but the new the new wages
and the like at GM and FORD are that they're coming for you. They
are coming for you. What is that going to mean to you in your
business? Well, I mean, I think it's generally not good to have
an adversarial relationship between people on the line, you know, one group at
the company and another group. In fact, I mean I disagree with the
idea of unions, but perhaps for a reason that is different than people may
expect, which is I just don't like anything which creates kind of a lords
and peasants sort of thing, And I think the unions naturally try to create
negativity in a company and create a sort of lords and peasants situation. There
are many people at Tesla who have gone from working on the line to being
in senior management. There is no lords and peasants. Everyone eats at the
same table, everyone parks in the same talking lot. You know, at
GM there's a special elevator for only for senior executives. We have no such
thing as Tesla. You know the things that I actually know the people on
the line because I worked on the line, and I walked the line,
and I stepped in the factory and I worked beside them, so I'm no
stranger to them. And actually many times where I've said, well, can't
we just hold a union vote, but apparently a company is not allowed to
hold a union vote, so it has to be somehow cull foral but the
unions can't do it. So I said, well, let's just hold a
vote and see what happens. The actual problem is the opposite. It's not
that people are trapped at Tesla building cars. The challenges is how do we
retain great people to do the hard work of building cars when they have like
six other opportunities that they can do that are easier. That's the actual difficulty
is that building cars is hard work and there are much easier jobs. And
I just want to say that I'm incredibly you should have of those who wove
cars and they know it, you know, So there's there's I don't know,
maybe there will be unionized if if if I say, like if Tesla
gets unionized, will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.
But we certainly try hard to, you know, ensure the prosperity of
everyone. We give everyone stock options. We've we've made many people who are
just working the line who didn't even know what stocks were. We've made the
millionaires. So we're going to run on time. Final A couple of quick
quick questions. When do you have the time to tweet or to post?
How? I actually think about it all the time. As I said,
I use the bathroom sometimes. I use it all the time. Being if
if we were to, if we were to open up our phones and look
at the screen, time, what does yours look like? Well about it?
Every three hours I make a trip to the laboratory. That's the only
time you do this. It seems like you're on there a lot. No,
I mean there'll be like brief moments between meetings. I mean, so
obviously I have like seventeen jobs, so you know, and no, no,
I guess technically it's work at this point. It is, But I'm
thinking just in terms of your mind sharing. I mean, by the way,
there's a lot of people who should be working who are on this.
Technically posting on Twitter is or X's is work. It just count as work.
So that's you know, there's that. But no, I mean I
think I'm on well, I guess usually probably I'm on for longer than I
think. I know. But do you think that's five hours a day?
If we have the screen time of like number hours per week, sometimes that's
a scary number. It's probably I don't know, it's a little over an
hour day or something like that. Just an hour a day. If we
really looked at this together. Do you have your phone with you? Yeah,
you want to look? Okay, Okay, here we go. You
ready to screen time? Sometimes there's a scary number of it. I know.
That's why I thought. I just got a new phone. So I
think this is not accurate because it's one minute. I'm pretty sure it's more
than that. Wait, it's over the week. It'll go to the week.
Okay, so it's still wrong. It's it's more than four minutes.
I just got a new phone, so this is not accurate. It literally
four minutes new phone. Tim cooks into the phone, new phone. Who
does Yeah, I should ask, by the way, because I just mentioned
him Cook, do you feel like you're gonna have to have a battle with
him eventually? Is that? Is that the next fight? I mean over
the app store? The idea of making a phone? What do you mean,
like, no, no, no, of the app store? You
make a phone? Sam Alvans apparently thinking about making a phone, Johnny,
I, I mean I don't think there's a real need to make a phone.
I mean, if there's an essential need to make a phone, on
make a phone. But I got a lot of christ to fry, so,
uh, I mean, I do think there's a there's a there's a
fundamental challenge that phonemakers have at this point because you've got basically a black rectangle.
You know, how do you make that better? So do you want
to do that? What does that? What does that look like? In
Elon's head? No, that's literally yeah, good good phrase in the head
A new link. Well, there we go that we need to touch that
before it's over. You know, the best interface would be a neural interface
directly to your brain, so that that would be a neural how far we
do you think from that, and how excited or scary does that seem to
be? And we read these headlines obviously about monkeys who died as you know,
what should we think about that? Yeah? Actually this is the USDA
inspector who came by the Neuralink facilities literally said in her entire career, she
has never seen a better animal care facility. It is we are the nicest
channels that you could possibly be, even to the rats and mice, even
though they did the plague and everything. So it is it is like monkey
paradise. So the thing that gets conflated is that there were some terminal monkeys
where you know, this is long. This is actually several years ago,
where the monkeys were about to die and we're like, okay, we've got
an experimental device. It's so kind of thing which only put in a monkey
that's about to die. And then you know, now the monkey died,
but didn't die because the neural link died because it was you add, a
total case of cancer or something like that. So neurlink has never caused the
death of a monkey. It's best unless they're hiding something from me. Has
never caused death of a monkey. And in fact, we've now had monkeys
with the neuralink implants for two three years and they're doing great so and we've
even replaced it a neurlink twice, and we're getting ready to do the first
implants in hopefully in a few months. The early implementations of neuralink, I
think are unequifectly good. Speaking of the double edged sword, I think these
early implementations are single edged sword because the first implementations will be to enable people
who have lost the brain body connection to to be able to operate a computer
or a phone faster than someone who has hands that work. So you can
imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than someone who had full body functionality.
Now in credible that would be well, that's what this device will do,
and we should have a proof of that in a human hopefully in a few
months. It already works in monkeys and worked quite well with monkeys that can
play video games just using just by thinking. So then the next application,
after the sort of those you know dealing with tetriplegics who quit quaraplegics, is
going to be vision. Vision is the next thing. So it's like if
somebody is like has lost both eyes or the optic nerve has failed. Basically
where there's they have no possibility of having sort of some ocular correction. That
that be the next thing when your link is a direct vision interface, and
in fact then you could be like Jordia LaForge from Star Trek. You could
see it in like any frequency. Actually you can see in radar. If
you want, two final questions and then we're going to do end this conversation,
which I think has taken everybody inside the mind of Elon Musk today,
not as well as in your link. Well, it actually goes to self
driving cars and vision and everything else. And I asked this question if Pete
Buddha Judge Transportation Secretary. It's actually something you retweeted, so I wanted to
ask you the same question. There's a big question about autonomous vehicles and the
safety of them, but there's also a question about when it will be politically
palatable in this country for people to die in cars that are controlled by computers.
Which is to say, we have thirty five forty thousand deaths every year
in this in this country. If you could bring that number down to ten
thousand, five thousand, that might be a great thing. But do we
think that the country will accept the idea that five thousand people that your family
might have perished in a vehicle as a result not of a human making a
mistake, but of a computer. Yes, Well, first of all,
humans are terrible drivers. So if people text and drive, they drink and
drive, they get into arguments, they you know, you know, they
do all sorts of things in cars that they should not do. So it's
actually remarkable that there are not more deaths than there are. What we'll find
with computer driving is I think probably in order of magnitude reduction in deaths.
I think now the US has actually far fewer death per capita than the rest
of the world. If you go worldwide, I think there's something close to
a million deaths per year to accidents. So I think computer driving will probably
drop that by or more. It won't be perfect, but it'll be ten
times. And do you think that the public will will accept that? Do
you think the government will accept that? Well, in large numbers, it
will simply be so obviously true that it really cannot be denied. And what
do you think. I know we've talked about the timeline before and I know
people have criticized you for putting out timelines that may not have come true just
yet, but what do you think it will? And by the way,
do you feel like you ever say yourself, Oh, I shouldn't have said
that, Sure of course, Wait I should have said that. So uh
yeah, I mean I'm optimistic about I mean, I think I'm like naturally
optimistic about time scales. And if I was not naturally optimistic, I wouldn't
be doing the things that I'm doing. I mean, I certain wouldn't have
started a rocket company or like the car company if I didn't have some sort
of pathological optimism. Frankly, so, as you pointed out, many people
said they would fail, and in fact, I actually I agreed with them.
I said, yes, it probably will fail, and they're like,
okay, but I thought spasics and says I had less than a ten percent
chance of success when we started them. So yeah, anyway, But the
self driving things is, I've been optimistic about it. We certainly made a
lot of progress. If anybody has tried the very has been using the sort
of full self driving beta, the progress is, you know, every year
has been substantial. It's really now the point where in most places it'll take
you from one place to another with no inventions, and the data is unequivocal
that that supervised full self driving is somewhere around four times safer, maybe more
than just human driving by by themselves. So I know, I can certainly
see it coming. Actually, really you think it's another five or ten years
and many people no, no, no, definitely not, definitely not.
Do you feel like investors have invested in something that hasn't happened yet? Is
that is that fair to them? And that's the other question that people have
about that. Well, I mean, I think they're all with rare exception,
but it wasn't happening, so they were investing despite thinking. They're very
clear that they don't think it's real, so they're not saying, oh,
we just believe everything. Elan says, Hooklient and Sacre. But the thing
is that, I mean, I would be a fair criticism of me to
say that I am late, but it isn't. But I always love her
in the end and ask you the final question. I took note of this.
It was November eleventh and you took to Twitter and you wrote only two
words. You said, amplify empathy. Right. I was taken back by
that. Given all the things that have been going on in the world,
do you remember what you were thinking? Well, I think it's quite literally,
I understand it. But what was going on? Why why did you
write then? Well, I was encouraging people to amplify empathy. Literally,
I've enduring quite literal. But what was there something that had happened that you
had seen that you said to yourself, I need to I want to say
that. I think I'm starting to some friends and we all agreed that we
should try to amplify empathy. And so I wrote, ampify empathy. If
you wanted an unvarnished look inside the mind of Elon Musk, I think you
just saw it. Look sometimes it's pretty simple, you know. Elon Musk,
thank you very very much for the conversation. Thank you, appreciate it
very very much. Thank you, Thank you so much. Right here,
take that with you for a second. I'm just going to say thank you
to everybody who stuck around for what has been a remarkable day. We are
so appreciative of everybody who has been with us for so many years, coming
back to this every year. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
I hope you had a great day, and I hope we have an
opportunity to do this again. Elon Musk, everybody, thank you.