Speaker 1: Latest interview of Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: All Right, everybody, we have a very special guest. Listen,
Speaker 2: we love all of you. This is this is the
Speaker 2: most amazing room of innovators in America. We love you all.
Speaker 2: It's a dinner of equals. But there can only be
Speaker 2: one number one.
Speaker 1: We do. We're Forbes.
Speaker 2: We do rank things, and the Forbes two point fifty innovators.
Speaker 2: The number one innovator and it wasn't that close, to
Speaker 2: be honest, was Elon Musk. So and we are very
Speaker 2: honored to have him join us. Elon, are you here?
Speaker 1: Oh, we're glad that you're glad that you're here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: There he is.
Speaker 3: You my ranking things, It's true we do.
Speaker 1: We're good at it.
Speaker 2: And again, first congratulations, it was not that close. There
Speaker 2: were a lot of there were a lot of battles
Speaker 2: in a lot of places, but number one was not
Speaker 2: in doubt. But anyway, this is a room of your people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: well does there there's a room of your people. I
Speaker 2: will say they were asking the first question, and we
Speaker 2: want we want to get really nerdy about innovation. The
Speaker 2: first question though, that everybody was asking, is all right,
Speaker 2: ask Elon.
Speaker 1: We had one of the.
Speaker 2: Great case cases in the world of innovation over the
Speaker 2: last few weeks.
Speaker 1: What's Elon's verdict on the verdict today? Uh? That that
Speaker 1: that the case in Oakland?
Speaker 2: Yes, oh what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Guess uh, Well, they basically just decided that the Stafford
Speaker 4: patients have passed. They did not actually river depending on
Speaker 4: the web you know, that have been unused or should
Speaker 4: or chat in stolen, which I think obviously their case. So,
Speaker 4: but I do think it's somewhat of a bivious situation
Speaker 4: because you know, what happened was by degrees, I mean,
Speaker 4: it wasn't it wasn't stolen once it was stolen one
Speaker 4: of these at the time. And so we have to say, like, well,
Speaker 4: was there really even a basis for legal action before
Speaker 4: you know, the proper to the spell and I don't
Speaker 4: think there is actually, so you know, like the first step,
Speaker 4: I believe the point because the first step into adding
Speaker 4: a full profit thing how to cap for profit and
Speaker 4: was at a small scale.
Speaker 3: And also that.
Speaker 4: All start to revert to the charity upon the inventure
Speaker 4: of appleple intelligence that.
Speaker 3: That closes not been remote so it will continue to
Speaker 3: be a full.
Speaker 4: Profit after developing official general intelligence that removal was quite recent,
Speaker 4: just in the last few weeks.
Speaker 3: So it is at this point is it is?
Speaker 4: It is whatever an eight hundred million dollar full profit
Speaker 4: company somehow from a nonprofit. And I think this is
Speaker 4: a dangerous precedent to set because if it means that
Speaker 4: someone can start take money as a nonprofit convote that
Speaker 4: to a full profit when it's successful, it underminds all
Speaker 4: charitable getting in America.
Speaker 2: It certainly would you see a lot of people starting
Speaker 2: to start nonprofits with the path towards for profit.
Speaker 3: Exactly what do you got to lose?
Speaker 2: Exactly what you said on next to your appealing optimistic
Speaker 2: about the appeal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we necessarily have to appeal because.
Speaker 4: This will this will become precedent, you know which people
Speaker 4: can actually then essentially allude to charities and use this
Speaker 4: as a as a basis for doing so, which I
Speaker 4: think would be reful.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's talk innovation. Your your title we have
Speaker 1: up here.
Speaker 2: I mean again, you're the CEO of four major companies,
Speaker 2: even those companies have major companies within those companies.
Speaker 1: Was this was this part of the plan or did
Speaker 1: it just happen.
Speaker 4: More or let's just happen I mean, well, let let's
Speaker 4: just say that when I was in college, I wanted
Speaker 4: to be part of things that would change the world
Speaker 4: in a significant way. I didn't originally think I wanted
Speaker 4: to be doing things in AI because a I was
Speaker 4: somewhat of a double edged sword.
Speaker 3: But I did want to.
Speaker 4: Accelerate the transition to sustainable energy economy, which is the
Speaker 4: sort of electric car as solar and batteries. And you know,
Speaker 4: I think some some kind of brain machine interface, uh
Speaker 4: that can give you cybernetic superpowers I think is probably good.
Speaker 4: It could you know, help people that have brain or
Speaker 4: spine injuries, you know, restill enable people who have spoken
Speaker 4: for years to speak again, which is which we've done.
Speaker 4: Give people eyesight who have lost both eyes of the
Speaker 4: optic nerve or maybe have never even seen at all,
Speaker 4: blind from both.
Speaker 3: By direct interface to the.
Speaker 4: The optical centers in the brain, you can actually restore eyesight,
Speaker 4: will give people, I say, have ful and you can
Speaker 4: enable people to walk again, which I think is profound.
Speaker 4: I mean these are kind of Jesus level things, you know,
Speaker 4: like let's say, like when technologists are hitting like Jesus
Speaker 4: level miracles, you know, like that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: How do you.
Speaker 2: How do you again, it's asked a lot, but it's
Speaker 2: it's fun to ask it to you. How do you prioritize?
Speaker 2: I mean, because you're right, you've got you multiple deities here.
Speaker 2: If it's if these are Jesus level solutions, which one?
Speaker 2: Which one do you serve?
Speaker 1: Users? Level?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Okay, pretty good? So and then and the space X
Speaker 3: is about.
Speaker 4: Making life multiplanetary, expanding consciousness to the stars, and hopefully
Speaker 4: we will make a fundamental breakthrough lated this year, which
Speaker 4: is how the first fully reusable orbital rocket, which is
Speaker 4: necessary in order to transport enough tonnage to the moon
Speaker 4: of Mars to create a self uh, a self growing
Speaker 4: city basically to extend civilization to an other planets. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think probably you need to move a rough order
Speaker 4: of magnitude about a million tons to the Moon or
Speaker 4: to Mars to create enough of an of an industrial
Speaker 4: base to have have the civilization there be self growing,
Speaker 4: meaning like the acid test being if the resupply shifts
Speaker 4: from Earth stopped coming for any reason, does it does
Speaker 4: the the civilization on the movement of Mars continue to
Speaker 4: grow or does it die out? And I think I
Speaker 4: think that's that's a fundamental branching point in the future
Speaker 4: of civilization or are we a multiplanet space baring civilization
Speaker 4: or are we stuck on one planet forever? And I
Speaker 4: do want emphasize that like being a multiplanet the civilization
Speaker 4: is it doesn't mean like we leave Earth and go
Speaker 4: somewhere else, because that would just be a single planet
Speaker 4: civilization somewhere else, right, and a loveer place probably, yeah,
Speaker 4: and a tougher place to live than than here. By far,
Speaker 4: Earth is extremely easy and comfortable compared to the Moon, Mars,
Speaker 4: or pretty much anywhere else. But you know, I think,
Speaker 4: I think at some point we want to be a
Speaker 4: space PreK civilization.
Speaker 3: We want to be out there among the stars and
Speaker 3: and and be Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these again, these are huge, huge things you're dealing with.
Speaker 2: So when you try to figure out when you get
Speaker 2: up every morning, is it just kind of like a
Speaker 2: buffet or is it do you have kind of a
Speaker 2: plan on what you're going to what you're gonna focus on,
Speaker 2: because that's something that a lot of innovators here have
Speaker 2: to deal with on a much smaller scale.
Speaker 4: Well, uh, I guess I don't really Uh, I don't
Speaker 4: really get up and say Hey, what shall I innovate
Speaker 4: today in a type of thing.
Speaker 3: It's really just.
Speaker 4: Both building the technology is necessary to extend life beyond Earth.
Speaker 4: There's you know, there's this, there's the Stalling Internet, where
Speaker 4: just rebuilding the entire Internet in space but better you know,
Speaker 4: I guess that's kind of pretty cool. There's yeah, the
Speaker 4: optimist robot that we're developing, a Tesla, the self driving cars,
Speaker 4: lower power scale, you know.
Speaker 1: Big stuff.
Speaker 2: A lot of again, they're all pointy. A lot of
Speaker 2: them are pointing to becoming an interplanetary Is there is
Speaker 2: there a time when you could see again putting these
Speaker 2: companies together and just running one big company. I mean,
Speaker 2: somebody you have a portfolio, but do you envision that
Speaker 2: would and would that help you in terms of making
Speaker 2: any things mesh?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: It it's difficult for me to to sort of comment
Speaker 4: on that, you know, because you know there's publicly traded
Speaker 4: companies and publicly traded ones you know about to be
Speaker 4: so it would be like difficult to you.
Speaker 2: No problem, We'll move on. We did the you know,
Speaker 2: the reports today that you might follow your space x
Speaker 2: S one this week?
Speaker 1: Is that that a go?
Speaker 3: I think I'm not allowed to comment on these things.
Speaker 1: That's like a period or something to that effect.
Speaker 2: That that is the that is the beauty of going
Speaker 2: public or being in that quiet period. Do you have
Speaker 2: a favorite of all your we know what you love,
Speaker 2: all you love, all your your children, all your companies.
Speaker 1: Is there a favorite among your companies? Well?
Speaker 4: No, I mean I'm not really gonna say that's like
Speaker 4: what's your favorite kid type of thing? You know, I like,
Speaker 4: you can't really say that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: What if it's not your favorite company. Who's your favorite
Speaker 2: role model as an innovator historically?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess you know, I'm obviously a big fan
Speaker 4: of Nicola Tesla since uh named the company after him.
Speaker 3: But also I also, like, you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: Edison is great too, like some people like them.
Speaker 4: I don't like Edison. I think some pretty impressive stuff,
Speaker 4: and like Neural Electric is like Edison's company. That's I mean,
Speaker 4: I certainly admired like great scientists, engineers, but I like anyone.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, Ben Franklin, Uh, Shakespeare, Newton.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, we did aspects, we did we surveyed historians,
Speaker 2: and so you were number one on the two fifty
Speaker 2: Living List. We did a two fifty oracle on the
Speaker 2: top three were Edison, you said, Franklin and Henry Ford.
Speaker 2: So you've you know, you're we should have had you
Speaker 2: as a judge.
Speaker 4: Uh was actually more something people realize because I mean
Speaker 4: he basically invented mass manufacturing of of complex objects.
Speaker 3: Like people didn't really know how to do that before
Speaker 3: before Ford.
Speaker 4: Yes, and like Ford actually created the automotive industry, uh
Speaker 4: of earth really and uh because because he he pretty
Speaker 4: much started what became General Motors and then he kind
Speaker 4: of got, I don't know, kicked out of that or
Speaker 4: something and then started uh Ford Motor Company and uh
Speaker 4: and and really developed mass manufacturer complex objects.
Speaker 3: It's quite quite a tricky thing. And then everyone just
Speaker 3: pretty much copied him.
Speaker 2: What's what's amazing if you look at the historicalists and
Speaker 2: even the current list, is just how much innovation comes
Speaker 2: out of America and how much of the things that
Speaker 2: everyone takes for granted came out of America. Do you
Speaker 2: have a do you have a favorite animator who's living today?
Speaker 2: Besides you know, anybody in this room or anybody who
Speaker 2: are who are some of your favorite entrepreneurs, innovators you admire?
Speaker 1: Who who are your contemporaries.
Speaker 4: Now, well, uh hmm, I mean I guess, uh, I mean,
Speaker 4: I don't really think about these things that much, but
Speaker 4: h well, I mean I guess.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, Jensen long Ad and videos like drink pretty
Speaker 4: great in terms of uh inventing you know, developing ANI computers, and.
Speaker 2: Well you may you must say you mentioned Jensen and
Speaker 2: uh and you were early uh warning about the danger
Speaker 2: of AI. But also you've been you know, a somebody
Speaker 2: who's helping pioneer a lot of great things that come
Speaker 2: out of AI. Right now, Where are you on the
Speaker 2: scale about being petrified or excited?
Speaker 4: Well, I think I'm like so simultaneously both, Honestly. It's like, uh,
Speaker 4: I mean, at this point, like like when I go
Speaker 4: to sleep, there's like some AI breakthrough, When I wake up,
Speaker 4: there's some AI breakthrough, and by lunchtime there's another AI
Speaker 4: break So.
Speaker 3: It's like a headspinner at this point.
Speaker 4: It you know, it's it's pretty obvious that we're gonna
Speaker 4: have AI that is vastly smarter than humans, and.
Speaker 3: Already in some ways it already is.
Speaker 4: I mean, it seems like AI unequivocally smart more than
Speaker 4: humans in every way, including in innovation is probably.
Speaker 3: No more than a year or two away. We would see.
Speaker 1: That's uh, it's happy to think about Jesus, this is
Speaker 1: kind of worrying.
Speaker 3: I hope it's nice to us.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: What, you know, when you look happy about all the
Speaker 3: things we've asked it to do.
Speaker 1: What's something.
Speaker 2: Listen, you have a better position to see this in
Speaker 2: anybody pretty much what's going to happen in five years,
Speaker 2: And you're seeing that. Maybe a lot of people aren't
Speaker 2: seeing that. It's going to blow people's minds. That will
Speaker 2: be doable in five years.
Speaker 3: In five years we'll have probably so five years being
Speaker 3: say twenty thirty one.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: Digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence.
Speaker 4: That there will be in five years. Probably there might
Speaker 4: be a let's say, at least one hundred million humanoid robots,
Speaker 4: but maybe a billion. Yeah, alright, the I mean, and
Speaker 4: and I predict that the economy is probably twice its
Speaker 4: current size in five maybe six years, seven at five
Speaker 4: to seven years, because you're going to hit a doubling period,
Speaker 4: you know where it's where the economic output is increasing
Speaker 4: so so fast that you know, plus myask a few years,
Speaker 4: you're you're you we'll see giant changes.
Speaker 1: Mhm, what what you know?
Speaker 2: A couple of follow up questions on that, When do
Speaker 2: you see the first data center in space? Again, you
Speaker 2: have a better vision on that than pretty much anybody.
Speaker 2: You know. You're again if when we're going to Mars,
Speaker 2: it's you're clearly going to be leading the way. When
Speaker 2: do we get a colony in the moon? When do
Speaker 2: we get a colonie on Mars?
Speaker 1: Three?
Speaker 2: Prime question, data center in space, humans on the Moon,
Speaker 2: humans on Mars timeline.
Speaker 1: Center.
Speaker 3: Space is much easier than people may think.
Speaker 4: I mean, SpaceX at this point has ten thousand satellites
Speaker 4: in orbook right now, and in the future with Starship,
Speaker 4: will be launching over ten thousand communication satellites per year,
Speaker 4: each one of which is much more capable than our
Speaker 4: current satellites.
Speaker 3: So you can expect, you know, probably.
Speaker 4: One hundred times more communications capability than currently exist from space.
Speaker 4: But that will pay in comparison to the tonnage of
Speaker 4: AI satellites. So, I mean, it's always helpful to use
Speaker 4: the physics tools of thinking in the limit. If say,
Speaker 4: if you think of the limit, what is the most
Speaker 4: amount of AI compute you could possibly bring to bear
Speaker 4: and the way to access power that's far beyond anything
Speaker 4: on Earth is in space. So these are some humbling
Speaker 4: ways to maybe frame the problem and see how tiny
Speaker 4: we are here on Earth. We are like microbes on
Speaker 4: a dust mote compared to the Sun. So all of
Speaker 4: human civilization currently uses less than a trillionth of the
Speaker 4: energy of the say the power emitted by the Sun,
Speaker 4: much less than a trillionth. All human energy, counted as
Speaker 4: generously as you could possibly imagine, is much less than
Speaker 4: a trillionth to the Sun's energy. So that means if
Speaker 4: you were to increase civilizational energy harnessed by a million,
Speaker 4: you would still be much less than a millionth of
Speaker 4: the Sun's and it harness. And another way to think
Speaker 4: about it is because people suddenly say, what about this
Speaker 4: form of left of power generation or that form of
Speaker 4: power generation. I'm luck everything is irrelevant compared to the Sun.
Speaker 4: The Sun is ninety nine point eight percent of mass
Speaker 4: in the Solar system. If all mass that was not
Speaker 4: the Sun was burnt, and you've extracted the absolute maximum
Speaker 4: amount of energy from all mass that is not the Sun,
Speaker 4: the amount of energy produced by the Sun, we're still
Speaker 4: round out to one hundred percent of the energy produced
Speaker 4: in the solar system. And then if you teleported two
Speaker 4: more jupiters from other somehow teleported two more jupiters into
Speaker 4: our solar system and burnt them too, the Sun was
Speaker 4: still be one hundred percent of power rounding out. So
Speaker 4: really everything is this extremely tiny compared to the Sun.
Speaker 4: So that therefore, when you go to space, if you
Speaker 4: if you want to to climb the Cottage Cottter chief
Speaker 4: scale in any meaningful way whatsoever, you have to go
Speaker 4: to space and and and uh, you know, our rough
Speaker 4: estimate is that you could probably do a tarror what
Speaker 4: a year of AI powered uh you know, sole powered
Speaker 4: AI satellites from launched from Earth. That would require let's
Speaker 4: say something like ten million tons a year of paler
Speaker 4: to orbit at one hundred killowats per ton, and that
Speaker 4: would be a tar tearwa per year. The average power
Speaker 4: usage in the United States is half a terror wort.
Speaker 4: That would mean you'd be launching twice the rist the
Speaker 4: amount of AI power. Then then the entire electricity consumption
Speaker 4: in the United States per year. Yeah, yeah, but this
Speaker 4: is this is this is We're not breaking any physic here.
Speaker 4: This is this is all achievable. Now, if you want
Speaker 4: to take that up several more orders magnitude, then the
Speaker 4: things to do is to build a base on the Moon,
Speaker 4: and construct a mass driver, and build the solar panels
Speaker 4: and radiators on the moon chips you could probably bring
Speaker 4: from Earth, but built those the Moon too, and uh,
Speaker 4: and that would enable you to do about a petawa
Speaker 4: per year into a solar powered AI.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure how much AI we need at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, but that's a lot.
Speaker 1: That a lot.
Speaker 4: What it would be vastly greater than the than the
Speaker 4: Earth's economy. This economy would be really inconsequential by comparison
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's a vision of abundance for sure. I
Speaker 2: know you've had quite a busy day, and you always
Speaker 2: have a busy day, so we don't want to be
Speaker 2: mindful of your time.
Speaker 1: So I just have two less questions on.
Speaker 2: There must be I mean, again, you keep on coming
Speaker 2: up with these big ideas and you keep executing, then
Speaker 2: what's a big idea in your head that you haven't
Speaker 2: deployed yet.
Speaker 1: That you'd like to.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I did say for the longest time
Speaker 4: that people want to booth build tunnels, and then everyone
Speaker 4: thought I was joking, and then I was like, final, well,
Speaker 4: let's just create a company, the barn Company, to build tunnels,
Speaker 4: because this is an obvious way to reduce traffic to
Speaker 4: zero by going three D with your transport system, just
Speaker 4: as we go three D with the buildings. It's obviously
Speaker 4: logical to illogical to.
Speaker 3: Expect that you.
Speaker 4: Won't have traffic if you have buildings that are three
Speaker 4: D and a transport system that is two D and
Speaker 4: everyone tries to go in and out of the three
Speaker 4: D building at the same time. But if you have
Speaker 4: a transport network that is three dimensional with tunnels going
Speaker 4: over the place, then you can address any arbitrary level
Speaker 4: of traffic. Now, I encourage other people to start tunneling
Speaker 4: companies because the boring company is the only one as
Speaker 4: far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: It's taking this boring to be the only boring company, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Honestly, there's like a lot of opportunity, you know,
Speaker 4: in tunnels, that really is and it's quite hard work
Speaker 4: building these things, so I hope other people do it too, okay,
Speaker 4: And I guess there's there's probably a lot of opportunity
Speaker 4: in synthetic medicine. So with like these days, you can
Speaker 4: basically create custom you know, RNA UH And I think
Speaker 4: I think like that there's sort of we're going from, uh,
Speaker 4: from a situation where medicine has been analog where we
Speaker 4: kind of like just find drugs kind of by accident
Speaker 4: most of the time, like finding sticks in the forest
Speaker 4: that you know, seem like this stick seems like a
Speaker 4: useful club type of thing. It's it's it's quite primitive
Speaker 4: how we found medication in the past. Now, but once
Speaker 4: you can sin, since we can now construct synthetic RNA,
Speaker 4: you can effectively think of medicine.
Speaker 3: The future's medicine is being digital.
Speaker 4: Like so if you just know what to program into
Speaker 4: that synthetic RNA strand you can basically, I think, cure
Speaker 4: almost anything.
Speaker 2: Right, challenge to the room, digital medicine and three D transportation.
Speaker 2: Let's go, let's give you once in competition. All right,
Speaker 2: last question, quick.
Speaker 3: Aircraft probably an opportunity there. I think this is startups
Speaker 3: in that field.
Speaker 1: What kind of quick what kind of aircraft?
Speaker 3: Electric aircraft, aircraft.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's coming.
Speaker 2: When we when we get together and you know, hopefully
Speaker 2: you know who knows what the way technology is going
Speaker 2: to something will be here in another two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years for the Forbes, you know, five hundred celebration innovation.
Speaker 2: What would you want your Yeah again, you're you're still
Speaker 2: building it. But when you think about your legacy, and
Speaker 2: I know it's early, but what would you what would
Speaker 2: be make you feel good when people look back the
Speaker 2: way you talked about Edison and Franklin.
Speaker 1: What would what would you like people say about you?
Speaker 3: You played a useful role in the advancement of civilization.
Speaker 1: Pray with in UHH.
Speaker 2: I think, by the way, again, this is the most
Speaker 2: incredible room in America today. I think that's true for
Speaker 2: all of us. So let's take inspiration. You all are great,
Speaker 2: but he's number one. Uh Elon must thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us here at this That's what the A I
Speaker 2: will say, thank you again, thank you for your time
Speaker 2: and all that, and thank you. Now we're gonna have them.
Speaker 2: We're gonna let you go and we're gonna bring the
Speaker 2: other award winners up. And Elon Musk again, thank you
Speaker 2: for your time and all all your good thoughts.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. To see you in the next episode.