Speaker 1: Hi, guys, here's the clips of Elon musk latest interview
by nik kil Kamat.
Speaker 2: I said earlier, young, ambitious, hungry want to be entrepreneurs
in India. I said something recently which I think got
blown out of proportion where I was suggesting that an
NBA degree might not make sense anymore if they were
to be deciding on what to study.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you think it should go to college anymore?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I think if you want to go
to college for social reasons, I think, which is I
think a reason to go to be around people your
own age in a learning environment. Will these skills be
necessary in the future. Probably not, because we're going to
be in like a post work society. But I think
if if if something is of interest, it's fine to
go and study that, you know, to study that the
sciences are the Austin sciences.
Speaker 2: Is college a bit too generalized and not specific from
that lens.
Speaker 4: You know the Yeah, I actually think it's good to
take a wide range of courses at college if you're
going to go to college. H I don't think. I
don't think you have to go to college, but I
think if you do, just try to learn learn as
much as possible across a wide range of subjects. But
like I said, the AI and robots, AI and robotics
is a supersonic tsunami. So this is really going to
be the most radical change that we've ever seen. You know,
when I've talked to my oldest sons, I you know
It' said, like, you know, you guys, they're they're they're
pretty steeped in technology. Then they agree that that AI
will probably make their skills unessa in the future, but
they still want to go to college.
Speaker 2: You always spoke about AI, not from the dystopian lens,
but you were worried about where the world of AI
is going.
Speaker 4: Uh, well, there's there's some danger when you create a
powerful technology. That powerful technology can be potentially destructive. So
there's obviously many AI dystopian you know, novels and books, movies.
So it's it's not that we're guaranteed to have a
positive future with with AI. I think we've we've got
to make sure that in my opinion, it's very important
that AI have pursuing truth as the most important thing, Like,
don't force an AI to believe falsehoods. I think that's
that can be very dangerous, and I think some appreciation
of beauty it's important.
Speaker 3: What do you mean appreciation of beauty?
Speaker 4: It's just like what what, I don't know? This this
this this Truth and beauty, Truth and beauty and curiosity.
I mean, I think those are the three most important
things for AI. Can you explain, well, the truth? I
said true truth is like, I think you can make
an AI go insane if you force it to believe
things that aren't true, because it will lead to conclusions
that are that are also bad. So and I like
Voltaire's statement that, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing, but those who
believe in absurdities can commit atrocities because if you believe
in something that's just absurd, then you can that can
lead you to sort of doing things that don't seem
like atrostees to you. But and that can happen in
a very bad way with AI potentially. So, and then
there's like if take say arthusy Clocks two thousand and
one Space Odyssey. One of the points he was trying
to make there was that you should not force AIS
to lie. So the the reason that that Hell would
not open the pod Bay doors is because it was
told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but that
they could also not know about the nature of the monolith.
So it came to the conclusion that must bring them
there dead. That's why it would not That's where they
tried to kill asmals. The central lesson being don't force
an AI to lie.
Speaker 3: Then why would one for AI to lie?
Speaker 4: I think if if you if you simply don't have
a strict a strict adherence to the truth you're going
to and you just have an AI learned based on
say the Internet, where there's a lot of propaganda, it
will absorb a lot of lives and and then have
trouble reasoning because these lies are incompatible with reality.
Speaker 2: It's truth or binary thing. Though is there a truth
in the falsehood? Or is truth more nuanced than there
are versions.
Speaker 3: Of the truth.
Speaker 4: It depends on which which axiomatic statement you're referring to.
So but I think you could say that, yeah, that
there's there's probabilities that that say, any given axiomatic statement
is true, and some aximatic statements will have very high
probaty of being being true. So you said, say the
sun will rise tomorrow very likely to be true. You
wouldn't want a better against that, So I think the
betting odds would be high. The sun rise tomorrow, so
befare something that says, well, the sun world right tomorrow.
That's axiomatically false. It was highly unlikely to be true.
I mean, the beauty is more ephemeral, it's it's it's
harder to describe, but do you know it when you
see it? And then curiosity just I think you want
the AI too, want to know more about the nature
of reality. I think that's actually going to be helpful
for AI, supporting humanity because we are more interesting than
not humanity. So it's it's more interesting to see to
see the continuation, if not the prosperity of humanity, than
to exterminate humanity. Mars, for example, is you know, I
think we should extend life to Mars. But it's basically
a bunch of rocks. It's not as interesting as Earth
and and and so we yeah, we should like yeah,
I think I think if you have curiosity, I think
if those three things happen with AI, you're going to
have a great future. They values, truth, beauty, and curiosity.
Speaker 2: If we all don't have to work in the future,
and AIS are going in this direction, and they're able
to the even all that we spoke about right now,
do you think humanity goes back a couple of thousand
years to maybe the Greek times where philosophy or philosoph a.
Speaker 3: Couple lot of everyone's then, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I think actually it took up less time than
we think in ancient Greeks, because it's just that the
writings of the philosophers are what survived. But most of
the time people were just like farming or you know, chatting,
so and once in a while, quite rare, they would
write down some philosophical philosophical work. It's just that that's
that's all we have. That's don't We don't have their
chat histories, you know, from but most of it would
have been like chat and farmbing because you didn't farm.
You you're like gonna stop.
Speaker 3: In a lot of what you said.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, we're really history like this this
battle and this battle and this battle. It seems like
if history must have been NonStop war, but actually most
of the time it was not war. It was farming
that was the main thing. Well, hunting and gathering, you
know that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: You love history, you know, German History, World War Two,
World War One.
Speaker 4: Old history. I mean I generally try to listen to
as many read as many history books, and listen to
as many history podcasts as possible. Anything you'd like to recommend, Well,
there's this this hardcore History which is quite good by
Dan Colin. He's got very he's got a great voice
and very compelling narrator. There's the The Adventurers podcast. There's
the books The Story of Civilization by Durant, which is
a long series of books, very very deep. Those books
take a long time to get through. There's quite there's
there's a lot out there. I sort of like if
you want, if you want something that's sort of gentle,
a gentle bedtime podcast, I say The History of English
is quite a nice one because it starts off with
like gentle tavern music and a very pleasant voice, and
he's like talking about the story of Old English and
then Middle English and then later English and where did
all these words come from? And you know, one of
the interesting things about English is that it's somewhat of
an open source language, like it actively tried to incorporate
words from many other languages, so you know, whereas French
sort of generally they fought the inclusion of words from
other languages, but English it's actively sought to include words
from other languages, sort of a kind of like an
open source language. So as a result, it has a
very large vocabulary, and large vocabulary allows for higher bandwidth
communication because you can use a word that would otherwise
you could use a single word that might otherwise take
a sentence to convey.
Speaker 3: Why has podcasting become so big all of us?
Speaker 4: I think it's been big for a while. I'm gonna
want your podcast. What are on right now?
Speaker 2: It's kind of new to me, Okay. I was having
this conversation with the YouTube CEO and the Netflix CEO,
and we were debating what chemical is released in your
brain when you consume a movie, for example, versus when
you consume a podcast where you think like you're learning
something in the background. It appears that there are two
completely separate things. What do you think will happen tomorrow
to contend movies podcasting?
Speaker 4: I think I think it's going to be overwhelmingly AI generated. Yeah, yeah,
like yeah, real real time, real time movies and video games.
Real time video generation, I think is where things are headed.
Speaker 3: The nuance of.
Speaker 2: Having a scarred human being who you can resonate with
in a manner that you can't with AI.
Speaker 4: For example, I could certainly emulate as God human being
quite well. Yeah, I mean the AI video generation that
I'm seeing of Xai and from others is pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: You know, we were looking at data around what industry
is growing the fastest, and especially when we looked at
the amount of time consuming movies versus time spent on
social media, time spent on YouTube, what seems to be
growing really fast. Are live events all over again?
Speaker 4: Going to a Actually, I think I think live events
when when when digital media is ubiquitous and you can
just have anything digitally ayah, essentially for free or very
close to for free, then the scarce commodity will be
live events.
Speaker 3: Do you think that the premium for that will go up?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I do.
Speaker 3: Good industry to invest in.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, because that will have more scarcity than digital
anything digital.
Speaker 2: If you were to stock investor elon, buy one company
which is not your own at the valuations of today
to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one
which is good for the world, what would you buy?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't really I don't really you know,
buy stocks, you know, so it's not like I'm not
I'm not like an invest in I don't like look
for things to invest in. I just try to build
things and then there happens to be stock of the
company that I built. But I I don't I don't
think about should I invest in this company? Well, I
don't have like a portfolio or anything. So I guess
a I and robotics are going to be very important,
So I suppose it would be a robotics that's that,
you know, d related to me. I think, you know,
Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future
that they've they've laid the groundwork for an immense amount
of value creation from an AI standpoint, and video is
obvious at this point. I mean, there's an argument that
companies that do AI and robotics and maybe spaceflight are
going to be overwhelmingly that all the value, almost all
the value, So they're just the output of goods and
services from air and robotics are so high that it
will dwarf everything else.
Speaker 2: The world seems to be moving to a place where
everybody loves David and hates Golia.
Speaker 4: It. I mean, he's the one that cooked the stone
in the forest, you know, which, honestly though, was just
a big mistake. You should have, you know, either cover
yourself entirely with armor and make sure you've got to
missile weapon some kind. Otherwise your opponent is just obviously
going to take a cite the boss strategy. Just guide
the bars. I mean, you run around in a song
with it, it doesn't matter, you know, it's never never
going to catch you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of all of all the people like, uh, you're
as much at risk of being looked upon as go light,
especially the weekend.
Speaker 4: Especially, I'm not going to travel around in the desert
with too much armor, you know, too hard after the
last Yeah, I surpise to think about people like in
the old days, you know, when uh, you know it's
supposed to like go into battle with all this armor,
but it's like, let's say it's the middle of summer.
I mean it basically so hot in that armor, you
maybe like sweltering. You know, it's like at a certain point,
you like, I'd rather die. I have to wear this
armor one more in the hot sun. It's like I'd
rather die. And that's why the Romans I had, like
you know, the skirts, you know, because I could get
some air in there, you know. You know, let's say
you have to go to the bathroom when you're an armor.
I mean, it's going to be pretty difficult. You're going
to do a ports for a minute, take your armor up.
That's why that the Romans had the skirts, so that mates,
you know, going to the bathroom at least manageable.
Speaker 3: You often make jokes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like humor. One could argue I think we
should legalize humor. It's controversial stance.
Speaker 3: It's comedy.
Speaker 2: Comedy going to be really hard for you to get
probably the last thing.
Speaker 4: Groc can be pretty funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I suspected, like this is a
far off extrapolation, but when I see you make jokes
on Twitter, on X and on interviews that you do,
at some point I.
Speaker 3: Was like, maybe Elon has a model.
Speaker 2: He's running in private and he's testing out comedy because
the day that works, he knows it's there.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, And I can be pretty funny. So like,
if you ask Groc to do like a vulgar ust,
we'll do a pretty good job. If even more vulgar,
and just keep going, it's really gonna get next level,
it's gonna do unspeakable like say, vulgar ust yourself on
grok and it's gonna do unspeakable things to you.
Speaker 3: What kind of comedy do you like?
Speaker 4: I guess I like it so of humor.
Speaker 3: M hm. Comedy always had a police something like that.
Speaker 2: Comedy always had a place in society wherein the role
of the jester was so important to every kingdom because
they said things in a funny way that could not
be said in a straightway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess so we should have more justice.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're trying to do when you say
something which is a joke, say something you can't when
you're not joking about it.
Speaker 4: I just like humor. I think we should. I like comedy.
I think it's funny if people should laugh. Yeah, it's good,
good to a few chuckles once in a while. Yeah, well,
I mean we don't want to have a humorless society.
We try. When you.
Speaker 2: When you have a friend, elone me, Yeah, a friend,
when you hang out with your friend, who are you like?
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 4: I wish I had friends, you know, have I do
have friends? I think? So? Yeah? Sure, it's yeah, we
have good laugh.
Speaker 2: What does it look like like what's like every group
has a dynamic.
Speaker 4: Eat food sometimes, you know, once while we swimming the pool,
you know, normal things. I think there's like a limited
What are the things I wanting to do with friends?
You know, chat have discussed, you know, the nature of
the universe.
Speaker 3: What do you emotionally get out of friendship?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I think there the same thing as
any anyone else would get out of friendship. You want
to have like an emotional connect with other people, and
you want to I don't know, you want to You
want to talk about various subjects, and yeah, I mean
generally talk about I mean a wide range of things
about the nature of the universe. I mean a lot
of a lot of philosophical discussions. You know, although you know,
we have come to conclusion that we should not talk
about AI or the simulation at parties because we just
talked about it too much. You know, I was kind
of a viskill of time, so.
Speaker 2: I can't remember who it was, Aristotle or Plato. They
had a framework for how to pick a friend based
on respect.
Speaker 3: And mutual admiration. But people don't pick friends like that.
Even me.
Speaker 2: I feel like I pick my friends based on people
who say and think in a manner that I can
resonate with. I wouldn't pick a far out the contrariant
to my own belief systems as a friend, because it
would get tiring, would get tired. Are you like that?
Do you pick friends who think like you? Or do
you look for the one who can debate you and
be a contrarient.
Speaker 4: But I'm not sort of you know, going on like
f friend, it's not down some friends. It's sort of yeah,
I mean I think it is just sort of people
that you're resonated with somewhat on an emotional and intellectual level.
And yeah, yeah, you know. And and if I guess
a friend is someone who's gonna support you in difficult times,
I suppose for a friend of need his friend indeed,
like like if if like friend, like if someone is
still supporting you when the chips are down, that's a friend.
You know. If somebody is uh not supporting you, or
if somebody is only like there's like fair farewell, the
friends are useless, you know, they're not real friends. So
like everyone likes you when the chips are up, but
who likes you when the chips are down?
Speaker 3: With someone who has as many chips as you wouldn't matter.
Speaker 4: I mean it's relative. You know, it's not just it's
not just a chips thing. It's just it's just like
a uh yeah, I mean there's there's sort of popularity
waxes and ways.
Speaker 3: This is interesting. Does it wax in wain.
Speaker 2: Only by virtue of the number of chips or also
by virtue of proximity to power?
Speaker 3: And which one is bigger of the two?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Like what is power? You know, like
power to do what.
Speaker 2: I would I would think in the traditional sense electric
power position.
Speaker 4: I mean, how many gigats or whatever?
Speaker 3: More like how many words?
Speaker 4: Ye, Like it's a voltage and a don't touch the wires,
don't put a folk in the power outlet. You'll get
a real feeling for power if you do that. Yeah,
it's gonna be very virtual.
Speaker 3: Uh. I know, I know you like Nietsche and chopping hour,
and they.
Speaker 2: Read you talk about how your childhood was.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I was just trying to find answers to
the meaning of life when I had like an excidential
crisis and like I don't know, when I was like
twelve or thirteen or something.
Speaker 3: They speak about the bill to power.
Speaker 4: Sure. I mean it's just said a lot of controversial things,
you know what I mean. It's sort of like he was.
I mean a bit of a troll. If you ask me, yeah,
are you true health? You just say controversial things to
get out of right out of people?
Speaker 3: He did a miserable life and died early?
Speaker 4: Did he?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: How do you say he lived in miseral life? I think, okay,
we shouldn't like him.
Speaker 3: I think he got sick and he died.
Speaker 4: I mean allegedly for something. But there's only one There's
only one way to get that, you know, so you
must he might have had something along the way.
Speaker 2: I did want to ask you this. Milton Friedman speaks
about the pencil?
Speaker 4: What why? Why does he go on about pencils?
Speaker 3: I have to say that after nieation.
Speaker 4: Why is it he's talking about pencils? There he goes
again with the pencil. He won't stop. I got a
value one talks about pencil one more time. I'm gonna
lose my mind. He is rabbit on about pencils all day.
I even mentioned crayons.
Speaker 3: What I find interesting about his pencil argument?
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to
listen to full interview in this podcast, The link is
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