Listen, playtime is over, okay? Obviously playtime is over. So you have all the bitcoin in the world and you're still going to starve?
Well, I think Putin is significantly richer than me. You really do? Yes.
Could you imagine that one day we would be able to download our human brain capacity into a optimus? Yes. Well, I certainly hope that SpaceX and Tesla do not are not forced to develop any kind of weapons technology.
Obviously we would only do such a thing if it was the last resort. I think I can be helpful in conflicts. Yeah I mean, I try to take the set of actions that are most likely to improve the probability that the future will be good.
Obviously sometimes I make mistakes in this regard. So it's not like I always get it right, but I aspire to get it right. Yeah.
Actually, can I just say I think it's very important that Germany not shut down its nuclear power stations. I think this is extremely crazy. I think long term most of civilization's energy is going to come from solar and then you need to store it with a battery because obviously the sun only shines during the day and sometimes it's very cloudy.
So you need solar batteries will be the main long term way that civilization is powered. But between now and then we need to maintain nuclear. I can't emphasize enough.
Please do not shut down the nuclear power plants and please reopen the ones that have been shut. This is total madness to shut them down. I want to be clear.
Listen, playtime is over, okay? Obviously playtime is over. We're kind of running this climate experiment, but it's an experiment where we know that that's pointless because we know ultimately we will run out of coal and oil and gas.
This is a, it's not going to last forever. And so we have to transition to something that is long term in any case because we'll run out of hydrocarbons to burn. So then let's just not run the experiment.
But I'm much less of a climate alarmist than people might think. Although of course my words are taken, you know, sometimes, always amplified. But how is it going to look like in 15 years better than today?
Much better than today from a sustainable energy standpoint. Much better, yeah. Much better.
So your bet is we are going to solve the climate issue? Yes absolutely, we will solve the climate issue. It's just a question of when.
And I'd say like the fundamental good of Tesla should be thought of as by how many years did Tesla accelerate the sustainable energy revolution that's the fundamental historic good of Tesla, not whether it would occur, it would occur anyway. But by how many years can Tesla accelerate that transition? Birth rate is one of the most underestimated problems of our times.
Can you explain? Yeah. So most people in the world are operating under the false impression that there are too many people.
This is not true. Earth could maintain a population many times the current level, and the birth rate has been dropping like crazy. So unfortunately, we have these ridiculous population estimates from the UN that need to be updated because they just don't make any sense, really.
You can just look at, say, what was the birth rate last year? How many kids were born, multiply that by the life expectancy and say, okay, that's how many people will be alive in the future. And then say, is the trend for birth rate positive or negative?
Negative. So that's the best case. Unless something changes with the birth rate.
I mean, you can look at, take Japan, for example. I think I'm just going off memory here, but I think the population is roughly 110 million. But last year, if you take the number of children born times the life expectancy, which is 85 years, it's very impressive life expectancy.
Then Japan would have, I think, around 68 million people. Roughly half of the current population. That does not tell the full story because those that you would have an upside down demographic pyramid.
You already have an upside down demographic pyramid where a lot of old people, very few young people. And so how is this that upside down demographic pyramid is unstable with respect to AI and robotics, I always approach these things with some trepidation because I certainly do not want to play a hand in anything that could potentially be harmful to humanity. Now humanoid robots, they're clearly happening.
You look at Boston Dynamics, the demonstrations are better every year. So there will be humanoid robots. The rate of advancement of AI is very rapid.
Even if Tesla stopped doing AI, think we're still on a track to develop artificial general intelligence the intelligence, smarter than the smartest human. People get confused sometimes. They think an economy is money.
Money is a database for exchange of goods and services and for time shifting the exchange of goods and services. Money is a database. Money doesn't have power in and of itself.
Like, you can run the thought experiment of you're trapped on a remote island, shipwrecked on an island, and you've got a trillion dollars in a Swiss bank account. It's worthless, you'd rather have a can of soup. So you have all the bitcoin in the world, you're still going to starve.
So the actual economy is goods and services. So then what limits the output of goods and services? The limiter is labor.
Even capital is distilled labor. So the limiting factor for the economy is labor. And so if you address the limiting factor for the economy, then it's not clear that an economy in the traditional sense has any meaning anymore because you have no constraint on goods and services.
The only things that will be missing are things that have artificial scarcity so that where we decide to make it scarce, like a particular piece of art or a particular home in this exact location or something like that. But there will be no shortage of goods and services. But in a way, Optimus is also an answer to the problem of drop in birth rates.
If we have not enough human people, we need more bots. Optimus will be helpful with respect to dropping birth rates. But I mean, like I said, you have to say if these things continue, then what happens?
Humanity dies out? Is that what we want? Or step by step replaced by artificial intelligence human beings.
That neuralink is empowering? Well, yeah, I mean neuralink in the short term, neuralink is just about solving, you know, brain injuries and spinal injuries and that kind of thing. So to be clear, for many years, Neuralink's products will just be helpful to someone who has lost the use of their arms or arms and legs, or who has just a traumatic brain injury of some kind.
That's what neuralink will be useful for many years. But in our last conversation you said that neuralink is among all your projects for you, the most important one. Is that still true?
I said it could be. I wouldn't say for sure it is the most important, but It could be the most important in that there is a long term mitigation to artificial intelligence, which is that we could effectively merge with artificial intelligence by improving the speed of interaction between our cortex and our tertiary layer, which is already silicon. Basically we're already a sort of a three level intelligence creature.
The base level is the limbic system, the sort of animal brain or reptile brain. Essentially the sort of fundamental, you know. Yeah, the animal or reptile brain.
And then there's the cortex, which, the cortex by the way, is largely in service to the reptile brain. Could you imagine that one day we would be able to download our human brain capacity into a optimus? Yes, I think that is, I'm not saying this is.
I think it is possible, I think, to do that, which would be a different way of eternal life because we would also download our personalities into a body. Yes, we could download the things that we believe make ourselves unique. Now, of course, if you're not in a body anymore, that there's definitely going to be some difference there, you know but as far as preserving our memories, our personality, if you will.
I think we could do that. So we've already amplified our sort of human brains massively with computers And I think an interesting ratio to roughly calculate would be the amount of compute that is digital divided by the amount of compute that is biological. And how does that ratio change over time?
And there's so much digital compute happening so fast that that ratio is increasing rapidly. Talking about speed you have the vision that one day starship could be able to get from A to B in 30 minutes all around the globe. Is that correct?
And if so, what would the time frame for this vision? It's like a global super taxi. You can just go from San Francisco to Nairobi.
Yeah, I mean, the landing will be loud, so you'd want to probably be connecting cities that are next to oceans or seas such that you can land maybe, I don't know, far enough offshore that the landing noise is not disturbing to people. But coast to coast, that would be a realistic. Absolutely.
Elon, you have solved so many problems of mankind and presented so many solutions. I'm surprised that one topic seems not to be too fascinating for you and that is the project of longevity and increased lifespan significantly Why are you not passionate about that? Well, you're not personally interested in living longer.
I mean, I don't think we should try to have people live for very long time, for a very long time. It would cause ossification of society. Because the truth is most people don't change their mind.
They just die. And so if they don't die, they will be stuck with old ideas, and they won't. Society won't advance.
I think we already have quite a serious issue with the Gerontocracy where the leaders of so many countries are extremely old. Look, I mean, in the US it's, you know, very, very ancient leadership, and it's just impossible to stay in touch with the people if you are at the, if you're many generations older than them. The founders in the US they put minimum ages for political office but they did not put maximum ages because they did not expect that people would be living so long.
But they should have because you really want, in order for a democracy to function well, the leaders must be reasonably in touch with the bulk of the population. And if you're too young or too old, you can't say that you would be in touch. Is there a kind of ideal age and how old would you like to get?
Well I think for political leadership, I think you want to be, I don't know, within, ideally within 10 or at least 20 years of the average age of the population. This doesn't sound too crazy. So, you know, for me, I don't know.
I mean, I certainly would like to maintain health for a longer period, period of time, but I'm not afraid of dying. I think it will come as a relief. So although you may not be able to see the vision of SpaceX come true in your life, well, I'd like to live long enough to see that.
Being at a net worth of 230 billion, roughly being perceived as the richest person on Earth. Well, I think Putin is significantly richer than me. You really do?
Yeah. Yes. Well, I mean, I can't go invade countries, so I, I believe, I mean, there's like some old quote , that from was it Crassus or I that you, you're not really rich unless you can afford a legion.
Do you know, do you know John Law? I don't know. John Law used to be the richest person on Earth 300 years ago.
Okay. He was a poker player, a gambler, homme de femme. He was the biggest art collector on Earth.
So a lot of superlatives. Wow. In the end, he went bankrupt.
What? That's a pretty far to fall. Did you ever thought about that option?
That something could go wrong and that you could one day lose everything? I mean, there's been many times where I expected to lose everything. Not, you know, I mean, who starts a car company and the rocket company expecting them to succeed?
Certainly not me. I thought they both had less than a 10% chance of success. And frankly, I wasn't wrong in that in 2008 we had the third failure of SpaceX.
And if the fourth launch had failed, SpaceX would be dead. In 2008, we had no money for a fifth launch. And for Tesla, Tesla's been on the verge of bankruptcy many times and we closed the last, the financing round in 2008.
Because remember at the end of 2008 General Motors and Chrysler were going bankrupt and Ford was almost bankrupt. So imagine trying to raise money for electric car startup while General Motors is going bankrupt. People were angry that I even asked, but we were able to just barely raise enough money to squeak by and close the financing round for Tesla on the last hour of the last day that it was possible in Christmas Eve 2008.
And if we had not closed that financing round then it would gone bankrupt two days after Christmas. So you know what you're talking about. Do you see any danger that one day not only big platforms like Google or Facebook could face much more rigid regulation, but that Elon Musk could be regulated because of regulated?
Actually as it is you know, SpaceX and Tesla are regulated. No, but I mean that there could be a discussion that it's just too much in too many areas, like I have too much power personally or something. Well, I mean if you build in many sectors that are absolutely crucial to society, very dominant.
See you on Mars, suckers. Just kidding. That's the option then.
Yeah. Okay so one way to avoid that is to be a good citizen. And you are, and you have your own foundation.
Could you tell us a little bit about your projects, what your foundation is going to do in the future, what your priorities are to donate money and to improve the world beyond your business activities? Yeah, I mean I do want to emphasize that SpaceX and Tesla are fundamentally intended to improve the probability that the future is good. So this will do more.
They will do more than anything I do from a charitable standpoint in terms of usefulness to humanity. I mean, Tesla's about accelerating sustainable energy, Obviously that's important. SpaceX is about making life multi planetary and of course providing a global Internet through starlink.
These are fundamental goods that the good of those companies will far exceed anything that I do from a charitable standpoint. And I have to say it is very difficult to give away money effectively if you care about the money actually doing good and not merely the perception of doing good. But I always like looking for ways to give away money that are effective.
Like what do you think I should do? You know what heroes of underrated heroes are the people who are doing a service in hospitals, helping elderly people. And I think they don't have a lobby.
Okay. So I think to do something for them because we all need them if we are in trouble. Sure.
Well, I mean the whole, I mean the pressing items in the short term are completing full self driving so that we have full self driving operating at a substantially safer level than humans. Basically it comes down to solving the problem of real world AI. That's that consumes a lot of my mind.
And then getting starship to work not just to get to orbit, but to achieve full and rapid reusability which is really the holy grail of rocketry that is necessary for humanity to become a multi planet species. Is there anything that you really would like to achieve which you think is going to be impossible? Impossible is a strong word.
But you don't like that word. Well, it's just a strong word. I mean I sort of approach things from a physics standpoint and there's the word impossible is more or less banned in physics.
So I'm really worried about this birth rate thing that's been troubling me for many years. Because I just don't see it turning around. Every year it's worse and I drive my friends crazy by.
. . Perhaps that's a project for your foundation.
Sure. Okay. You are a multi talent person.
Is there any field of total incompetence? I'm terrible at dancing. Although you like techno music so much.
Yeah, but the nice thing about techno is you don't have to be able to dance very well. You can just jump around basically. Walter Isaacson is planning a biography and he has written a biography on Einstein, on Steve Jobs, on Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci.
Among the four. With whom would you like to meet and have a glass of wine? Well, I mean it would be an honor to meet any of them even for a minute.
I think Ben Franklin would be the most fun at dinner. And who is the one where you would say I'm closest to him? Would it be Leonardo da Vinci?
I think I'm. You're a renaissance. I'm pretty different from those people, you know, everyone there.
It might actually be Ben Franklin, frankly. You know, he did a lot of science and engineering stuff. I don't know.
But you know, it's funny. Da Vinci thought of himself first and foremost as an engineer. And in his like application, like when he applied for, you know, for his position you know, that enabled him to create a lot of the Art, his application was all about his engineering stuff.
And then at the end, and also I do some art. It was just funny that Da Vinci really thought of himself as an engineer and you know, I mean for the time he was pretty impressive. What is your biggest fear?
Well, I think there's, you have to say, like what are the existential threats that humanity faces? We spent a lot of time talking about the birth rate thing that might be the biggest single threat to the future of human civilization. Then there's artificial intelligence gone wrong is a big concern.
I think religious extremism is a concern. What is your biggest hope? My biggest hope is that humanity creates a self sustaining city on Mars.
You have once said, if I'm not in love, I cannot be happy. Are you happy at the moment? I think there's degrees of love, but certainly for one to be we're fully happy.
I think you have to be happy in work and happy in love. So I suppose I'm medium happy. There are degrees of happiness.
Can love for projects, for work compensate love among people? I think love of work and my experience could at best make one halfway happy. Perhaps that's your biggest hope, to be really in love.
I have been in the past, I try to be as literal as possible. I would be happy if humanity has a self sustaining city on Mars, because then the probable lifespan of humanity is much greater. You know, I think we really just got this, you know, consciousness like this little candle of consciousness, like a small light in the void.
And we don't want that small candle in a vast darkness to be put out.
