Elon Musk Answers Your Questions! | SXSW 2018

We we met a number of years ago in part I was writing a movie I was going in to pitch a movie called interstellar at the time Steven Spielberg was the director and he wanted to do a grounded Movie about the future of space travel so I came in to my pitch was very short I said the movies gonna be 10 minutes long because it's not happening it was about 10 years ago We're not going there's no money left This is not a priority for us anymore And then in the course of and somehow. I

got the job in the course of Writing the movie working with Kip Thorne a physicist invited me in a physics conference one night And I got seated next to Ilana We've been friends ever since the irony of that being I wound up becoming friends with a guy who I think personally is Moving the needle back in the other direction And up by himself at this point More than more than anyone. I can think of so the net result is I think we are going back to the moon I think we are going to Mars, and

I think a lot of it is because of you So one of the questions we got here today One of the questions that you guys have submitted the night that I love is simple Mars how can we help? What see so In the short term Mars is really about getting a spaceship built We're we're making good progress on this on the on the ship and the booster Codenamed PFR What is this tan for again well, it's like sort of a roar shy yes an acronym form And It is very big and I gave a presentation

on this at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia last year And that design is evolving rapidly we're actually building that That should but that ship right now The I Think right now that like the biggest thing. That would be helpful is just general support and encouragement and a good goodwill I Think once we build it there will be Well it will have a a Point of proof something that the Companies and countries can then go and do like they currently don't think it's possible so if we show them that it is then I think they

will Fill up their game, and they will build Interplanetary transport vehicles as well Now once that has been built, and there is a There's a means of getting. I'll go and people to and from Mars as well as turn from the moon other places in the solar system and I think That's that's really where There's a matter of entrepreneurial entrepreneurial resources that are needed because you got to build out the entire base of Industry everything that allows your human civilization to exist and it's gonna be harder a Lot harder in a place like Mars or

the moon We need some volunteers to be colonists do we have any comments pollen tears here? I'm actually not many hands raised by the way I Mean the moon of Mars often thought of is like is this some escape ski escape hatch for rich people but I it won't be that at all, it's In anyone who look for the only people that go to Better Mars. It'll be far more dangerous. I mean really it's it kind of reads like Shackleton's ad full Antarctic explorers, you know it's like Difficult dangerous good chance you will die Excitement

for those who survive That kind of thing And I think there's not many people who actually want to go in the beginning because all those things I said are true but there'll be some who will for whom the excitement of the frontier and exploration exceeds the concern of danger and And it will start off building the first elementary infrastructure just a base to create propellant a power station Blast domes in which to grow crops All the sort of fundamentals without which we you cannot survive and then and then really there's gonna be an explosion of

entrepreneur opportunity because mas will need everything from Iron foundries to pizza joints to like pizza joints Like oh, I should really have great bars The Mars bar right Like I would love dad What do you think the timeline for this is so I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the timeline although I'm I can't be a little sometimes my timelines are a little you know People have told me that My timelines historically have been optimistic and So trying to recalibrate to some degree here But I can tell you what what I know currently this case is that

where we are building the first ship the first Mars Orange over interplanetary ship Right now, and I think we'll be able to be able to do short flights short sort of up and down flights Probably sometime in the first half of next year. This is a very big Booster in ship the liftoff thrust of this would be about twice that of a seven-five So it's it's capable of doing 150 metric tons to to orbit it and be fully reusable So the the expendable payload is around around double that number so What it'll what's amazing about

the ship assuming we can make Pulling wool and rapid reusability work is that we can reduce the cost marginal cost per flight? Dramatically by orders of magnitude compared to where it is today But this this question of reusability is so fundamental to rocketry it is the it is the fundamental fundamental breakthrough that's needed if you consider aircraft for example the You can Lease a 747 and do a return flight from Cal Bullock. Ah go from California to Australia For half a million dollars, that's what it cost to Lisa 747 fully round trip to Australia which

is far To buy a single agent to have a prop plane a good one would Would be about one and a half million dollars, and that can't even reach, Australia and it's and it's tiny compared to a 747 so what that means is like a it cost less to - take it - use a giant plane with huge cargo for a long trip then at Night that costs way less than buying a small plane for a short trip in the aircraft world and the same actually is true of rocketry the be a VFR flight will

actually cost less Then then our Falcon one flight bit back in today that Was about a five or six million dollar marginal cost per flight they were confident that VFR will be less than that So that that's profound and that is what will enable the creation of a affirmative base on the moon any city on Mars And that's the Equality of like the Union Pacific Railroad or or having Ships that work across the oceans Until you can get there, there's no way for all of the entrepreneurial energy to Do you can't you can't do anything

there's no way for the flowers to bloom Once you can get there the opportunity is immense and So we're gonna do our best to get you there, and then make sure that there's an environment in which Entrepreneurs can Laura, SH and And then I think it'll be it'll be amazing a big part of that and we've talked about this is Inspiring people to look again like this. You know we talked about this yesterday It was our grandparents who went to the moon, and we have not gone back since you know in my lifetime No one's

gone to the moon You and I were having a conversation last year about what to put in Falcon Heavy? and and the kind of What's the cargo? And the idea was to to use that as an opportunity to inspire people again Carl Sagan had a beautiful thought many many years ago there if you just get enough people to look at the Earth from a distance that if we get them to focus on the problems here and on the possibilities of Space exploration I Was fortunate enough to be with you at launch control when Falcon Heavy?

Launched a few weeks back and we made a little movie. We've called it a trailer That that sums up that experience we have it we have it here. We thought we'd play it you guys again This is two minutes that that does a pretty good job of giving you the feeling of what it was like To be there when fucking everyone Yeah We really want we wanted to get the public year to warranty of getting excited about the possibility of something new happening in space of the space frontier getting pushed forward the goal of this

was to inspire you and Make you believe again. Just as people believed in the Apollo era that anything is possible That picture at the end is a picture of one of the circuit boards inside the Roadster window But we tried confused the aliens as much as possible As if you look carefully there's also a little Hot Wheels version of the Roadster With a tiny little astronaut in the hot wheels roadster on the dashboard How was just by a basketball Nora Norse just that and so if you guys have any suggestions let us know I Think

for me watching those two boosters Come down side by side it felt like a transformative moment it felt like a oh we can do anything and that's the culmination I was really struck there by the culmination of you know a singular vision and hundreds or thousands of very talented people working together to make sure Every sitting in launch control and looking at the sheer amount of variables that you guys are clocking in those moments before the launch Wind speed at different altitudes and the status of all the different 27 Engines and then How do you

manage how do you? Your very hands on with the details, but you're also looking at the bigger bigger picture How do you manage your time? How do you how do you how do you parse you know? How do you zoom in and zoom out and make sure that all these things are coming together? Well at at SpaceX almost all my time is spent on Engineering and design, it's probably 80 and 90% And then Gwynne Shotwell who's president chief operating officer takes care of the business operations the company, which is what allows me to do that?

Yeah, I think in order to make the right decisions you have to understand something you need to understand something you add a detailed level You cannot make good decision So But I'd like to just probably like the you know where you saw there as a result of an incredible team and that's base X Super talented people who really work like crazy. They make that happen you Know I think my role is to make sure that they have an environment where they can they can really where the talents can really come to the floor and You

know and but I can't tell you how honored and grateful I am to work with such a great team Everyone in this room is inspired by you. Who are you inspired by what Kanye West obviously? Today Me too fred astaire fred astaire. You know you should see my dance moves We may we may see some dance moves unless you love Fred Astaire. He's amazing if you haven't watched his movies. They're amazing. Yeah, I Think for me when I look at all of all of the things you've undertaken to do the the commonality is With Tesla

with SpaceX shoulder city now with the boring company It feels like you're seeing a firmly established a mature Industry That is ripe for sort of a quantum shift that there's there's an opportunity there for you know in the case of cars its electrification Which drastically changes? You know the complexity of an automobile and potentially down down the line the? Expense of it with rockets it's the usability of it With with solar it's about a firmly established energy system. That's about to be massively disrupted. This is having And with the boring company it's about looking at

infrastructure projects would typically take decades and billions of dollars and looking to to reduce the Complexity that is that is that how you is that how you? You know is that how you see the world. Do you see the things that don't work and can be made better? No but I mean I Don't like look at things that say. Okay. What's the rank ordered? You know business opportunity From a financial standpoint or anything like that It's a it's really just like these are the there's some things that are that don't seem to be working that

are important for the You know for our life and for the future to be good and I've said that if If you're before me to say like where is the One way to do or a suggestive rate or return estimate on various industry opportunities I would put Arrows like basically building rockets and cars pretty close to the bottom of the list But there would have to be the dumbest things to do Just just because you know look at the auto industry and In the US auto industry the only two companies that haven't gone bankrupt At

least at some point are Tesla and Ford every other company got bankrupt, or was failing and got acquired There's only two companies that have gone bankrupt, and there's a big graveyard of companies that did so and engineering up against entrenched competitors There's no III gave basically both SpaceX and Tesla from the beginning a probability of less than 10% of likely likely to succeed So why do it? Well in the case of SpaceX I just kept wondering why we were not making progress towards Sending people to Mars Why we didn't have a base on the moon

Here where we're at the sort of space hotels that were promised in 2001 the movie It's like You know it's uh. It. Just wasn't happening year after year. Yeah, I was getting me down. I look at the NASA website I was like Does where does it say when we go to Mars isn't? so Initially for SpaceX for example I thought well The genesis of SpaceX was not to create a company But but really had it how do we get NASA's budget to be bigger that was initially to go so? I came up with this little

small philanthropic mission, which would be to send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars? It's called Mars oasis and And they were one landing the seats were being dehydrated nutrient gel Hydrate upon landing, and and then you have this little greenhouse And then the money shot would be you know green plants against the right background Recently learned that money shot has a meaning that That I didn't aware of but The the you know, I think that that would get people excited about Rekindles the spirit of a follower essentially and as I thought it more

more into what it would take to do that I learned that The fundamental issue is actually the cost of access to space Rockets were super expensive and the cost has per pound to kilogram to orbit had actually gone up over the years not down and it was like okay, well if you it won't matter if we are able to do this philosophic mission and It generates a lot of will to go to Mars. That's not going to matter if there's no way So at my second or third trip back from Russia I was like whoa

there's got to be a way to build rockets There's gotta be a way to solve the rocket falling I missed our reading a lot of books and rockets and They're better sort of a first principles analysis of a varrock. It just broke down the materials that are in a rocket what would it cost to buy those materials what verses the price the rocket and there's a gigantic difference between the Raw material cost the rocket and the finish cost the rocket so there must be something wrong happening in Going from the constituent atoms to the final

shape and Found that certainly to be true and then and then why won't people trying to make reusability work It was very difficult to make rocket reusability work and then unfortunately the the Space Shuttle ended up being a counter example of don't don't try to make reusability work because spatial data ended up costing more per flight than an expandable vehicle of equivalent capability So for a long time people used in the space shuttle as an example of why reusability is dumb You can't take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it

so There's no question in my mind that if you could read the Rockets effect It has to be true reuse which means Rapid and complete reuse the problem with the space shows only a portion of the System came back like the big orange tank which was also the primary airframe was discarded every time and the parts that were used were incredibly difficult to refurbish So they kind of reached the only country reuse that matters is if it's rapid and complete It's that the only thing you're changing between flights far from scheduled maintenance is the propellant

So we embarked upon that journey to create SpaceX in 2002 And In the beginning I wouldn't actually wouldn't let my friends invest because I don't want to lose their money. I thought it was like you Know I really lose my own money, so And then We almost did die at SpaceX actually so we I budgeted four or three flights I mean technically I did have a plan where I had to have the money from PayPal I had like 180 million from PayPal. I thought you know I'll allocate half of that to SpaceX and Tesla and

SolarCity and That should be fine. I'll have 90 million Lexus plots. You know But but then what happened is Things cost more and took longer than and I thought so I had a choice of either Put the rest of the money in or their companies are going to die And It's like set up putting all the money in and firing money or rent from friends 2008 was brutal if you Yeah, 2008 we had the third consecutive failure of the Falcon rocket for SpaceX Tesla Almost went bankrupt. We closed our financing around 6 p.m.. Christmas Eve

2008 it was the last hour of the last day that it was possible We would have gone back up two days after Christmas otherwise And I've got divorced I was like rough, man Governor Scott yes You do wait it. It poses a question or maybe you just answer the question of why is no one else doing these things What's your pain threshold yeah, well, it's real high So yeah SpaceX is alive, but it's kind of at sea so is Tesla If things have just gone a little bit the other way Both companies would be dead,

and I'd like one of the most difficult choices. I have ever faced in life was was in 2008 and I think I had I think Maybe thirty million dollars left thirty or forty one dollars left in 2008 I had two choices I Could put it all into one company, and then the other company would definitely die Or split it between the two companies and but if I split it between two companies then both might die And you know when you put your blood sweat and tears into creating something a bully something. It's like a child

And so it's like which one am I gonna let one starve to death I Can bring myself to do it surprised. I split the money between two Fortunately, thank goodness they both came through We've got a question for the audience that builds on that. What was your biggest failure, and how did it change you? What was your biggest failure and how did I change you? Have to really think hard about that failure There's your answer well, there's a ton of failures along the way, that's for sure Like I said as a support for SpaceX the

first three launches failed and We were just barely able to scrape together enough Parts and and money to do the fourth launch that both launch should fail who would have been dead so multiple failures along the way I Tried very hard to get the right expertise in for for SpaceX I tried hard to to find a great chief engineer for the rocket but in that the good Chief Engineers wouldn't join and The bad ones well there was no no point in hiring him so I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket So if I

could have found somebody better, then we would have maybe had less than three failures How do you how do you plan a business where you know? The rocket business, you know some of these things are gonna blow up on the launch pad How does the business plan work I? Don't really have a business plan Yeah, I haven't had it, but I had a business by her way back in the zip two days But but these things are just always wrong so I just just been father's business plans after that Yeah I mean, I think you

know wishful thinking for sure is a Source of many problems and in many walks life a Business or personal business or personal wishful thinking Causes a lot of a lot of trouble you really have to ask you know whether something It is true or not that Doesn't make sense and if it ever feels like Too easy it probably is You know the yeah But for the drama of SpaceX I think Tesla's actually Been probably 2,000 might old little problem a dose of overtime Practices drama magnet, it's crazy How do you I mean a lot of

people want to know you Know you're managing three or four companies now each of them trying to do something revolutionary each of the a business that has historically been regarded as Impossible to challenge or disrupt. How do you how do you prioritize? How do you how do you how do you prioritize between? The different companies how do you prioritize? How do you spend your time? Yeah, absolutely actually could trouble you for a water I've got a bit of a cult my voice is a bit hoarse Too it tells a top priority For business time almost

all of it is really dedicated to SpaceX and Tesla it may sound like I've got a lot of different endeavors, but It's overwhelmingly SpaceX and Tesla in terms of try of allocation So it's a and then for non-business stuff, it's Almost entirely kid stuff my kids are here here today actually put them on to South by Southwest everything a good time But they went so the West world Exhibit or it's just really amazing very haven't seen the West world What do you call it exhibit or a I don't know what you just call it. It's

a theme park It's really incredibly well done, and I took the kids they yesterday to had a great time together I Think probably one the the biggest of us are standing is that I'm actually not an investor I'm so much fielding investor invested things. I don't actually don't miss anything back the only Public security that I would have any kind is Tesla and then the next biggest is SpaceX and And then The boring company Hennis Tata. It more as a joke because there will be a funny name for a company You know we put we

put the zero and bring I mean it's like Doesn't make any sense When we when we talk about everyone you first told me that you were thinking about tunnels And I must tell you about that years ago, okay, it's like a long time ago. Like I thought you're joking yeah It was I was joking but It's not because of some epiphany that I had one day Driving on the 405 That's how it gets called translated, so now I was talking four tunnels for years and years for probably five years or four years at least Whenever

I'd give a talk and people would ask me about what opportunities you do see in the world I'd say tunnels can someone please build tunnels so after four or five years of begging people to build tunnels and Still no tunnels. I was like okay. I wanna build a tunnel Have missing something here So Yes, I was like basically talking fuels Arizona for tunnels right for several years, and then said well let's find out what it takes to build a tunnel and Yeah, so started digging a tunnel I wanted to start the tunnel From where I

could see it from my office at SpaceX it so stuff. I said well Let's just cobble for part of the parking lot across the road so I can see if it's if anything's happening or not And then we named our first boring machine Godot because I kept waiting for it no it came Finally did and and we got it going and Now we're making good progress and We were finding the company for merchandise sales So, thank you for anyone who's bought a flamethrower You will not be sorry or maybe you will Won't be boring We

have a video I think here of the latest vision for the boring company it turns a Howard You know this great Attitude I Think you know when we were first talking about the concept, you know tunnels feel like a resolutely old-school Solution to approach that that I invented tunnels And I always tell holding out hope for the flying car that you asked me one simple question that Answered the question for me about flying cars kind of forever Which was would you want your neighbor to have a flying car. Yes, exactly? This is exactly the question

Oh you want to fly car how about everyone around you has a flying car too? Oh? That doesn't sound so good Yeah, and I think one of the interesting things about tunneling is it's one of these things that you know there's no a lot of More competition there. It's not a you know. It's it's something that's right for change, so how do you yeah? You talked about the philosophy with godot was to just keep running. It basically until you figured out. Why it can't run any faster Yes The point coming to be clear is it's

a it's like literally 2 percent of my time. It's probably 20 percent of my tweets The tweets do not correlate to actual time spent The I mean, I sort of just have fun with the boring company But my time allocation is about especially about 2% Talk about your time allocation. I think one of the things you spend an awful lot of time thinking about I know Is artificial intelligence and something that you and I have a shared interest and it's something that our audience is interested in as well The question here is a lot of

experts in AI don't share the same level of concern that you do about the danger off pools What what's yours last words what's what specifically do you believe that they don't? Well the biggest issue I see with so-called AI experts is that they they think they know more than they do And they think they're smarter than they actually are in general We are all much smarter than we think we are but much less smart dumber than we think you out by a lot so This is this tends to plague plague smart people like you just

can't that they define themselves by their intelligence And they they don't like the idea that a machine can be way smarter than them so they discount the idea which is Fundamentally flawed that's the wishful thinking situation I'm really quite close to I'm very close to the cutting edge in AI and it scares the hell out of me It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential But you can see this in things like alphago which went from in the span of maybe Six to nine months it went from

being unable to beat even a reasonably good go player So then beating the European world champion who was ranked 600 then beating Lisa doll for five What been world champion for many years then beating the current world champion, then beating everyone while playing simultaneously then Then there was alpha zero which crushed alphago a hundred to 0 and alpha zero just learnt by playing itself and It can play basically any game that you put the rules in for if you whatever rules you give it Just literally read the rules play the game every superhuman for any

game Nobody expected that great of improvement to guess those so those same experts Who think AI is not progressing at the rate that I'm saying? I think you will find that their predictions for things like go and and other AI advancements have Therefore their batting average is quite. Weak. It's not good That we'll see this also with with self-driving I think probably by intermixture self-driving will be well encompass essentially all modes driving and be At least a hundred to two hundred percent Safer than a person by the end of next year we're talking like maybe

18 months from now Netsertive study on on Tesla's autopilot version 1 which is relatively primitive and found that it was a 45 percent reduction in highway accidents And that's despite. What a pilot one being just version 1 Version 2. I think will be At least 2 or 3 times better. That's the current version that's running right now So the rate of improvement is really dramatic we have to figure out some way to ensure that The advent of digital super intelligence is one which is Symbiotic with humanity, I think that's the single biggest existential crisis that

we face and the most pressing one And how do we do that I? Mean if we take it that it's inevitable at this point that some version of AI is coming down the 1 How do we how do we steer through them well? I'm not normally an advocate of Regulation and oversight I mean I think it's once you generally go inside minimizing those things But this is a case where you have a very serious danger to the public and it's therefore there needs to be a public body that Has insight and then oocytes on to

confirm that everyone is? developing AI safely This is extremely important I think a danger of AI is much greater than the danger of nuclear warheads landlocked and Nobody would suggest that we allow anyone to just build nuclear warheads if they That would be insane and mock my words AI is far more dangerous than nukes Far so why do we have no regulatory oversight, this is insane Which question you've been asking for a long time. I think it's a question That's coming to the forefront over the last year where you begin to realize that it doesn't

necessarily I think if we we've all been focused in on the idea of artificial superintelligence Right which is clearly a danger, but maybe you know a little further out? What's happened over the last year is you've seen the artificial what I would be calling artificial stupidity You're talking about you know algorithmic manipulation of social media like we're in it now. It's starting. It's starting to happen How do we how do we is it what's the intervention at this point? I'm not really all that worried about the short-term stuff things that are Like narrow AI is

not a species level risk It will it will result in dislocation in lost jobs and You know that sort of better weaponry and that kind of thing, but it is not a fundamental species level risk Whereas digital super intelligence is? So it's really all about laying the groundwork to make sure that if humanity collectively your science that Creating digital super intelligence is the right move then? We should do so very very carefully Very very carefully This is the most important thing that we could possibly do Building on that other other than AI and The the

other issues that you're you're tackling Transportation energy production aerospace. What issues should our next generation of leaders be focused on solving what else is coming down the line Well I mean there there are other things that are on a longer time scale The obviously the things that I believe in like extending life beyond Earth making life multiplanetary No a big believer in a sort of Asimov's Foundation series or the principle that you you really want to You know I recommend reading the foundation series, but It's like if you if you know that there's a there's

likely to be you don't know But there's likely to be another Dark Ages, which It seems my guess is the fall there will be at some point I'm not predicting that we're about to enter a Dark Ages But that there's some probability that we will particularly if there's a third world war Then we want to make sure that there's enough of us of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring civilization back and perhaps shorten the length of the dark ages I Think that's why I said that it's important to get a self-sustaining base

Ideally on Mars because Mars is far enough away from Earth that I caught that a Warrant earth the Mars base might survive is more likely to survive than a moon base But I think a moon base and a Mars base That That could perhaps Help regenerate life back here on earth. It would be really important, and I'd get that done before a possible World War 3 You know that's the century we had two massive world wars three if you count the Cold War I Think it's unlikely that we'll never have another The Poli will be

at some point or if we have another one it'll be the last Yeah, it it. Just could be radioactive rubble. Yeah so Again, I'm not predicting This seems like well, if you say given enough time will it be most likely given him of time because this is This is has been our pattern in the past So Like you really believe in the zeroth law of Asimov zeroth law you take the set of actions most likely to support the humanity of the future But I think that sustainable energy is also obviously really important, that's tautological if

it's not sustainable its unsustainable Yeah, how close early to solving that problem? Well, I think that the core technologies are are there with the wind solar with with batteries The the fundamental problem is that there's an unprocessed own allottee in the cost of of co2? The the market economics works very well, if things are priced correctly But when there's when things are not priced correctly And something that has it has a real cost that has zero cost then that's where you get distortions in the market that Inhibit the progress of of other technologies so Essentially

anything that That produces cop, and it will push push cotton into the atmosphere which includes rockets by the way. I'm not excluding rockets from this It has to be a price and then You sawed off with a low price but then that price and then depending upon whether that price has any effect on the past a million a Possibility of co2 the atmosphere you can adjust that price up for down But in the absence of a price we sort of pretend that digging trillions of tons of Fossil fuels from deep and Under the earth and

putting it into the atmosphere who were pretending that that had that that that has no probability of a bad outcome And the entire scientific community is saying obviously It has it's gonna have a bad outcome obviously you just you're changing the chemical constituents in the atmosphere so So it's really up to people and governments to put to put a price on Carbon, and and then automatically the right thing happens It's really straightforward What do we do with the carbon Center I actually think we can manage with the current carbon level or even a little bit

higher It's and this is gonna sound It sound like I'm backtracking, but there's actually an argument that More carbon in the atmosphere is is actually good, but up to a point So We might actually arguably have been a little carbon starved if you go back 200 years ago And say okay, well furio's go with like we had like turning 890 parts per million of carbon we're probably a little carbon stuff now we're about 400 just past 400 mark I think somewhere in the 400s probably okay We don't have to worry about to question carbon or

anything like that But now if this momentum keeps going and we start going up to six hundred eight hundred a thousand fifteen hundred That's where things get really squirrely and The sheer momentum of the world's energy infrastructure is leading us in that direction It's very so it's just very important that the The public and the governor's pushed to ensure the correct price of carbon is paid So that that will be the thing that matters Yeah our audience is very interested in knowing how many hours of sleep you got last night. Oh I don't know about

six five or six. I think right I Feel like we know part of the answer this cuz you were trapped in West well for a while But, but how do I mean on a Regular day for you, or you are you are you sleepy you're not sleeping a lot right geez do I look that bad? You look great Okay, just imagine with the amount of responsibilities with the amount of you know with what you've got going on to these problems still keep You up at night, or do you think we're on our way to solve

it? Well right now the only things that are really stressing me out in a big way or AI obviously that's like boys there and and working really hard on Tesla Model 3 production and who making good progress, but it's Usually hard work, but those are the two most stressful things my life right now Yeah Our audience really wants to know What do you hope the world will look like for children born today when they're your age Right, what do you hope for the world to look like? What's the best-case scenario say? We solve these problems?

What's that world look like? Let's see so I Think the a good picture would look like You know we're really substantially transferred to sustainable generation and consumption of electricity So that the Does the co2 risk and the ocean rising risk is mitigated? and we're not looking at like you know having, Florida and And sort of large portions to the world underwater, that'd be great That not But to have addressed that risk that'll be there. You know us For us to have a base on the moon face a mirage big out there exploring the solar system

so welding industry on it essentially having a human civilization go out there and And and have you such that anyone can? go the moon of Mars or the solar system if they want to making it really affordable I Do think it's important that this competition of their multiple companies doing this not just a sex and And that a I risk is that I guess there's the sort of a benign AI and that were able to achieve a symbiosis with that AI Ideally the AI There's somebody who can members name but had a good a suggestion

for what the Optimization of the AI should be what's its utility function? You have to be careful about this because you say maximize happiness and the AI concludes that happiness is function of dopamine and serotonin So just captures all humans and jacks your brain with large amounts of dopamine serotonin Like okay, so holy mint It sounds pretty good though. I'll you beloved Well I like the definition of like the I should try to maximize the freedom of action of humanity Maximize the freedom of action maximize freedom essentially I like that definition But we do want

to close coupling between collective human intelligence Digital intelligence And a newer link is trying to help in that regard by Creating a an interface between a high bandwidth interface between AI and your and human brain There were already we're already a sidewalk in a sense that That your phone and your computer a kind of extension of you Just low bandwidth input-output exactly. It's just low bandwidth Particularly output, I mean two thumbs basically So how do we solve that problem? Give it the bandwidth bandwidth thing it's a bandwidth issue And we've all we've also come to

it now We're all we're all cyborgs were just low efficiency cyborgs, so how do we how do we make it better? I think we've got above a We've got opposed interface Like we didn't evolve to have a communications Jack You know some So there's gonna be essentially the vast numbers of tiny electrodes That are able to read right for your brain of course. You know security is pretty important in the situation say the least I was just saying I'm not coming with I'm keeping my brain air-gapped. Yeah well I think a lot of people will

choose to do that But it's a bit like Ian banks is new or lace, but not but in the case of relation sort of that that's there from when you're born or it's sort of it's not a Sort of I'm sorry to back them yackin over back up this would be this there's a digital extension of you That is an AI the AI extension of you a tertiary layer of intelligence So you've got your limbic system your cortex, and and the tertiary layer Which is the digital AI extension of you and that high bandwidth connection

is what? achieves the tights and meiosis I think that's the best outcome I I Hope so if you know he's got better ideas And Talking about another project that you're working on that her audience wants to know a little bit more about sterling. Oh Can you tell us anything Doing Skynet hopefully not Skynet its internet in the sky Well we We don't talk that much about StarLink But essentially it's intended to provide low latency high bandwidth Internet connectivity throughout the world That actually will not be enough cognitive processing car onboard the satellite system to to

in any way be a Skynet thing like it's Digital AI requires a lot of super intelligence requires a lot of big servers on the ground just to power intensity But this antenna to be to provide people with Who don't have any internet connectivity with Internet connectivity? and it's very good for sparse and sparsely populated in moderate moderate least mostly quiet populated areas and forgiving people in cities a choice of in your low-cost choice of internet access But I do think it's gonna be important the Starling system will be important in providing the funding necessary for

SpaceX to develop interplanetary spacecraft And at the same time yeah helping people who have even though or super expensive connectivity and giving people in urban areas more of a competitive choice very cool I have to ask you because it's the number one question just Going back to Mars What kind of government do you envision for the first Martian colony? Blitzer and what's your title yeah? Yeah exactly Emperor Oh goddamn friar? I don't know Might be too much If you're what I should watch my jokes yeah, not everyone gets irony must remember So I think the

I think most likely the the form of government on Mars would be somewhat of a direct democracy where You vote on issues where people vote directly on issues instead of going to representative government in When the United States was formed Representative government was the only thing that was logistically feasible Because people there's no way it was or evil to communicate instantly a lot of people's didn't even have really access to Mail boxes or there wasn't even the post office is very primitive a lot of people couldn't write So you had to have some form of

representative democracy Or things just wouldn't work at all. I think my mas most likely. It's gonna be people at everyone votes on every issue and That's how it goes. I've a few things. I'd recommend which is keep blowers short long laws it's like that's That's something suspicious is going on if there's long though You know if you if the size of law exceeds the word count of Lord of the Rings Which it does Amazingly, then it's like something's wrong So there should be a limit to the size of the law that I should be able

to digest it like how come you can read the Constitution and all of the amendments like you can read those and maybe an hour and And and we govern so much of a civilization by that and yet modern law is this obtuse? Super boring tome. That's indecipherable to almost anyone so I think direct democracy Lowers lows that are comprehensible I think having some kind of hysteresis on Like it should be easier to remove a law than Create one because things just get to a no-show you have to have something that's gonna come inertia So probably

I don't want the right number of you, maybe it's like 60/40 Maybe you require a 60% to get a law in place, but any number above 40% can remove a little Otherwise you just get lowers just accumulate over time they cure their time and it's sort of like Gulliver where you just get trapped by all these tiny strings, and you can't move You get hardening of the arteries of civilization with law with rules and rules rules rules So it should be just easier to get rid of rule then let's put one in Maybe they should

even have like a some kind of sunset clause So that they just automatically expire unless there's enough of an impetus to keep them around I Know I know there's an affirmative, it's just I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about the very early days with Tesla, and how I came together brother Kimble is here, I thought we'd bring him out you guys could talk a little bit about it You guys might get lucky tonight, I noticed you have a guitar. I'm gonna ignore that It had some good guitar But I guess there are a

fair number of entrepreneurs here today and a fair number of people interested looking at Tesla, which now extraordinary extraordinary success of it You know how did how did this come together and when you in when you guys were looking at I know famously? You know and you guys were you were looking at problems you could solve How those conversations look like? Yeah, so the C2e back in well, thanks coming on About the things that I thought would be most important to work on for a long time. We'll look back to college days and Electric cars

are something I've been here since and so is 1819 When do you first recall here when we talk about electric cars that's correct first time was well you talk about a lot We we used to brainstorm a lot randomly even in we were 20 20 years old and the first thing. I remember us brainstorming was solving connectivity amongst doctors and we were on a road trip from We a lot of doctors in the family so we had the information But the idea was really to solve that problem where we from Silicon Valley to Philadelphia Brainstorming

how you do it. This is before the internet, so we you know in our minds designing Network computers doctors talking This is all happened of course over 25 years, but it's one of the sort of the first time I remember us Really trying to solve a world problem and unless it was a world problem. That was really important. It. Just wasn't that interesting to us Electric cars you talked about for a long time, but I remember walking into your house once it this is in Polly 2002 or 2003 and You had these plans laid out

that The team of Tesla had or the earlier guys had basically said you know we're gonna take this Lotus Elise We're gonna convert it in electric car and you know we sat down and talked about it for a bit And and it wasn't so much that it Could be done. I think we all believe it could be done. It was more just the attitude that it should be done And then from there Yeah, well the the first internships that I had that were Interesting were on ultra capacitors were used in electric cars, so that's what

why I first came out to Silicon Valley in Like 93 or made to something that was to work at a company called political research on advanced ultra capacitors with the idea that this could be a solution to the energy storage problem in electric vehicles and then When I graduated from Penn the I was gonna be doing a PhD at Stanford in material science and and invent physics Try to figure out if there's a way to solve for an ultra high density Solid-state capacitor that would have enough range to power an electric vehicle, so I said

impact it so that's that's a that's a 95 and then I Wasn't sure there's one of those things where you could work in it for a long time and discover that there's no Actually, no. Good solution you you publish a paper and You get a PhD in a lab, but it would be academic in its value so In 95 I had a choice of either work on this energy storage system for electric vehicles or Try to play a role in building the internet But the internet stuff was happening right then and there Whereas the electric

electric vehicle technology was going to progress slowly on its own? Whether I was there or not so I thought well put the rat studies on hold and do something To help out the internet or do something useful on the Internet and that's when I talk to Kimbo You're working in Canada at the time and Said hey, why don't we try to do this this company in Silicon Valley? pretty cool We bought that we were we were the first to see maps and door-to-door direction it had been built by a company Knapp tech they Never burn

have never been on the Internet, and it was was so cool to be the first two humans to see it You can draw a map type in an address get directions Things you probably all dead about 50 times today each And we were the first to see that put it on the internet. It was really cool She was the first maps and directions Yellow pages and white pages on the internet, yeah so And then we ended up helping bring a lot of publications online So it as investors and customers the New York Times Company knight-ridder

or Hearst in a number of others? and Yeah, but I always wanted to get back to electric vehicles because that that was a primary interest of mine from undergrad and grad days and And so After us up to still took one more Internet company because thought it's up to you had not achieved its its full potential We built this incredible technology, but it wasn't being used by the customers in the right way It's a bit like building you know F-22 fighter jets and then and then you selling to people and they roll them down the

hill at each other Not the way to use it, okay, I Think that's that's where decide you really want to go to? The end consumer if you've got a great technology you want to go all the way to the end consumer Don't tell it this to to some bonehead legacy company that doesn't understand how to use it So yeah So with with excel comb which became PayPal That's what that's what we try to do something significant with the with the internet And and it got sort of part of the way towards its its objective after

a PayPal I Went went public and and they've got bought by eBay in 2002 that actually freed up me and a bunch of other people so you go and create companies and I start debating between Either solar electric car or space I thought space was like the least likely to have somebody, but at least likely to attract Entrepreneurial times, I don't like like nobody is gonna. Be crazy enough to do space so I better do space So I started off with with space first and And Then about a year and a half later in 2003.

I had lunch with JB Straubel and Hal Rosen and It was that it's like fish restaurant in El Segundo And Hal Rosen had been involved in space and electric vehicles And And jb was had just got just graduated from college was working with him and the conversation turned to electric vehicles Because Howard had done something called Rosen Motors, which was like an attempted evie startup, and I said well I've always been super interested in electric vehicles. I was gonna do my PhD on an advanced and reduced energy storage I Was gonna do grad studies on

on advanced energy storage techniques for electric vehicles and And so JB said well have you heard of this company called AC propulsion because they had created It the t zero electric sports car as a prototype I was like wow that's great like lithium-ion batteries had really achieved a level of energy density that For the first time could allow you to have significant range in an electric car And they had a sports car that had zero to 60 in under four seconds at 250 mile range And it's pretty cool, and that was just made of it's

just a kit car so it didn't have a roof or airbags or Thermal control system, and it was extremely unreliable it wasn't productized, but it was a proof of concept So I got the test drive from AC repulsion and I was like wow You guys should really commercialize this this would show people what electric cars can do and I tried for months to get AC propulsion to Go into production with the T 0 and Like they just were not interested in doing that Amazingly they wanted to do an electric Scion, you know like that boxy

car But the problem is like the electric saundra could cost $70,000 or You could build a sports car for $100,000. Okay, but like nobody's gonna buy the electric silent But fuel might fight electric sports car So After hounding them for months. I finally said like look if you guys are not going to Commercialize the T zero, would you mind if if I did that? They said no no problem. Go ahead. It's like great So I'm gonna do that with JV, and I said, but if you're if you're gonna do If you're gonna go and try

to productize t zero there's some other teams you should talk to that also interested in doing that So that's where Whatever hard macht hopping and Ian Wright came in and No, I think that was probably the biggest mistake of my career quite frankly I The I I think whatever you think you can have your cake and eat it, too That's something you're probably wrong So I thought I can keep running SpaceX I'll dedicate 20% of my time to Tesla and that'll be fine but actually It didn't things really melted down Went through hell we're to

recapitalize the company the Kimmel was there singing time So Silicon Valley accurate or not accurate that's the show yeah The it starts to get very accurate around around Episode four So took a few episodes to kind of get get grounded the first few episodes struck me as Hollywood making fun of Hollywood's idea of Silicon Valley which is like not you know not on point But then by about but the fourth or fifth episode season one it really starts get good and then by season two it's amazing in fact Reality But the truth is stranger than

fiction all the crazy stuff you see in that show Silicon Valley the reality is way crazier than that Yeah, you've seen the two right yeah, I'm just like wow What will have to be a story for another time for says? We've been asked to wrap it up I got one last question for the audience. It is what is your favorite song from the movie three amigos? Well we don't need we don't need to do it if if you guys willing to sing along Okay So so Jonah actually is the dancer of the three? Of Us

have been we've been playing and singing and dancing this song since we were kids And so we're gonna do that on the stage and you guys can sing along well We'll do the first verse and then you guys can sing along on the second verse This is gonna be a real bad Yeah, I said terrible I'm mixing the dancing thing Come with me when moombas hits the sky You'll walk with me along the biome bye Okay all together now Bye little boat you Smile my little buttercup, what do you say a while? Bin's me to

the sky And you and I walk the wild by well, this is really winning You