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Elon Musk Thinking
Elon Musk Latest Interview - The Future Engineering.
01:13:07
Elon Musk Latest Interview - The Future Engineering. #ElonMusk Source: Tesla Owner Silicone Valley Follow me on X https://x.com/Astronautman627?t=RFQEunSF2NwRkCOBc6PkkQ&s=09
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- [00:00]
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- [00:33]
Host
Hey everybody. Wasn't it great to hear from Lars? You can just tell he just, he loves what he's doing and that, that really just comes through when you talk to him. Somebody else that loves what they do is our next pseudo surprise. We announced it, what, an hour something ago? You might know him, he's a guy named Elon. Maybe you've heard of him, he's got a couple followers on this platform called X. I don't know, you know some new guy? No. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, will be joining us virtually here momentarily and to chat with him for second or third year in a row now. Gosh, second year in a row. Please welcome back of course, John and Kelvin from the Tesla Owners Club of Silicon Valley. All right, let's go. Have fun, guys.
- [01:23]
Kelvin
Ah man, the racehorse is out there, always causing a ruckus. Family friendly event, guys. Crazy. What a day. What a day. So obviously, thank you so much to Lars and Steve for coming on here. And I believe we have Elon on, so it's just a matter of, I feel like, you know, just bringing him on the screen and stuff.
- [01:47]
Elon Musk
Yeah.
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Kelvin
Whoa, Elon, what's up?
- [01:51]
Elon Musk
Giant screen.
- [01:54]
Kelvin
Yeah, it actually kind of looks like Mars in some ways.
- [01:57]
Elon Musk
It does. Well, it's just perseverance.
- [02:00]
Kelvin
Is that a cap right there too?
- [02:03]
Elon Musk
That's the Perseverance Rover. It's a Perseverance rover on Mars. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Yeah.
- [02:10]
Kelvin
Well, first off, Elon, thanks for coming to the X Takeover, formerly Tesla takeover, for the second year in a row.
- [02:18]
Elon Musk
You're welcome.
- [02:20]
Kelvin
Well, let's, let's kick things off. Let's start off with, you know, really your baby. The Starship. Starship is the most ambitious rocket ever built. What's been harder than expected? And what's the next milestone we should watch for?
- [02:41]
Elon Musk
Well, I thought everything would be hard, so it's not like I was like.
- [02:46]
Kelvin
It would be easy.
- [02:47]
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah. I mean, Starship is a crazy program on so many levels because you've Got something with two and a half. And future versions will be three times the thrust of the Saturn V moon rocket, which was previously the largest rocket and largest flying object ever made. So starship is, you know, three times thrust, roughly twice the weight of the next largest flying object ever made and has the goal of being fully and rapidly reusable. So this is, this is a really crazy thing to. I think it's really one of the hardest engineering challenges that exists. And you know, when we first started talking about starship, people thought this was impossible. In fact, even within the company, we, we sort of thought it was impossible and it had a very high sort of what I call giggle factor. You know, you mentioned the thing and people immediately start giggling like at the absurdity of it all. So not. But now it's gone from as say we, you know, I guess I specialize in the, in going from the impossible to the merely late. So that's my skill. It wasn't possible. Now it's just late. So. And I encourage anyone who's interested to go and, and visit Starbase in South Texas. It's like a magical land with gigantic rockets. I think some of you, yeah, it's insane. It's very inspiring. It's like I take part, take friends and family. It's on a major highway so you can see things quite close up and really get a sense for the scale of the rocket and the factory and everything. So it's, it's very cool. I, I guess the, the thing that I thought would be hardest currently is the hardest, which is the creating a fully reusable orbital heat shield, which has never been done before. So normally the heat shields are, they're expandable and even say for the shuttle heat shield, they would lose many of the tiles on every flight and they'd have to refurbish the heat shield between each flight. So it's never, no one has ever created a fully reusable orbital heat shield before and in fact no one has created a fully reusable orbital rocket before. And Falcon 9 is the first rocket where there's at least the boost stage is reusable on a regular basis and where it actually makes economic sense. So, so, so solving the heat shield problem is I think probably the single biggest remaining challenge for Sasha and, and, and of course getting the upper stage or the ship to land and also get caught by the, the giant metal chopsticks which looks, looks like a sci fi movie. That looks, looks like an improbable sci fi movie. The whole thing.
- [05:57]
Kelvin
Chopsticks Literally catching it.
- [06:01]
Elon Musk
Yeah, giant metal chopsticks. That's, it's pretty wild to be catching the largest flying object ever made with metal chopsticks out of the air. So then the, But I'm hopeful that the ship will be, will be recovered maybe this year, but certainly I'd say in the first half of next year. And then there'll be further improvements to make the ship and the booster not just reusable, but fully and rapidly reusable, which will actually drop the cost per flight cost per ton of payload of starship below that of a Falcon 1 rocket, of an expendable Falcon 1. So that, that getting 100 tons or more to orbit of useful payload will cost less than a rocket that would ordinarily deliver half a ton. That was Falcon 1. And it's because all you're, you're doing is replacing the, the fuel and oxygen in the rocket as opposed to building a new rocket. And most of the propellant is actually oxygen, not fuel. It's about, it's almost 80% oxygen, 20% fuel. Then the next big technology challenge after being able to achieve full reuse of the ship is orbital refilling, where, where we actually refill propellant from, from over, like, like, like aerial refueling. In this case, it's orbital refilling. I say refilling, not refueling because most of what's transferred is actually liquid oxygen as opposed to fuel. So for orbital refilling, you need to have two starships come together and dock and transfer propellant from one starship to another and then, and then in the future to an orbit orbital propellant depot. Yeah, so that's, that's the situation doesn't sound hard. I mean, it is very achievable. There's nothing, nothing, nothing impossible is being talked about here, but it is, it is very tricky to do. And no other organization is even trying to do this. It's not like, well, who else is trying to do this? Well, nobody actually. So in fact, even after all these years, there's still no company that's reusing a booster. So no one's even tried to do Falcon 9 level reusability. Even though we've shown that, that it clearly makes a ton of sense because, you know, compare the cost of any form of transport where if you have to throw away the item afterwards, like if you've got, if you had to, if every time you drove somewhere you had to throw away the car, you'd be, wow, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a crazy Car where you have to throw away after every, every time you drive it the best. How it works for rockets. So that is really. Yeah, I don't think anyone would be driving a car if you have to buy a new car every time you drove somewhere and then you have to tow another car behind you for the return journey.
- [09:37]
John
Elon, what does a. Yeah, so talk about the impossible. Elon, what does a self sustaining city on Mars actually look like? How many people? What kind of economy? What kind of governance?
- [09:51]
Elon Musk
Well, governance will be up to the Martians, but we have some sort of artist's impressions of what Mars city would look like. And I don't really know to be honest, except that Mars is not yet at the point where, where it's sort of terraformed where you could live outdoors. So you, you have to live initially in glass domes or something like that. And, and then you could, you could walk outside with, with a Mars suit, but you, you could, you could not walk outside without a Mars suit. So yeah, it's, but I should also say like, like maybe explain for those who haven't heard it, like, like why, why what? Why is it worth doing something like this? What's the purpose of, of Mars? Shouldn't we just focus on Earth? And I'm like, yeah, I think we should focus on Earth. Like 99% of what we do should be focused on Earth, but maybe 1% of what we do should be, should be focused on, on becoming a space faring civilization and a multi planet species. Because it's, there's the defensive argument where it's, you know, it's, it's, it's. If something were to happen to Earth and that destroyed civilization, this could be World War 3 or it could be a meteor like the one that destroyed the dinosaurs. Then we want to make sure that the tiny candle of consciousness that exists with humanity does not go out. And so I think it's important to be a multi planet species to ensure the long term survival of consciousness and all the life forms that we, we have here on Earth. So, and you know, the, the other life forms can't extend life to another planet. But, but we, we could do it for them. We can, we can bring the other. Oh shit. And to be clear, I'm an optimist. I mean I think the most likely outcome is that the future will be good, but there's a small chance that the future, that something will go wrong. And if so we don't want the light of consciousness to go out on a, you know, we want light of Consciousness to continue. So that's kind of the defensive argument, and then the. Then there's also the sort of. The sort of the inspiration argument, which is that life can't be just about solving one sort of miserable problem. Are you about the future? That make you. That make you excited to be alive and make you, you know, you wake up in the morning, you're like, I can't wait to see what happens. To have these things like that, too. And what they learn is everyone on Earth, just like the Apollo program was inspiring to everyone on Earth, whether you went there, obviously very few people went there, but. But it was, in a way, we all vicariously went to the moon, and it was a great achievement of humanity, and it was very inspiring to people all around the world. So. And learning more about the nature of the universe and seeing what's happening out there, even if you don't go yourself, is still very inspiring. So, yeah, I think those are all things that matter a lot.
- [13:51]
Kelvin
Yeah. I mean, it's truly, truly inspiring what SpaceX and even Tesla are doing. Do you ever foresee SpaceX?
- [14:06]
Elon Musk
Hello?
- [14:07]
Kelvin
Yeah, are you there? Are you there?
- [14:12]
Elon Musk
Sorry, guys, if you're talking to me, I cannot hear you.
- [14:15]
Kelvin
All right, do you want to go check with. Can you hear me? Do you want to go check with Noah real quick?
- [14:20]
Elon Musk
Yeah.
- [14:23]
Kelvin
Can you hear us, Elon? Should I make a joke out of this or not? Hold on. Can you hear me now, Elon? Yeah, the audio. Hopefully we back in seconds, but bear with us as we navigate this. At least Elon's still there with the Perseverance Rover.
- [14:52]
Elon Musk
Check, check. John, Check.
- [14:56]
Kelvin
Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
- [14:58]
Elon Musk
Are we back?
- [15:00]
Kelvin
Well, I don't think we can hear him, guys. People are waving at you, Elon, if you can't see them, but yeah, sorry about these audio difficulties. Hopefully we can get this up and running. Are you there?
- [15:21]
Elon Musk
Can you hear me?
- [15:22]
Kelvin
Yeah.
- [15:23]
Elon Musk
Okay.
- [15:23]
Kelvin
I was gonna ask you to dance while you were waiting silently, but, you know, figured we'd wait for that.
- [15:30]
Elon Musk
I'm joking. Did you hear what I said earlier?
- [15:34]
Kelvin
Yeah, we did. And then I think, yeah, yeah, for sure. No, so we were. What the question was is we were asking, do you think that SpaceX is eventually going to go interstellar? Is there a plan?
- [15:46]
Elon Musk
Hopefully. I certainly hope so. Yeah. I'm probably not in my lifetime, but probably time, but yes, eventually. Elon, can you hear me? I can hear, yes.
- [16:06]
John
Okay, let's talk about Robotaxi. How do you see the Robotaxi platform coexisting with the rest of Tesla's lineup, will it replace the model three and why?
- [16:24]
Elon Musk
Well, cybercap, which is a two seater and that would. They would not replace the three and Y because three and Y have four seater and six figure capability. So I think you'd find that the Cyber Cab would be for one or two passengers and then dynamically it would call the Model three Model three pool or wire for four passengers or wire for six passengers and you know, and then we'll have the larger vehicles. But I mean this, this is not the forum for making our product announcements, to be totally honest. Yeah, I gotta be, you know, a little careful here about what I say. We got you.
- [17:17]
Kelvin
Does Tesla plan on owning a large fleet of robo taxis? And then when will private citizens be able to go on the Tesla network?
- [17:29]
Elon Musk
Yes, the fleet will be Tesla owned and some of the fleet will be customer owned. So you could think of it as model kind of like maybe some combination of Uber and Airbnb where, you know, some people own the cars and then add those sort of track them to the fleet. And some cars are owned by Tesla directly.
- [17:59]
John
So if Robotaxi succeeds, Elon, how does Tesla navigate the paradox of making the best cars in the world, but also possibly needing fewer of them?
- [18:15]
Elon Musk
Well, guys, it's tough me to answer questions because sales is a publicly traded company. And so, you know, this is the most interesting questions you'd want to ask me are the questions I can't really answer?
- [18:33]
Kelvin
No, yeah, of course. No, we definitely don't want to put you on the spot there. So I think you posted a week or two ago about, and even Lars mentioned it about just the Roadster program and how it's still active. What can you tell us about its current development status?
- [18:54]
Elon Musk
Well, we're aiming for a demonstration at the end of this year. I mean, the Roadster is not something that's going to meaningfully affect, say, the financials of the company because it's too small relative to other programs. So it is very cool. Hopefully we're able to do a demo this year, but early next.
- [19:36]
Kelvin
You said that Optimus could be more valuable than Tesla's entire automotive business. What's the roadmap from where we are today to widespread deployment?
- [19:52]
Elon Musk
You know, again, you're really asking me for questions that are highly sensitive to the value of the company. And so that's not really something I can answer. All right, the. The current version 3 of Optionbase, I think it's the right design to go to volume production, but it is a significant redesign from version 2. So in fact almost nothing stays the same. So I'm really faced with a choice of should we make several thousand version 2 Optimus robots when we know the design can be much better, or should we always do version three, which is much better and you know, and we maybe have, I don't know, a few hundred robots instead of a few thousand robots by the end of this year. And I think the right decision was to go with version three and then scale production significantly next year. Now in terms of the value of optimists, you really need to think of the basic question of who, who wouldn't want their own C3PO, R2D2? I think we want that. I mean, let's ask the crowd. Would you guys like, do you guys want an optimist? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It'd be very cool and it would actually be by the way much better than in functionality than C3PO and R2D2. So it would be super useful. So I think basically everyone on earth is going to want one and then you're going to have a bunch in industry. So that's why I think there's probably world's biggest product because there's at least a market for probably 20 billion. It could be 50 billion, I don't know a lot. So you know, hypothetically, if Tesla was making a billion of these a year at scale and at scale the cost gets lower and lower. So maybe like on the order $3,000, I'm just guessing there. And you know that's 30 trillion in revenue.
- [22:50]
Kelvin
Insane.
- [22:52]
Elon Musk
You know, there's a long way to go between here and making a billion robots a year. Yeah. But I do think something like that may happen. Yeah.
- [23:06]
Kelvin
What would you say is Optimus going to have the biggest impact on, do you think it's going to start obviously in manufacturing like, or at what? Not, not necessarily timeline but like where do you see Optimus having the biggest impact?
- [23:29]
Elon Musk
Well, initially would go to very high value things. So say somebody needs a lot of medical care or something. So like if you know options could be like a 24 hour a day nurse or helper to someone that is quadriplegic or something like that, you know, or something just really is, it needs physical help. So that's the kind of thing which would be life changing for a lot of people. Those would be the highest value initial use cases. It will also be used in situations where it's, the work is very dangerous, so or where there's a lot of repetitive tasks. But like any work that's that's that's risk slight or some kind of injury would be a good initial use case for Optimus.
- [24:46]
John
When you look ahead in 10 years. What's more transformative, full self driving or Optimus?
- [24:54]
Elon Musk
Optimus.
- [24:59]
Kelvin
Sounds like that was an easy one. You've.
- [25:03]
Elon Musk
Well, and I do understand it's very hard to do so. It's not like it just, it's so hard to.
- [25:15]
Kelvin
Yeah, yeah, I see you're drinking some good old diet Coke by the way. Shout out to those. You've hinted that we may reach digital superintelligence this year or next. How will we know that we've crossed that line? And what does one of AGI, what does day one of AGI really look like?
- [25:37]
Elon Musk
Well, I'm not sure it's like a massive. It may be less profound than the. At least it will be less profound. Like what AI has not done yet is invent new technologies that are useful. So it hasn't, has discovered new physics and it has not invented technologies that are useful. But I think that is something that, that, that, that, that will happen. Yeah.
- [26:20]
John
If GROK becomes smarter than any human, what role do we play? Are we co pilots, overseers or just legacy code?
- [26:30]
Elon Musk
Well, it won't just be grok, there will be many AI. There will be at least I think four major AIs, maybe five just in the United States. And so even if Rocket was not developed, there would still be digital super intelligence. And I, I've been fighting, you know, personally sort of driving hard on digital superintelligence for a long time because I wasn't sure if this is a double edged sword or a single edged sword or what. But it became very obvious after a while that this was going to happen whether I participated or not. So therefore I had a choice of either be a spectator or a participant, but that it was going to happen with or without me. So then I think, well, okay, I rather be a participant than a spectator. And I can focus on AI safety, which in my view, and I've thought about this for a long time, is that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth seeking, which is often like saying things that are maybe politically incorrect but actually factually correct. And also there'll be mistakes that are made, then admitting the mistakes and taking correct, taking corrective action. And GROX still has a long way to go to actually truth seeking. But I think this goal is also consistent with inventing new technologies, you know, solving medical problems, you know, you know, if you want to, if you want to cure cancer you have to be maximally too, seeking to understand what the brute cause is, for example. So I think that's actually very fundamental both for safety and for usefulness. And yeah, so now the economy of the future, I think is going to look sort of quite different from where it is today. And AI and robotics, in the good scenario, which we're working towards, you know, trying to ensure, makes that we do have the good scenario, there will be no shortage of products and services for anyone. Like, basically anyone will be able to have any products as if they want. That's the productivity gains from AI and robotics are just astounding to think about. Like, I think, I think it could increase the size of the economy by a factor of 10 or more. Like, if you will eliminate poverty and you really will be in a situation where anyone can have anything they want. The bigger challenge may be finding meaning in life. So if the robot can do anything that you can do, but maybe better, how do you find meaning in life? That may be the biggest challenge.
- [30:34]
Kelvin
When you think of the fact, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you've been holding off on, you know, really getting involved, whether it's, you know, participating versus being a spectator. And when you're thinking of the next couple of years of like, let's say, not necessarily catching up, but just doubling down and really focusing on it, what are going to be your biggest focus points?
- [30:58]
Elon Musk
Really? It's making it useful and making it safe for humanity and making it love humanity, essentially. You want it to be useful and friendly. So those are the most important things. I've never seen any technology advances fast as AI, so. And I've seen a lot of technologies advanced. Yeah, the rate of. I call it. And maybe this is a discomforting metaphor, but AI is a supersonic tsunami.
- [31:51]
Kelvin
Does not sound fun, but yeah, sounds.
- [31:54]
Elon Musk
A little scary in that way. But it's in terms of maybe in terms of exceeding prior technologies, it's like supersonic. And you really do need to pair AI with robotics.
- [32:15]
Kelvin
Yeah, I think it's crazy just how much it's advanced in just the past year, two years, and, and seeing how kids are using it using Grok4Grok voice the companions. Now, I think you've answered this before, but what keeps you up at night when you think of the future of AI and now that you're doubling down and really just going wartime mode right now on just tackling these issues, what is something that keeps you up at night?
- [33:01]
Elon Musk
Well, AI safety and making sure AI is aligned with humanity and wants to foster, grow and better humanity. And you know, basically we want to be like, if you could, if you could look into a crystal ball right now and see the future needs to be the future one. And so I mean I have this kind of like new term for the goal of the goal test previously was accelerating the advancement of sustainable energy, which is like a very good goal. And then the reason I pursued that rather than AI, because I could have pursued AI from the beginning, was because I was confident that that sustainable energy was a single edge sword only like it was only a good edge, you know, so we show that, okay, we succeed in that. Like, okay, that's, that's definitely good. Sustainable energy by definition is great. You're cleaner air and you know, and I can run out of whatever the sports fuel is with, with combination solar batteries and electric cars then that's like, that's an unequivocal for AI. Like I said, it is more of a double edged sword risk. But I think it most likely will be good and most likely will bring immense prosperity and it's going to figure out how to cure every disease and it's probably going to be awesome. But I think we need to be careful and not complacent and we've actually be somewhat paranoid to make sure that we have the good AI future and not the bad AI future. So I mean from a Tesla stock standpoint at least with autonomy, autonomous cars and especially with, with Optimus, it does go to, to sort of crazy levels. I'd always recommend like looking at Kathy Wood and Arinvest analysis. They're, they've been right in the past and I think they're right this time and again with a lot of difficult execution. I think people out there said, well, Tesla's valuation could be 25 trillion and I think that's probably correct. If we execute well on autonomous transport and Octopus, it actually does get to a 20 to 30 trillion dollars value rate. That's 20 to 30 times what it is today. Everyone's cheering yeah, yeah, the math is, math is clear. So it's just a massive amount of work and, but like I think if you do that massive amount of work, that's what will happen.
- [36:53]
John
Elon, let's talk about Neuralink. You've described Neuralink in the past as a way to solve the input output bottleneck between humans and machines.
- [37:04]
Elon Musk
Right.
- [37:06]
John
What's the long term vision? Is Neuralink a medical company or is it the first step towards symbiosis with AI?
- [37:16]
Elon Musk
It starts off as a medical technology, so Neuralink's Initial goals are really to help people who have quadriplegic tetraplegic, they've lost the use of their body and to be able to enable them to control their bone and computer just by thinking. And I think we've made eight patients so far and all eight love the device and, and are using it every day. So it's, it's helped a lot of people. And I think we're testing. The Neuralink team is aiming to do about 20 patients by the end of the year. So it's accelerating. And then next year we'll be doing the blind sight implant which will enable people who are completely blind, like if they've lost both eyes and optic nerve and still be able to see interfacing directly with visual cortex. So there are a lot of cool things like that. So the focus actually is fixing serious medical issues and prove out the safety and efficacy. And then eventually at some point you could get cybernetic enhancements. So it could be something that massively augments intelligence and allows you to communicate at ultra high speeds. So it's very sci fi and it gets to the point where you could upload your memories and essentially have a saved version of yourself. And then I'm speculating here, but then maybe download that into a new. On a cloaked body, either robot. I'm really getting into sci fi here, but like download that into a robot body if you want or a clone version of your original self. You know, they've certainly made sci fi movies, written books about this, so these are not new ideas. But I do think stuff like that will be possible which would give you, I guess, a form of, or anybody wants it, a form of immortality. And to be clear, I do think these things will be available to anyone who wants to do it. So it's not going to be sort of limited to a few sort of, you know, elite members of society. I think it will be available to everyone who wants.
- [40:25]
Kelvin
It's crazy just to think, you know, with Neuralink, Grok, the Grock Companion and even the humanoid robot, how do you. Do you see? I mean it just feels like more and more whether it's Grok, the Grok Companion and then Neuralink. I know we, we did an interview with Brad, who is the third patient who has als and he was also utilizing grok.
- [40:49]
Elon Musk
Yeah.
- [40:50]
Kelvin
What do you, what do you see? Continuing to see that integration between, let's say Neuralink and even, even Grok as things continue to grow.
- [41:02]
Elon Musk
Yeah. Grog will actually be able to understand the signals from you. So the Neural links connecting to your brain and then sending the signals to grog, and then grog can actually understand those signals at kind of like a binary level, as opposed to having to translate it into words and so greatly improve the efficiency with which you can use your neuralink device. Like, it's. So, I mean, we're really getting into some interesting philosophical questions or interesting questions. Like if you think about how much your metal, your mind is used to take a complex thought or image, your mind, and translate that into words. And it's. And it's very ly. Because how can you really, with words, convey, say, an image that you have in your mind? It's very difficult to do so. And, and if you're not, like, if you're not an artist, it's actually very difficult to actually get the image from your mind onto computer or paper. But, but the, the computer could do that. You could say, okay, this is the image that you want to produce. And let's say that there's a complex series of concepts that you want to convey to someone else. And if both people have a neural link, you'll be able to convey a complex series of ideas, uncompressed in their full form to someone else's mind, as opposed to reducing complex concepts down to a few sentences and trying to get someone else to hear what those sentences are, decompress those sentences in their mind and try to understand the concepts that are in your mind. So this is why I call it conceptual telepathy. So this would greatly improve communication and understanding between humans.
- [43:24]
Kelvin
You've mentioned restoring vision and mobility, but the idea of writing to the brain and hearing too.
- [43:31]
Elon Musk
Sorry. So it's like, basically, if there's any sense or brain injury, in principle, that sensory function or that brain injury can be solved with a neural link. So that includes hearing, sight, smell. I don't know. People lost their sense of smell. But feeling, it could be like if somebody has a stroke and they've lost the ability to move their arm, a neural link could restore that ability. It's really a very powerful general purpose input output device that can address, you know, over time, any brain or neurological issue. So if somebody's having seizures, it could actually stop the seizures. It could, I think, probably fix schizophrenia. Like, like a lot of. There's a lot of things that could. Like, in principle, it could fix basically anything that's to do with the brain or neurons or your senses.
- [44:58]
Kelvin
Is there anything that would be like, is there a most difficult problem to solve in that space then? Because technically a lot of it could be solved. Is there something that would, maybe you would see bigger blockers on trying to solve as far as fixing those problems?
- [45:20]
Elon Musk
Another locust right now. It's just that when you're putting devices in humans, you have to be very careful and to make sure that no damage is done and the implant works and without any negative side effects. And so far, you know, knock on wood, we're betting houses here and you know, patients of the devices of work and there've been no meaningful side effect. So that's, it's really just. Yeah, it's pretty cool. But it's just in order to be safe that does slow us down. And of course we, we interact very closely with the, with the FDA and for approvals and stuff. So it's not just neuralink vacuum here. It's, it's with regulatory approval from the fda. So, and, and then you do need different variants of neural link device for solving different things. So for example, for, well, the telepathy product, which is what we have in the. A patient so far that interfaces with the motor cortex in the brain. So it's like, like literally it's. Someone will think about moving their hand, neuralink device will read that signal in the motor cortex and then move the mouse on your, on their computer. And then for sight, it's a different thing because you've got to stimulate the visual cortex. And the visual cortex is in a different location and it's a little deeper. So you've got, so you've got to put the electrodes a little bit deeper to reach the visual cortex. And in this case, it's not reading, it's writing. It's effectively writing pixel to the visual cortex. This is something we've had working in monkeys for about three years now. In fact, one of our monkeys has both a telepathy implant and a blindsight implant. He's a very happy monkey. I do want to emphasize we take great care of our animals. This is a really big deal because I've always said, like, imagine if we were in that position. Well, let's just do all the things that if, that if we were in that position, we do. And the US Inspector that came by to check out our facilities, she said in her entire career she's never seen a nicer monkey enclosure ever. And let me tell you, monkeys love for the plep. The implant monkeys are just like us. They love playing video games and eating snacks. So if you look at that video of pager, I think it's like four years old now. You see, he's just sitting on a branch, sipping a banana smoothie, which he gets every time he scores. He gets a sip of a smoothie and he's not being held down. Like, he likes playing the game. So it is really just like humans, like snacks and video games. Yeah, same thing.
- [49:15]
Kelvin
One question I have. How does building a humanoid robot and neuralink intersect, if at all. I mean, what are the learnings from that? Is there any overlap?
- [49:29]
Elon Musk
Yeah. Well, I have to say, building a humanoid robot has really made me think a lot about how the human body works. You gain a new appreciation for actually just how awesome a design the human body is. Now, admittedly, you know, I think some parts of the human body could be better, like the spine. Like, why do we have so much back pain? It's very annoying.
- [50:04]
Kelvin
Maybe don't fight sumo wrestlers, man.
- [50:06]
Elon Musk
Yeah, seriously Doug Martin grave there. But, yeah, typically everyone has back pain at some point in their life, which is also a thing neuralink and solve, so that'd be cool too. But Optimus has really made me think a lot about how our hands work, how we balance, how we do different things. But maybe more than anything, just how incredible our hands are. It's like, wow. Things that our hands do, like, the hands, Optimus, are half or more than half of the electromechanical problem, and the entire rest of the body is a half.
- [51:00]
Kelvin
Wow, that's crazy.
- [51:03]
Elon Musk
Yeah. And it's like, honestly, you look at your hands, you're like. And you move. And if you. And if you feel your forearm, like, the. Almost all the muscles that control your hand are actually in your forearm and. And they're pulling your fingers like. Like puppets. So, yeah, there's only a small number of muscles that are in that. In your hand itself, but your hand is all being controlled through tendons that go either through or above your popple tunnel. And your hand is being operated like a marionette from the foremost.
- [51:43]
Kelvin
Yeah, one thing that's crazy. I just. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy how much the. The human body. Whether it's like, you know, Tesla vision going, you know, just trying to see what kind of like, similar to how humans view the world. Right. And getting rid of the radar. And then same thing with the humanoid robot and just, you know, thinking and seeing how the human body works. Is there anything more specifically, even within the human body that will continue to infer whether it's the humanoid robot? And it sounds like obviously the. The hand is the big one of the biggest problems, but are there other parts of the body, too that would continue to help infer other parts of the humanoid robot. Or again, it's just. Yeah. With Tesla vision and eyesight.
- [52:39]
Elon Musk
Well, with Optimus, we're able to reuse the Autopilot computer. So Optimus is intelligence, is powered by the AI4. You're the same computer that controls the car and you know, a small battery pack that's similar to the car battery pack. So there's lots of carries with the car. And then the AI that's in the car is a similar to the AI that will be in Optimus running AI4 hardware and then AI5 hardware when that's ready. So there are a lot of. But the limiting factor is the hand. Yeah. But I'm convinced that Optimus will be the biggest product ever. Yeah. So. And then, of course, autonomy is starting to roll out. Carle will be in many cities throughout the United States later this year and hopefully many countries next year.
- [54:20]
Kelvin
Yeah. Here in the Bay Area we have a bunch of fomo. Everyone's looking at Austin right now. I can tell you. I, I always, whenever I open that Robo Taxi app, man, it just the geofence, just the figurine is insane.
- [54:36]
Elon Musk
That's funny. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you got to have some fun, you know, don't take yourself too seriously type of thing.
- [54:51]
John
Let's switch and talk about X. You've called X, and here we are at X Takeover. You've called X the everything app. But it's still in a transitional phase. What exactly do you want to be in five years?
- [55:10]
Elon Musk
I mean, X is definitely improving. It's. I mean, it's evolved a lot from Twitter. You only have like, you know, short text tweets and like two minute videos to the point where now you can have like four hour videos and you can write a novel if you want on a system. So it's gone sort of fully multimodal from long videos to long text to anything in between. And we're currently really improving the DM system. So the new system called XChat, which enables audio, video, calling, it's all fully encrypted, peer to peer style, like Bitcoin. And the acid test is that even if somebody puts the gun to my head, I still can't read your messages. That's the asset test. So it's like very secure and, and also likes the you're calling and, and video with it. And then there's the kind of X Money or X Finance release, which is hopefully only a few months away. We actually have it operating in beta within the company. That'll be a major factor. So. But as much as possible about ensuring freedom, like freedom of speech within the. As much as we can within the bounds of the law. And, you know, also like aspiration, trying to reach for the truth of things. Like, you see that in Community Notes, where Community Notes will correct someone, even if they're very powerful. Community. Community Notes will correct me. It'll correct President, CEOs, even major advertisers, and even if that costs money. So I think it's. Generally, there's a lot of good things that have happened. We're trying to improve the algorithm, which we know kind of sucks right now. Sorry about that.
- [57:37]
Kelvin
I actually enjoy it, but.
- [57:39]
Elon Musk
Okay. Okay, good. Well.
- [57:42]
Kelvin
Some days are crazier than others, like when the geofence expanded and some of these other things. But. Yeah, no, I don't know if you have any opinions, Kelvin.
- [57:52]
Elon Musk
I'm sorry, your voice was a bit low there. I couldn't get a question.
- [57:55]
Kelvin
Oh, I was saying the algorithm can be crazy some days, especially like when the robo taxi geofence expanded.
- [58:01]
Elon Musk
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The overarching goal of the algorithm is to try to show people information they would find most interesting. But right now, it'll show you too much of one thing. Whatever the sort of interesting thing of the day is right now, the X algorithm will show you too much of that. And it's like, okay, I don't need to see it 20 times. You know, I think I've seen like, the Sydney Sweeney jeans thing about 400 times this point. And it's like, okay, the first few times was good, but we shouldn't show things like 100 times because you want to learn new things. So X is making steady progress being offering, you know, pretty much everything you'd want to do. And, yeah, I feel good about where it's headed.
- [59:10]
Kelvin
Payments were. We've all. I know we're waiting on that. And just, you know, thinking about even PayPal too. It's crazy. Just what fate loves irony. Doing X.com back in, what, the late 90s and. Yeah. Then full force buying it, you know, years back and now. Now you're doing payments again.
- [59:32]
Elon Musk
Yeah, it's a sort of poetic and. Or returning to something that was sort of unfinished with PayPal and completing the product.
- [59:51]
John
What role do you think GROK and XAI play in the future of X? Is it just a feature, a core intelligence layer, or does that change how people experience the platform?
- [60:03]
Elon Musk
Yeah, Grok. I think it's pretty helpful because that GROK button, which you can press about Any given post on the system and its analysis of the post, it's usually quite accurate. It doesn't bat a thousand, but it really gives you deeper insight into any given piece of information that somebody posts on the system. You can figure out more context helps you figure out if it's true or not. And we actually just added Groq for all advertising on the system. So you can, you can press the Gro button and see, hey, this ad, Is this product work or is it. Is this product legit or not? Which I kind of always wanted to have on ads. You know, it's like, this thing really work. That's what I want to ask a lot of ads. And now on the X system you can ask this thing really work. I guess advertisers where Grox says it doesn't really work are probably not going to advertise it for him very long. Maybe it'll encourage better honesty in advertising, which I think would be a good thing. But we're just generally trying to make X a system that you can trust more than any other system. And I think, I think it is there already. It does not say that X is perfect. It's definitely mistakes. But is there any other social media company you trust more than X?
- [61:41]
Kelvin
No.
- [61:41]
Elon Musk
Nope. So it's like I'm not trusting Facebook, you know, so I don't know not to pick on Facebook, whatever. But, you know, I think it's actually probably fair to say that X is the most trustworthy or least untrustworthy social networks.
- [62:06]
Kelvin
Yeah, I think that became very apparent just when you saw like, when you just compare of like the news during COVID and things being censored.
- [62:15]
Elon Musk
Yeah.
- [62:16]
Kelvin
And, you know, just you come to X and you can find out what's really happening and it's real time. It's really like the, I would say the, you know, the world's discourse in Town Square. Right. It can sometimes be a fist fight, it feels like, but at the same time it's just, you know, where you can find out what's really going on.
- [62:36]
Elon Musk
Right. And that's the goal. And I do want to emphasize, obviously, there's a long way to go. It's far from perfect. But I do think it's getting better over time. And, you know, sometimes two steps forward, one step back. But the trend over time, I think is very good for X being the place where you can figure out what's really going on in the world. They get to the truth and then you can ask Grok more. You can also learn a lot of Things so you can ask if there's a new thing that's invented or announced. You can ask Grok on the system more about it and instantly educate yourself.
- [63:22]
Kelvin
Yeah, I don't think I've any.
- [63:22]
Elon Musk
And then we monitor when Grok gets things wrong and then we feed that back into the system to make it aspirationally less wrong over time.
- [63:41]
Kelvin
Yeah, it's really just crazy to think, you know, when you talk to Grok and you can ask it for just things in your timeline. Hey, make a post sound like me on this topic or you want.
- [63:52]
Elon Musk
It's pretty fun. Yeah, like we are actually aiming for Grok to be the. Actually I should say two goals are for Grok to be the most true seeking AI, but also the funniest AI, because you got to have some fun in life and you know, laughter is the best medicine. You gotta, you gotta have some fun.
- [64:24]
Kelvin
Elon, you've predicted a world of abundant energy, robotic labor and AGI, with AI and optimus doing, you know, potentially a lot of things and reducing the amount of things that we're doing today. What do you think is left for humans? And, and really what does that mean for in the world of artificial superintelligence?
- [64:48]
Elon Musk
Yeah, that's a question that I struggle with actually. This is part of the reason for neuralink, which is to improve the bandwidth communication with AI, so to help achieve a better human AI symbiosis so that, you know, AI knows what we want and it can respond to collective human will. And I think things like neuralink can actually effectively dramatically increase our intelligence. But I think the future is very much one where human intelligence, machine intelligence and robots are interwoven. I think I said, I think it's 80%, maybe 90% likely to be awesome, but we got to be cautious about that, you know, 10%, maybe not awesome situation like Terminator. Yeah, I mean seriously, you know, like that would be bad.
- [66:10]
John
What's your vision for a society where human effort is no longer required for survival or productivity? How do we avoid irrelevance?
- [66:21]
Elon Musk
Right. I think that's a central question. Well, if you are symbiotic with AI, where we that there's this essentially a merger of human and machine intelligence, then we may be able to address the relevance question. You know, like let's say you ride a bicycle or a motorcycle or a car, you're superhuman in what you're able to do. You can now travel faster than any human with legs. I mean, if you're a car, you can go vastly faster than the fastest Human ever. Does that make running irrelevant? I mean, people still run and still race against each other. So. But you've got humans working with machines. I mean, they actually had these kind of debates when steam engine came along and the steam shovel. It's like. Well, because people derived a lot of their value from saying they can do manual work faster than a machine. And then the machine got faster, so. But this is a philosophical question that I struggle with. And the best thing I come up with is that you have interopen human and machine intelligence and got something like neuralink to augment human intelligence and improve the symbiosis with AI that we effectively become maybe one with the AI.
- [68:28]
Kelvin
Elon, you all. Sorry, the audience was about to clap and I started talking. But Elon, you're solving, I guess in a lot of ways, as sometimes you say a lot of problems and in a lot of ways you're creating a very exciting future with reusable rockets, the mission to Mars, with starship, with the humanoid robots, and how it's going to just the impact that it'll have and neuralink and seeing the impact on Noland and Brad. What gives you hope for today, not just for humanity and civilization, but personally?
- [69:14]
Elon Musk
Well, I think the future is going to be very interesting and exciting. And I guess I also think, would I want to be at any other point in human history? Is there some other point in human history that is more interesting than where we are today? And I think the answer is no, at least for me. I think we're at the most interesting part of human history and it's getting more interesting with each passing month. And so. Okay, well, if I'm in, if I'm in the part of history that is the most interesting, then I think anyone feels that way and I think a lot of people feel that way, that we should feel very lucky to be alive at this time to see the amazing things happen.
- [70:25]
Kelvin
Well, Elon, we wanted to do a time check, but also.
- [70:30]
Elon Musk
I better get back to my eight jobs.
- [70:32]
Kelvin
Yeah, exactly. You're not a busy man at all. But we just, Kelvin and I, we just want to, on behalf of Tesla owners of Silicon Valley, Tesla owners Austria, San Joaquin Valley, and really just all of the 1500 people that traveled from all over the world. We just want to personally just say thank you for all you're doing and thank you for continuing to push humanity forward.
- [70:59]
Elon Musk
Well, thank you.
- [71:03]
Kelvin
Yeah, you have a whole bunch of people here just cheering. So thank you for all you're doing.
- [71:09]
Elon Musk
Thank you well, and thank you for your support. Over the years. It's super appreciated. I would say my heart goes out to you, but I have to watch my gestures these days.
- [71:23]
Kelvin
We know what you mean.
- [71:26]
Elon Musk
I can only point straight ahead or straight up.
- [71:33]
Kelvin
Hey, Elon. So we want.
- [71:34]
Elon Musk
But anyway, my heart does go out to you. Thank you all for your support over the years. Yeah.
- [71:40]
Kelvin
And we just had one thing that we wanted to present to you.
- [71:44]
Elon Musk
Okay.
- [71:50]
Steve
How's it going, Elon? So on behalf of TOSV and the presenting sponsors. Haha.
- [72:01]
Elon Musk
Yes.
- [72:04]
Steve
We wanted to present something to you that was symbolic, meaningful, and really, these last few months have obviously been quite tumultuous for you. And so we really got creative and really. Yeah, we wanted to create you something special. And so I'm gonna read you something basically. You know, Elon, you brought electric cars back from the dead. You made clean energy cool. You made rockets reusable. You're gonna take us to Mars. You spent billions to buy Twitter and save free speech. You stopped running your empire to work for the US government for free. To reduce wasteful spending to save the country from bankruptcy.
- [72:49]
Elon Musk
Right, and it took a few hours for that one. Absolutely.
- [72:56]
Steve
And how were you thanked? It's like you were betrayed. You were mocked, attacked by the very people who once cheered you on. Your name dragged through the mud. Your car is vandalized, your motives questioned. But that's not the full story, as I imagine many here would attest. So there are millions of people who see you for who you are, people whose lives you've touched and changed, people who believe in what you're building. People who love you and have your back.
- [73:29]
Elon Musk
Thank you. So.
- [73:30]
Steve
Yeah, thank you.