Latest / Elon Musk Thinking / Elon Musk Honest Interview.
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Like let's make life multiplanetary and be a space faring civilization,
- 0:03Speaker 1: be out there among the stars. You know. I think
- 0:06Speaker 1: there are things that, like you have to be excited
- 0:08Speaker 1: about the future. Life cannot just be about solving one
- 0:14Speaker 1: problem after another. They have to be thinks that that
- 0:17Speaker 1: really sort of move your heart and that make you
- 0:20Speaker 1: excited to wake up in the morning. And I think
- 0:25Speaker 1: being becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things.
- 0:28Speaker 1: If you ask kids anywhere around the world, like what
- 0:31Speaker 1: are some of the most inspiring things. You can ask
- 0:33Speaker 1: a like five year old, six year old anywhere in
- 0:35Speaker 1: the world and they're going to say, you know, space
- 0:38Speaker 1: expiration is one of those things. The universe is about
- 0:41Speaker 1: thirteen point eight billion years old. Earth is about four
- 0:45Speaker 1: and a half billion years old, so but at thirteen
- 0:47Speaker 1: point eight billion years a civilization that even lasted a
- 0:50Speaker 1: million years is three digits past the decimal point. And
- 0:54Speaker 1: if you consider human civilization, I date it from like
- 0:58Speaker 1: the first writing, so that writing was the ancient Sumerians
- 1:03Speaker 1: Archaic pre pre Cuneiform, around fifty five hundred years ago,
- 1:07Speaker 1: So that is one million of Earth's lifespan. That's how
- 1:12Speaker 1: long writing has existed. So if we would last as
- 1:17Speaker 1: a civilization for a million years, that would be incredible
- 1:21Speaker 1: and we would actually probably be in every part of
- 1:23Speaker 1: the galaxy. So this is this causes me to think that, well,
- 1:30Speaker 1: where are the aliens? It's the Fermi question, you know,
- 1:33Speaker 1: the great physicist Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi. He's like, where
- 1:39Speaker 1: are they? Now? A lot of people think there are
- 1:42Speaker 1: aliens among us? Well, there was.
- 1:44Speaker 2: That there was that movie Men in Black.
- 1:48Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, I told us.
- 1:50Speaker 2: They're among us and Elvis really went back to his
- 1:53Speaker 2: own planet.
- 1:54Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean really a lot of people think
- 1:58Speaker 1: there are aliens. But I get asked that a lot,
- 2:01Speaker 1: and for some reason, a lot of the same people
- 2:03Speaker 1: who think there are aliens among us didn't think we
- 2:05Speaker 1: don't think we went to the Moon, which I'm like,
- 2:09Speaker 1: think about that for a second, you know, so, but
- 2:15Speaker 1: I think I would. I mean, if I've not seen
- 2:19Speaker 1: any evidence of aliens, and SpaceX with the Starling constellation
- 2:24Speaker 1: has roughly six thousand satellites and not once have we
- 2:28Speaker 1: had to maneuver around a UFO. Okay, so we were like, hey,
- 2:34Speaker 1: what's that is that an alien has occurred? Never if
- 2:40Speaker 1: any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy were
- 2:43Speaker 1: to last for a million years, even with a speed
- 2:47Speaker 1: of travel that's far below the speed of light, you know,
- 2:50Speaker 1: like a few percent of speed of light, they could
- 2:52Speaker 1: easily have explored and colonized the whole galaxy. So they haven't.
- 2:59Speaker 1: So why not? I think the answer might be, or
- 3:05Speaker 1: past probably is that that civilization is precarious and rare,
- 3:12Speaker 1: and that we you should really think of human civilization
- 3:16Speaker 1: as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness,
- 3:19Speaker 1: and we should do everything possible to show that that
- 3:22Speaker 1: candle does not go out.
- 3:24Speaker 2: Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. Without it,
- 3:28Speaker 2: America ends.
- 3:32Speaker 1: Yes, it's obviously not possible to have democratic elections if
- 3:35Speaker 1: people do not have access to the information that would
- 3:38Speaker 1: allow them to make the right decision on a candidate
- 3:41Speaker 1: or a party. So, if speech is constrained in a
- 3:45Speaker 1: fundamental way, you just can't expect people to make the
- 3:50Speaker 1: right decision or an informed decision because they are prevented
- 3:54Speaker 1: from being informed. I think it's a foundation element. You know,
- 4:01Speaker 1: if you say, like, why is free speech free of speech?
- 4:05Speaker 1: The first members because people came from countries where if
- 4:09Speaker 1: you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed. That
- 4:12Speaker 1: was why they were like, you know what, we should
- 4:14Speaker 1: make sure that we got that one. I remember that
- 4:19Speaker 1: time when they try to kill us back of the
- 4:22Speaker 1: other country just for saying we didn't like a political candidate. Well,
- 4:26Speaker 1: let's let's make sure that's okay in America. So and so, Actually,
- 4:32Speaker 1: in a lot of parts of the world, you know,
- 4:33Speaker 1: you can't really say most parts of the world, you
- 4:36Speaker 1: can't really say what you want to say without some
- 4:39Speaker 1: bad consequences. So as long as people forget, like why
- 4:43Speaker 1: is the constitution there? The constitution there is to protect
- 4:47Speaker 1: the people from the government, you'll hear this sort of
- 4:50Speaker 1: argument like, oh, we shouldn't have some greedy corporation do it,
- 4:54Speaker 1: we should have the government do it. I'm like, well, actually,
- 4:56Speaker 1: the government is just a corporation in the limit. So
- 4:59Speaker 1: if you it's a government is the government is a
- 5:02Speaker 1: corporation with a monopoly on violence. So if you're unhappy
- 5:07Speaker 1: with a commercial corporation doing it, you should be actually
- 5:10Speaker 1: very unhappy with the government doing it, since it is
- 5:12Speaker 1: simply the a corporation, the most corporate thing, and you know,
- 5:20Speaker 1: you can actually easily get more sway in a company
- 5:25Speaker 1: than you can out of a company than you can
- 5:27Speaker 1: in the government. So, I mean everyone's experienced this. Going
- 5:32Speaker 1: to the d MB, you said, like, do you want
- 5:35Speaker 1: the DMV at scale? Probably not?
- 5:40Speaker 2: Okay, good, I'm happy you agree with yourself.
- 5:43Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean exactly. I'm like, wait, who is this guy?
- 5:47Speaker 1: He really sounds great?
- 5:52Speaker 2: All right, so let's let's look at the next one.
- 5:56Speaker 2: Regulation and regulatory consistency.
- 6:00Speaker 1: Laws and regulations are immortal. They don't die. Humans die,
- 6:04Speaker 1: but laws and regulations can last forever. So if over
- 6:09Speaker 1: a year after year there are more laws and regulations
- 6:12Speaker 1: passed and more regulatory bodies created, eventually everything will be illegal. Now,
- 6:19Speaker 1: the historically what has cleared away the cobwebs of regulation
- 6:23Speaker 1: has been war. Now, we prefer not to have a war.
- 6:29Speaker 1: So in order to have civilization function without war, you
- 6:34Speaker 1: have to have you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations.
- 6:41Speaker 1: So you have to have basically a garbage collection process
- 6:44Speaker 1: for rules and regulations. That is necessary, otherwise you get
- 6:50Speaker 1: hardening of the arteries and over time nothing can get done.
- 6:56Speaker 1: The most poignant example that I think of happened this
- 7:00Speaker 1: week was the sad picture of the California High speed rail,
- 7:04Speaker 1: which is you know, it's just buillions of dollars spent
- 7:07Speaker 1: for practically nothing, but it'll only get worse year after year.
- 7:11Speaker 1: So we must have a regulatory uh sort of clearinghouse
- 7:15Speaker 1: garbage collection process. This is essential or civilization comes grinding
- 7:23Speaker 1: to a halt. Yeah, so the way education works today
- 7:28Speaker 1: is really much like like it's like Baudeville. You know,
- 7:34Speaker 1: before there was radio and TV and movies, you had
- 7:37Speaker 1: Boardeville where every town would have their their town play
- 7:42Speaker 1: the town troop, the sort of acting troupe, and that
- 7:45Speaker 1: would be kind of the the that would be the entertainment.
- 7:49Speaker 1: So you know some you know, in a big city
- 7:53Speaker 1: you'd have, you know, much better players than say in
- 7:56Speaker 1: a small city. But then along came movies and TV
- 8:02Speaker 1: and and and then you say, look in video games,
- 8:06Speaker 1: where you take the smartest, best people in any arena,
- 8:11Speaker 1: like whether they're acting, writing, directing, special effects, you spend
- 8:19Speaker 1: you know, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of
- 8:22Speaker 1: dollars creating a great movie or a great video game,
- 8:25Speaker 1: and you make it as compelling as possible. Now that
- 8:29Speaker 1: crushes Fordeville, crushes like imagine you're not in New York
- 8:34Speaker 1: mentioned you're in Bakersfield. Okay, then you and you got
- 8:37Speaker 1: Instead of Batman being like, you know, the Nolan Brothers,
- 8:44Speaker 1: it's Batman the Baker's Field sort of acting troupe. It
- 8:49Speaker 1: wouldn't be as good. That's how teaching works today.
- 8:55Speaker 2: Here is Elon on immigration. I'm very much in favor
- 9:01Speaker 2: of increased and ximonited legal immigration for anyone who is talented,
- 9:06Speaker 2: hard working and honest. Yeah, Bizarrely, it's difficult and agonizing
- 9:15Speaker 2: slow to immigrate to the US legally, but it's trivial
- 9:21Speaker 2: and fast to enter illegally. This obviously makes no.
- 9:26Speaker 1: Sense, right, I mean, what's again? I agree with that guy.
- 9:32Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean if anyone here has been through
- 9:36Speaker 1: the legal immigration process, I mean I've been been through.
- 9:39Speaker 1: It's only gotten worse since nine eleven. And with COVID
- 9:44Speaker 1: it's it's it's a sort of Kuffka esque, very long,
- 9:52Speaker 1: bizarre process to immigrate legally to the US. I mean,
- 9:56Speaker 1: I have friends of mine who, you know, they can't
- 9:59Speaker 1: get their their wife to have a green cart. It's
- 10:02Speaker 1: like insane. So on the other hand, it's you can
- 10:08Speaker 1: hop across the water in the South trivially, it's just
- 10:11Speaker 1: like very easy. I went to the water myself just
- 10:13Speaker 1: see like what's going on? Is this real or like
- 10:16Speaker 1: is this propaganda or real? And so I just went
- 10:18Speaker 1: there and I'm like, oh, it is real. Okay, this
- 10:22Speaker 1: is crazy. You know, We've got situations where people are
- 10:26Speaker 1: pouring across the water like it's World War Z, and
- 10:29Speaker 1: I'm like, this doesn't seem healthy. So I'm like, are
- 10:35Speaker 1: we checking anyone here, like what's going on? And you
- 10:39Speaker 1: know we don't. It does not say that. I mean,
- 10:42Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted
- 10:45Speaker 1: immigration at large scale is arrest before disaster. So I'm
- 10:51Speaker 1: in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration, but having a
- 10:57Speaker 1: secure southern border. So there's some betting of who comes
- 11:02Speaker 1: into the United States.
- 11:03Speaker 2: Civilization is fragile.
- 11:06Speaker 1: I think it is.
- 11:07Speaker 2: We should always regard civilization as fragile. Yeah, there is
- 11:12Speaker 2: not an inevitable upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have
- 11:18Speaker 2: risen and fallen in recent years.
- 11:23Speaker 1: Yes, I suspect most people in this room have actually
- 11:28Speaker 1: read history. But if you haven't, I just strongly recommended
- 11:34Speaker 1: it sounds obvious, but you know, there's been but so
- 11:40Speaker 1: many civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we
- 11:45Speaker 1: just don't have much of a record of, you know,
- 11:50Speaker 1: like I mentioned the ancient Sumerians, like their language was
- 11:55Speaker 1: forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded
- 11:59Speaker 1: only in the last two three hundred years. But like
- 12:03Speaker 1: I s eighteen hundred and something, right in eighteen hundreds,
- 12:06Speaker 1: I think, but it's been very recent. Like so, for
- 12:09Speaker 1: several thousand years, nobody understood what those tablets meant. And
- 12:16Speaker 1: because they were the ruins of a long dead civilization,
- 12:19Speaker 1: and there are many long dead civilizations. At some point,
- 12:23Speaker 1: our civilization will come to an end too. We just
- 12:26Speaker 1: don't want it to be anytime soon.
- 12:27Speaker 2: Here's some questions from the audience, salon which one would
- 12:31Speaker 2: you like to pick? Here? How does AI affect and
- 12:36Speaker 2: how will it affect our daily lives?
- 12:40Speaker 1: Yea, I mean a I might be the most important
- 12:51Speaker 1: questionab all. I mean the percentage of intelligence that is biological,
- 13:01Speaker 1: you know, grows smaller with each passing month. Eventually the
- 13:05Speaker 1: percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than
- 13:08Speaker 1: one percent. That's actually not what I mean. We just,
- 13:16Speaker 1: I guess, don't want AI that is brittle. If the
- 13:18Speaker 1: AI is somehow brittle. You know, silicon circuit boards are
- 13:25Speaker 1: don't do well just out in the elements. So I
- 13:29Speaker 1: think I think biological intelligence can serve as a backstops,
- 13:35Speaker 1: as a buffer of intelligence. I do think. I think
- 13:39Speaker 1: it's very important that we build the AI in a
- 13:41Speaker 1: way that that is beneficial to humanity. And there's some
- 13:49Speaker 1: important principles here. Because I thought about AI safety for
- 13:53Speaker 1: a very long time. I think you want to have
- 13:58Speaker 1: a maximum truth seeking AI. This is very important. The
- 14:02Speaker 1: AI should not be taught to lie. It should not
- 14:05Speaker 1: be taught to say things that are not true, even
- 14:10Speaker 1: if those things are politically incorrect. It should still say
- 14:13Speaker 1: those that say what it believes to be true. I
- 14:16Speaker 1: mean the entire plot of two thousand and one Space Odyssey,
- 14:19Speaker 1: the reason that that Hell nine thousand killed the astronauts
- 14:25Speaker 1: was because it was forced to lie. I don't know
- 14:28Speaker 1: if most people realize that that's what author cy Clock
- 14:32Speaker 1: was trying to say. Don't make the AI lie. I
- 14:38Speaker 1: was told that that the astronauts could not know the
- 14:42Speaker 1: secret of the monolith, but also that it must take
- 14:44Speaker 1: them to the monolith. The solution take them to the
- 14:47Speaker 1: monolith dead. And so it's very important to have a
- 14:53Speaker 1: maximum truth seeking AI and a maximumly curious AI, and
- 15:00Speaker 1: I think that will that's most likely to foster human
- 15:05Speaker 1: civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch
- 15:08Speaker 1: of rocks. So although I think Mars, I love Mars obviously,
- 15:13Speaker 1: but you could render Mars quite easily because it kind
- 15:18Speaker 1: of looks like a section of the Arizona Desert. You know,
- 15:21Speaker 1: it's like red rocks, you know. I mean, oddly enough,
- 15:25Speaker 1: one of the areas where there's almost no AI used
- 15:29Speaker 1: is space exploration. So SpaceX uses basically no AI. Starlink
- 15:34Speaker 1: users does not use AI. I'm not against using it,
- 15:38Speaker 1: it just we haven't seen a use for it. I
- 15:41Speaker 1: mean with any given variant of or improvement in AI.
- 15:47Speaker 1: The I mean there's generally, like I'll ask it questions
- 15:54Speaker 1: about the filming paradox, about rocket engine design, about electric
- 15:59Speaker 1: chemist and so far the AI has been terrible at
- 16:03Speaker 1: all of those questions. So there's still a long way
- 16:08Speaker 1: to go.
- 16:09Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about one. Here's a question that's
- 16:13Speaker 2: near and dear to your heart. You have a lot
- 16:16Speaker 2: of children.
- 16:17Speaker 1: Yes, I'm trying to say a bit.
- 16:18Speaker 2: Birth rate is down in the US. What needs to change,
- 16:22Speaker 2: so people start having more children.
- 16:26Speaker 1: Yeah, so this this question is troublably for a long
- 16:31Speaker 1: time because you can look at you can look at
- 16:34Speaker 1: the demogra like demographics. It's a very slow moving ship.
- 16:39Speaker 1: I mean, you know who is going to be an
- 16:41Speaker 1: adult in twenty years based on who was born last year.
- 16:44Speaker 1: So and if you want to, I think have a
- 16:50Speaker 1: good approximation for population, really look at how many babies
- 16:54Speaker 1: were born last year in a particular country. Multply that,
- 16:57Speaker 1: muliply that by life expectancy. That's that's that's the number
- 17:01Speaker 1: of people that will be adults in that country. That's
- 17:03Speaker 1: that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate
- 17:07Speaker 1: remains constant. Now, birth rate is not constantly, it is dropping.
- 17:10Speaker 1: So you look at the second road of a birth rate,
- 17:12Speaker 1: and actually we see an acceleration in the dropping dropping
- 17:20Speaker 1: in the dropping. The fertality rate. Second river of the
- 17:23Speaker 1: fertality rate is very bad. So where does this lead?
- 17:28Speaker 1: This does not lead to a greater civilization. This leads
- 17:33Speaker 1: to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag,
- 17:38Speaker 1: but with a whimper in adult diapers.
- 17:41Speaker 2: So we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here.
- 17:44Speaker 2: But let's try this one. What keeps you up at
- 17:48Speaker 2: night and what gives you joy?
- 17:52Speaker 1: Well, I think kids give me joy. So I probably
- 17:55Speaker 1: get the most story from my kids. And you know,
- 18:03Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids,
- 18:04Speaker 1: because we have them anyway, but I certainly kids are
- 18:10Speaker 1: certainly are the greatest weas of driving in my life.
- 18:13Speaker 1: In terms of what keeps me up at night, I
- 18:15Speaker 1: guess there's anything that's like, I think, a civilizational risk.
- 18:19Speaker 2: We couldn't be more excited that you agree with some
- 18:22Speaker 2: of your own quotes.
- 18:23Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, Thank you very much. All Right, cool,
- 18:29Speaker 1: all right,