Latest / Elon Musk Thinking / Elon Musk Thinking About AI And The Tesla Campany
Transcript
- 0:00M hm hm hmm. I think is that just taking me a little biting?
- 0:09Let's see? This is this is cruzy? Yeah, okay, well
- 0:16a lot of people don't, okay more than merry are. Oh yeah,
- 0:21that'll be crazy. So it's just on speakers. That basically what we do
- 0:34there, okay, and we'll just plug it in that your mics will beat
- 0:38it once you plug it into that adapter. Oh great, okay, so
- 0:42we'll just be a little bliger than, you know, than as more m
- 0:59Let's see, can people hear me? I think they can hopefully, so
- 1:10let's hopes yeah, m hm hm. Do you want to test the audio
- 1:33with it bucked into the would you prefer to keep its Yeah? It should
- 1:38work? Um, this is I think this is working? Um great,
- 1:49yes, it's working. Okay, okay, all right, well we can
- 1:57go. All right, you're getting ready. I want to have a frank
- 2:01of water, take a deep breath a right, let's go. You're good
- 2:07yeah? Sure, oh yeah, thanks, okay, all right, we're
- 2:12ready to go here yep, okay, production lines moving. It's just such
- 2:23a great thing to watch. Yeah, all right, we're gonna get started
- 2:29in just a second, just a second. Is this is this live live?
- 2:32Great? Yeah, okay, yeah, I wanted to do it live.
- 2:44Yep. I'm ready. When they are, I'll tell them we're live
- 2:52on Twitter spaces too, should absolutely okay, M yeah, Carl, thank
- 3:00you. I am here with the Elon Musk. He's he's getting everything ready
- 3:04on Twitter spaces, so join us there as well. But of course you
- 3:07can just watch us live here at the gig of factory in Austin. Thank
- 3:10you for allowing us to be here. You're welcome. H It's quite something
- 3:15to just sit and watch for quite some time. UM. Yeah, this
- 3:17this is actually where Um, I don't actually have an office here. I
- 3:22either walk the floor or I hold meetings in this room, okay, And
- 3:25this room allows me to see what's going on with production while I'm holding meetings.
- 3:30Is there one particular production that you focus on when you're here or that
- 3:34you sort of your eyes always go to, or you you actually walk over
- 3:38to. Um, well, this is the end of line that we're seeing
- 3:40here. So if if cars aren't moving, um, that means this there's
- 3:46some blockage upstream, and then I can go and see what that blockage is.
- 3:50UM, So I think we might be on a break right now.
- 3:53But uh, this, if this, this is um, if this,
- 3:58if vehicle end of line is not moving, that means there's something upstream that's
- 4:00wrong. Got it. Well, it's been amazing just to walk around the
- 4:03facility a bit and get a sense for the size. All Right, you
- 4:08just finished your annual meeting. You took a lot of questions from a very
- 4:11eager audience. I feel like most of it you've shared before, but there
- 4:15was some news and I want to start there advertising. You got a big
- 4:19applause. You didn't sound like you're going to advertise that much, but you
- 4:24did at least seem to open the way to saying, okay, we might
- 4:27consider doing some advertising. Why Well, I mean, I believe in listening
- 4:31to listening to the shareholders, and I actually was surprised by the level of
- 4:35enthusiasm for advertising, since we are not historically done that. But there perhaps
- 4:43is some good logic to it in that if we're simply saying out information by
- 4:47I say that the Tesla Twitter account of my Twitter account, we're somewhat preaching
- 4:50to the converted and not reaching people that are not already convinced. Essentially,
- 4:58so I think the I have a good point. Well, I mean I
- 5:00think it's worth a try and we'll see, we'll see. How do you
- 5:04have any idea how you'd like to try it or what that would involve?
- 5:09Um? Well, I mean I have some general thoughts about advertising. Um
- 5:13that that you know, if advertising is informative um and and entertaining, then
- 5:24it is it can start to approach content. Um. So I think sometimes
- 5:28advertising is perhaps a non informative or perhaps in some cases a bit misleading.
- 5:34Um. And in fact, we've lost some advertisers on Twitter because community notes
- 5:40applies to advertising too, and so if somebody advertises something that isn't perhaps a
- 5:47bit inaccurate, then it gets community noted, and then they get mad and
- 5:51stop advertising. But we're we're care enough about the truth that we're willing to
- 5:57give out averting, give up advertising dollars on Twitter even you know, in
- 6:00order to have the most the least inaccurate, right. And I want to
- 6:06talk about that, but I want to obviously spend some time on Tesla again.
- 6:11Back to adds though, I mean, am I going to start to
- 6:12seek Tesla ads? During the NFL broadcast on a given Sunday Monday Thursday,
- 6:17The NFL's always on. Well, bar in mind. I mean I only
- 6:19just agree to it, so it's like I have a fully formed strategy.
- 6:23Okay, Well, how much time does go into when you think about these
- 6:26things? I mean, was it something you decide to do up on stage
- 6:29or at least did you know coming in I may you know this comes up
- 6:32that I may go there? No, I mean the questions are not scripted
- 6:36in any way, right, So so in that moment, you just said,
- 6:41all right, we'll do some ads. That's right. So We're only
- 6:44like twenty minutes later and I'm asking you detailed questions. Yeah, have any
- 6:47answers? I guess I'm not sure what the most spectrum thing is, except
- 6:50that, like I said, I believe that advertising should be informative about a
- 6:55product. It should be ideally esthetically pleasing. It should be you know,
- 6:59beautiful, should have some autistic element to it, and it should be something
- 7:02that you don't regret watching after it's done. And I think if advertising fits
- 7:10those criteria, that it starts to approach content, and you want advertising that
- 7:15is as close to content as possible, such that you don't regret the time
- 7:18you spent watching it, but you did say something as well, which is
- 7:21that you know you've been preaching to the converted. You mentioned a few statistics,
- 7:26for example, about safety, about price during the meeting that may not
- 7:30be fully understood by the general auto buying public at large. Yeah, so
- 7:35a lot of people still think Teslas are super expensive because we did start out
- 7:40with an expensive sports car, then slightly less expensive sedan and suv. But
- 7:45now we're at the point where the starting price of a Tesla is actually below
- 7:48the average selling price of a car in the United States. So it Teslas
- 7:53are actually much more affordable than people realize, and so we should just make
- 7:59sure people at least know that, right um, and that it tells is
- 8:01also the safest cars in the road US in so many ways that people at
- 8:07a lot of people with Tesla don't even know, um, you know,
- 8:11sort of the cabin overheat protection for example, or the fact that we continuously
- 8:15update the automatic emergency breaking software and the way the airbags deploy. So we
- 8:22look, we look at an accident, we say, is there anything we
- 8:24can do from a software standpoint to improve the cars that are already on the
- 8:28road, And then what can we update in the design to improve safety?
- 8:31So um, and I think that you know, the statistics speak for themselves.
- 8:39This is not simply a matter of opinion. It's statistically it's safer than
- 8:41anything else. Um. You mentioned affordability. It's something you discussed during your
- 8:46meeting. You've also discussed it a bit on the call on the earnings call
- 8:50recently as well, in relation to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and obviously
- 8:54the monthly cost for a typical autobuyer. You think it's going to be a
- 8:56tough twelve months ahead. You've said that a few times times. Yes,
- 9:01for everyone not just has understood. So it's um, I mean simply uh,
- 9:07you know you can you can think of raising there fred rate as as
- 9:11somewhat of a brake pedal and the economy frankly, so it's um. It
- 9:16makes a lot of things more expensive, certainly things that are bought with credit,
- 9:20but then it has downstream effects on on even things that are on board
- 9:22with credit. So um, you know, if if the car payment or
- 9:26your home mortgage payment is absorbing more of your monthly budget, then you have
- 9:31less money to buy other things. So actually it affects everything, even those
- 9:35that aren't things that aren't bortant or on credit so UM and my concern with
- 9:39the with the way that the Federal Reserve is making decisions is that they they're
- 9:43just operating with um too much latency. Basically, the data is somewhat stales,
- 9:48so they So the Federal Reserve was was slow to raise interest rates um
- 9:54and and now I think they are slow to they're going to be slow to
- 9:56lower them. That's that's that appears to be the case. Yeah, that
- 10:00may well be. We spent a lot of time talking about that, perhaps
- 10:03too much. But when it comes to latency, that takes me to pricing,
- 10:07because you've discussed the lack of latency in your own ability to understand exactly
- 10:11what's going on in the market for those cars as opposed to yea many of
- 10:16the legacy and other Yes, yes, we have real time information on demand
- 10:22so UM. So we know how many people place an order for it has
- 10:26yesterday, so the computer calculates that will UM and literally every day we get
- 10:33a you know, an automated email to the exact staff that says how many
- 10:39people place an order in which countries for which cars, So we know what
- 10:43demand, we know, we know what the orders were yesterday. Um.
- 10:46And you don't want to overreact to these things because sometimes you get like little
- 10:50dips for you know, reasons that are hard to explain. Do you look
- 10:54at them every day? Yeah? Yeah. Um but like I said,
- 10:58you don't want to over react to to you know, if like a week
- 11:01is slow or something, you don't overreact to that. Um. But uh,
- 11:05if but if you look at the trend, say for over two weeks
- 11:11span or something like that, you can see that, Okay, there's this
- 11:13for some reason the demand is is less than it was or it's higher.
- 11:18Um. Just pricing Yeah yeah that I mean is that are are you almost
- 11:24like an airline at this point in terms of kind of dynamic pricing model?
- 11:30Yes? So, Um, we we're basically adjust pricing to match demand.
- 11:37Um and um we obviously did a big price drop in Q one. But
- 11:43you no, no, January is it's usually a terrible type of car binding.
- 11:46Um. So there's there's seasonality to car purchases. Um with January.
- 11:50January, January is often the worst month. So um, so we did
- 11:56we did a big price drop and then and then then recently we did a
- 12:00price increase. So, as I mentioned to the audience. The reality is
- 12:07that all companies do significant All car companies make significant adjustments to price because you've
- 12:11got the MSRP number, and then if demand is high, a dealist will
- 12:16charge some premium over MSRP. If demand is lower, they'll they will have
- 12:20manufacturing setups so that you can actually see a very big difference over the course
- 12:26of say six months, between the peak to trough of all cars. It's
- 12:31just that Tesla is so immediate and obviously transparent. It's not a question of
- 12:35MSRP and then mock ups or discounts. Right, But after your last earnings,
- 12:41a lot of investors came away wanting to talk about your margins and wanting
- 12:45to talk about your pricing in particular. I think you know, you talked
- 12:48about vehicle cost reduction. You sort of even said it's hard to explain the
- 12:54profundity of technically selling cars now for no profit and still yielding tremendous economics over
- 13:00time. Yes, I'd like you to explain a little bit more of what
- 13:03that means. You did a bit in the meeting as well. You're talking
- 13:07about sort of the move I think from manual to autonomous and the value add
- 13:11that will come along with that, But explain to people why that's profound and
- 13:16why conceivably not that you want to You could sell automobiles now for no profit
- 13:20and still make enormous profit in the future. Yeah, so Tesla is the
- 13:26only car company selling cars that where we believe the car is capable of achieving
- 13:31full autonomy with a software update. So the value of a folios or folio
- 13:35autonomous car is we think perhaps five times more valuable than an autonomous car.
- 13:45Why, well, the utility of a car, typically a passenger car is
- 13:48going to be maybe ten ten hours a week, maybe twelve if you say,
- 13:54like somebody's going to drive an hour and a half a day on averaging,
- 13:56so maybe maybe in our commute per day and then an occasional long trip.
- 14:01But figure it's like ten twelve hours a week is typical for um,
- 14:07a passenger vehicle. UM. And then, uh, you also have a
- 14:13lot of costs associated with parking. You need a garage, or you've better
- 14:15buy a parking space, or you've got to get you know, get a
- 14:18parking ticket at them at the mall. It's there's there's a lot of costs
- 14:20associated with cars. UM and uh, you know if you've got a car
- 14:26that's autonomous, UM, that can go around and essentially be like an autonomous
- 14:31uber. UM. The utility I think is going to be what's gonna be
- 14:35much higher? Perhaps you know? And then this again there was there's so
- 14:39much speculative I understand we're talking about robot taxis here or at least what people
- 14:43have called and you have called. Yeah, autonomous uber is what you think
- 14:46about. So perhaps the utility that would be on the order of fifty hours
- 14:50a week. It's just a guess, say there's one hundred and sixty eight
- 14:54hours a week, UM, and probably as rough guests an autonomous car is
- 14:58we'll be able to be active instead of four or four ten hours a week,
- 15:03probably in argue for about fifty But it's the same car, so the
- 15:07and it costs the same to build. Um, You're I want to understand
- 15:13the business model a little bit because I'm buying the car and instead of it
- 15:16parking at my lot while I'm working, it goes off and picks people up
- 15:20and drops them off. Yes, who's making the money from that? I
- 15:24assume that that's the value add you're talking about. Is it a revenue share?
- 15:28Do you have this model sort of planned out specifically is how it would
- 15:31look. Um, yeah, it's it's it's been tens of terms and conditions
- 15:35for for quite a long time. It has. Yeah, So the the
- 15:39owner of the car would make I don't know some amount, who knows what
- 15:43would be, but perhaps, uh, you know, it could be a
- 15:48fifty fifty split or seventy thirty I don't know. But um, the cars
- 15:54are are if you buy it tells a car it can only be used in
- 15:56the tells a network, I cannot be used in someone else's at work.
- 16:00So um that that means that if the car is able to be used five
- 16:07times as much and and Tesla is likely to make basically two or three times
- 16:14the original value or sale value of the car um in in robotaxi revenue.
- 16:19Right. This this is this is gigantic. Um as it said, it'll
- 16:25be like selling cars for software margins because in fact it is software. Right.
- 16:30So um, instead of effectively having say twenty five cent margins, it
- 16:37might be seventy seventy percent or more. Um and uh, I mean the
- 16:47pre cash flow associated with that it is actually truly a staggering amount. The
- 16:52best analysis that I've seen thus far about This is from Kathy Woods from ARC
- 16:56invest Yeah. She's great. Ye, I would assume you like her obviously,
- 17:00she's been a used proponent of your stock for many years. Was right,
- 17:03by the way, very early on she was right. Yeah. Um,
- 17:07so I thought she was being optimistic, but I she turned out to
- 17:12be in fact almost spot on. Yeah. Um, and I am familiar
- 17:18somewhat with her analysis. What a lot of investors come back to where everybody
- 17:22is your promises of full autonomy. Um, and you seem to be saying
- 17:26again it's close. Yeah, you said it before, you know that?
- 17:32Yeah, So, I mean you said nineteen, I think about twenty and
- 17:36I've certainly been Um. You know if I guess I have somewhat of a
- 17:41pathological optimism. Um, well, it works, by the way, because
- 17:44you don't end up with this unless you're optimistic. But yeah, exactly,
- 17:47I mean, who would try to do this and this and rockets if they
- 17:51weren't pathologically opted? No, you'd have to be. Yeah, so there's
- 17:55a you know, there's a double edged sword, I guess, um.
- 17:56But but you know, do you ever say to yourself, are I'm getting
- 18:00a little ahead of myself here? I mean when you said again, we're
- 18:03gonna have full autonomy. No, I didn't say, well, I said,
- 18:04I think you think, my opinion, we probably will. Okay,
- 18:08right, there's a number of qualifiers there. I think my opinion, we
- 18:11probably will. So what do you think in your opinion you probably will win?
- 18:17I mean, it does look like it's going to happen this year.
- 18:18Why, well, we're not at the point where the car can drive on
- 18:25highways and in cities with and where a human intervention is extremely rare. So
- 18:36I mean, just I was able to drive for several days just dropping a
- 18:41navigation pen in random locations in the Greater Wilson area with no interveentions on the
- 18:45same in San Francisco, which is a very dificult place to drive. So
- 18:48I mean it's you got bus lanes, one way streets. You know,
- 18:55it's quite quite a challenging a homeless situation. You were driving recently in San
- 18:59Francisco. The car was I have been doing doing that quite a lot because
- 19:02of the Twitter's headquartered quarter. Maybe less, maybe a little less soon.
- 19:08Yeah, well we'll get to that. But finished your point though, in
- 19:11terms of why you feel more why you're optimistic. I'm optimist for that reason,
- 19:18which is that the I've actually never, um, the first time I've
- 19:23had a situation where there's been several days in a row going picking random destinations
- 19:32and having no safety related intervention, So the first time ever. UM.
- 19:37I want to get to a lot of other topics, but you know,
- 19:41I am curious on Tesla in particular. UM. One thing I haven't heard
- 19:45you discuss is the impact on your business of the Inflation Reduction Act. At
- 19:49least I haven't heard it. Maybe you've discussed it. UM. You know
- 19:52Adam Jonas, who follows your company, Morgan Stanley said, we believe the
- 19:56IRA is so advantageous to Tesla in terms of absolute dollar versus the legacy OAMS
- 20:00it could equal as much as forty five percent of current earnings per share.
- 20:06Is the IRA going to be usually beneficial to your company? I'm not sure
- 20:10it'd be it's gonna be that beneficial. Uh, there's UM, there are
- 20:17there are significant advantages for having domestic production of batteries, which I think is
- 20:23important for strategic reasons. You know, I think as we moved to an
- 20:32electric transport economy, I think it's important for the United states to UM have
- 20:36some independence with respect to battery production, including all of the precursors necessary for
- 20:41a battery. So the the IRA strongly incents that, and I think that
- 20:47will prove to be something of important of national strategic importance in the future.
- 20:55So I'm not sure I would say it's as good as a forty five percent
- 20:59increase and only share or it's it's a it's helpful. Yeah, yeah,
- 21:04I would say it's maybe it's a half that or something, okay, But
- 21:08I mean it's quite significant. Have you mapped that at all? Do you
- 21:11have a sense. I mean, obviously you talk about storage, for example,
- 21:15which is so important. You spend time on that as well with megapac.
- 21:18Is it beneficial in that particular area beyond obviously the the credits, the
- 21:22tax credits that certain people get for buying a Teslam. Yeah, there's two.
- 21:26There's really two posts to the IRA. There's the incentive for battery manufacturing
- 21:34UM and it's really quite a detail. It's's actually a very well written
- 21:37uh well in that it's it really makes sure that you can't game it,
- 21:42you know, so you actually have to build the batteries in the US,
- 21:45and you actually have to build the precursis to the batteries. Um. But
- 21:48if you do it is um Uh, I believe thirty dollars at the at
- 21:55the cell level and fifteen dollars I believe partly so that that is very significant
- 22:03batteries. And then you've got the consumer tax credit for evs provided they are
- 22:08built in the US. Uh. And and that the package built in the
- 22:12US. So UM, no, this this this is the really the first
- 22:18time that we've we've actually had the you know, the first time in many
- 22:22years that Tesla has actually had the consumer tax credit. Yes, because we
- 22:26actually exceeded the limit for the consumer tax credit several years ago. Um.
- 22:30And so up until December, until January this year, I should say,
- 22:36there was no consumer tax in center to buy a Tesla, but there was
- 22:40for the other car companies because they had not reached They've not made that many
- 22:44electric cards, right, they didn't reach their moment. Yeah. Um.
- 22:47You know, before I wrap on Tesla, I would like to get to
- 22:49China, which is obviously an important market for you. Um. You know,
- 22:52I noticed that chart you put up by D's the only company that seems
- 22:56to be making money so far. Um, are you concerned at all about
- 23:00UM, you know, ruthless pricing sort of at the low end and the
- 23:03Chinese market and what that will mean to your market share though well, currently
- 23:08a limitation UM with it is that is the is the production rate of our
- 23:15Shanghai factory. It's not demand so UM. I mean, so that's there's
- 23:25some constraints on our ability to expand in China and UM and so it's we're
- 23:30making as many conis we can't it's not a demand issue. And you can
- 23:34be making batteries soon as well. Yes, yes, UM for the Mega
- 23:40pac UM for for mostly for non US markets. So are you concerned at
- 23:45all about the growing belligerence between China and the US? UM. I think
- 23:49that should be a concern for everyone. I think you're right. I think
- 23:55it is shared by many people who run large organizations and smaller ones. Do
- 24:00you think, for example, China will will make a move to take control
- 24:03of Taiwan? The official officially, the official policy of China is that Taiwan
- 24:14should be integrated. One does not need to read between the lines. One
- 24:18continually read the lines, do you think so? I think there's a certain
- 24:22there's some inevitability to the situation that would not be good for Tesla conceivably or
- 24:30for any any company in the world. Frankly, yes, for any company
- 24:34in the world. I think most almost no one really realizes that the Chinese
- 24:41economy and the global the rest of the global economy are like conjoin twins.
- 24:47It would be like trying to separate conjoin twins. That that's the severity of
- 24:51the situation. Um. And it's actually worse for for a lot of other
- 24:56companies than it is for for I mean, I'm not sure, I'm sure
- 25:00where you're gonna get an iPhone for example. UM, and Apple's recently started
- 25:04doing some some small amount of production in India, but it's tiny compared tiny,
- 25:08not to mention an advanced semiconductor chip if they take over Taiwan Semi.
- 25:12Correct, you design your own chips, but you manufacture them a Taiwan Semi
- 25:17too, right, we do some we do. We do. We use
- 25:21Samsung an TSMC um. But uh, you seem to think it's it's likely
- 25:26to happen. I'm so only saying that that is their policy, and I
- 25:33think you should take their word seriously. They mean it. Um, you
- 25:40know your time. I think you've said in fact, some of the brief
- 25:42conversations we've had, you know, it's one of the most valuable things in
- 25:45your own control. And I am curious now. And Tesla investors sort of
- 25:49seemed to rejoice at the announcement of a new CEO of Twitter, in part
- 25:52because they thought, well, he's gonna have more time for Tesla. That's
- 25:56true. Is it true? How do you see sort of allocate your time
- 26:00now that you will suit no longer be the CEO of Twitter? Um?
- 26:03Yeah, so, um, you know it was. It was really a
- 26:08very very challenging um situation at the point in which the Twitter position closed because
- 26:14um, you know, in rough terms, uh, there was a billion
- 26:19and a half dollars of debt sipcing was added. Um, while at the
- 26:22same time there was a massive side exactly you've said, you were four months
- 26:26away from bankruptcy. It was three billion dollars in a year, conceivably negative
- 26:30three billion dollar cashload, and had a billion billion dollars in the bank.
- 26:33Yeah. Um, no, that's not good. No, anybody who knows
- 26:36anything about corporate finance knows it's bad. No. I mean, I say,
- 26:40like the analogy as using was, it's like being teleported into a plane
- 26:42that's in a nose dive, headed to the ground, with the engines on
- 26:47the fire and the controls don't work. Right, you were the guy that
- 26:51you chose to get into the plane. Well, well, I did try
- 26:55to exit the deal and it wouldn't let me. I mean, it was
- 26:57it was a funny situation where when when I first first proposed the acquisition,
- 27:02they said, hell no, they adopted a poison pill, basically saying they'd
- 27:07rather die than be then be acquired, like they'd rather chew on cyanide.
- 27:14Then a few months later that they're like, basically have a gun to my
- 27:17head saying no, you must acquire us. I mean, that's quite a
- 27:19change. It is quite a change. But you seem to think I can
- 27:23figure out a way out of this, until finally, I guess you realized
- 27:26that I can't. It was made clear to me that the decision would not
- 27:29come down in my favor legally. Yeah, all right, Well, now
- 27:33you have a new CEO. Why I think little Linda Yaqoan is gonna be
- 27:38great? Why? Um, well, Twitter is it's very much an advertising
- 27:44dependent business. Linda's obviously incredble with that, and she's just a great executive
- 27:48in general. Um so, the and you know, my skills and interests
- 27:56are in technology. Um so, you know I will continue to play a
- 28:00role advancing the software. Um and you know, you know, getting the
- 28:07futures and product stuff basically. M So. I mean the general idea is
- 28:15Lenda will operate the company and I will build products. Yeah, and that's
- 28:18I think that's that's that's a good. That's a good, and that will
- 28:21take less of your time. Yeah, and I have I have that situation
- 28:25at SpaceX. Um you know, Gwyn Shotwell's amazing um uh, you know
- 28:32operates the company and I and I booken the sort of advanced technology, right,
- 28:36both sort of designing in your rockets and that kind of thing. And
- 28:38then that's uh, you know, every once you play to their strengths.
- 28:41And that's that's that's mine. That's although I wonder you mean in twenty twenty
- 28:45one you said you spend most of your time on the development of Starship.
- 28:48I think you've also been quoted, I've read I think I heard you say
- 28:51actually most of your mental energy at certain points has been on Starship. Yes,
- 28:55So I wonder have you been diverted from Starship a little bit and we'll
- 28:57return to it as the main focus. Or is it Tesla you know again,
- 29:03your time, I know, having tried to schedule this interview with time.
- 29:07Time treach is a real thing. Yeah. In fact, I i'd
- 29:12say that the only real currency is time. Time is the only true currency.
- 29:17So where you're going to spend the currency now that you don't have to
- 29:18spend as much on Twitter, Well, I'm going to be devoting a lot
- 29:22more time to to Tesla UM and especially on the AI development UM and your
- 29:33product development, the and and then there's and I'll also be allocating some more
- 29:38time to getting Starship to orbit. UM. In the case of SpaceX UM,
- 29:47what I was able to do there was as as the Starlink constellation I
- 29:52started working, I was able to move some of the best people from the
- 29:56Starlink program to the Starship program UM, so they were you know, the
- 30:03timing kind of worked out well that that UM. I mean, we have
- 30:07really some of the world's best engineers it SpaceX and Tesla really some incredible human
- 30:12beings. There was some statistic you shared. I think three point six million
- 30:17people applied for a job at Tesla. I think I didn't I wrote it
- 30:19down. I didn't write it down here since member, but that was that
- 30:22the number. Yeah, it's crazy. There's a lot of demand. One
- 30:27hundred and twenty seven almost hundred twenty thousand employees, but three point six million
- 30:32people applying for a job. Yes, and I mean there's you know,
- 30:37we would only add like to twenty or thirty thousand jobs. So it's it's
- 30:41it's sort of the acceptance rate for for Tesla is it's much more difficult to
- 30:48get into Tesla or SpaceX than Harvard, right, the acceptance rate is even
- 30:52lower one for two. Well, yeah, it's it's. It's it's the
- 30:56excerptance rate is lower than than the most demanding universities in the world. It's
- 31:02insane. Speaking of employment, though, you had seventy eight hundred people at
- 31:07Twitter when the plane was nose diving, I think you're at fifteen hundred.
- 31:10Now we're roughly sixty three hundred people. Were they all superfluous? No?
- 31:15Not all. Do you figure out which ones aren't or is it a little
- 31:19late? You know, sometimes it gets a little late. I mean,
- 31:22look, desperate time was called for desperate measures. So um, there's no
- 31:26question that some of the people who are let go probably shouldn't have been let
- 31:30go because we we simply did not have the time to figure out we had
- 31:37to be you know, make make widespread cuts to get the run rate under
- 31:41control. So um you know. And uh so this is not to say
- 31:47that hey, everyone who is like go from Twitter is like somehow terrible or
- 31:49something. It's just we have to with very little information. You get get
- 31:56the the the headcount expenses and that the non posonal expenses down to where we're
- 32:02at least break even. And we're not quite a break even yet, but
- 32:06we're close. We need to do it fast and if you if you,
- 32:09if you do it fast, unfortunately, there are gonna be some babies thrown
- 32:14out with the death orders. So um so, I definitely, I definitely
- 32:17would not want to say, uh, you know, disparage you know,
- 32:22any I understand. But it's funny, you know, I hear from other
- 32:24I've heard from other tech CEOs quietly they look at what you did at Twitter,
- 32:30and they sort of they won't admit it publicly, but you know,
- 32:34they said, wow, that was something I mean to cut that deeply and
- 32:37still be able to shroun the company. People will argue about how well or
- 32:40things are running. Have you heard from any of the CEOs and said,
- 32:44thank you for doing that giving us sort of runway or leeway to at least
- 32:47make some cuts of our own. Um I have. I've heard that from
- 32:51a few people, and and I've heard that through the grapevine. Yeah.
- 32:53Um, but um, like I said, if desperate times call for desperate
- 33:00measures, unfortunately that those were desperate times. So do you see starting to
- 33:02I mean, we'll lend up hire people. Do you think are you reading
- 33:06from people to be hired a twitter? You know, I think we absolutely,
- 33:08um, I need to need to hire people, and and and if
- 33:13they're not too mad at us, probably re hire some of the people.
- 33:15But they were like go um, and they're gonna have to come into the
- 33:21office. Look, I I'm a big believer that that that that people need
- 33:25to are more productive when they're in person, um, and and and and
- 33:31and really man and who the whole sort of work from home thing, it's
- 33:36like, I think it's if there are some exceptions, but I kind of
- 33:44think that that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the
- 33:46you know, the the fake Marie Antoinette quote let them eat cake. It's
- 33:51like it's like, it's like, really, you're gonna work from home,
- 33:53and you're gonna make everyone else who made your car come work to the fact
- 33:57work in the factory. You're gonna make the people who your food that gets
- 34:00to live it that they can't work from home. That you know, the
- 34:04people that come fix your house, they can't work from home but you can.
- 34:07Does that seem morally right? That's messed up? You see there's a
- 34:12moral issue. Yes, I mean I see it more. It's a productivity
- 34:15issue, but issue. People should get off the moral high horse with the
- 34:21work from home bullshit. Um because they're asking everyone else to not work from
- 34:24home while they do, and they're still pushback. By the way, it's
- 34:28still going on. This battle is still happening. I mean leaders of organizations
- 34:31and I speak to plenty of them. I want people back. I want
- 34:34people back three days a week. They're still battling. It's not clear that
- 34:38it's ever going to change to people are not people the laptop classes living in
- 34:45Lala land. Okay, As I said, you can't but look at the
- 34:50cars or people working from from home here? Of course not um so so
- 34:54the people were, you know, building the cars, servicing the cars,
- 35:00holding houses, fixing houses, making the food, um, making all the
- 35:04things that that people consume. It's it's messed up to assume that that this
- 35:09they have to go to work, but you don't. How is that that
- 35:15is? It's not just a productivity thing. I think it's Marley Marley wrong.
- 35:20Although productivity is definitely impacted too, and the ability people learn, I
- 35:24mean on and on list. So I mean, look, you know people
- 35:29will disagree with me about this, but I you know, it's like,
- 35:31um, so if you want to work at Tesla, you want to work
- 35:35at SpaceX, you want to work at Twitter, You've got to come into
- 35:37the office every day. Yes, I mean you know, Like I'm not
- 35:42saying, um, I'm saying, like, look, we put forty hours
- 35:46in you know, and it frankly, it doesn't even even need to be
- 35:49like, you know, Monday through Friday. You know, you work Monday
- 35:52through Thursday. And also not saying no one should take I mean I think
- 35:57people should take vacations, Like I work seven days a week, but I'm
- 36:00not expecting others to do that. How much sleep do you get, by
- 36:04the way, about six hours you do six hours typically. Yeah, no,
- 36:08that's not bad. I thought it would be less. I've tried less,
- 36:10but my productivity even though I'm awake more hours, I get lest one,
- 36:15okay, and the brain pain level is bad if I get lessen in
- 36:17six hours. But you work seven days a week? Yes, yeah,
- 36:22I actually only um in terms of actually you say, like, how many
- 36:29days in a year do I not put in some meaniqual amount of work?
- 36:32It's probably about two or three, right, two or three days a year?
- 36:37Yeah? A year? Yeah? Yes, um. I want to
- 36:42get to some more specific questions about Twitter that's sort of have a more global
- 36:46aspect, and I still want to get to AI. You're gonna give us
- 36:49some time here, can we still? Um? Yeah? I think about
- 36:51a board meeting coming up, but I'm happy to give as much time as
- 36:52reasonally possible. I think it's maybe it's six or something. Okay, Well,
- 36:55let's our time, isn't now? I love another twenty years? Another?
- 37:00All right? At least twenty great? Um, let's talk about free
- 37:04speech a bit. You know, you call yourself a free speech absolutist.
- 37:07You want Twitter, and this isn't aspirationally. Aspirationally you want Twitter to be
- 37:09as truthful as possible, most accurate source of information about the world. Um,
- 37:15So what does that mean for how you police lies on the platform?
- 37:20You mentioned community notes? Is that I think community Yeah? I mean,
- 37:24I'd say so. My overall kind of vision for actual Twitter is to be
- 37:31a cybernetic collective mind for humanity. This is going to sound quite esoteric and
- 37:38sci fi bit um. So the if if you know, in pursuit of
- 37:44that objective, you want to have information move quickly, have that information be
- 37:50accurate, and you want to have error correction on that information. So you
- 37:52can think of community notes as like an error correction on information in the network.
- 37:58Um. And the effective community notes is actually bigger than it would seem.
- 38:01It's bigger than the number of notes because if somebody knows that they're going
- 38:05to get noted, they are less likely to say something that is false because
- 38:09it's embarrassing to get community noted. Okay, And and that applies even to
- 38:15advertisers. Right, We've lost that's so far forty million dollars in advertising because
- 38:22it was misleading or because because the community notes get to two pretty big advertisers
- 38:29got community noted. Um and I yes, UM, I think on balance
- 38:37the community notes who are correct? And I did I did say to those
- 38:42advertisers, look provide just go on Twitter and provide some facts that contradict the
- 38:51community note. That's the way to deal with the community note is to say,
- 38:54is that the community note is saying that the ad is misleading for the
- 38:59following reasons. You've got the information that rebuts that note, then just add
- 39:05that to the ad. Okay, well, we're coming up on an election.
- 39:07I mean it's a ways a way, but it's going to all start.
- 39:10Um. Yeah, President Trump is allowed back on the platform. He
- 39:15hasn't actually come back, right, but one would imagine if and when he
- 39:17does, or there are others who will say twenty twenty election was rigged?
- 39:22Is that something I assume that saw something you believe? I well, I
- 39:28think the answer the answer is is nuanced, Like do I believe Biden?
- 39:35One? Yes, I believe you want and you voted for I did?
- 39:37Actually do you regret that? I mean, man, I wish we could
- 39:49have just a normal human being as president. That's what I wanted. I
- 39:52think if if if we could, you know, there's that that old saying
- 39:55of like we're better we're better off being run by um, by people picked
- 40:00at random from the phone book then the faculty of Harvard. Yeah. I
- 40:04don't know who said that, but someone very wise. UM. And and
- 40:07I would I would say if we could do that for the president, that
- 40:12would be So you're not obviously you're not happy with don't we all just want
- 40:16an all human beings whatever? What I mean? Like you know, just
- 40:23I don't know. So you want somebody's competent it's helpful, Yes, I
- 40:28think definitely. Um, somebody's executive ability is underrated. Since the president is
- 40:32effectively the chief executive officer of the country. UM, it actually matters if
- 40:37they are a good executive officer. Yeah, it's it's not simply a matter
- 40:39of do they share your beliefs and you know, um, but but are
- 40:44they good at getting things done? There's a lot of decisions that need to
- 40:47be made every day. UM, many of them are unrelated to moral beliefs,
- 40:53you know. And and you just want a good executive because their CEO
- 41:00of America they are they are. We want a good CEO of America who's
- 41:05going to do being effective? Fortunately, we live in highly partisan times where
- 41:10there is war about everything. Including ideas, including the truth, which gets
- 41:15back to it's not true that the election in twenty and twenty was rigged.
- 41:20It wasn't stolen. And I wonder on the platform when you see that,
- 41:22does that end up in a community note or is that something you take more
- 41:25action on? And obviously the place is so many I mean, to be
- 41:29clear, I don't think it was there was a stolen election, um um.
- 41:35But by the same token, if somebody's going to say that there's there's
- 41:37never any election fraud anywhere, this is obviously also false. Yeah, if
- 41:43you if you if one hundred million people vote, the probability that the fraud
- 41:46is zero is zero. Of course, there's always going to be something.
- 41:51I mean, perhaps this election was audited. It was so many judges.
- 41:57I mean, it went on and on and on, and there was no
- 41:59nothing whatsoever that. I don't want to debate this with you. My question
- 42:02is more about what I think it's important to say, like that in any
- 42:06given election, even if you try your hardest, if you've got one hundred
- 42:08million votes, there's gonna be some some amount of fraud that is not zero,
- 42:12and that that it's important to acknowledge that without saying that that the fraud
- 42:16was of sufficient magnitude to change the outcome. So, uh so my opinion
- 42:22would be that there was some there was some small amount of fraud, but
- 42:24it was not enough to change the right and by the way, it might
- 42:27have been either way. I mean, you know, yeah, this is
- 42:29probably a little bit. But again it's gonna be You're gonna let people say
- 42:31that though on on Twitter, and then you're gonna hope that they're corrected,
- 42:35and they will be corrected. They will be Oh, let's talk a bit
- 42:39about your tweets, um, because it comes up a lot um even today,
- 42:45it came up in you know, anticipation of this. I mean,
- 42:49um, you know, you do some tweets that seem to be or at
- 42:52least give support to some who would call others conspiracy theories. Well yes,
- 43:00but I mean honestly, you know, some of these conspiracy theories, uh
- 43:07I've turned out to be true. Which ones, well, like the hunter
- 43:10Biden laptop that's true. Yeah yeah, so, uh you know that that
- 43:15that that was a pretty big deal. There was Twitter and and and and
- 43:20others engaged in active suppression of information that was relevant to the public. M
- 43:23that's that's a that's a terrible thing that happened. That's like your interference.
- 43:27But how do you make a choice you don't see I mean in terms of
- 43:31when you're going to engage. I mean, for example, even today,
- 43:35elon you you you tweeted this thing about George Soros. Well, I'm looking
- 43:38for because I want to make sure I quote it properly. But I mean,
- 43:42you know what you wrote, but you basically this is like, you
- 43:45know, calm down, people, this is not like you said, he
- 43:51wants to rot the very fabric of civilization and so hates humanity. Like when
- 43:54you do something like that. Yeah, I think that's true, that's okay,
- 43:59But why share it? Why share it? Especially because I mean,
- 44:01why share it when people who buy Teslas may not agree with you, advertisers
- 44:07on Twitter may not agree with you. Why not just say hey, I
- 44:10think this. You can tell me, we can talk about it over there,
- 44:13you can tell your friends, But why share it widely? I mean,
- 44:19this is a freedom of speech. I'm allowed to say whatever you absolutely
- 44:22are, But I'm trying to understand why you do, because you have to
- 44:23know it's gotta there. It puts you in a in the middle of a
- 44:28the partisan divide in the country. It makes you a lightning rod for criticism.
- 44:31I mean, do you like that. You know people today saying he's
- 44:36an anti Semite. I don't think you are. No, I'm definitely.
- 44:37I'm like, I'm like a pro Semite. If anything, I believe that
- 44:43probably is the case. Why would you even introduce the idea of it that
- 44:46that would be the case. I mean, it looks we don't want to
- 44:50make this a George Stars interview. No, God, no, I don't.
- 44:52I don't want it at all. But I'm what I'm trying even came
- 44:54up then when the annual meeting. I mean, you know, do your
- 44:58tweets hurt the company? Are there test loan ers to say I don't agree
- 45:00with his political position because and I know it because he shares so much of
- 45:05it? Or are there advertisers on Twitter that Linda Yak Greena will come and
- 45:07say you gotta stop man, Or you know, I can't get these ads
- 45:12because of some of the things you tweet. You know, I'm reminded of
- 45:28as a scene in The Princess Bride, Great Movie, Great Um where he
- 45:39confronts the person who killed his father. He says, offer me money,
- 45:52offer me power. I don't care. So you just don't care. You
- 46:02want to share what you have to say, I'll say I don't want to
- 46:05say. And if, if, if the consequence of that is losing money,
- 46:08so be it. Okay. But I mean when you when you when
- 46:15you link to somebody who's talking about the guy who killed children in a mall
- 46:21in Allen, Texas, you say something like it might be a bad siop.
- 46:25I'm not quite sure what you meant in that particular case. Uh,
- 46:34there was a somehow that that's that's not not not that the that the people
- 46:45people were killed, but the it was I think incorrectly ascribed to be a
- 46:49white supremacist action. Um. And the evidence for that was some obscure Russian
- 46:57website that no one's everihood of that had no followers, UM and the like.
- 47:02The company that that found this is belling Cat. Right. Did you
- 47:07know what belling cat does? Psy ops? Right? I couldn't really even
- 47:10follow exactly what it was you were trying to express there, So that's part
- 47:15why I was curious. But I'm saying I thought that the ascribing a two
- 47:17white supremacy you is bullshit okay, and and uh and and and that the
- 47:22information for that came from an obscure Russian website and was somehow magically found by
- 47:29Belling Cat, which is a company that does psy ops. And there's no
- 47:34proof, by the way that he was not. There's no I would say
- 47:37that there's no proof that he is. And that's a debate you want to
- 47:42get into on Twitter. Yes, because we should not be ascribing things to
- 47:46why supremacy? If if there if it's false. Okay, Um, can
- 47:52we talk about AI now? Actually I want to talk about AI. Well,
- 47:54let me end with Twitter in the sense of Sam Altman was on the
- 47:59Hill today and he said AI's ability to manipulate interactive disinformation is a significant area
- 48:05of concern. It's moving so quick, it is. And how do you
- 48:10know, I'm curious to whether you agree with that? How you see that
- 48:14even playing out on Twitter with people who know somebody could you know look like
- 48:17you and or me and use our voice. I don't know what it could
- 48:22be. Oh that that that that that is happening in big time. Um.
- 48:25So the so the reason that I'm uh asking people to be verified on
- 48:34Twitter and and and and that we're saying okay. Verification means you've got a
- 48:38phone number from a reputable carrier, which means that you've at least passed through
- 48:44whatever they're uh security mechanisms are that you have a credit card, which so
- 48:50you now have passed through whatever security mechanisms the credit card company has. And
- 48:54that there's some small amount of money paid for a month. Um uh.
- 49:00That that set of actions um uh significantly increases the cost of of fake accounts.
- 49:07Um and the with with modern with with with the latest AI um it
- 49:14can bypass basically every test for are you a human? So so then how
- 49:19do you know that a million accounts were created? How do you know that
- 49:23those are people? I don't know. How do you exactly you have to
- 49:29do? You have to do account verification? Um and and the thing that
- 49:32makes the like I sort of put myself in a position of like, if
- 49:37it was my goal to manipulate public opinion and create millions of accounts and make
- 49:42it seem as though a topic was trending, um and and that and that
- 49:45this is actually what public beliefs um and But in order to do so,
- 49:50I had to get a million phone numbers, a million credit card numbers and
- 49:54pay uh you know, eight bucks a month, um and and and have
- 50:00that old not be traceable and clustered. I'd say it's impossible, impossible,
- 50:06So that the goal of the uh of the sort of Twitter verification is fundamentally
- 50:13to prevent AI manipulation of the system. UM. Final question on Twitter,
- 50:19Walter Isaacson, your biographer, He said your big goal for Twitter is disrupting
- 50:23the banking industry. Oh. Um, I'd say that's that's that's a that's
- 50:30a look. First of all, I don't want to disrupt something with the
- 50:34sake of disrupting it. It's more like, if there is a better product,
- 50:37that's great. But I'm not output disruption for thesatic disruption. I'm like,
- 50:42if if you're gonna make a product that improves a quality of life for
- 50:45people that they find more useful, that that's great. UM and Uh,
- 50:51what what people see in PayPal is sort of like sort of a halfway.
- 50:55It's sort of a sort of it's frankly a half baked version of what it
- 51:00could be. UM and um and so I think there's potential to create,
- 51:06um a more efficient financial system. UM and here we can get again quite
- 51:14quite esoteric sort of into sort of information theory. But um, the actual
- 51:19financial system today is a heterogeneous set of databases running on mainframes and cobal um
- 51:23that still engage in batch processing. It's really quite uh, very inefficient UM
- 51:30so UM things are still not real time UM and and so it's possible to
- 51:35have um a much more efficient homogeneous real time data system. Money is just
- 51:40information um and and so the so. But that's not like the only reason.
- 51:49It's it's just a thing that that would be I think poetic to fulfill
- 51:53ultimately the vision that I had for X over twenty three years ago, and
- 52:01and and actually see that count tuition would be nice. But but there are
- 52:06many other things for Twitter, it's not just financials. Well, you talk
- 52:09about enhancing humanity. You know, I'm curious than a bad AI, which
- 52:14many people say will lead to great productivity gains. You showed those robots.
- 52:20I mean, I can imagine what they conceivably could do empowered by AI.
- 52:22But I'm also curious, because you've certainly been concerned, what percentage do you
- 52:27give the chance that it will destroy humanity? Well, the advent of artificial
- 52:36general intelligence is cool to seeingularity because it is so hard to predict what will
- 52:40happen after that. I think it's it's it's very much a double double edged
- 52:47sword. I think it's there's there's a there's a strong probability that it will
- 52:51make life much better and that will have an age of abundance, and there's
- 52:58some chance that it goes wrong um and UH destroys humanity. Hopefully that chance
- 53:04is small, but it's not zero um. And so I think we want
- 53:06to take whatever actions we can think of to minimize the probability that AI grows.
- 53:10You've called for a pause, along with the number of other people.
- 53:13Yes, I look when I call for the A friend of mine, Max
- 53:15Tegmark, as a business said at M I t um, you know,
- 53:21I wanted me to sign onto the letter, and it's it's like I knew
- 53:22it would be futile. It is futile. I knew it would be futile.
- 53:27I just want to could call it like it's one of those things.
- 53:29Well, for the record, I recommended that we pause. Uh. Did
- 53:32I think we would there would be a pause? Absolutely not. So you're
- 53:37starting uh x AI, I think that's what you're calling it or some new
- 53:44AI effort. UM. How is it going to be different than Open AI
- 53:49or alphabet this is this is not the time to to this. I we
- 53:57don't have enough time and and order. Is this the moment to really talk
- 53:59at it? Um, we will have a launch event and will explore the
- 54:05issues in more detail. But UM, I should say that that, and
- 54:12I mentioned this at the shareholder meeting, that UM Tesla has actually um tremendous
- 54:20capability in real world AI. Yes, in fact, it is very far
- 54:23ahead of of anyone. I know. People actually on Twitter prior to our
- 54:28interview, we're saying, you know, he never gets asked about how advanced
- 54:30his AI is A Tesla. You always talk about the other names. TESLAI
- 54:37is like said by It's like there's not I'm not even sure who's second.
- 54:40Frankly, Um, why is that? What? Then? What? What
- 54:44are people not understanding about what you have? And why are we talking so
- 54:45much about chat GPT in generative AI, that open AI and what Microsoft's cann
- 54:51be able to do with it and not about Tesla. I don't know.
- 54:53I mean people do talk about it online. UM. I think I think
- 55:00Tesla will have sort of a chat GPT moment maybe that If not this year,
- 55:04i'd say no. Later the next year, Um, wait, say
- 55:07that again. I'm sorry, You're gonna have a sort of chat GPT moment.
- 55:10Oh you will. In terms of suddenly it will Yeah, suddenly,
- 55:14three million cars we will drive themselves with no one. Right, it goes
- 55:15back to that, right, yeah, and then five million cars and then
- 55:19ten million cars. So um, the and and and and and I would
- 55:24I would also say that if if positions were reversed, um and say um,
- 55:30Well, in fact, the positions are are reversed. For example,
- 55:32Google has way Moo, which is, you know, sort of attempting self
- 55:37driving, and they are able to make self driving work in a very limited
- 55:42geography with with very tightly mapped streets. But as soon as any as soon
- 55:45as that anything goes wrong with those streets, like there's an accident or a
- 55:49parade um or road construction, uh, it stops working. Basically, Google
- 55:55is unable to produce a generalized alution to self driving that works anywhere. They've
- 56:01been trying to that for a long time they have been unsuccessful. Tesla basically
- 56:06has that and is far more advanced that than Google. Yea, and so
- 56:12if the positions were reversed and you said, okay, um, Tesla's got
- 56:16to produce a large language model that has output equal to a greater than Chat,
- 56:22GBT or Microsoft. Opening Eye has to do self driving, and we
- 56:27just we flipped the tasks. Tesla would win, you'd win. Yes,
- 56:30you have a computing power and everything else. You have to do it absolutely.
- 56:35Um I'm being told we don't have that much time. You can you
- 56:37give me another five minutes or yeah, I think so, I do have
- 56:42a board meeting. I know I five five minutes is probably fine. Sure,
- 56:45okay, thank you, um um open Ai. I mean you seem
- 56:52somewhat frustrated with them. You were one of the big contributors early on the
- 56:57reason I am the reason Opening Eye exists. How much money did you give
- 57:00them? Um so. Uh, I'm not sure the exact number, but
- 57:07it's some some number on the order of fifty million dollars. So the man
- 57:14fate loves irony next level, um So. I used to be close friends
- 57:20with our page, and I would say at his house and we'd have these
- 57:22conversations long long into the evening about AI and I would I would be constantly
- 57:28urging him to be careful about the danger of AI, and and and and
- 57:32he just he was really not concerned about the danger of AI, and was
- 57:37quite cavalier about it. Um and and and and At the time, Google,
- 57:45especially after their acquisition of deep Mind, had three quarters of the world's
- 57:49AI talent. They had obviously a lot of computers and a lot of money.
- 57:52Um, so it was a unipolar world for four AI and and we've
- 57:55got a unipolar world. But but the the person who who controls that does
- 58:00not, or at least do not seem to be concerned about AI safety.
- 58:05That that sound that sounded like a real problem. So um. And then
- 58:09the final straw was Larry calling me a speciist for being um pro human consciousness
- 58:16instead of machine consciousness. And I'm like, well, yes, I guess
- 58:20I am. I. I am a specist. And so right, so
- 58:23you helped to the creation of open AI. You put as much as fifty
- 58:27dollars more than help. It wouldn't exist with that. It wouldn't exist with
- 58:30that. I came up with a name. The name opening Eye refers to
- 58:34open source. So it's the intent was what's the okay? So what was
- 58:37the opposite? What's the opposite of of Google? Would would be an open
- 58:43source nonprofit because Google is closed sourced, poor profit um and that profit motivation
- 58:49can be potentially dangerous. Um. So uh, should you've gotten governance for
- 58:54that money? Should you have gotten some level of control perhaps in retrospect?
- 59:02Yeah, I fully admit to being a huge ilient here um so um anyway,
- 59:10So, so Opening I was meant to be. Opening I opened as
- 59:14an open source. It was created as a buy one C three um and
- 59:19but but so so part of it is also in the beginning, I thought,
- 59:22look, this is this is probably a hopeless endeavor. How could we
- 59:25possibly compete with How could Opening I possibly compete with with Google Deep Mind?
- 59:30I mean this, this seemed like an ant against an elephant, you know,
- 59:34which is not a contest um and um. And I was also,
- 59:45I mean I I was instrumental in recruiting that the key scientists and engineers,
- 59:53most specifically, most notably Elias skier Um. In fact, Elia went back
- 1:00:00and forth several times because he would say he's going to join an Opening Eye,
- 1:00:05then Demis would convince him not to. Then I would convince him to
- 1:00:07do so, and then and this went back and forth several times, and
- 1:00:10ultimately decided to join an Opening Eye, and really Eliot joining was the was
- 1:00:15the lynchman for Opening Eye being ultimately successful. You're very disappointed in what's happened
- 1:00:21there. In terms of it becoming a for profit. I do think that
- 1:00:30there's some Look, it does seem weird that something can be um a nonprofit
- 1:00:39open source and somehow transform itself into a for profit closed source. UM.
- 1:00:46I mean this would be like like, let's say you funded an organization to
- 1:00:50save the Amazon rain forest and instead they became a lumber company and chopped down
- 1:00:54the forest and sold it for money. And you'd be therefore like, well,
- 1:00:59wait a second, that's the exact opposite of what I gave the money
- 1:01:01for. Is that legal? That doesn't seem legal? And if it is,
- 1:01:08and in general, if it is legal to start a company as a
- 1:01:14nonprofit and then take the IP and transfer it to a for profit that then
- 1:01:19makes tons of money, shouldn't everyone start? Shouldn't that be the default?
- 1:01:25And and and then I also think it's important to understand the like like when
- 1:01:31push comes to shove, let's say they do create some some digital superintelligence,
- 1:01:36almost godlike intelligence, Well, who's in control and what exactly is the relationship
- 1:01:42between Open and I and Microsoft, and I do worry that Microsoft actually may
- 1:01:46be more in control than say, the leadership team and Opening Eye realizes.
- 1:01:51I mean Microsoft had as part of the Microsoft investment, they have rights to
- 1:01:54all of the software, all of the model weights, and everything necessary each
- 1:02:00run the inference system, so they essentially have a great deal of control.
- 1:02:05At any point, Microsoft could cut off Open the Eye. Elan, I'm
- 1:02:09being told we have to wrap up. Your board has been very satient.
- 1:02:14I want to end on one AI question. You have a lot of kids.
- 1:02:17I have some kids. I have one who's actually soon to go into
- 1:02:22the workforce. I struggle with how to advise him about a career when this
- 1:02:27technology exists and will only improve. I'm just curious when you think about advising
- 1:02:31your children on a career with so much that is changing, what do you
- 1:02:35tell them there's going to be a value. Well, that's a tough question
- 1:02:52to answer. I guess UM. I would just say, you know,
- 1:03:02to to sort of follow their heart in terms of what they find interesting to
- 1:03:07do or fulfilling to do. UM and UM, you know, try to
- 1:03:13be as useful as possible to the rest of society. UM. You know,
- 1:03:20if we do get to the sort of like magic Genie situation where um,
- 1:03:23you can ask the A for for anything. Um. And let's say
- 1:03:29it's even the benign scenario. Let's say it's a benign scenario. How do
- 1:03:31we actually find fulfillment? You know, it's a how do we find meaning
- 1:03:37in life? If the air I could do your job better than you can.
- 1:03:40Um. I mean, if I think about it too hot it correctly,
- 1:03:47it can be uh just dispiriting and demotivating. Um, Because I mean
- 1:03:54I I go through I mean I I've put a lot of blood, swen
- 1:04:00and tears into building companies. And then and then I'm like, wait,
- 1:04:03well should I be doing this? Because if I'm sacrificing time with friends and
- 1:04:09family that I would prefer to do. But then ultimately the AI can do
- 1:04:14all these things. Does that make sense? I don't know. To some
- 1:04:19extent, I have to have deliberate suspension of disbelief in order to remain motivated.
- 1:04:26So I guess I would say, just you know, welcome things that
- 1:04:32you find interesting, fulfilling and that contribute some good to the rest of society.
- 1:04:39Well, that's a great place to end. There's so much we didn't
- 1:04:41get to. I hope you'll give me another chance to sit down with you.
- 1:04:44But Elan, thank you for being so generous with your time, Thanks
- 1:04:46to your board for waiting as well, and thanks for having us here at
- 1:04:49this incredible facility. Appreciate it. Thank you all right, pleasure Carl.
- 1:04:56I'm going to send it back to you numberststst