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Elon Musk on Advertisers Full Interview DealBook Summit. · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Everybody, Thank you so much for being with us throughout the day. And
• 0:04
  I couldn't be more pleased to sit with Elon Musk as our final interview of
• 0:10
  this remarkable time we've all had together. He doesn't need much of an introduction,
• 0:15
  but I want to say a couple of things. He's the richest person
• 0:18
  in the world. He may very well be the most console, most consequential
• 0:24
  individual in the world right now. He runs the most innovative companies in the
• 0:28
  world Tesla SpaceX, Starlink, which is part of that Neurolink, the boring
• 0:33
  company X, and his X dot Ai and he's disrupted each of these lanes.
• 0:39
  He's moved a breakneck speeds, but he's facing us from controversy in the
• 0:45
  process. He joins us today following and visited, as you all know so
• 0:48
  well, and we discussed earlier on Monday to Israel, where he met with
• 0:52
  the Prime Minister there and the President of Israel. And we're going to talk
• 0:56
  about everything, and my hope is that we can talk about how he thinks
• 0:59
  about his influence, about his power, about all of it. And we're
• 1:03
  going to talk about innovation and everything else. I want to say just two
• 1:07
  other things real quick. We met each other for the first time sixteen years
• 1:11
  ago. Time, it's been a long time, and all the kids were
• 1:15
  three when we first met. I think you're just you're about to deliver your
• 1:23
  first roadster. I don't think you had yet. Larry Page was still waiting
• 1:26
  to get like seven, two and seven and eight, and I remember it
• 1:32
  was a little in two thousand and eight. I remember going back to the
• 1:34
  newsroom and saying, I think I just met the next Steve Jobs and I'm
• 1:40
  going to hold to that. I'm going to hold to that. But a
• 1:44
  lot has happened between when I first met you and now you came to deal
• 1:49
  Book and Boring that's for sure. Actually, technically I do to have a
• 1:53
  boring company. Twenty twelve, you came to deal Book and sat on this
• 1:57
  stage, and we're thrilled to have you back. But there's been so much
• 2:02
  that's happened between now and then, and there's been so much that's happened in
• 2:05
  the past week, week and a half, and a lot of folks,
• 2:08
  and I want to tell you this, A lot of folks called me up
• 2:12
  and said, you really you're really going to host elon musk here can you
• 2:15
  believe what he just said on Twitter one x X no idea? What this
• 2:22
  Twitter? Should you platform him? That's what they said, should you platform?
• 2:29
  And then I said that I think it's our role. And I know
• 2:32
  you have issues with journal I have a platform, and I know you have
• 2:37
  an issue with journalist oftentimes, But I said, it's our role to have
• 2:40
  conversations and to inquire and to and sometimes even interrogate ideas. And that's I'm
• 2:50
  hoping we can do that. So I want to start just so we can
• 2:53
  begin this conversation and just level set, take us through everything that happened.
• 2:57
  If you could everything, no over the past week and a half long.
• 3:00
  If you're God, we're gonna We've got the time. Okay, you send
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  out, you send out a post or X or a tweet whatever. As
• 3:14
  I'm trying to say, you like when things were just one hundred and forty
• 3:16
  characters, that made says to call my tweet because it's like a bunch of
• 3:19
  little boasts chopping. But when you know point which you can put like three
• 3:22
  our videos on, it's like it's a very long tweet. So here we
• 3:25
  are. This is more descriptive, I think, and at some point I
• 3:29
  don't know where you were, but you write in responding to another tweet,
• 3:36
  yes, this is the actual truth, and it's set off a firestorm of
• 3:42
  criticism all the way to the White House. Right, and then you make
• 3:46
  this trip to Israel. You have advertisers who left the platform, people calling
• 3:51
  well, the trip to Israel is independent of it wasn't something like apology to
• 3:57
  our clear that was. Let's talk about that. So just but just take
• 4:00
  us back to the moment at which you write that trip to israelative to indepenitive
• 4:04
  in response to that at all, well, let's do We'll do israelan in
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  a moment. I have no problem being hated by the way I hear it
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  away. Well, but you know what, let's go straight to that then
• 4:17
  for a second. Sure, because there is an idea and you could say
• 4:23
  that I think it's a real weakness to want to be liked, a real
• 4:28
  weakness. I do not have that. Well, let me ask you this.
• 4:30
  Then there's a difference between saying I don't care if anyone likes me or
• 4:33
  they hate me. But given your power and given what you have a massed
• 4:39
  and the importance you have, I would think you want to be trusted.
• 4:45
  I would think maybe you don't need to be liked or hated, but trusted
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  matters. If X is going to become a financial platform where people going to
• 4:53
  put their money, where people where, where the government's going to give you
• 4:56
  money for rockets, where people are going to get into the they need to
• 5:00
  ultimately decide that you are. Maybe they don't have to say that they love
• 5:04
  you, but that you are ultimately a decent and good human being. Yes,
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  I mean I think I am, but I'm certainly not going to do
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  some sort of tap dance to prove to people that I am. So.
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  As for trust, I mean, I think you break that down in a
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  few ways if you want. If you want satellites cent to orbit reliably,
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  SpaceX will do eighty percent of all master orbit this year. China will do
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  twelve percent. The rest of the world will do eight That includes Blowing Locke
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  Eat and everyone else. So the track record of the rocket is the best
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  by far of anything. You could hate my guts next you could not trust
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  me. It is relevant. The rocket track records speak for itself. With
• 5:48
  respect to Tesla, we make the best cars. Whether you your hate me,
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  likely or indifferent. Do you want the best car or do you not
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  want the best car? So? Uh so I will certainly not pander and
• 6:05
  Jonathan like, the only reason I'm here is because you are a friend,
• 6:11
  Like what was my speaking fee? You know you're not making any First of
• 6:15
  all, I'm Andrew, but yeah, sorry, it's okay. Second of
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  all, we've known each other for a very long time, smoking yes,
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  and listen, you know, uh what, I'm trying to illustrate us that
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  sometimes I say the wrong thing. I think there are a lot of people
• 6:40
  who are tired. But let me, let me, let me go back.
• 6:45
  You should hear the sketches that SNL wouldn't post. By the way,
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  those are really good. And I would say, unfortunately or fortunately or unfortunately
• 6:54
  whatever friendship we have not great. We don't talk to you other that much.
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  But let me ask you this true, that's true? Where am I?
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  That doesn't matter long calls. Yeah, I'm here because you're you're a
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  friend, not because I mean paytable, because I need any validation or anything.
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  Is that we've been friends for sixteen years and I promise you i'd be
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  here, and that's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate you being here
• 7:16
  for other reasons. But let me ask you this this then just go go
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  at it. Just tell me what happened. You write this tweet that says
• 7:24
  that this is the actual truth. People read that tweet, yes, and
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  they say Elon Musk is an anti Semite. That he is. He is
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  riling up this base. You're hearing it from, as I said, the
• 7:38
  White House, You're hearing it from Jewish groups all over. I think Jonathan
• 7:42
  green Black from the ADL is here. There's there's lots of people who say
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  this. And by the way, it's not just that read the whole thing
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  I did. And that's why I want I ask the responses. Excuse me,
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  I said more more responses? Yeah, I said more. I said
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  more than what you just read. Yes, there was absolutely more. Yes,
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  But I'll tell you the thing that struck me. It wasn't and I'm
• 8:03
  an American Jew, It wasn't just the people who who had that view.
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  It was actually people who really are anti Semites who said, oh my goodness,
• 8:16
  go Elon, this is fabulous. And that actually was the thing that
• 8:20
  really really set me back. I said to myself, what's going on here?
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  And I want to know how you felt about that? In that moment
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  when you when you saw all of this happening. Yeah, well, first
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  of all, I did clarify almost immediately what I meant. I would say
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  that that was you know, if I could go back and say, I
• 8:41
  should, in retrospect not have replied to that particular person, and I should
• 8:46
  have written in greater length as to what I meant. I did subsequently clarified
• 8:54
  in replies, but those topifications were ignored by the media, and essentially I
• 9:01
  handed a loaded gun to those who hate me, and arguably to those who
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  are anti Semitic too, And for that I'm quite sorry that that is not
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  that was not my intention. So I did, you know, post on
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  my primary timeline to be absolutely clear that I'm not anti Semitic, and that
• 9:22
  I, in fact, if anything, am filo Semitic, and the trip
• 9:26
  to Israel was planned before any of that happened. It was neither handle there.
• 9:31
  Do you see you see this thing? You know what it is?
• 9:33
  I do because I actually followed your entire trip to Israel, right, what
• 9:37
  do you tell everybody? This is this says, says bring them home the
• 9:48
  hostages. It was given to me by the parents of one of the hostages.
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  And I said I would wear it as long as there was a hostage
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  store remaining. And I have what was that trip like? And obviously you
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  know that there's a public perception that you're clarifying this now, but there's a
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  public perception that that was part of a apology tour, if you will,
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  that this had been said online. There was all of the criticism, There
• 10:20
  was advertisers leaving. We talked to Bob, I stop, you hope don't
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  advertise. You don't want them to advertise? No, what do you mean
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  if somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing with money,
• 10:35
  go fuck yourself, but go fuck yourself? Is that clear? I hope
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  it is. Hey, Bob here in the audience, Well, well let
• 10:52
  me ask you. Then that's how I feel. Don't advertise? How do
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  you think that about the economics of of x if if if part of the
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  underlying model at least today, and maybe it needs to shift. Maybe the
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  answer is it needs to shift away from advertising. If you believe that this
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  is the one part of your business where you will be beholden to those who
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  have this view, what do you do why? I understand that, but
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  there's a reality too, right, Yes, no, no, I mean
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  Lino Yakarino's right here and she's got to sell advertising absolutely, so no,
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  no, tell you so no, Actually, what what this advertising boycott is
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  is going to do. It's it's going to kill a company. And you
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  think that that and the whole world. Well, no, that those advertisers
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  killed the company, and we will document it in great detail. But there
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  are those advertisers, I imagine are going to say. They're going to say,
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  we didn't kill the company. They're going to say to tell it to
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  Earth. But they're going to say that they're going to say, Elon that
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  you killed the company because you said these things and that they were inappropriate things
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  and that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. Right, That's that's what
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  they're to say. And let's see how Earth responds to that something. Okay,
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  this then this goes back to well, we'll both make our cases,
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  right, and we'll see what the outcome is. What are the economics of
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  that for you? I mean, you have enormous resources, so you can
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  actually keep this company going for a very long time. Would you keep it
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  going for a long time if there was no advertising? I mean, if
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  the company fails because of advertised boycott. It will fail because of an advertised
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  boycott, and that will be what bankrupt of the company. And that's what
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  everybody on earth will know. What do you think then, of the against
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  This goes back to the idea of trust though it I'll be gone, and
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  it will be gone because of an advertised boycott. But you recognize that some
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  of those people are going to say that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform,
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  and I want I just wonder and ask you and think about that for
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  the judge. But the judge is going to be the judge of the public.
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  And you think that the public is going to say that that Disney is
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  making a mistake. Yeah, and they're going to boycott Disney. There already
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  are well, there are some that are for lots of different reasons. But
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  you think that this is going to that you have? This goes actually the
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  interesting of power and leverage. Let the chips fall where they may, let
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  the chips full where they may can. I ask why that is the approach.
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  I ask it because you've been very approached well, you've been very particular
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  about the approach to Tesla. When you think about the engineering involved in that
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  the approach to SpaceX, the approach to some of the stuff you're doing with
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  AI has been very specific. Right, there's not a let the chips fall
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  where they may approach to those businesses. I don't think we're focused on making
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  the best products and Tells THO has gotten to where it's gotten with no advertising
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  at all. I understand that Tells the currently sells to twice much in terms
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  of electric vehicles as the rest of electric carmakers in the United States combined.
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  Tells has done more to help the environment than all of the companies combined.
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  Be fair to say that, therefore, as a leader of the company,
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  I've done more for the environment than everyone else, any single human on earth.
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  How do you feel about that? I feel about that. Yeah,
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  No, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that? Because this goes
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  We're talking about power and influence, and I'm saying I'm saying what I care
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  about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what
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  I see all of the place is people who care about looking good while doing
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  evil. Fuck them. Okay, let me ask you this because I think
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  part of this, By the way, there's some people who said, look
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  owning X to begin with has just created problems that You've created so many amazing
• 15:05
  things that are changing our world. And and and I know you want to
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  uh make X this fabulous town square free speech platform, but that unto itself,
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  that that has created such a distraction of all of these things. This
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  is the conversation we're having. We're not focused, or we're not not talking
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  at least yet, and we will on Tesla. You have your cyber truck
• 15:24
  deliveries tomorrow and everything else that you're doing. But is there any will be
• 15:28
  the biggest product launch of anything by far on Earth this year? Is there
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  any part of you though? It just says, you know what, I
• 15:37
  just shouldn't have done this, or maybe I should sell it or give it
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  away or do something else with the with the X piece of it, given
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  given, given the propensity for some of the things that you do and say
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  on that platform to create these these issues. Yeah, of all the posts
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  I've done on the platform, I think there might be thirty thousand or something
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  like that. Right, Once in a while I will say something foolish,
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  and I have and I would certainly put to that comment, as you said,
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  the after truth among perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the
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  most foolish thing I've ever done on the platform, and I did do my
• 16:26
  best to clarify afterwards that, you know, I certainly do not mean anything
• 16:33
  anti Semitic in that the nature of the criticism was simply that the Jewish people
• 16:41
  have been persecuted for thousands of years. There is a natural affinity therefore for
• 16:47
  persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations that essentially promote any
• 16:57
  persecuted group or any group with the perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic
• 17:03
  groups. Everyone here has seen the massive demonstrations for Hamas in every major city
• 17:14
  in the West that should be jarring. Well, a number of those organizations
• 17:23
  received funding from prominent people in the Jewish community. They didn't expect that to
• 17:29
  happen. But if you generically, without condition sort of fund, if you
• 17:37
  fund persecuted groups in general, some of those persecuted groups unfortunately want your annihilation.
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  And what I meant by that, when I subsequently clarified, is is
• 17:52
  that it's unwise to fund organizations that support groups that want your annihilation. Is
• 18:03
  this coming across really? Yeah? It was. I question to you,
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  though I think logically this makes a lot of sense. Is there any part
• 18:11
  of you? I mean, just tell me what happens though, when once
• 18:12
  all this happens. Let's say you fund a group and that group supports the
• 18:17
  mass who wants you to die. Perhaps you should not fund them, but
• 18:23
  you but you do, thank you, you do appreciate that when you wade
• 18:30
  into these very delicate waters at these very delicate times. Yes, that it
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  can create a real I mean, as it created headlines for the past two
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  weeks and economic impact. What I'm just so curious what happened in your brain
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  when you see all this happening. I think, are you sitting there going,
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  oh my god, I stepped in and I wish I didn't do that.
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  Are you saying threw them I hate these people day after me? But
• 18:57
  all of that, Yeah, there's all of that. I mean, I
• 19:03
  mean, look, I'm sorry for that that tweed or post. It was
• 19:07
  foolish of me. Of the thirty thousands, it might be literally the worst
• 19:11
  and dumbest to post that I've ever done. And I try my best to
• 19:15
  clarify six raceist Sunday, But you know, at least I think over time
• 19:22
  it will be obvious that, in fact, far from being anti Semitic,
• 19:26
  I'm in fact philo semitic, and all the evidence in my track record would
• 19:30
  support that there are people who say crazy things on x as. You know,
• 19:37
  maybe you think they're crazy, maybe they're not. The aspiration FRACS is
• 19:42
  to be the global town square. Now, if you were to walk down
• 19:47
  to let's say Times Square, right, do you occasionally hear people saying crazy
• 19:53
  things? Yes, but they're not that they don't have the megaphone, right,
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  And that's that's the conundrum. No, they can only stay to the
• 20:00
  fifty one hundred people that are that are sitting standing there in Times Square.
• 20:03
  They don't have a mega. I mean, look, the joke I used
• 20:06
  to make about old Twitter was it was like giving everyone in the psych ward
• 20:08
  a megaphone. So, you know, I'm aware that things can get promoted
• 20:17
  that are negative beyond the sort of circle of somebody simply screaming crazy things in
• 20:23
  Times Square, which happens all the time, you know, So the it's
• 20:30
  actually it's pretty rare for something frankly that is hateful to be promoted. It's
• 20:37
  not it's not it's not that it never happens, but it's it's fairly rare.
• 20:44
  I mean, I would encourage people to look at for those that use
• 20:47
  the system, when you look at the sort of the feed that you receive,
• 20:52
  how how often is it is it hateful? And over time hasn't gotten
• 20:56
  more or less hateful? And I would say that if you look at the
• 21:02
  X platform today versus a year ago, I think it is actually much better.
• 21:07
  I mean, what is your perponce? Are you surprised? I'm just
• 21:10
  curious you use this. I use the platform religiously. I not being an
• 21:15
  addict you and I use it for you, and I will I will say,
• 21:19
  now the problem is because I'm a journalist, I go looking for stuff.
• 21:23
  Well I'm not. I'm just saying and because I and I also think
• 21:27
  the algorithm for me personally because I'm looking for stuff also is feeding the others
• 21:32
  things. Well, this this is actually a challenge in that like sometimes people
• 21:37
  will say like why is it showing me h, you know post from this
• 21:41
  person that I hate? And then we're like, well, did you interact
• 21:45
  a lot with this person that you hate? Well? Yes, well therefore
• 21:49
  thinks that you want to interact more with this person that you hate. That's
• 21:52
  like a reasonable you know you kind of want to have an argument tweet.
• 21:57
  Yeah, do you ever post, let's say, post when you post listen,
• 22:02
  I'm over. If anyone cannot come up with a better word, that
• 22:04
  would be great. When you post though, but the least bad way I
• 22:08
  can think of his post? When you post though? Do you are you
• 22:12
  trying to rile up either a base or an audience? Do you do you?
• 22:18
  Do you recognize the power you have in that? And and also,
• 22:22
  by the way, not just up rile up one version of Saturday, but
• 22:26
  also rile down, which is to say, as I said, there are
• 22:29
  people who are demonstrably anti Semitic on the site who I get jew boy things
• 22:34
  and all sorts of things that come my way. For a while I thought
• 22:37
  I was dosh, so they would you know, I get it to but
• 22:40
  but no. But the question is do you ever think to yourself, you
• 22:42
  know what, I'm going to go online and I'm going to say these people.
• 22:45
  I condemn these people that are on my site saying these things because you
• 22:52
  say I've condemned as sims it. But do you ever go I said,
• 22:55
  I can condemn I literally I literally posted I condemn anti Semitism in all its
• 22:59
  forms. That is a literal, I believe literal post that I've made.
• 23:04
  I mean, I'm like, listen, if I can get out the phosaurus,
• 23:07
  if you you know, and we could you know, let me ask
• 23:11
  you a different question. You're you're you composed it, I'll post it.
• 23:15
  Okay, let me ask you this. You you're a You're on a podcast
• 23:21
  about a month ago, and you said something that struck me, and it
• 23:25
  struck me as accurate came out of your mouth, so hopefully it is.
• 23:29
  But I'm hoping to go deep on this. Just because it came out of
• 23:30
  my mouth does not mean it's true. But you said, you said,
• 23:33
  you said, my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would
• 23:40
  want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but
• 23:42
  they don't know, they don't understand. What did you mean by that?
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  What was what your mind being a storm? And I think it, I
• 23:52
  mean I have known you for quite some time. I think it is a
• 23:55
  bit of a storm. Yes, yeah, I mean in as much as
• 24:02
  a whey that metaphor makes sense. My mind is often feels like a like
• 24:08
  a like a very wild storm. I mean, I have a fountain of
• 24:12
  ideas. I mean, I have more ideas than I can possibly execute,
• 24:17
  So I have no shortage of ideas. Innovation is not the problem. Execution
• 24:21
  is the problem. I've got a million ideas. I mean, I've got
• 24:22
  an entire design for an electric supersonic vertical takeoff jet. But I mean,
• 24:27
  I just if I just can't do that as well. I've had that for
• 24:30
  ten years. I know there's a million things. Does your storm a happy
• 24:37
  storm? Yeah, it's not a happy storm. Tell us about that,
• 24:48
  because I think that that actually, when people try to really understand you,
• 24:52
  I think that there's a lot of this comes from some other place, and
• 24:55
  I want to talk about that. What do you think that is? It
• 25:10
  should really need like a psychiatrist catch here or something. You know. I
• 25:21
  think there's some degree I was born this way, but and then I was
• 25:22
  amplified by a difficult childhood. Frankly so, but I can remember, even
• 25:30
  in happy moments when as a kid that there's just it just feels like there's
• 25:36
  just a a range of forces in my mind constantly. But now this,
• 25:44
  you know, productively manifests itself in technology and building things for the most part.
• 25:52
  So and I think on balance, the output has been very productive.
• 26:00
  I think the results as we you know, discussed earlier with SpaceX, Tesla
• 26:07
  PayPal, which is you know, still going today. The first yearnet company
• 26:14
  that I started, in fact, the first internet company I started, it
• 26:15
  too was funded by New York Times company Hurst Night, Writter and Remberked.
• 26:25
  We wrote some of the software for the New York Times website and we helped
• 26:30
  bring online several hundred newspapers that previously were only in print. Now this is
• 26:37
  in the nineties, which at this point is like like a Grandpa plack.
• 26:41
  But basically, you know, the nineties and internet feels like a pre Cambrian
• 26:48
  era when there were only sponges. So anyway, so you know, I
• 26:56
  feel like a lot of productive things have been done. And you can also
• 26:57
  look at at Tesla's being sort of many companies in one, like our supercharging
• 27:03
  network is if it were if the Tells a super talking network where its own
• 27:08
  company, it would be a fortune five hundred company by itself, just just
• 27:12
  the supercharging system. We also make the seals, We build the paralylectronics in
• 27:21
  the power train for Scratch. We have the most innovative structural design, the
• 27:27
  largest castings ever used. We have the best manufacturing technology at Tesla, better
• 27:33
  manufacturing technology than companies that have been doing it for one hundred years. So
• 27:38
  these these demons of the mind, you know, for the most part,
• 27:45
  harnessed to productive ends. That doesn't mean that once in a while they you
• 27:53
  know, go wrong. But and this is a question, I think a
• 28:00
  lot of people, you know, are always trying to figure out about not
• 28:04
  just you, but sometimes themselves, Meaning, what is driving all of this?
• 28:07
  You're doing all of these things. Do you think it's Do you think
• 28:11
  that you would be as successful, whatever success is, if it wasn't being
• 28:18
  driven by some I think that there's something you're trying to prove, either to
• 28:22
  yourself or to somebody. I don't know. We're all trying to prove that.
• 28:23
  We're trying to prove to my mother. I don't know. No if
• 28:29
  I were describe my philosophy as a philosophy of curiosity, I mean I did
• 28:38
  have this existential crisis when I was around twelve about what's the meaning of life?
• 28:45
  Isn't it all pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist?
• 28:52
  I read the religious texts, I read the philosophy books that well, especially
• 29:00
  the German philosophy books made me quite depressed. Frankly once you'd not read Schopenhauer
• 29:04
  Nietzsche as a teenager. But then I read Douglas Adams Hitdack Guide to the
• 29:12
  Galaxy, which is a book and philosophy in the form of humor. And
• 29:17
  the point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions
• 29:25
  to ask. That's why I said that, you know, the answer is
• 29:27
  forty two, Like, basically, it was a giant computer and it came
• 29:30
  up with the answer forty two. But then to actually figure out what the
• 29:33
  question is, that's the actual hard part. I think this is generally true
• 29:40
  also in physics. At the point of which you can properly frame the question
• 29:44
  the answer is is actually the easy part. So my motivation then was that,
• 29:55
  well, my life is finite, really a flash in the pan and
• 30:00
  on a galactic time scale. But if we can expand the scope and scale
• 30:06
  of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask
• 30:14
  about the answer that is the universe, and maybe we can find out the
• 30:19
  meaning of life or even what question to what what the right question to ask
• 30:23
  is? You know, where do we come from? Where are we going,
• 30:30
  Where are the aliens? Are there aliens? You know? These these
• 30:37
  questions you know? And is there new physics to discover? Or is this
• 30:44
  because this is real questions about dark matter and dark energy. And so the
• 30:52
  purpose of SpaceX is to extend life beyond Earth on a sustained basis, so
• 31:00
  that we can at least pass one of the Firmi great filters, which is
• 31:03
  that of being a single planet civilization. For your single planet civilization, then
• 31:08
  we are simply waiting around for some extinction event, whether that is man made
• 31:15
  or natural. But if you're a single planet civilization, eventually you will something
• 31:22
  will happen to that planet and you will die. If you're a multiplant civilization,
• 31:26
  you will live much longer. Also, a multiplanet civilization is that's the
• 31:30
  natural stepping stone to being a multi stellar civilization and being out there among the
• 31:36
  stars. So now this I think has two. This is not simply a
• 31:41
  defensive motivation, but it is also one that you know that gives meaning.
• 31:49
  Man search for meaning. Let me finish this philosophy point. Even though it
• 31:56
  may seem rather esoteric, it may resonate for a few people. We must
• 32:01
  get past this Firmi filter. Of being a straight filter of being a single
• 32:07
  planet civilization, and if we do that, we're more likely to understand the
• 32:13
  nature of the universe and what questions to ask. If you believe her in
• 32:17
  the philosophy of curiosity, then then I think you should support this ambition.
• 32:25
  And but it's more, there's being a multipliant species is more than than simply
• 32:32
  you know, life, life insurance for life collectively. That's a defensive reason.
• 32:37
  But but I think also that that that life has to be more than
• 32:43
  simply solving one sad problem after another. You know, there have to be
• 32:49
  there be reasons where you wake up in the morning and you're happy to be
• 32:52
  alive. There have to be reasons that you have to say, why are
• 32:58
  you excited about the future? Like what gives you hope? And if you
• 33:06
  if you're if you'ren't sure, ask your kids. And and I think the
• 33:12
  idea of us being a space faring civilization and being out there among the stars
• 33:17
  is incredibly inspiring and exciting and something to look forward to, and there need
• 33:23
  to be such things in the world. Let me ask you a different question
• 33:28
  about confidence. We were having a conversation here earlier, but people and where
• 33:31
  where people get their confidence from. Some people have great and security, other
• 33:37
  people have great confidence. And I was thinking about you because you have a
• 33:44
  very interesting history where people have told you over and over again that you're wrong.
• 33:51
  Well sometimes they're right. Well sometimes they are, But I would say
• 33:55
  that when it comes to Tesla, when it came to SpaceX, people told
• 34:00
  you that you were crazy, You're out of your mind. This was never
• 34:02
  going to happen. This is never going to work. And so I ask
• 34:06
  you this, though, is now, when people say you're wrong, this
• 34:13
  isn't right, do you look at that and say, you know what?
• 34:16
  That's like a red flag for me because you know, I've been told so
• 34:20
  often that I'm wrong that I know that and I know I'm right because I've
• 34:24
  had that experience. Or are there people in your life when they say,
• 34:30
  you know what, Elon, this is not this is not right. Do
• 34:32
  you know what I'm saying? I mean, I think what you start trying
• 34:37
  to say, is that to do at this point? Think because I've been
• 34:40
  right so many times for others I said I'm wrong, that now I passed
• 34:43
  believe I'm right when I in fact I'm wrong. You did very well.
• 34:49
  What do you think no, I'm right, so uh yeah, No.
• 34:57
  Look, here's the thing. Physics is unforgiving. Physics is unforgiving. So
• 35:07
  I mean, I have, you know, these various little sayings that I
• 35:09
  have come up with that physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation
• 35:15
  in the sense that you can break any law made by humans, but try
• 35:21
  breaking a law made by physics. That's much more difficult. So if you
• 35:25
  are wrong and persistent being wrong, the rockets will blow up and the cars
• 35:30
  will fail. So this is we're not trying to figure out what flavor of
• 35:39
  ice cream is the best flavor of ice cream. Like if there's a thousand
• 35:45
  things that can happen on a rocket flight and only one of them gets the
• 35:50
  rocket to orbit, and so being wrong results in failure when dealing with physical
• 36:00
  But that's the interesting part. So now you've built this these great companies that
• 36:04
  physically the physics of them are enormously successful, so successful arguably that you have
• 36:10
  leverage over everybody else. Right, there's nobody else can do starlink, nobody
• 36:15
  else can get nobody else can get the rockets in space. Yet Amazon and
• 36:20
  Jeff Bezos are trying, but they haven't yet I hope he does. You
• 36:23
  hope he does? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think you know,
• 36:28
  but I actually agree with with with a lot of Jeff's motivations. I mean,
• 36:31
  I think you know he's so they're put this way. If there was
• 36:39
  a button I could press that would delete blue argin, I wouldn't press it.
• 36:45
  So I think it's good that he's spending money on making rockets too.
• 36:51
  You know, it's just peraps you spend more time on it, but you
• 36:53
  know it's up to him the the But I should make a point here,
• 37:00
  So nothing, nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle competition.
• 37:07
  In fact, we've done the opposite. So at Tesla we have open
• 37:12
  sourced our patents. Anyone can use our patents for free. How many companies
• 37:17
  do you know who've done that? Can you name one? I can't.
• 37:24
  At SpaceX, we don't use patents, So I mean, she said,
• 37:30
  once in a while, we'll file a patent just so some patent trol doesn't
• 37:34
  cause trouble. But we're not stopping any we've done. We've done nothing anti
• 37:39
  competitive. We've done nothing to stop I always want to clarify for the audience
• 37:45
  because some companies have done anti competitive things. I think the strange thing,
• 37:52
  the unusual thing about SpaceX and Tela is that we've done things that have helped
• 37:55
  our competition. So at Tesla, we have made our supercharger system open access.
• 38:05
  We've made our charger technology available for free to the other manufacturers. The
• 38:12
  reason that no wall of garden. We could have put a wall up,
• 38:15
  but instead we invited them in. The reason I mentioned this though, is
• 38:17
  because you've had the success in the physical physics world, you now have these
• 38:22
  very difficult decisions that have huge impacts on the world that are not physical decisions
• 38:29
  at all. They're decisions of the mind, the decisions that you and others
• 38:32
  have to make. It there's a question whether you should be making these decisions
• 38:36
  at all. And I think about it in the context of starlink. Obviously,
• 38:39
  there was the report about how it's being used in Ukraine and the Russian
• 38:44
  War. There's questions about Taiwan, whether Taiwan should use it or will use
• 38:49
  it. I believe they're not right now because they're worried that at some point
• 38:52
  maybe the Chinese will tell you that you have to they have leverage over you,
• 38:57
  and you're going to have to turn that off, right, I mean,
• 38:59
  these these are very difficult decisions, and I'm so curious how you think
• 39:02
  about that, and not just the decisions, the fact that you have that
• 39:06
  power. I just I think it's important for they order to understand that the
• 39:10
  reason I have these powers not because of some anti competitive actions. It's simply
• 39:14
  because we've executed very well. Oh, I'm not dismissing that. I think
• 39:16
  there's so many people, by the way, who work huge supporters of what
• 39:20
  you. There are are satellites out there, you know, but they're but
• 39:23
  they're not as good as yours and the same and we can say that maybe
• 39:25
  make the same argument of the cars and everything else. But as a result,
• 39:29
  that gives you enormous leverage. Right with the exception of that, By
• 39:34
  the way, these advertisers who aren't on X in every other instance, everybody
• 39:37
  needs you, I mean, nobody's them. They use our product if it's
• 39:44
  better than use somebody else's product, if it's the other products better, And
• 39:47
  I accept that it maybe one days also better products, Like you know,
• 39:52
  how is it a bad thing to make better products than other companies? Well,
• 39:57
  and I want to go back to this, to the starlink piece of
• 39:59
  it, though, because that has sort of a geopolitical ramification in terms of
• 40:05
  your power and how you think about that specific power, and then the power
• 40:09
  that the US government might have either over you or not over you, the
• 40:13
  power that Chinese government might have over you or not over you, and how
• 40:16
  those things get used. I mean, what are you suggesting. I'm asking
• 40:24
  the question around this very idea of how these satellites are going to be used,
• 40:30
  whether you think that you should have control of them, whether the government
• 40:35
  should have control of them. How's the government? Well, that's there's a
• 40:38
  lot of people who don't trust the government exactly. But then this goes back
• 40:43
  to the trust of you, right, I mean, like I said that,
• 40:45
  we're not the only company who has communications satellites. AL satellites are just
• 40:52
  much better than theirs, So it's not like we have a monopoly. Right.
• 40:55
  Do you feel like anybody has a products? It's not like do you
• 40:59
  feel anybody has leverage over you? I mean, I think at the end
• 41:06
  of the day, if we make bad products that people don't want to use,
• 41:09
  then the users will vote with their resources and do something else. Pivot
• 41:20
  the conversation for six. I mean certainly me and my company's overseen by regulators.
• 41:24
  And while you know once since SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla are overseen by
• 41:37
  you know, cumulatively over one hundred regulators in actually more than that few hundred
• 41:43
  regulators, because you've got we're fifty five countries. If you sum up all
• 41:51
  the times that I had an argument with regulators of hundreds of regulators over decades,
• 41:59
  it can sound really terrible, except for they forgot to mention that there
• 42:02
  were ten million regulations we complied with and only five that I disagreed with.
• 42:08
  But it was still the five and it sounds like, Wow, this guy's
• 42:10
  a real maverick. I'm like, yeah, but what about the ten million
• 42:14
  we complied with? Do you let me let me one related thing on this
• 42:17
  and the leverage of countries and things over you and regulators X is this free
• 42:23
  speech platform? You do business in China, lots of business China. That's
• 42:27
  an important part of your business, I imagine, well, not SpaceX.
• 42:32
  How do you think about the leverage that the Chinese have over you? And
• 42:37
  do they have leverage over you? And how do you feel about some people
• 42:42
  say is it hypocritical for you to be doing business in China or frankly in
• 42:45
  other countries as it relates to X and other things that don't follow this free
• 42:51
  speech path that you have his spoused. The best that the platform can do
• 42:58
  is adhere to the laws of any given country. Do you think there's something
• 43:01
  more we could do than that? I think it would be very hard.
• 43:05
  But I just wonder, given the sort of strong philosophical approach that you've you've
• 43:09
  you've you've been vocal about whether you say to yourself, you know, maybe
• 43:14
  I shouldn't be doing business in that country. Well, first of well,
• 43:21
  Starlink and SpaceX do our no business in China whatsoever. Tesla has one of
• 43:27
  four factories for vehicle factories in China, and China is you know, I
• 43:32
  don't know a quarter of our market or something like that, and so it's
• 43:36
  a quarter of the market of one company. The same is true, by
• 43:39
  the way, of all the other car companies. They also have something on
• 43:44
  that order of a quarter of their sales in China. So if you if
• 43:49
  that's a problem for Tela, it's a problem for every car company. I
• 43:53
  mean, I think one has to be careful about not conflating the various companies
• 43:58
  because I can only do things that are within the bounds of the law.
• 44:01
  I cannot do beyond that. My aspiration is to do as much good as
• 44:06
  possible and to be as productive as possible within the bounds of what is legal.
• 44:10
  More than that I cannot do. I want to pivot and talk about
• 44:15
  AI for a moment. We had Jinsen Wong here, who's a big fan
• 44:17
  of yours, as you know. Yeah, Jensen's awesome talk about talked about
• 44:21
  bringing you the first box by the way, with Ilia. Interestingly enough,
• 44:25
  back in twenty sixteen, I think there's a video of Jensen and me unpacking
• 44:31
  the first AI computer at open AI. So I'm so curious what you think
• 44:38
  of what's just happened over the past two weeks while you were dealing with this
• 44:43
  other headline series of headlines, there was a whole other series of headlines and
• 44:50
  so forth at open AI. What did you think, Well, you founded
• 44:58
  it, co found it, found it. Yeah, I'm well. The
• 45:04
  whole arc of Opening I, frankly, is a little troubling because the reason
• 45:08
  for starting Opening I was to create a count counterweight to Google, Google and
• 45:14
  deep Mind, which at the time had two thirds of all AI talent and
• 45:20
  basically infinite money and compute, and there was no there's no counterweight. It
• 45:23
  was unipolar world. And Larry and Paige and I used to be very close
• 45:28
  friends, and I would stay at his house and I would talk to Larry
• 45:31
  until the late hours of the night about AI safety, and I became imparent
• 45:37
  to me that Larry did not care about AI safety. I think perhaps the
• 45:44
  thing that gave it away was when he called me a specist for being pro
• 45:47
  humanity, as in, you know, like a racist, but for species.
• 45:54
  So I'm like, wait a second, what side are you on,
• 45:58
  Larry? And then I'm like, okay, listen to this guy calling me
• 46:02
  a specist. He doesn't care about AI safety. We've got to have some
• 46:07
  counterpoint here, because this seems like we could be this is this is no
• 46:15
  good. So open I was actually started and it was meant to be open
• 46:19
  source. I named it open AI after open source. It is in fact
• 46:24
  closed source super closes it should be it should be renamed super closed source for
• 46:30
  maximum profit AI. So because this is what it actually is, I mean,
• 46:38
  fate loves irony. I mean, in fact, a friend of mine
• 46:43
  has this says like the way to predict outcomes, is the most ironic outcome
• 46:46
  is the most It's like this oukhomes Razor, like the simplest sort of explanation
• 46:51
  is most likely. And my friend Jonah's views that the most ironic outcome is
• 46:54
  the most likely. And that's what's happened with open AI. It's gone from
• 46:59
  an open source foundation of five one, two three to suddenly it's like a
• 47:06
  ninety billion dollar full profit corporation with closed source. So I don't know how
• 47:10
  you go from here to there, but that seems like a I don't know
• 47:15
  how you get I don't know if is this legal. It's like, so
• 47:20
  as you saw Sam Waltman get housted by somebody you know, Ilia, and
• 47:23
  Ilia was somebody who was a friend of yours. Yes, you brought him
• 47:27
  there. Your relationship with Larry Page effectively broke down over you recruiting him away.
• 47:31
  I think that's correct. That was the fact that was the Larry refused
• 47:36
  to be present to me after I recruited Elia. And so here's Ilia apparently
• 47:40
  saying something is very wrong. I think we should be concerned about this because
• 47:45
  I think Ilia actually has a strong moral compass. He thinks about it,
• 47:49
  you know, he really sweats it over questions of what is right and if
• 47:54
  Ilia felt strongly enough to want to you know, fire Sam, Well,
• 48:02
  I think the world should know what was that reason. Have you talked to
• 48:07
  him? I've reached out, but he doesn't want to talk to anyone.
• 48:10
  Have you talked to other people behind the scenes? Is this all happening?
• 48:15
  I've talked to a lot of people as nobody. I have not found anyone
• 48:22
  who knows. Why have you? I think we are all still trying to
• 48:27
  find out. I mean, look, one of two things. Either it
• 48:30
  was a serious thing and we should know what it is, or it was
• 48:34
  not a serious thing and then the Portraite resign. What do you think of
• 48:37
  Sam Altman? I have mixed feelings about Sam. I do you know the
• 48:50
  ring of power? You know can corrupt and here is the ring of power?
• 49:00
  Are so you know? I don't know. I think I want to
• 49:07
  know why Eliot felt so strongly as the fire Sam. This sounds like a
• 49:12
  serious thing. I don't think it was trivial, and I'm quite concerned that
• 49:19
  that there's some you know, dangerous element of AI that they've they've discovered.
• 49:22
  Yes, you think they've discovered something that'll be my guess. Where are you
• 49:30
  with your own AI efforts relative to where you think open AI is, where
• 49:36
  you think Google is, where you think the others are, I mean on
• 49:45
  the AI front them in somewhat of a quandary here, because I've thought AI
• 49:52
  could be something that would change the world in a significant way since I was
• 49:54
  in college, I mean like thirty years ago. But the reason I didn't
• 50:00
  bull AI right from the get go was because I was uncertain about which which
• 50:06
  edge of the double edged sword would be sharper the good edge of the bad
• 50:09
  edge, So I held off on during anything on a I could have created.
• 50:15
  I think the leading a company kind of opening eye actually kind of is
• 50:20
  that because I was just uncertain, if you make this magic genie, what
• 50:25
  will happen? You know? Whereas I think building sustainable energy technology is much
• 50:34
  more of a single edged sword, that is, single edged good, making
• 50:37
  like multiplanetary I think single edged good, you know, Starling mostly single edged
• 50:45
  good. I mean giving people better connectivity to people that you know don't don't
• 50:50
  have connectivity or too expensive. I think it's very you know, very much
• 50:55
  a good thing. Starling was instrumental, by the way, and halting the
• 51:00
  Russian advance, and the Ukrainians said, so, so you know, I
• 51:06
  think there's But with AI, you've got the magic gene problem. You may
• 51:14
  think you want a magic Jenny, but one season that genie's out of the
• 51:20
  bottle. It's hard to say what happens. How far are we away from
• 51:23
  that genie being out of the bottle? You think we think it's already out,
• 51:29
  when the genie is certainly poking its heat out. AGI the idea of
• 51:35
  artificial general intelligence, given what you now are working on yourself, and you
• 51:38
  know how easier hard it is to train to create the inferences to create the
• 51:44
  weights. I hope I'm not getting too far in the weeds of just how
• 51:47
  this works, but those are the basics behind the software end of this.
• 51:53
  It's funny, you know, all these weights, they're just basically a number
• 51:58
  is in a common separated value file, and that's our digital god, a
• 52:01
  CESP file. Not that funny, but that's kind of literally what it is.
• 52:13
  So I think it's coming pretty fast, you know, is that?
• 52:17
  I mean you famously have admitted to overstating how quickly things will happen, But
• 52:22
  how quickly do you think this will happen. If you say smarter than the
• 52:30
  smartest human at anything, Yep, it may not be been quite smarter than
• 52:37
  all humans old machine augmented humans, you know, because we able got computers
• 52:43
  and stuff as a hire bar. But you say smarter than any you know,
• 52:49
  you can write as good a novel as say J. K. Rowling,
• 52:52
  or discover new physics or invent new technology. I would say that we
• 52:58
  are less than three years from that point. Let me ask you a question
• 53:01
  about XAI and what you're doing. And because there's an interesting thing that's different.
• 53:07
  I think about what you have relatives to some of the others which you
• 53:12
  have data, you have information, You have all of the stuff that everybody
• 53:15
  in here has put on the platform to sort through. And I don't know
• 53:22
  if everybody realized that initially. What is the value of that? Yeah,
• 53:35
  I mean data is very important. You could say that data is probably more
• 53:39
  viable than gold. But then maybe you have actually maybe you have more.
• 53:45
  Maybe you have the gold in x in a different way in a way again
• 53:50
  that I don't know if the public appreciates what that means. Yes, excess
• 53:58
  the that might be the single source of data. I mean it is they're
• 54:05
  more you know, people links that go to feel click on, more links
• 54:09
  to X than anything else on Earth. As sometimes people think Facebook or Instagram
• 54:14
  is a bigger thing, but actually there are more links to X than anything
• 54:17
  you can there's public information. You can google it. Okay, let me
• 54:20
  ask you a So it is. It is where you would find what is
• 54:25
  happening right now on Earth at any given point in time. The whole open
• 54:29
  Air drama played out in fact on the X platform, so it is one
• 54:35
  of the it's not there. You know. Google certainly has a massive amount
• 54:38
  of data, so does Microsoft. So it's not like but it is one
• 54:45
  of the best sources of data. Can ask you an interesting IP issue,
• 54:52
  which I think is actually something I can say as somebody who's in the creator
• 54:55
  business and journalistic business and whatnot or care about copyright. Right. So,
• 55:02
  one of the things about training on data has been this idea that you're not
• 55:06
  going to train or these things are not being trained on people's copyrighted information.
• 55:10
  Historically that's been the concept. Yeah, that's a huge lie. Say that.
• 55:14
  Again, these as are all trained on copyrighted data obviously, so you
• 55:20
  think it's a lie when when open AI says that this is not None of
• 55:23
  these guys say they're training on copyrighted dat. That's a lie. It's a
• 55:28
  lie, straight up lie. Okay, it's been trained on appropriated data.
• 55:35
  Okay. So the second question, which is all of the people who have
• 55:38
  been uploading, all of the people who have been uploading articles, the best
• 55:45
  quotes from different articles, videos, two X, all of that can be
• 55:52
  trained on. And it's interesting because people put all of that there, and
• 55:57
  those quotes have historically considered fair use. Right, people are putting those quotes
• 56:01
  up there and individually on a fair use basis, you'd say, okay,
• 56:05
  that makes sense. But now there are people who do threads. And by
• 56:08
  the way, there may be multiple people who've done you know, an article
• 56:12
  that has a thousand words. Technically all thousand words could have made it onto
• 56:15
  X somehow and effectively. Now you have this remarkable repository. And I wonder
• 56:22
  how you think about that again, and how you think the creative community and
• 56:27
  those who were the original IP owners should think about that. I don't know,
• 56:35
  except to say that by the time these lawsuits are decided, we'll have
• 56:37
  digital God. So that's digital God. At that point, these lawsuits won't
• 56:43
  be decided before on a timeframe that is relevant. Is that a good thing
• 56:49
  or a bad thing? I think we live, you know, there's that
• 56:57
  I don't know if it's actually a real Chines saying or not, but maybe
• 57:00
  live an interesting times. It's apparently not a good thing, but I would
• 57:08
  prefer to personally, I would prefer to live in interesting times, and we
• 57:13
  live in the most interesting of times. I think for a while I was
• 57:19
  like really getting demotivated and losing sleep over the sort of the threat of AI
• 57:23
  danger, And then I finally sort of became fatalistic about it and said,
• 57:28
  well, even if I knew it was annihilation, was certain, would I
• 57:36
  choose to be alive at that time or not? And I said, I
• 57:39
  probably would have choose to be alive at that time because it's the most interesting
• 57:43
  thing, even if there's nothing I could do about it. So then,
• 57:46
  you know, then basically sort of a fatalistic resignation helped me sleep at night
• 57:52
  because I was having trouble sleeping at night because of AI danger. Now what
• 57:57
  to do about it? I mean, I've been the biggest, the one
• 58:01
  banging the drama the hardest, by far, the longest or least one of
• 58:07
  longest for AI danger and these regulatory things that are happening. The single biggest
• 58:14
  reason that happening is because of me. We think we're ever going to get
• 58:16
  their arms around it. We talked to the Vice President this afternoon. She
• 58:20
  said she wants to regulate it. People can try to regulate social media for
• 58:23
  years and have done nothing effectively. Well, there's there's regulation around anything which
• 58:29
  is like a physical danger, a danger to the public. So like cars
• 58:34
  are heavily regulated, communications are heavily regulated, rockets and aircraft are heavily regulated.
• 58:40
  The general will us be about regulation is that when something is a danger
• 58:45
  to the public, that there needs to be some government oversight. So I
• 58:52
  think, in my view, AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs, which
• 58:57
  we regulate. Nuclear bombs, you can't just go make it your clear in
• 59:00
  your backyard. I think we should have some kind of regulation with AI.
• 59:07
  Now, this tends to cause the AI accelerations to get up in arms because
• 59:13
  they think AI is sort of heaven basically, but you typically don't like regulation.
• 59:20
  You've pushed back on regulators for the most party in the world of Tesla,
• 59:22
  and so many instances where we read articles about you pushing back on the
• 59:27
  regulators. I'm so curious why in this instances now you own one of these
• 59:30
  businesses. As I said a moment ago, one should not take what is
• 59:39
  viewed in the media as being the whole picture. There are literally hundreds like
• 59:46
  this is not an exaggeration. So there are probably one hundred million regulations that
• 59:52
  my companies comply with, and they're probably five that we don't. And if
• 1:00:00
  if we disagree with some of those regulations, it's because we think the regulation
• 1:00:04
  that is meant to do good doesn't actually do good. But that is not
• 1:00:07
  the applying regulations. But the question if there are laws and rules, whether
• 1:00:14
  the idea is that you're making the decision that the law and the rule shouldn't
• 1:00:16
  be the law on the rule, and then right, isn't I'm saying you're
• 1:00:19
  fundamentally mistaken, and you should be obvious that you're mistaken. My companies,
• 1:00:23
  UH automotive is heavily regulated. We would not be allowed to put cars on
• 1:00:29
  the road if we did not comply with this vast body of regulation. Now
• 1:00:32
  you could you could fill up a stage with literally, you know, six
• 1:00:37
  foot high with the regulations that you have to comply with to make a car
• 1:00:45
  would make you could have a room full of phone books. That's how many.
• 1:00:50
  That's how big the regulations are. And if you don't comply with all
• 1:00:52
  of those, you can't sell the car. And if we don't comply with
• 1:00:55
  all the regulations for rockets or for starlingk they shot a stack out. So,
• 1:01:00
  in fact, I am incredibly compliant with regulations. Now, once in
• 1:01:05
  a while, there'll be something that I disagree with. The reason I would
• 1:01:08
  disagree with this is because I think the regulation in that particular case, in
• 1:01:12
  that rare case, does not serve the public good, and therefore I think
• 1:01:15
  it is my obligation to object to a regulation that is meant to serve the
• 1:01:19
  public good. If it doesn't, that's the only time I object, not
• 1:01:22
  because I seek to object. In fact, i'm incredibly rule following. Let
• 1:01:28
  me ask you a separate question is social media related question. We've been talking
• 1:01:30
  about TikTok today ahead of the election. TikTok is what do you think of
• 1:01:37
  TikTok? Do you think it's a national security threat? I don't use TikTok
• 1:01:45
  vidin you don't. I don't personally use it, but for people that for
• 1:01:53
  teenagers and people in their twenties, they seem almost religiously addicted to TikTok.
• 1:02:01
  So people, we'll watch TikTok for like two hours a day. I stopped
• 1:02:12
  using TikTok when I felt the AI probing my mind and I don't it made
• 1:02:15
  me uncomfortable, so I stopped using it. And in terms of anti smitty
• 1:02:27
  content, I mean, TikTok is rife with that. It has the most
• 1:02:30
  viral anti Smittic content by far. But do you think the Chinese government is
• 1:02:35
  using it to manipulate the minds of Americans? No? Is that something that
• 1:02:40
  you think we should worry about. I mean, you have different states that
• 1:02:44
  are trying to ban it. I don't think this is some Chinese government plot,
• 1:02:47
  but it is. The TikTok algorithm is entirely AI powered, so it
• 1:02:55
  is really just trying to find the most viral thing possible. But it's what
• 1:03:01
  is going to keep you glued to the screen. That's it. Now.
• 1:03:07
  The on sher numbers, there are on the order of two billion Muslims in
• 1:03:13
  the world, and I think you know much smaller number of Jewish people for
• 1:03:20
  twenty million something, many orders of magnitude few are so if you just look
• 1:03:23
  at content production just on sher numbers basis, this is going to be overwhelmingly
• 1:03:31
  anti Semitic. Let me ask you a number. Let me ask your political
• 1:03:36
  question. And I've been trying to square this one in my head for a
• 1:03:38
  long time. Yeah, in the last two or three years, you have
• 1:03:44
  moved decidedly to the right, I think have I Well, we can discuss
• 1:03:49
  this. I think that you have been espousing and promoting a number of Republican
• 1:03:59
  candidates and others. You've been very frustrated with the Biden administration over I think
• 1:04:02
  unions and feeling like they did not respect what you've created. Well, I
• 1:04:11
  mean without any doing nothing to provoke the Biden administration. They held an electric
• 1:04:17
  vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. This
• 1:04:20
  was in the first six months of the administration, and we required, like,
• 1:04:26
  we literally make more electric cars than everyone else combined. Why are we
• 1:04:29
  not allowed? Why are you only letting your for GM, Chrysler and UAW
• 1:04:34
  and you're specifically disallowing us from the ev summit at the White House. We've
• 1:04:40
  done nothing to provoke them. Then, Biden went on to add insult injury
• 1:04:45
  and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car revolution. This was in
• 1:04:48
  the same quarter that Tesla made three hundred thousand electric cars and GM made twenty
• 1:04:54
  six Does that seem fair to you? So tell me this thing. It
• 1:05:00
  doesn't seem fair. And I've asked it repeatedly and you've probably seen it.
• 1:05:05
  Although I had a great relationship with Obama, so this is not a but
• 1:05:11
  then there's for Obama seven hours for six I certain line for six hours to
• 1:05:15
  shake Obama's head. Okay, okay, So let me just ask on a
• 1:05:18
  personal level. I can see it in your face. This this hurt you
• 1:05:23
  personally, and I hurt the company too, and it was an insult to
• 1:05:28
  you. Know, Tesla has one hundred and forty thousand employees, okay,
• 1:05:32
  of the half of them are in the United States. Tells us created more
• 1:05:35
  manufacturing jobs than everyone else combined. Soon, I asked, this thing.
• 1:05:42
  You've devoted at least the last close to twenty years of your life, if
• 1:05:45
  not more, to the climate climate change, trying to get Tesla off the
• 1:05:50
  ground in part to improve climate You talked about that. Yeah, a real
• 1:05:55
  right wing motive. Is repeatedly got far right. If I stand that,
• 1:06:00
  and then it's guys reverse psychology next level. Well no, but so here's
• 1:06:05
  then the question, which is, how do you square the support that you
• 1:06:11
  have given. I believe you were at a fundraiser for Viva Gramaswami, for
• 1:06:16
  example, who says that the climate climate issue is a hoax. Right,
• 1:06:24
  I disagree with him on that. I but I would think that that would
• 1:06:27
  be such a singular issue for you. I would think that the climate issue
• 1:06:30
  is such a singular issue for you that actually it would disqualify almost anybody who
• 1:06:35
  didn't take that issue seriously. Well, I haven't endorsed anyone for president.
• 1:06:41
  I mean I wanted to hear what Vic had to say because I think some
• 1:06:45
  of his things are That's some of the things he says I think are pretty
• 1:06:48
  solid. You know, he is concerned about government over each about government control
• 1:06:54
  of information. I mean, the degree to which old Twitter was basically a
• 1:06:59
  soft puppet of the government was ridiculous. So, you know, it seems
• 1:07:04
  to me that there's a very severe violation of the First Amendment in terms of
• 1:07:10
  how much a government control, how much control the government had of an old
• 1:07:14
  Twitter and it no longer does, so you know, there's a reason for
• 1:07:18
  the First Amendment. The reason for the First Amendment, for the freedom of
• 1:07:23
  speech is because the people that immigrated this country came from a place is where
• 1:07:28
  there was not freedom of speech, and they were like, you know what,
• 1:07:31
  we've got to make sure that that's constitutional because where they came from,
• 1:07:36
  if they said something that would be put in prison, whether it be you
• 1:07:40
  know, something bad, what happened to them. So and freedom of speech
• 1:07:45
  you have to say when is it relevant. It's only relevant when when someone
• 1:07:50
  you don't like can say something you don't like or it has no meaning.
• 1:07:57
  And as soon as you sort of, you know, throw in the towel
• 1:08:02
  and concede to censorship, it is only amount of time before someone censors you.
• 1:08:08
  And that is why we have the First Amendment. Could you see yourself
• 1:08:13
  voting for President Biden if it's if they Biden Trump election, for example,
• 1:08:23
  I think I would not vote for Biden. You'd vote for Trump. I'm
• 1:08:27
  not saying i'd vote for Trump, but I mean this is definitely a difficult
• 1:08:33
  choice. Yeah, you know, we would you would you vote for Nicki
• 1:08:38
  Haley? Nicki Haley, by the way, once all social media names to
• 1:08:44
  be exposed as you know, no, I think that's outrageous. Yeah,
• 1:08:46
  no, I'm not going to vote for some pros and censorship candidate, Like
• 1:08:51
  I said, I mean, I think these you have to you have to,
• 1:08:57
  you know, consider that there is a lot of wisdom and these amendments,
• 1:09:01
  you know, I mean the Constitution and uh, you know a lot
• 1:09:06
  of these a lot of things that we take for granted here in the United
• 1:09:10
  States that don't even exist in Canada. There's not no constitucial rights to freedom
• 1:09:16
  of speech in Canada, so you know so, and there's no Miranda rights
• 1:09:21
  in Canada. People like think like you know, you have the right to
• 1:09:24
  romancean you don't actually in Canada, so you know have Canadian I can say
• 1:09:30
  these things both, but you know so, so like you just got,
• 1:09:35
  the freedom of speech is incredibly important even when people say and like I said,
• 1:09:45
  it's it's actually especially important. In fact, it is only relevant when
• 1:09:49
  people you don't like can say things you don't like. And do you think
• 1:09:54
  right now as the meaningless do you think right now? The Republican candidates or
• 1:09:57
  the Democrats are more inclined. I mean, this is where you go to
• 1:10:00
  I assume to to woke an anti woke in the mind virus issue that you've
• 1:10:05
  talked about, which party do you think is more pro freedom of speech?
• 1:10:12
  Given all the things you've seen, we also see you know, desantus,
• 1:10:15
  uh, you know, preventing people from reading certain things. Maybe you maybe
• 1:10:19
  you think that's that's that's correct. No, Look, we actually are in
• 1:10:27
  an odd situation here where on balance the Democrats appear to be more pro spensor
• 1:10:34
  censorship than the Republicans. And that used to be the opposite. It used
• 1:10:39
  to be, you know, the left position was freedom of speech, you
• 1:10:45
  know, ugly at one point the ACL you even defended the right of someone
• 1:10:51
  to claim that they were Nazi or something like that, you know, so
• 1:10:55
  like they were there really were, Like the left was free of us.
• 1:11:00
  Each is fundamental, and I mean, my perception, perhaps it is inaccurate,
• 1:11:05
  is that the pro censorship is more on the left than the right.
• 1:11:14
  We certainly get more complaints from the left than the right that way. So,
• 1:11:20
  but my aspiration for the X platform is that it is the best source
• 1:11:26
  of truth, well the least inaccurate source of truth. And well, you
• 1:11:30
  know, I don't know if people are believing or not. But I think
• 1:11:32
  honesty is the best policy, and I think that the truth will win over
• 1:11:38
  time and the you know, We've got this great system and it's getting better
• 1:11:43
  called community notes, which is fantastic. I think it correcting falsehoods or adding
• 1:11:49
  context. In fact, we make a point of not removing anything, but
• 1:11:55
  only adding context. Now that context could include that this is completely false and
• 1:11:59
  here's why. And no one is immune to this. I'm not immune to
• 1:12:03
  it. Advertisers are not immune to it. In fact, we've had community
• 1:12:06
  notes, which has caused us some loss in advertising, speaking of lots of
• 1:12:12
  advertising revenue. If a community note, if this false advertising, the community
• 1:12:18
  note will say this is false and here is why. I mean, there's
• 1:12:26
  one specific example that is public knowledge, so I'll mention it, which is
• 1:12:29
  at one point, Uber had this ad which said earned like a boss,
• 1:12:34
  and it was community noted if by a boss you mean twelve dollars and forty
• 1:12:38
  seven cents an hour. This did cause at least a temporary suspension of advertising
• 1:12:45
  from Uber. I got to ask you a question that might make everybody in
• 1:12:47
  the room got uncomfortable or not uncomfortable. It goes to the free speech issue
• 1:12:51
  the New York Times company and the New York Times newspaper. It appeared over
• 1:12:56
  the summer to be throttled. What did the New York Times? Well,
• 1:13:01
  we do require that that everyone has to buy a subscription, and we don't
• 1:13:08
  make exceptions for anyone. And I think, if I want the New York
• 1:13:11
  Times, I have to pay for a subscription, and they don't give me
• 1:13:14
  a free subscription. So I'm not going to give them a free subscription.
• 1:13:17
  But were you But were you throttling the New York Times relative to other news
• 1:13:21
  organizations, relative to everybody else? Was it was? It? Was it
• 1:13:25
  specific to the to the Times, they didn't buy a subscription only costs like
• 1:13:30
  a thousand dollars a month. So if they just do that, then then
• 1:13:33
  they're back in back in the settle. But but but you are saying that
• 1:13:39
  it was throttled. You know what I'm saying. I mean, was there
• 1:13:42
  a conversation that you had with somebody you said, look, you know,
• 1:13:45
  I'm unhappy with the Times. They should either be buying the subscription or I
• 1:13:48
  don't like their content or whatever whatever. Any organization that refuses to buy a
• 1:13:54
  subscription is not going to be recommended. But then what does that say about
• 1:14:00
  free speech? And what we'll say about amplifying voices. It costs a little
• 1:14:06
  bit, right, But that's it. But that's an interesting you know,
• 1:14:13
  it's it's like an South Park when they say, you know, freedom isn't
• 1:14:18
  free. It costs a bucko five or whatever. So but it's pretty cheap.
• 1:14:23
  Okay, it's low cost, low cost freedom. I got a couple
• 1:14:28
  more questions for you. You're heading back to Texas after this to launch the
• 1:14:32
  styber truck. Yeah, it's going to be a big launch. But I
• 1:14:36
  wanted to ask you right now more broadly, just about the car business and
• 1:14:42
  what you see actually happening, and specifically, the government put in place lots
• 1:14:47
  of policies, as you know, to try to encourage more evs. And
• 1:14:51
  one of the things that's happened uniquely is you have now a lot of car
• 1:14:55
  companies saying, actually, this is too ambitious for us, these plans or
• 1:15:00
  too ambitious four thousand dealers. I don't know if you saw just yesterday sent
• 1:15:02
  the letter of the White House saying this has gone too far. You're going
• 1:15:05
  too far. You had this ev it was this is going too fast,
• 1:15:13
  too far, and that there's not enough demand. Underneath all this is his
• 1:15:17
  idea that maybe there's not enough demand for evs, that the American public has
• 1:15:20
  not bought into the I mean they bought it into with your company, but
• 1:15:25
  they haven't bought into it broadly enough. Well, I think if you make
• 1:15:28
  a compelling electric car, people will buy it, no question about it.
• 1:15:31
  I mean electric car sales in China are gigantic. That's my father the biggest
• 1:15:36
  category, right, and I think that would be the case, you know,
• 1:15:42
  I mean it's worth noting. Okay, So the probably the best reputation
• 1:15:45
  of that is that the Tesla model why will be the best selling car of
• 1:15:50
  any kind on Earth this year of any kind, gasoline or otherwise. Is
• 1:15:58
  there another car company that you think doing a good job with these? I
• 1:16:02
  mean, I think the Chinese clock companies are extremely competitive. By far,
• 1:16:05
  our toughest competition is in China. So I mean there's there's a lot of
• 1:16:13
  people who out there think that the top ten clock companies is going to be
• 1:16:17
  Tesla followed by nine Chinese clock companies. I think they might not be wrong.
• 1:16:23
  So China is super good at manufacturing, and the work ethic is incredible.
• 1:16:29
  So you know, like, if we consider different leagues of competitiveness at
• 1:16:35
  Tesla, we consider the Chinese League to be the most competitive. And by
• 1:16:41
  the way, we do very well in China because our China team is the
• 1:16:45
  best China. How worried are you that the unionized unionization effort that just took
• 1:16:48
  place at well, I shouldn't say effort, but the new the new wages
• 1:16:55
  and the like at GM and FORD are that they're coming for you. They
• 1:17:00
  are coming for you. What is that going to mean to you in your
• 1:17:02
  business? Well, I mean, I think it's generally not good to have
• 1:17:08
  an adversarial relationship between people on the line, you know, one group at
• 1:17:15
  the company and another group. In fact, I mean I disagree with the
• 1:17:18
  idea of unions, but perhaps for a reason that is different than people may
• 1:17:23
  expect, which is I just don't like anything which creates kind of a lords
• 1:17:26
  and peasants sort of thing, And I think the unions naturally try to create
• 1:17:31
  negativity in a company and create a sort of lords and peasants situation. There
• 1:17:39
  are many people at Tesla who have gone from working on the line to being
• 1:17:44
  in senior management. There is no lords and peasants. Everyone eats at the
• 1:17:46
  same table, everyone parks in the same talking lot. You know, at
• 1:17:50
  GM there's a special elevator for only for senior executives. We have no such
• 1:17:56
  thing as Tesla. You know the things that I actually know the people on
• 1:18:00
  the line because I worked on the line, and I walked the line,
• 1:18:04
  and I stepped in the factory and I worked beside them, so I'm no
• 1:18:11
  stranger to them. And actually many times where I've said, well, can't
• 1:18:17
  we just hold a union vote, but apparently a company is not allowed to
• 1:18:20
  hold a union vote, so it has to be somehow cull foral but the
• 1:18:25
  unions can't do it. So I said, well, let's just hold a
• 1:18:28
  vote and see what happens. The actual problem is the opposite. It's not
• 1:18:34
  that people are trapped at Tesla building cars. The challenges is how do we
• 1:18:41
  retain great people to do the hard work of building cars when they have like
• 1:18:46
  six other opportunities that they can do that are easier. That's the actual difficulty
• 1:18:51
  is that building cars is hard work and there are much easier jobs. And
• 1:18:57
  I just want to say that I'm incredibly you should have of those who wove
• 1:19:00
  cars and they know it, you know, So there's there's I don't know,
• 1:19:09
  maybe there will be unionized if if if I say, like if Tesla
• 1:19:12
  gets unionized, will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.
• 1:19:17
  But we certainly try hard to, you know, ensure the prosperity of
• 1:19:23
  everyone. We give everyone stock options. We've we've made many people who are
• 1:19:29
  just working the line who didn't even know what stocks were. We've made the
• 1:19:31
  millionaires. So we're going to run on time. Final A couple of quick
• 1:19:36
  quick questions. When do you have the time to tweet or to post?
• 1:19:44
  How? I actually think about it all the time. As I said,
• 1:19:46
  I use the bathroom sometimes. I use it all the time. Being if
• 1:19:51
  if we were to, if we were to open up our phones and look
• 1:19:54
  at the screen, time, what does yours look like? Well about it?
• 1:20:00
  Every three hours I make a trip to the laboratory. That's the only
• 1:20:04
  time you do this. It seems like you're on there a lot. No,
• 1:20:12
  I mean there'll be like brief moments between meetings. I mean, so
• 1:20:20
  obviously I have like seventeen jobs, so you know, and no, no,
• 1:20:27
  I guess technically it's work at this point. It is, But I'm
• 1:20:30
  thinking just in terms of your mind sharing. I mean, by the way,
• 1:20:32
  there's a lot of people who should be working who are on this.
• 1:20:35
  Technically posting on Twitter is or X's is work. It just count as work.
• 1:20:40
  So that's you know, there's that. But no, I mean I
• 1:20:45
  think I'm on well, I guess usually probably I'm on for longer than I
• 1:20:50
  think. I know. But do you think that's five hours a day?
• 1:20:54
  If we have the screen time of like number hours per week, sometimes that's
• 1:20:58
  a scary number. It's probably I don't know, it's a little over an
• 1:21:02
  hour day or something like that. Just an hour a day. If we
• 1:21:08
  really looked at this together. Do you have your phone with you? Yeah,
• 1:21:11
  you want to look? Okay, Okay, here we go. You
• 1:21:18
  ready to screen time? Sometimes there's a scary number of it. I know.
• 1:21:25
  That's why I thought. I just got a new phone. So I
• 1:21:38
  think this is not accurate because it's one minute. I'm pretty sure it's more
• 1:21:43
  than that. Wait, it's over the week. It'll go to the week.
• 1:21:47
  Okay, so it's still wrong. It's it's more than four minutes.
• 1:21:51
  I just got a new phone, so this is not accurate. It literally
• 1:21:55
  four minutes new phone. Tim cooks into the phone, new phone. Who
• 1:21:59
  does Yeah, I should ask, by the way, because I just mentioned
• 1:22:02
  him Cook, do you feel like you're gonna have to have a battle with
• 1:22:04
  him eventually? Is that? Is that the next fight? I mean over
• 1:22:09
  the app store? The idea of making a phone? What do you mean,
• 1:22:12
  like, no, no, no, of the app store? You
• 1:22:15
  make a phone? Sam Alvans apparently thinking about making a phone, Johnny,
• 1:22:17
  I, I mean I don't think there's a real need to make a phone.
• 1:22:24
  I mean, if there's an essential need to make a phone, on
• 1:22:27
  make a phone. But I got a lot of christ to fry, so,
• 1:22:30
  uh, I mean, I do think there's a there's a there's a
• 1:22:33
  fundamental challenge that phonemakers have at this point because you've got basically a black rectangle.
• 1:22:42
  You know, how do you make that better? So do you want
• 1:22:45
  to do that? What does that? What does that look like? In
• 1:22:47
  Elon's head? No, that's literally yeah, good good phrase in the head
• 1:22:54
  A new link. Well, there we go that we need to touch that
• 1:22:58
  before it's over. You know, the best interface would be a neural interface
• 1:23:01
  directly to your brain, so that that would be a neural how far we
• 1:23:05
  do you think from that, and how excited or scary does that seem to
• 1:23:10
  be? And we read these headlines obviously about monkeys who died as you know,
• 1:23:14
  what should we think about that? Yeah? Actually this is the USDA
• 1:23:23
  inspector who came by the Neuralink facilities literally said in her entire career, she
• 1:23:29
  has never seen a better animal care facility. It is we are the nicest
• 1:23:34
  channels that you could possibly be, even to the rats and mice, even
• 1:23:38
  though they did the plague and everything. So it is it is like monkey
• 1:23:45
  paradise. So the thing that gets conflated is that there were some terminal monkeys
• 1:23:54
  where you know, this is long. This is actually several years ago,
• 1:23:57
  where the monkeys were about to die and we're like, okay, we've got
• 1:24:00
  an experimental device. It's so kind of thing which only put in a monkey
• 1:24:03
  that's about to die. And then you know, now the monkey died,
• 1:24:06
  but didn't die because the neural link died because it was you add, a
• 1:24:09
  total case of cancer or something like that. So neurlink has never caused the
• 1:24:16
  death of a monkey. It's best unless they're hiding something from me. Has
• 1:24:21
  never caused death of a monkey. And in fact, we've now had monkeys
• 1:24:26
  with the neuralink implants for two three years and they're doing great so and we've
• 1:24:33
  even replaced it a neurlink twice, and we're getting ready to do the first
• 1:24:40
  implants in hopefully in a few months. The early implementations of neuralink, I
• 1:24:46
  think are unequifectly good. Speaking of the double edged sword, I think these
• 1:24:49
  early implementations are single edged sword because the first implementations will be to enable people
• 1:24:56
  who have lost the brain body connection to to be able to operate a computer
• 1:25:00
  or a phone faster than someone who has hands that work. So you can
• 1:25:04
  imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than someone who had full body functionality.
• 1:25:12
  Now in credible that would be well, that's what this device will do,
• 1:25:15
  and we should have a proof of that in a human hopefully in a few
• 1:25:19
  months. It already works in monkeys and worked quite well with monkeys that can
• 1:25:27
  play video games just using just by thinking. So then the next application,
• 1:25:32
  after the sort of those you know dealing with tetriplegics who quit quaraplegics, is
• 1:25:41
  going to be vision. Vision is the next thing. So it's like if
• 1:25:45
  somebody is like has lost both eyes or the optic nerve has failed. Basically
• 1:25:53
  where there's they have no possibility of having sort of some ocular correction. That
• 1:25:59
  that be the next thing when your link is a direct vision interface, and
• 1:26:03
  in fact then you could be like Jordia LaForge from Star Trek. You could
• 1:26:06
  see it in like any frequency. Actually you can see in radar. If
• 1:26:11
  you want, two final questions and then we're going to do end this conversation,
• 1:26:15
  which I think has taken everybody inside the mind of Elon Musk today,
• 1:26:18
  not as well as in your link. Well, it actually goes to self
• 1:26:27
  driving cars and vision and everything else. And I asked this question if Pete
• 1:26:30
  Buddha Judge Transportation Secretary. It's actually something you retweeted, so I wanted to
• 1:26:34
  ask you the same question. There's a big question about autonomous vehicles and the
• 1:26:42
  safety of them, but there's also a question about when it will be politically
• 1:26:46
  palatable in this country for people to die in cars that are controlled by computers.
• 1:27:00
  Which is to say, we have thirty five forty thousand deaths every year
• 1:27:02
  in this in this country. If you could bring that number down to ten
• 1:27:06
  thousand, five thousand, that might be a great thing. But do we
• 1:27:11
  think that the country will accept the idea that five thousand people that your family
• 1:27:17
  might have perished in a vehicle as a result not of a human making a
• 1:27:24
  mistake, but of a computer. Yes, Well, first of all,
• 1:27:28
  humans are terrible drivers. So if people text and drive, they drink and
• 1:27:31
  drive, they get into arguments, they you know, you know, they
• 1:27:40
  do all sorts of things in cars that they should not do. So it's
• 1:27:46
  actually remarkable that there are not more deaths than there are. What we'll find
• 1:27:51
  with computer driving is I think probably in order of magnitude reduction in deaths.
• 1:27:58
  I think now the US has actually far fewer death per capita than the rest
• 1:28:02
  of the world. If you go worldwide, I think there's something close to
• 1:28:06
  a million deaths per year to accidents. So I think computer driving will probably
• 1:28:16
  drop that by or more. It won't be perfect, but it'll be ten
• 1:28:21
  times. And do you think that the public will will accept that? Do
• 1:28:25
  you think the government will accept that? Well, in large numbers, it
• 1:28:30
  will simply be so obviously true that it really cannot be denied. And what
• 1:28:35
  do you think. I know we've talked about the timeline before and I know
• 1:28:39
  people have criticized you for putting out timelines that may not have come true just
• 1:28:44
  yet, but what do you think it will? And by the way,
• 1:28:46
  do you feel like you ever say yourself, Oh, I shouldn't have said
• 1:28:48
  that, Sure of course, Wait I should have said that. So uh
• 1:28:59
  yeah, I mean I'm optimistic about I mean, I think I'm like naturally
• 1:29:04
  optimistic about time scales. And if I was not naturally optimistic, I wouldn't
• 1:29:08
  be doing the things that I'm doing. I mean, I certain wouldn't have
• 1:29:11
  started a rocket company or like the car company if I didn't have some sort
• 1:29:14
  of pathological optimism. Frankly, so, as you pointed out, many people
• 1:29:20
  said they would fail, and in fact, I actually I agreed with them.
• 1:29:24
  I said, yes, it probably will fail, and they're like,
• 1:29:26
  okay, but I thought spasics and says I had less than a ten percent
• 1:29:30
  chance of success when we started them. So yeah, anyway, But the
• 1:29:38
  self driving things is, I've been optimistic about it. We certainly made a
• 1:29:44
  lot of progress. If anybody has tried the very has been using the sort
• 1:29:48
  of full self driving beta, the progress is, you know, every year
• 1:29:53
  has been substantial. It's really now the point where in most places it'll take
• 1:30:00
  you from one place to another with no inventions, and the data is unequivocal
• 1:30:04
  that that supervised full self driving is somewhere around four times safer, maybe more
• 1:30:14
  than just human driving by by themselves. So I know, I can certainly
• 1:30:24
  see it coming. Actually, really you think it's another five or ten years
• 1:30:27
  and many people no, no, no, definitely not, definitely not.
• 1:30:30
  Do you feel like investors have invested in something that hasn't happened yet? Is
• 1:30:35
  that is that fair to them? And that's the other question that people have
• 1:30:38
  about that. Well, I mean, I think they're all with rare exception,
• 1:30:45
  but it wasn't happening, so they were investing despite thinking. They're very
• 1:30:47
  clear that they don't think it's real, so they're not saying, oh,
• 1:30:51
  we just believe everything. Elan says, Hooklient and Sacre. But the thing
• 1:30:59
  is that, I mean, I would be a fair criticism of me to
• 1:31:01
  say that I am late, but it isn't. But I always love her
• 1:31:04
  in the end and ask you the final question. I took note of this.
• 1:31:09
  It was November eleventh and you took to Twitter and you wrote only two
• 1:31:13
  words. You said, amplify empathy. Right. I was taken back by
• 1:31:18
  that. Given all the things that have been going on in the world,
• 1:31:24
  do you remember what you were thinking? Well, I think it's quite literally,
• 1:31:29
  I understand it. But what was going on? Why why did you
• 1:31:32
  write then? Well, I was encouraging people to amplify empathy. Literally,
• 1:31:40
  I've enduring quite literal. But what was there something that had happened that you
• 1:31:45
  had seen that you said to yourself, I need to I want to say
• 1:31:47
  that. I think I'm starting to some friends and we all agreed that we
• 1:31:53
  should try to amplify empathy. And so I wrote, ampify empathy. If
• 1:32:00
  you wanted an unvarnished look inside the mind of Elon Musk, I think you
• 1:32:02
  just saw it. Look sometimes it's pretty simple, you know. Elon Musk,
• 1:32:09
  thank you very very much for the conversation. Thank you, appreciate it
• 1:32:12
  very very much. Thank you, Thank you so much. Right here,
• 1:32:15
  take that with you for a second. I'm just going to say thank you
• 1:32:21
  to everybody who stuck around for what has been a remarkable day. We are
• 1:32:26
  so appreciative of everybody who has been with us for so many years, coming
• 1:32:30
  back to this every year. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 1:32:32
  I hope you had a great day, and I hope we have an
• 1:32:35
  opportunity to do this again. Elon Musk, everybody, thank you.