Elon’s Predictions For the Future: AI, Free Energy, and More | EP #129

0:00Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for a fun conversation with a very special guest and someone I'm proud to call a friend. Welcome, Elon Musk.

0:17Welcome to Riyadh. It's been quite an incredible 90 days for you, my friend. XAI Colossus came online 122 days. You're about to double in size again. The extraordinary success of the fifth mission of Starship and the booster capture, amazing, the launch of CyberCab, Starlink helping and disaster relief progress with Optimus, the second neural link, human patient, new record users on X. And that's in 90 days. I'm sure I've missed a few things. Welcome. Yeah. I've been playing a sickle for at role in this election? I think I saw you someplace on X dealing with election issues. Let's talk a little bit about AI, which is on the tips of everybody's conversations here.

1:15When we spoke last in March at the abundance summit, your prediction was that AI was increasing at a rate as fast as 100 times per year. and that by 2029 or 2030 we might see AI as capable of 8 billion humans. Are you still seeing that pace? Yeah, it's difficult things to quantify exactly, but I just don't think you'll comfortable saying that it's getting 10 times better per year, which is, you know, thousand times better. So maybe a hundred thousand. Yeah. And it's it's it's it's I think it'll be able to do anything that any human can do.

2:15Possibly within when the next year year or two. and then it's what good, how long is it longer than that? Does it take to be able to do what all humans can do combined? I think not long, probably only, I don't know, three years from that point.

2:40So like 20, 20, 29 is 28, something like that. Yeah. The other conversation we've had and you came out in the same side as Jeffrey Hinton in this was 80 % probability it's going to be awesome. 20 % probability was screwed. Are you still on those odds? Yeah, I mean, I want to say it's most likely going to be great and there's this some chance which could be 10 to 20 % that it goes bad. The chance is not zero that it goes bad. But overall, one point, what we'd say at the coverage 80 % full is one positive way to look at it. Maybe 90%. All right, I like that increasing. Yeah. What keeps you up at night besides running six companies?

3:35Well, about this. I'm looking up really for to participate in talks like this one. I felt very guilty asking you to do this, but thank you for joining us in the news. But it was worried about the future.

3:56Well I think AI is a significant existential threat and something we should be paying close attention to, but it's probably the most significant near term threat. The longer term than that is the global population collapse. Both rates have been collapsing pretty much worldwide. We're headed to a situation where, for example, based on current both rates South Korea would have about a third of its current population have much less. Europe would have about half of its current population have much less. And I should say those numbers are if the birth rate were suddenly to return to 2 .1 per woman, which is a still 80 point, which it's not doing.

4:46So if the But if the current compounding effect continues, you would see really many countries become 5 % of their current size or less within three generations. I know you've been doing your best. We consider that to be a very big problem. And I think for most countries, they should view the birth rate as the single -weeks problem they need to solve. If you don't make new humans, there's no humanity and all the policies in the world don't matter. I know you've been doing your part to maintain the birth rate in the US. Yes. I mean, you've got to walk the talk.

5:37So I do have a lot of kids and I encourage others to have lots of kids. But on the AI, I'm sorry to go negative on this, but what are you doing right now that's most important for countering that 10 % probability of dystopian outcomes? Is there something or is there a regulation that you're promoting? How do you think about, you know, the upside will take care of itself. How do you protect against the downside? side.

6:10Well, my thing with respect to AI safety is that you have to be creating a maximally truth -seeking AI, which may sound obvious, but that's what I'm seeing being produced is not maximally truth -seeking. It tends to be trained to be politically correct and And for a lot of the AIs that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area, they have taken on the philosophy of the people around them, which kind of makes sense. So you have sort of a work nihilistic, in my opinion, philosophy that is being built into these AI's and they're being important to say crazy things in some cases that are very troubling.

7:05So we really want to have a maximum of true seeking AI and I can't emphasize that enough that's incredibly important and obviously building AI that loves humanity and I think I think these, so I'm looking to say that's why I created XAI, which is to have an AI that is maximally true seeking, that aspirationally does love humanity, and we'll see or seek the best interests of humanity going forward. You just tweeted that you're doubling the size of the colossus cluster. What are your thoughts? It's right. We already have with XAI the most powerful training cluster in the world. And we're about to double it.

7:57Energy is a point of conversation here. How concerned are you about providing sufficient energy for the growing hungry clusters globally? Yeah, I think things are currently

8:15They are quite limited. They are, you can get used to point where, they are limited by voltage transformers and installation. And, they will become limited by energy. So, there will be a trans -mount of energy that's needed for, for digital intelligence and for, and for also for electrification of transport. So those two things that are a big deal.

8:47Yeah, we're gonna need a lot of energy. The long term that almost only energy that we will get is for gonna come from the sun. So one way to look at civilization is progress on the cloud shift scale. We're just barely getting to one. Well, we're far from, okay. I think we're probably, we might be close. I'm not, it's not going to be, we're about 1 % on the Cautishave scale one. Cautishave scale one means you've honnest all the power of a planet. I think we, I think we've probably honnest less than 1 % of the power of Earth. Now Cautishave scale two is you've honnest all the power of your sun. The sun is overwhelmingly the largest source of energy in the solar system.

9:40Everything else is maybe amounts to about a trillion of the energy in the solar system compared to the sun. Let's go safely less that less than a trillion of all the energy is non -sun in our solar system. Yeah, we're using one eight thousand of the sun's energy hits your surface the earth. Just that hits the surface of the earth. And the percentage of the sun's energy that hits the surface of the earth is less than controlling the energy that the sun produces. So almost all energy long term will be solar. We call it ground. It rounds up to 100%. So it rounds up to 100%. That's how much of the energy the future will be solar, when you view things from a cottage at standpoint.

10:33You know, Elon, we have a number of national leaders, corporate financial leaders from the Middle East here. What's your advice to decision -bakers here in the room that don't wanna miss the AI transformation? I'll be part of the leadership of that AI transformation.

10:57Do they need to build their own clusters here? Are they partnering? Yeah. Well, I think this probably all countries will have their own AI clusters over time. It's currently very difficult to actually build an AI cluster and have it run. It's not like just pulling a computer out of a box. It's, it, they, they are currently very difficult to run. And you have to say, are you going to be training a frontier model? Because if you're training a frontier model, then you, you need a massive amount of compute and a level of technical skill that is only a few, a few companies present possess.

11:45But over time, I think every country will have AI compute clusters. It's just going to be a normal thing that every country has. So, yeah. So basically infrastructure for every nation, like they have an electrical grid. Yeah, it'll be something like electricity or, you know, just, or, you know, having airline or something like that. It's every country will have AIs or multiple AIs. So, and there will be a lot of robots. There will be a lot of robots. But we have to talk. Way more robots than people. Yeah, let's have that conversation a second because people are concerned about, as you You said dwindling populations, AI and robots have potential to help support the GDP.

12:41Congratulations on Optimus 2 and soon Optimus 3. Your prediction on the number of robots by 2040, humanoid robots to be specific. What order of magnitude? By 2040. Yeah. So I think by 20 if they're like 2040 probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people. So I know you're 10 billion. Yes. And your price point on these humanoid robots. You're you're pretty good on placing some sometimes you're often timing. Yeah, I'm often optimistic on timing, but although, you know, the press will report when I'm late, but not when I'm early. You know, for example, our Shanghai factory, we thought we would take about a year and a half and we did it in 11 months.

13:41are going to battle factory, we thought two years we did it in 18 months. Or the colossus crop cluster. It's just factory two years we did it in 14 months. So I've been early actually many times, it's just not recorded. So when I make a prediction, I try to figure out, I try to say, what is the 50th percentile likely? Which means that half the time I should be wrong. So I'm not saying vacuuming essentially.

14:15So, but I think it's, once you get out of 2040, that's a long time from now. I'm going to 25 years. There'll be at least 10 billion humanoid robots. Price for a frog. Yeah, the price point will be, I think, quite low. Probably 20, 25 thousand dollars for a robot that could do anything.

14:41We will be in a future, assuming we are in the good path of AI, I think we will be in the future of abundance. Obviously you wrote a book called abundance. So I think you would agree that that is probably the outcome.

14:59Basically anyone will have to be able to have any goods and services they want. The actual marginal cost of goods and services will be extremely low in the future. I mean, so. In our last four minutes, let me change the subject to something near and dear to both of our hearts. Congratulations on, on Starship. It was literally awesome. Probably the engineering feat of this decade, if not more. Up after humans. Up after human. We did that with no AI was involved in that whatsoever. So I'm using. I'm glad to say that we all do that entirely with human brains and without AI. I think in the future the AI might look at that and say not bad for a bunch of monkeys.

15:45When are we on Mars? When is this Starship on Mars? I think we'll be able to launch the Starships to Mars in two years. So as an auction, the next of my window, which is in about 26, 27 months, we're just about start, or we're beginning of a my strategy window now on the occur of 26 months. So just over two years, we'll be sending our first uncrewed Starship supplies. And then if those work out well, and we don't increment the crater accounts on my, then then we'll send humans two years out of that. So a challenge to be on the surface of Mars before the end of the decade sounds like a reasonable proclamation for either side of the White House.

16:43Hopefully. Yeah. I feel more optimistic about it under a Trump White House than an entrepreneur White House because the biggest impediment to progress that we're experiencing is regulatory, is overregulation. Gotta keep those wells in terms of work safe. Yeah, exactly. It just takes us, I mean, it takes longer to get the permit to launch, to build a giant rocket. And the bureaucracy in the the US has been growing every year and has particularly grown under the Biden administration. And unless we do something to scale back the over -regulation, I call it sort of America is getting, and a lot of countries are getting slow -strangulation from over -regulation.

17:34And unless something is done to push back on that, it'll eventually become illegal to do almost any large project and we won't be able to get to Mars. Last subject, congrats on the cyber cab roll out. Pretty extraordinary. Kathy Woods predicted it to be, you know, multiple trillions of dollars of potential GDP growth and impact. Yeah. Give us some predictions on when we'll see cyber cab, when we'll be ordering a cyber cab. Yeah, well, Tesla unsupervised full self -driving. We expect to be working in the US next year with the Model 3 and Y. So you don't have to wait for the robot taxi or a StarVacab to, for Tesla to release autonomy.

18:30We're currently expecting to exceed human safety levels in Q2 next year. and then substantially, you'll go beyond that thereafter. And so it really is just a software update to the cars, to be able to do launch our self -driving network. So we expect you unsupervised self -driving and start that in California and Texas, around the middle of next year. And then we have seven million cars in the road, will have under nine, nine and a half million cars by the end of next year. So, and eventually we'll have a fleet of 100 million plus vehicles, and there will all be autonomous. The Saviacab with no steering wheel load pedals, we're expecting to reach volume production in 2026.

19:28So that's certainly interesting, but like I said, the actual launch of a robotic taxi and un -too -wise full self -driving is actually next year. At the event, Tesla autonomy event, we had 50 cars, 30 model -wise that were driverless and 20 of the cybercabs. and so autonomy is here, it's what I'm saying. And yeah, and all cars will drive themselves. This is an over -hander that they'll get to where there are 10 times safe to save for them, human -driven cars, which will save on a past million lives a year, locally, and then optimists, starts limited production at next year, 2025, and then it should be a volume production in 26.

20:28And then we'll grow to, I think ultimately be the biggest product of any kind ever. So, and I kind of agree with our guests in Kathy Wood that autonomy, me robotic taxis makes Tesla a $5 trillion company. The Optimus robot makes Tesla a $25 trillion company. It's not even clear what money means in that industry. We end up in a post -capitalist society at some point. Elon, you make it look like it. We do end up, it does become post -capitalist. I know you agree with this. I'm looking the most likely bright side. We're headed for an age of abundance where anyone can have any goods and services they want.

21:21It would be a case of universal basic income. It'll be a case of universal high income is the most likely outcome. You make it look easy, my friend. Thank you for making some time available. I know it is, Newsy. Let's give it up for Elon Musk, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, my friend.