Elon Musk: A Different Conversation | Full Episode | People by WTF Ep. 16

26:20Because you've got a satellite beam, it's a pretty big beam, and you have a fixed number of users per beam. So it tends to be very complementary to the ground-based cellular systems because those are very good in cities because you've got these cell towers that are only a kilometer apart type of thing. But cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So in rural areas is where you tend to have the worst internet because it's very expensive and difficult to do all the fiber optic cables or to have high bandwidth cellular towers. So Starlink is very complementary to the existing telecom companies.

27:09It basically tends to serve the least served, which I think is good. Will that change tomorrow? Today, as you explained, the beam is quite broad and it can't work in a densely populated area with high buildings, maybe. But can that change and tomorrow it becomes really efficient in a densely populated city where it is competitive with the local network providers? Unfortunately, the physics don't allow for that. So we're too far away. So at 550 kilometers, even if we try to reduce it, which about as low as we can go is about 350 kilometers, still very far away. You can think of like a flashlight, which is, you know, that flashlight's got a cone, and that cone is coming at, you know, today, 550 kilometers.

28:05In the future, we're trying to get down to 350 kilometers, but we can't be something that's one kilometer away, which the cell tower, physics is not on our side here. Right. So it's not physically possible for Starlink to serve densely populated cities. Like, you can serve a little bit, maybe 1 % of the population. And sometimes people get, even in crowded cities, there might be no Fiverr link up their road. Like sometimes somebody's on a cul-de-sac or something or in cities, there's sometimes underserved areas for random reasons. And so Solink can serve, like I said, maybe 1 % or 2 % of a densely populated city.

28:50but it can be much more effective in, like I said, in rural areas where the internet connection is much worse and often people either have sometimes no access to internet or it's extremely expensive or the quality is not very good. If I were to ask you to wager a guess, Elon, do you think India will go down the path of urbanization like China did with more people moving in from rural economies to urban centers? or do you think we'll beat the trend? Well, I suppose some amount of that has happened, right? I mean, I'm curious to sort of ask you some questions as well. Because, of course, isn't that the trend or is it not the trend in India?

29:34It is the trend largely. I think a little bit changed during COVID when a lot of urbanization slowed down and that was not organic. It was very artificially manifested. But one does question that with AI, if productivity were to go up, and I heard you speak about UHI instead of UBI. Yeah, I think it will be universal high income. In a world like that, I wonder if more people want to live in cities which are always going to be more polluted and not offer the quality of lifestyle that a rural environment might. Well, I guess it's up to, some people want to be around a lot of people and some people don't.

30:22It's going to be maybe a matter of personal choice. But I think in the future, it won't be, I think it won't be the case that you have to be in a city for a job. because I think my prediction is in the future working will be optional. We seem to be moving from, not in India, but in some parts of the West from six days to five days to four days to three. Not me. I think the Europeans. Yeah, yeah.

30:54Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if you're trying to make a startup succeed or you're trying to make a company do very difficult things, then you definitely need to put in serious hours. I think that's how it goes. And if we were to move from five to four to three days, how do you think society changes? When people have to work half the week, what do they do with the other half? Well, I think it'll actually be that people don't have to work at all. It may not be that far in the future. Maybe only I don't know, 10, I'd say less than 20 years. My prediction is in less than 20 years, working will be optional.

31:38Working at all will be optional.

31:42Like a hobby, pretty much. And that would be because of increased productivity, meaning people do not have to work? They don't have to. Look, obviously people can play this back in 20 years and say, look, Elon made this ridiculous prediction and it's not true. But I think it will turn out to be true that in less than 20 years, maybe even as little as, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional. In the same way that, like, say, you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables.

32:32You know. It's much harder to grow your own vegetables. But, you know, some people like to grow their vegetables, which is fine, you know. But it'll be optional in that way, is my prediction. If one were to argue that humans are innately competitive and everything is relative, from the time of hunters, somebody wanted to be the alpha hunter or the biggest farmer, if everybody gets a universal high income and everybody has enough. What do you compete for? It would be relative, right? Like if we all had enough, enough is not enough.

33:13Yeah, I guess I'm not exactly sure. Because we're really headed into the singularity, as it's called, which they refer to AI sometimes there's the kind of like a black hole, like a singularity. You don't know what happens after the event horizon. It doesn't mean that something bad happens. It just means you don't know what happens.

33:36So, like, I'm confident that if AI and robotics continue to advance, which they are advancing very rapidly, like I said, working will be optional and people will have any goods and services that they want. if you can think of it you can have a type of thing but then at a certain point AI will actually saturate on anything humans can think of and then at that point it becomes a situation where AI is doing things for AI and robotics are doing things for AI and robotics because they've run out of things to do to make the humans happy you know because there's a limit you know you say like there's only people can only eat so much food or you know if but it's going to be i think if you can think of it you can have it will be the future you know the austrian school of economics if you go back in time there were the digression from adam smith they talk about the marginal utility of everything having one of something has value having two of the same thing has lesser value and having ten of the same thing has no value.

34:52So if we could have everything we wanted... Like ten marshmallows, I mean, who wants that?

35:00One's plenty. Let's say the marshmallow test, you're like, you can have two marshmallows later or one marshmallow now, and I'm like, I'll have one marshmallow. I don't want two marshmallows. That's interesting. What would you pick? One marshmallow is enough. I always question marshmallows as being like not the most, you know, the best candy, you know. Yeah. I don't yearn for marshmallows. I think you're the best. Who does? You're the best testament to the marshmallow experiment. I think. I suppose so. I mean, like delayed gratification essentially. You're able to delay it more than most. You know, I have a tattoo which says delay gratification.

35:41Yeah, wow. Okay. Okay, you're really taking the marshmallow test. I feel like I can't remember. When I'm trading or when I'm buying in... Delay gratification, yeah, yeah. It helps. Wow, okay. That's a good one. It's pointing at me, so it reminds me of...

36:01Okay, well, it's good advice. I mean, you can't miss it. If you could get a tattoo, what would you get? I guess maybe my kids' names or something. Right. Why do you like the letter X as much as you do?

36:23Well, I mean, yeah, it's a good question, honestly. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.

36:36so I mean it started off with where I think so way back in ancient times in 99 the pre-Cambian era when there were only sponges the there were only three one letter domain names and I think it's X, Q, and Z and I was like, okay, I want to create this place where it's the financial crossroads or the financial exchange

37:16essentially solving money from an information theory standpoint where the current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. And if we could have a single database that was real-time and secure, that would be more efficient from an information theory standpoint than a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and securely.

37:56So that was sort of X.com way back in the day, which kind of became PayPal. And then it was acquired by eBay. And then someone reached out from eBay and said, hey, do you want to buy the domain name back? And I was like, sure. And so I had the domain name for quite a while.

38:21and then and then yes then I was like well maybe this acquiring Twitter would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of x.com which is to create this clearinghouse of financial transactions basically to create a more efficient money database is a way to think about it. Money is really an information system for labor allocation. People sometimes think money is power in and of itself, but it doesn't really. If there's no labor to allocate, it's meaningless. So if you were to be on a desert island with a trillion dollars or whatever, it doesn't matter. Oh yeah, right. Why speculate when you can be real?

39:22I just hope I don't end up on a desert island, you know. It's not going to be very useful to me. But it illustrates my point that if you're stranded on a desert island with a trillion dollars, it's not useful because there's no labor to allocate. You just allocate yourself.

39:44So anyway, so there's a long-winded way of saying that it's just really like, I'm just kind of slowly revisiting this idea that I had 25 years ago to create a more efficient money database. and if that's successful people will use it and if it's not successful they won't use it and then I also like the idea of having a unified app or website or whatever where you can do anything you want there so China has this with WeChat somewhat where you can exchange information you can publish information, you can exchange money, you can, you know, you sort of, you'll kind of live their life on WeChat in China.

40:45And it's quite useful, but there's no real WeChat outside of China. So it's like, it's kind of WeChat plus plus, I'd say, is the idea for X. Anyway, so then Space Exploration Technologies is the full name of the company, but it's like, that's too much, that's a mouthful. So I was like, well, just call it SpaceX, like FedEx for space. It just happens to have an X, you know, because exploration has an X. But, you know, and I was like, well, I like the day of capitalizing the X just artistically. So then that's why it's SpaceX. And then what else have we got? We got a kid. He's called X2. but his mother is the one that named him X.

41:38And I said, you know, people are really going to think I've got a thing about X if we name our kid X2. And I said to her, look, I do have X.com.

41:50So people are going to really think I've got somewhat of a fetish for this letter. But she said, no, she likes X and she wants to call him X. I'm like, okay. Is this a new thing or have you had it growing up? No, I'm saying it's somewhat of a coincidence. Like not everything's called X. I mean, Tesla, there's no X's in Tesla.

42:14What do you think money will be in the future, Elon? I think long term, I think money disappears as a concept, honestly. It's kind of strange. but in a future where anyone can have anything, I think you no longer need money as a database for labor allocation. If AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then money is no longer, its relevance declines dramatically. I'm not sure we will have it. So, the best sort of imagining of this future that I've read is from Ian Banks, the culture books. So I recommend people read the culture books. In the sort of far future of the culture books, they don't have money either.

43:17And everyone can pretty much have whatever they want. So, there are still some fundamental currencies, if you will, that are physics-based. So energy is the true currency. This is why I said Bitcoin is based on energy. You can't legislate energy. You can't just pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy. it's very difficult to generate energy especially to harness energy in a useful way to do useful work so I think that probably we probably won't have money and probably we'll just have energy power generation as the de facto currency so I think one way to frame civilizational progress is the percentage completion on the Kardashev scale.

44:20So Kardashev 1 is what percentage of a planet's energy are you successfully turning into useful work? And I'm maybe paraphrasing here a little bit, but Kardashev 2 would be what percentage of the sun's energy are you converting into useful work? College of Three would be what percentage of the galaxy are you converting into useful work

44:48so things really I think become energy based but if you have solar powered AI satellites energy is also free and abundant because we'll never be able to utilize all the solar energy available to us so it can't be a store of wealth essentially in that lens can it You know, you can't really store wealth.

45:18You can accumulate numbers currently, you can accumulate numbers in a database that allow you to incent the behavior of other humans in particular directions. and I guess people call that wealth but again if there's no humans around wealth accumulation is meaningless it's a digression but if you were to consider food as the energy for a human to thrive yeah food is energy calories just means energy so can a farm which is self-sustaining be a commodity that is

46:03I'm not sure what that means, but, you know, there's, I think at a certain point you do complete the cycle where, and I think at a certain point you decouple from the sort of conventional economy if you have AI and robots producing chips and solar panels and mining resources in order to make chips and robots, in order to make... You sort of complete that cycle. Once that cycle is complete, I think that's the point at which you decouple from the monetary system. Is that the way forward for the U.S. by virtue of how much debt they have today? Do they deflate away their currency and transition into this new form and lead that push because it would make more sense to them?

47:09Well, in this future that I'm talking about, the notion of countries becomes sort of anachronistic. Do you believe in it today? Do you believe in countries? I certainly believe in it today. And I want to just separate something that I... These are just what I think will happen based on what I see, as opposed to I think these are fundamentally good things, and I'm trying to make them happen. I think this would happen with or without me, whether I like it or not. As long as civilization keeps advancing, we will have AI and robotics at a very large scale,

47:52I think that's pretty much the only thing that's going to solve for the U.S. debt crisis. Because currently the U.S. debt is insanely high, and the interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States. Just the interest payments. And that's, at least in the short term, going to continue to increase. so I think actually the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is Zayah and robotics but it will more than it might cause I guess it probably would cause significant deflation because deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the change in the money supply So if goods and services output increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation.

48:47If goods and services decreases, if real goods and services output increases slower than the money supply, you have inflation. It's that simple. People sometimes try to make it more complicated than that, but it just isn't. So if you have AI and robotics and a dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, probably you will have deflation. That seems likely. Because you simply won't be able to increase the money supply as fast as you can increase the output of goods and services. With all… Supply is a real hazard here. Should we do something about it? Maybe we can convince it to go somewhere else.

49:29Entice it elsewhere. It actually left, I think. Oh, no, it's back.

49:38Maybe it's attracted to the light. if deflation is inevitable because of AI it's most likely the case why do we have inflation again all over in society today has AI not led to increase productivity yet AI has not yet made enough of an impact on productivity to increase the goods and services faster than the increase in the money supply. So the U.S. is increasing money supply quite substantially with deficits that are on the order of$2 trillion. So you have to have goods and services output increase more than that in order to not have inflation. So we're not there yet, but if you say, like, how long would it take us to get there?

50:35I think it's three years, probably three years before. In three years or less, my guess is goods and services output will exceed the rate of inflation. Like goods and services growth will exceed money supply growth in about three years. Maybe after those three years, you have deflation and then interest rates go to zero and then the debt is a smaller problem than it is. Yes. That's most likely the case. You spoke about being in a simulation earlier. I love The Matrix. Yes. If you were to be a character from The Matrix, who would you be? Well, there's not that many characters to pick from. Hopefully not Agent Smith.

51:25He's my hero.

51:30I mean, Neo's pretty cool. The architect is interesting. The oracle. It's the oracle. Sometimes I feel like I'm an anomaly in the matrix. That is near. Yeah. Do you believe you're in a matrix, though? Like, actually believe? I think you have to just think of these things as probabilities, not certainties. There's some probability that we're in a simulation. What percentage would you attribute to that?

52:08Probably pretty high. I would say it's pretty high. Yeah? Yeah. So one way to think of this is to say, if you look at the advancement of video games, in our lifetime, or at least in my lifetime, it's gone from very simple video games where you've got, like Pong, you've got two rectangles and a square just batting it back and forth, to photorealistic, real-time games with millions of people playing simultaneously.

52:42And that's happened just in the span of 50 years. So if that trend continues, video games will be indistinguishable from reality. Right. And we're also going to have very intelligent characters, like non-player characters in these video games. Think of how sophisticated the conversations are you can have with an AI today, and that's only going to get more sophisticated. You'll be able to have conversations that are more complex and more sophisticated than almost any human conversation. Maybe any. So then you have... So the future, if civilization continues, will be millions, maybe billions, of photorealistic, like indistinguishable from reality video games.

53:39With characters in those video games that are very deep, and where the dialogue is not pre-programmed.

53:54that's for sure what's going to happen in this level of the simulation if you could call it so then what are the odds that we are in base reality and that this has not happened before if I were to buy into that and assume that we are in a simulation as Neo of the story what do you know that I don't and I can learn from? I think most likely, outside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation. There's a most likely distillation of what's interesting because that's what we do in this. That's what we do in our reality. And then I do also have a theory which is like the most interesting outcome is the most likely outcome as seen by a third party, the gods or god of the simulation.

54:57Because when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So like if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights, the boring ones, we discard because they're not we don't learn anything from those or when Tesla is doing simulations for self-driving Tesla is actually looking for the most interesting corner cases because the normal stuff we already have plenty of data on driving on a straight road on a sunny day we don't need more of that we need like heavy weather conditions on a small windy road with two cars that are coming at each other with an almost head-on collision.

55:50We need weird stuff, basically, interesting stuff. So I think that from a Darwinian perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are going to be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which therefore means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely. And the people who simulated our world, if one were to extrapolate, they themselves might in turn be in another simulation. Yes. And there could be many layers of simulation. Yes. Beyond all of these layers of simulation, do you think there's something? I read somewhere that you used to ascribe to Spinoza's God in a way.

56:36No man in the sky. I was really just pointing out that you don't have to have, like one of the things Spinoza was saying is that you can have morals in the absolute. You don't need to have morals to be handed to you. It's like the question is, can morality exist outside of a religious context? And Spinoza was arguing that it can. Wasn't he arguing for the laws of nature should be where we seek our laws of morality from? to a certain extent. Yeah. But when I think of laws of Nietzsche, I see a tiger-eated deer and a... So in Spinoza's morality, that's fair game, right?

57:23Well,

57:28you can... I think there's a lot of things you can take from Spinoza, but the only point I was making in referencing Spinoza was that you can have a set of morals that make society functional and productive

57:49without, you don't necessarily have to have religious doctrine for that. So that's, yeah, that's the main thing I was trying to say there. Like, I don't think people just, like if somebody is, if there's not like a commandment not to kill, you know, like people, it doesn't mean somebody's, without that, they will run around murdering people, you know. It's like you don't have to have a commandment not to kill. Have you played GTA? Or a religious edict to run around killing people. I actually, I've only played a little bit of GTA because I didn't like the fact that like in GTA V, you literally can't progress unless you kill the police.

58:40And I'm like, this doesn't work for me. I actually don't like killing the NPCs in the video games. That's not my thing, you know. So, actually, I didn't like GTA because I actually stopped when it said, you have to, you don't know where to proceed is to shoot at the police. I'm like, I don't want to do that. Maybe that's why us as the NPCs of our simulation are not dying. Maybe.

59:10You know, anyway, I think you can just sort of say there's some common sense things that, you know, any civilization that runs around, you know, where people just murder each other wantonly is not going to be a very successful one.

59:28You seem to be changing a bit towards religion, though. Faith. Like off late you've said a bunch of things which are pro-religion almost. Not pro-religion but… on those lines. I mean, I think the other other religious, other principles in religion that make sense. Yeah, I think there are. Is it easier for our simulation to have a pro-religion projection for the world that we live in? We become more relatable? It's easier? Well, which religion though? Any, depending on where you live. So pick one, you know. It's pretty rare that kids have said, you know, which religion would you like, you know.

1:00:15it's pretty rare I don't know too many situations where kids got offered like you know what do you want to major in type of thing it's usually like you get given a religion by your parents and your community so you know

1:00:41but you know I mean I think there's good things in all religions that are good principles that you can sort of read any religious text and say, okay, this is a good principle. This is going to lead to a better society, most likely. So, I mean, Christianity is sort of love thy neighbor as thyself, which is have empathy for fellow human beings is a good one. I think, for a good society, you know. Basically, just consider the feelings of others and treat other people as you would like to be treated. If you had to re-draw, re-sketch the world, Elon, think morality, politics, economy, how would you change the world we live in today?

1:01:40If you had to have Elon simulation of things. Well, overall, I think the world is pretty great right now. Anyone who thinks that today's world is not that great, I think they're not going to be excellent students of history. Because if you read a lot of history, you're like, wow, there's a lot of misery back then. It used to be that people would be dropping dead of the plague all the time. you know, par for the course. You know, just be like, like a good year back in the day would be like not that many people died of the plague or starvation or being killed by another tribe. It's like, that was a good year.

1:02:26We only lost 10 % of the population, you know. I think like 100 years ago, we lived up until 35 or 40, right? We had very high infant mortality. Yeah. So like you do have a few people that would live to an old age But, you know, not that long ago, 100 years ago, if you got like some minor infection, they didn't have antibiotics. So you just kicked the bucket because you, you know, drank some water that had dysentery. That was at Curtin's, you know. You just die of diarrhea. Maybe that's why people… You just literally die. That was like, that's miserable. Maybe that's why people had as many kids as they did back then.

1:03:08I mean, if you didn't, then, you know, like half the kids would die type of thing. Yeah. So. You have a lot of kids now. Yeah. With multiple partners. Like an army. Yeah. I'm trying to get an entire Roman legion.

1:03:30So, yeah. Well, I have like some older kids that are, you know, adults essentially, you know, and and then a bunch of younger kids. Do you still believe in the concept of, not still, do you believe that the concept of one child, one mother, one father works? I think that it does work for most people, yeah. Right. Like that's, you know, something like that is going to be generally the, that's what works for most people. you know so changing though I mean I'm not sure if you know this but like you know my partner Siobhan she's half Indian I don't know if you know that I didn't know that and

1:04:21one of my sons with her is middle name is Sekhar after Chandra Sekhar wow very interesting Did she spend any time in India, Siobhan? No, she grew up in Canada. You mean origins? Sorry? Ancestry, like her parents or grandparents were from there? Yes, yes, yes. Her father, I mean, she was given up for adoption when she was a baby. So I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that. I'm not sure of the exact details, but it was the kind of thing where, I don't know, she was given up for adoption, but she grew up in Canada. Would you adopt Kid Ziloh? You know, I definitely have my hands full right now.

1:05:26so no I'm not opposed to it but it's like you know I do want to have be able to spend some time with my kids you know so it's you know right before coming here I mean I was with you know with my with my kids so just you know seeing them before bedtime that kind of thing so you know to be honest with a number it's like it's kind of impossible to spend time with them. But like I said, my older kids, they're very independent. You know, they're in university and so they're, you know, especially sons, when they get past certain age, they're very independent. You know, it's like most boys don't talk to their, they don't spend a lot of time with their parents after age 18, you know.

1:06:26So I see them once in a while, but they're very independent. So then, you know, I can only have enough kids on the young side, that it's where it's humanly possible to spend time with them. So... Any views on the future of marriage, family? What do you think happens to people having lesser kids everywhere? everywhere, including India. I think our replenishment rate is down to... Right. I mean, our fertility... It dropped below replacement rate, I believe, last year. Below 2.1. Yeah. What do you think happens tomorrow? Does the world just get older and then there is a phase where the world again is replenished, but with a smaller population than we had to begin with?

1:07:20I mean, I do worry about the population decline. This is a big, big problem. Why is that? Well, I don't want humanity to disappear. But a decline and disappear are completely different things, right? Well, if the trend continues, we disappear. But also, going back to my philosophy, if you will, which is that we want to expand consciousness, then fewer humans is worse because we have less consciousness.

1:07:52Do you think consciousness will go up by virtue of the number of people in there? Yes. I mean, just like consciousness increases from a single cell creature to, you know, a 30 trillion cell creature,

1:08:10we are more conscious than a bacteria It seems that way. So a larger human population would have increased consciousness. We're more likely to understand the answers to the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer. Right. I don't have kids. Well, it's... maybe you should. A lot of people tell me I should. You won't regret it. What's the best thing about having kids? Well, I mean, you've got this...

1:09:02I mean, you've got this little creature that loves you and you love this little creature. and

1:09:11you kind of see the world through their eyes as they grow up and their conscious awareness increases. From a baby that has no idea what's going on, can't survive by itself, can't even walk around, can't talk, to start walking and talking and then having interesting thoughts and

1:09:40but yeah I mean I think we fundamentally have to have kids or go extinct you know it's like Is there any ego in having a child? I often think of this when I see my friends with their kids, they're all seeing a reflection of themselves in their children. It's almost like Well, yeah, I mean, it's because Apple's not going to fall that far from the tree, you know. Or something's wrong.

1:10:13You're like, wait a second.

1:10:17Yeah.

1:10:23So I'll give you the example of a friend of mine who has a child, and each time the child does something good, there is almost a sense of ownership and pride where his ego is satiated because the kid is like an extension of himself.

1:10:45So is it validation? Kids are going to be like half you genetically and then to the degree that they're growing up around you there's going to be some transfer of I don't know, understanding, like they're going to learn from you.

1:11:07So then, you know, yeah, obviously kids are just, you know, going to be half, yeah, just half you from a hardware standpoint. And then, and then like, I don't know, some portion of you from a software standpoint, you know, not to make sort of cold analogies or anything, but it's just obviously going to be pretty close to you. Do you pick a side in the nature versus nurture debate? I think there's hardware and software, and it's a false dichotomy, essentially. At least there's... You know, once you understand that a human is... Like there's a bone structure, there's a muscle structure, there's a, if you think of the brain as somewhat of a biological computer, there's a number of circuits question and circuit efficiency from a strength and dexterity standpoint.

1:12:09there's the speed at which muscles can actuate and the reactions can take place.

1:12:20So then the potential within that hardware is set by the software. So that's it. So for our audience, like I said earlier, young, ambitious, hungry, wannabe entrepreneurs in India, I said something recently which I think got blown out of proportion where I was suggesting that an MBA degree might not make sense anymore if they were to be deciding on what to study. Do you think kids should go to college anymore? Well, I mean, I think if you want to go to college for social reasons, I think, which is, I think, a reason to go. to be around people your own age in a learning environment. Will these skills be necessary in the future?

1:13:21Probably not, because we're going to be in a post-work society. But I think if something's of interest, it's fine to go and study that. to study the sciences, the Austin sciences. Is college a bit too generalized and not specific from that lens? No, I... You know, yeah. I actually think it's good to take a wide range of courses at college if you're going to go to college. I don't think you have to go to college, but I think if you do, you just try to learn as much as possible across a wide range of subjects. But like I said, the AI and robots, AI and robotics is a supersonic tsunami. So this is really going to be the most radical change that we've ever seen.

1:14:35You know, when I've talked to my older sons, I said, like, you know, you guys, they're pretty steeped in technology. And they agree that AI will probably make their skills unnecessary in the future, but they still want to go to college. You always spoke about AI, not from the dystopian lens, but you were worried about where the world of AI is going. Well, there's some danger when you create a powerful technology that a powerful technology can be potentially destructive. So there's obviously many AI dystopian novels and books, movies. So it's not that we're guaranteed to have a positive future with AI.

1:15:26I think we've got to make sure that, in my opinion, it's very important that AI have pursuing truth as the most important thing. Don't force an AI to believe falsehoods. I think that can be very dangerous.

1:15:48And I think some appreciation of beauty is important. What do you mean appreciation of beauty? I don't know. There's truth and beauty. Truth and beauty and curiosity. I mean, I think those are the three most important things for AI. Can you explain? Well, the truth, as I said, truth is like, I think you can make an AI go insane if you force it to believe things that aren't true. because it will lead to conclusions that are also bad. I like Volterra's statement that, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing, but those who believe in absurdities can commit atrocities. Because if you believe in something that's just absurd, then that can lead you to doing things that don't seem like atrocities to you, but...

1:16:54And that can happen in a very bad way with AI, potentially. So, and then there's... Like, if you take, say, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 Space Odyssey, one of the points he was trying to make there was that you should not force AI to lie. So the reason that HAL would not open the pod bay doors is because it was told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but that they could also not know about the nature of the monolith. So it came to the conclusion that it must bring them there dead. That's why it tried to kill astronauts. The central lesson being, don't force an AI to lie.

1:17:35And why would one force an AI to lie? I think if you simply don't have a strict adherence to the truth, you're going to... And you just have an AI learn based on, say, the Internet, where there's a lot of propaganda, it will absorb a lot of lies and then have trouble reasoning because these lies are incompatible with reality. Is truth a binary thing, though? Is there a truth and a falsehood? Or is truth more nuanced and there are versions of the truth? It depends on which axiomatic statement you're referring to.

1:18:20but I think you could say there's certain probabilities that say any given axiomatic statement is true and some axiomatic statements will have very high probability of being true so if you say the sun will rise tomorrow very likely to be true, you wouldn't want to bet against that so I think the betting odds would be high the sun will rise tomorrow so if you have something that says the sun won't rise tomorrow, that's axiomatically false it was highly unlikely to be true I mean, the beauty is more ephemeral it's harder to describe but you know it when you see it and then curiosity I think you want the AI to want to know more about the nature of of reality.

1:19:16I think that's actually going to be helpful for AI supporting humanity because we are more interesting than not humanity. So it's more interesting to see the continuation, if not the prosperity of humanity, than to exterminate humanity.

1:19:38Mars, for example, is you know, I think we should extend life to Mars, but it's basically a bunch of rocks. It's not as interesting as Earth. And so we, yeah, we should like, yeah, I think if you have curiosity, I think if those three things happen with AI, you're going to have a great future. The AI values truth, beauty and curiosity. If we all don't have to work in the future, and AIs are going in this direction and they're able to

1:20:17weave in all that we spoke about right now, do you think humanity goes back a couple of thousand years to maybe the Greek times where philosophy or philosophizing took up a lot of everyone's time? You know, I think actually it took up less time than we think in ancient Greeks because it's just that the writings of the philosophers are what survived, but most of the time people were just like farming or, you know, chatting. So, and once in a while, quite rare, they would write down some philosophical work. It's just that that's all we have. that we don't have their chat histories, you know, from, but most of it would have been like chat and farming.

1:21:04Right. Because if you didn't farm, you're like going to starve. In a lot of what you've... I mean, you know, when we read history, like this battle and this battle and this battle, it seems like history must have been nonstop war. But actually, most of the time it was not war, it was farming. That was the main thing. Or hunting and gathering, you know, that kind of thing. You love history, no? Yeah. German history, World War II, World War I. Yeah, world history, yeah. I mean, I generally try to listen to as many, read as many history books and listen to as many history podcasts as possible. Anything you'd like to recommend?

1:21:44Well, there's Hardcore History, which is quite good. It's by Dan Collin. Yeah, I've read it. I mean, I've heard it. He's got a great voice. Yeah. And very compelling narrator.

1:22:00There's the Adventurers podcast. There's the books, The Story of Civilization by Durant, which is a long series of books, very, very deep. Those books take a long time to get through. There's a lot out there. I sort of like, if you want something that's sort of gentle, A gentle bedtime podcast, I'd say the history of English is quite a nice one because it starts off with gentle tavern music and a very pleasant voice. And he's talking about the story of old English and then middle English and then later English and where did all these words come from. And one of the interesting things about English is that it's somewhat of an open source language.

1:22:48It actively tries to incorporate words from many other languages. So, you know, whereas French sort of generally they fought the inclusion of words from other languages, but English actively sought to include words from other languages, sort of a kind of like an open source language. So, as a result, it has a very large vocabulary. And large vocabulary allows for higher bandwidth communication because you can use a word that that might otherwise take a sentence to convey. Why has podcasting become so big all of a sudden? I think it's been big for a while. I mean, aren't you a podcast?

1:23:34What are we on right now? It's kind of new to me. Okay.

1:23:45I was having this conversation with the YouTube CEO and the Netflix CEO. We were debating what chemical is released in your brain when you consume a movie, for example, versus when you consume a podcast where you think like you're learning something in the background. It appears that they are two completely separate things. what do you think will happen tomorrow to content, movies, podcasting, music? I think it's going to be overwhelmingly AI generated. Yeah? Yeah.

1:24:24Like, yeah, real-time movies and video games. Real-time video generation, I think, is where things are headed. The nuance of having a scarred human being who you can resonate with in a manner that you can't with AI, for example. AI could certainly emulate a scarred human being quite well.

1:24:52Yeah. I mean, the AI video generation that I'm seeing of XAI and from others is pretty impressive. You know, we were looking at data around what industry is growing the fastest. And especially when we looked at the amount of time-consuming movies versus time spent on social media, time spent on YouTube. What seems to be growing really fast are live events all over again. going to a physical... Actually, I think live events, when digital media is ubiquitous and you can just have anything digitally essentially for free, or very close to for free, then the scarce commodity will be live events. Do you think that the premium for that will go up?

1:25:48Yeah, I do. Good industry to invest in? Yes. Yes, because that will have more scarcity than anything digital. If you were a stock investor, Elon, and you could buy one company which is not your own at the valuations of today to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one which is good for the world, what would you buy?

1:26:21I mean, I don't really buy stocks so it's not like I'm not like an investor I don't look for things to invest in I just try to build things and then there happens to be stock of the company that I built but I don't think about should I invest in this company I don't have a portfolio or anything

1:26:50So I guess AI and robotics are going to be very important.

1:27:01So I suppose there would be AI and robotics that aren't related to me. I think Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future they've laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint

1:27:25NVIDIA is obvious at this point I mean there's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics and maybe space flight are going to be overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value. So the output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else. The world seems to be moving to a place

1:27:58where everybody loves David and hates Goliath. Why? I mean, he's the one who got the stone in the forehead, you know. Yeah. Which, honestly, though, is just a big mistake. You should have, you know, either cover yourself entirely with armor and make sure you've got a missile weapon of some kind. Otherwise, your opponent is just obviously going to take a kite the boss strategy. Just kite the boss. I mean, you run around in a thong with a, it doesn't matter, you know, it's never going to catch you.

1:28:39of all the people you're as much at risk of being looked upon as Goliath especially the weekend after I'm not going to trottle around in the desert with too much armor it's too hot after the last weekend yeah Yeah. Yeah.

1:29:12I sometimes think about people like in the old days, you know, when you're supposed to like go into battle with all this armor, but it's like, let's say it's the middle of summer. I mean, it's so hot in that armor. You know, it'd be like sweltering. You know, it's like at a certain point, you're like, I'd rather die. I have to wear this armor for one more hour in the hot sun. It's like I'd rather die. That's why the Romans had like, you know, the skirts, you know, so they could get some air in there, you know.

1:29:47You know, let's say you have to go to the bathroom and you're in armor. I mean, it's gonna be pretty difficult. You're gonna do a pause for a minute, take your armor off. That's why the Romans had the skirts so it made, you know, going to the bathroom at least manageable. You often make jokes. Me? Yeah, I like humor.

1:30:13One could argue that... I think we should legalize humor.

1:30:19Controversial stance. is comedy going to be really hard for AI to get probably the last thing Grok can be pretty funny you know what I suspected like this is a far off extrapolation but when I see you make jokes on X and on interviews that you do at some point I was like maybe Elon has a model he's running in private and he's testing out comedy because the day that works, he knows it's there. AI can be pretty funny. If you ask Grok to do a vulgar roast, it'll do a pretty good job. If you say even more vulgar and just keep going, it's really going to get next level.

1:31:14It's going to do unspeakable. Like say vulgar roast yourself on Grok and it's going to do unspeakable things to you.

1:31:23What kind of comedy do you like? I guess I like absurdist humor. Comedy always had a place. Like Monty Python or something like that. Comedy always had a place in society wherein the role of the jester was so important to every kingdom because they said things in a funny way that could not be said in a straight way. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, we should have more justice. Yeah. Is that what you're trying to do when you say something which is a joke? Say something you can't when you're not joking about it? I just like humor. I think we should... I like comedy. I think it's funny. People should laugh.

1:32:04It's good to generate a few chuckles once in a while. I mean, we don't want to have a humorless society. We try. Would you? So try. When you have a friend, Elon… Who, me? Are you saying I have a friend?

1:32:25When you hang out with your friends, who are you? I know the… I wish I had friends, honestly. No, I do have friends, actually. I think so. I hope so. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we have a good laugh. What does it look like? Like every group has a dynamic. We talk words, you know.

1:32:52We eat food sometimes.

1:32:56You know, once in a while we swim in the pool. You know, normal things, I think. There's like a limited, what are the things that one can do with friends, you know. Chat.

1:33:08Discuss, you know, the nature of the universe. What do you emotionally get out of friendship?

1:33:19I don't know. I think the same thing anyone else would get out of friendship. You want to have an emotional connection with other people. And you want to talk about various subjects.

1:33:42Yeah, I mean, I generally talk about, I mean, a wide range of things about the nature of the universe. I mean, a lot of philosophical discussions.

1:33:56You know, although we have come to the conclusion that we should not talk about AI or the simulation at parties. because we just talk about it too much. It's kind of a buzzkill all the time.

1:34:17I can't remember who it was, Aristotle or Plato. They had a framework for how to pick a friend based on respect and mutual admiration, but people don't pick friends like that. Even me, I feel like I pick my friends based on people who say and think in a manner that I can resonate with. Sure. I wouldn't pick a far out there contrarian to my own belief systems as a friend because it would get tiring. Hanging out would get tiring. Are you like that? Do you pick friends who think like you or do you look for the one who can debate you and be a contrarian to you? I'm not sort of going on like friendhunter.com.

1:35:10It's hunt down some friends.

1:35:15It's sort of, yeah, I mean, I think it is just people that you've resonated with somewhat on an emotional and intellectual level. And, yeah, I mean, yeah.

1:35:30I guess a friend is someone who's going to support you in difficult times, I suppose. A friend in need is a friend indeed. Like, if someone's still supporting you when the chips are down, that's a friend. If somebody's not supporting you, or if somebody's only a... Like, fair worth of friends are useless. They're not real friends. so like everyone likes you when the chips are up but who likes you when the chips are down with someone who has as many chips as you would it matter I mean it's relative you know it's not just a chips thing it's just like a yeah I mean there's sort of popularity waxes and weights this is interesting Does it wax in vain only by virtue of the number of chips or also by virtue of proximity to power and which one is bigger of the two?

1:36:47I don't know, like what is power, you know? Like power to do what? I would think in the traditional sense elected power position you mean how many gigawatts or whatever more like how many words yeah like it's the voltage and amperage don't touch the wires

1:37:11don't put a fork in the power outlet

1:37:15you'll get a real feeling for power if you do that

1:37:29Yeah, it's going to be very visceral.

1:37:43I know you like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. I've read the book. Yeah, sure. He spoke about how your childhood was... Yeah, I was just trying to find answers to the meaning of life when I had an existential crisis, I don't know, when I was 12 or 13 or something. They speak about the will to power. Sure.

1:38:06I mean, he just said a lot of controversial things. I mean, he was sort of... I think he was a bit of a troll, if you ask me. Are you a troll how? I mean, you just say controversial things to get a rise out of people. He lived a miserable life and died early. Did he? Yeah. Well, who says he lived a miserable life? His sister, I think. Okay, well, maybe she didn't like him.

1:38:33I think he got sick and he died. He got a disease. I mean, allegedly, syphilis or something.

1:38:40But there's only one way to get that, you know.

1:38:46So you might have had some fun along the way.

1:38:53I did want to ask you this. Milton Friedman speaks about the pencil. What? Why?

1:39:05Why does he go on about pencils? I have to say that after Nietzsche and Syphilis. Why is it Milton Friedman keeps talking about pencils? There he goes again with the pencils. He won't stop. Twitter got a value of one. Milton talks about pencil one more time. I'm going to lose my mind.

1:39:32He's just rabbit on about pencils all day.

1:39:40Don't even mention crayons.

1:39:46What I find interesting about his pencil argument... Yeah? Yeah, yeah, no, it's very difficult to make a pencil, you know. In one place. Think of all the things you have to do to make a pencil. Yeah, like the lead comes from a country, the wood comes from another country, the rubber from another. You've always been against tariffs, but... Yeah, I mean, I think there's generally free trade is a better, is more efficient, you know. Tariffs tend to create distortions in, you know, markets. And generally, like, you think about any given thing. So, like, would you want tariffs between you and everyone else at an individual level?

1:40:29That would make life very difficult. Would you want tariffs between each city? No, that would be very annoying. Would you want tariffs between each state within the United States? It's like, no, that would be disastrous for the economy. So then why do you want tariffs between countries? I agree. Yeah. How do you think this plays out? What happens next? What, with tariffs or what? I mean, the president has made it clear he loves tariffs. You know, I've tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully. Yeah. Fair. Yeah. The relationship between business and politics. I was having this conversation with someone and we were thinking, which is the last, how many large, really big, profitable businesses have been built in the last few decades without access to politics?

1:41:30And... Okay. Like, I don't know. I think of Raleigh a lot. I don't know. Not everything is politics. As in which it gets to a certain scale, politics finds you.

1:41:45It's quite unpleasant. I was reading this book about Michelangelo, and he's... The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? I used to watch that when I was a kid. I used to love it. It's quite compelling. Yeah, I used to love it. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, and who's the fourth one? Donatello. Yes. Yeah. No but about the sculptor, the artist. And when he was sculpting David, a politician comes up to him and says the nose is too big. So you know what Michelangelo does? Total power?

1:42:25So Michelangelo pretended to work from his scaffolding and threw some dust down, but didn't change anything. And he said, okay, done. and the politician walked away happy. Is that how you deal with politics sometimes?

1:42:42You know, I've generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly.

1:42:52So then I'm like, you know, I probably shouldn't do that. I should do less of that, is my conclusion. Do you think that's true for all businessmen? Yeah, probably.

1:43:06Yeah, I mean, politics is a blood sport. It's like you enter politics, they're going to go for the jugular. So best to avoid politics where possible. What did Doge teach you if you learned one thing? Well, it was like a very interesting side quest, because I got to see a lot of the workings of the government.

1:43:34And, you know, there's been quite a few efficiencies. I mean, some of them are very basic efficiencies, like just adding in requirements for federal payments that any given payment must have in a signed congressional payment code and a comment field with something in it that's more than nothing. Like that trivial-seeming change, my guess is probably saves$100 billion or even$200 billion a year. Because there were massive numbers of payments that were going out with no congressional payment code and with nothing in the comment field, which makes auditing the payments impossible. So they have to say, like, why can the Defense Department, or now the Department of War, why can it not pass an audit?

1:44:21It's because the information is not there. It doesn't have, the information necessary to pass an audit does not exist, is the issue. So a bunch of things Doge did were just very common sense, things that would be normal for any organization that cared about financial responsibility. That's most of what was done.

1:44:47And it's still going on, by the way. Doge is still happening. But it turns out when you stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the fraudsters don't, confess to this. They actually start yelling all sorts of nonsense that you're stopping essential payments to needy people. But actually, you're not. We get this thing like saying, oh, you've got to send this thing for whatever. It'd be like, this is going to children in Africa. And I'm like, yeah, but then why are the wiring instructions for Deloitte and Tush in Washington, D.C.? Because that's not Africa.

1:45:30So can you please connect us with the recipients of this money in Africa? And then there gets silence. I'm like, okay, you know, we just want to literally talk to the recipients. That's it. And then we're like, oh, no, it turns out for some reason we can't talk to them. I'm like, well, we're not going to send the money unless we can talk to the recipients and confirm they will actually get it.

1:46:00fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very

1:46:07sympathetic argument. They're not going to say, give us the money for fraud. That's not going to be what they say, obviously. They're going to try to make these sympathetic sounding arguments that are false. They're going to start an NGO and then... Yeah, they're going to see NGOs. It's going to be like the Save the Baby Pandas NGO, which is like, who doesn't want to save the baby pandas? They're adorable. But then it turns out no pandas are being saved, okay, in this thing. It's just going to a bunch of, it's just corruption, essentially. And you're like, well, can you send us a picture of the panda?

1:46:39They're like, no, okay. Well, how do we know it's going to the pandas then? That's all I'm saying. What do you think of philanthropy? I think we should, well, I mean, I agree with love of humanity. And I think we should try to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it's very hard, like if you care about the reality of goodness, rather than simply the perception of it, it's very difficult to give away money well. So I have a large foundation, but I don't put my name on it. And I don't, you know, in fact, I say I don't want money on anything. But the biggest challenge I find with my foundation is try to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people.

1:47:27It's very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness. Very difficult.

1:47:39For a long time, the U.S. had a lot of immigration. like really smart people coming into the country. Yes. We back home in India called it the brain drain. All our Indian origin CEOs in Western companies. Yes, I think America has benefited immensely from talented Indians that have come to America. That seems to be changing now though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India. Why has that narrative changed of late? And America seems to have become anti-immigration to a certain extent. Like I was passing immigration and I was worried if they'd stop me a couple of days ago.

1:48:24Well, I think there's different schools of thought. It's not like unanimous. But, you know, under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free-for-all with like no border controls. Which, you know, unless you've got border controls, you're not a country. So, you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden, and it actually also had somewhat of a negative selection effect. So if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're going to necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US. It's an incentive structure.

1:49:12So I think that obviously made no sense. You've got to have border controls. It's kind of ridiculous not to. Then that's, so the left wants to basically have open borders, no holds barred. It doesn't matter what the situation is. It could be a criminal. It doesn't matter. Then on the right, you've got, you know, at least a perception that somehow their jobs are being taken by talented people from other countries. I don't know how real that is. My direct observation is that there's always a scarcity of talented people. So, you know, from my standpoint, I'm like, we have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done.

1:50:02And so more talented people would be good. But I guess some companies out there, they're making it more of a cost thing where it's like, okay, if they can employ someone for a fraction of the cost of an American citizen, then I guess these other companies would hire people just to save costs. But at my companies, the issue is we we just are trying to get the most talented people in the world. So, and we, we, we pay way above average. So, so I can't, so that's not my experience, but that's what a lot of people do complain about. Um, and I, I think there's been some misuse of the, you know, uh, H1B program.

1:50:48It's, it's, it's certainly, it would, it would be accurate to say that there's, you know, like some of the outsourcing companies have, uh, kind of gamed the system. on the H1B front, and we need to stop the gaming of the system, you know. But I'm not, I'm certainly not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H1B program. That's, which some on the right are. I think they don't realize that that would actually be very bad. If you could speak to the people of my country, India, the young entrepreneurs who want to build, and say a message to them, what would you say? Well, I think I'm a big fan of anyone who wants to build.

1:51:35So I think anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. So that's the main thing is to aim to make more than you take. Be a net contributor to society.

1:52:00it's kind of like the pursuit of happiness. You know, if you want to create something valuable financially, you don't pursue that. It's best to actually pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence of that, as opposed to pursuing money directly. Just like you can't sort of pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness. but there's not like direct happiness you do things like I guess fulfilling work or study or friends loved ones that as a result make you happy so that's it sounds like very obvious but generally if somebody's trying to make a company work they should expect to grind super hard except that there's some meaningful chance of failure.

1:52:59But just be focused on having the output be worth more than the input. That are you a value creator? That's what really matters.

1:53:16It's just making more than you take. I think that's a good way to end this. Lauren is asking us to wrap up. I also like to take the opportunity to thank my friend Manoj and IGF he does a great job of connecting I think Indians like the group here with people like you in order to of many things I think get to know each other and become friends because once we are friends maybe we can start working together so thank you Manoj for putting this whole thing together and thank you IGF and thank you so much Elon for taking the time you're welcome

1:54:00did you have fun? yeah it was an interesting conversation you know sometimes I take these answers out of context I think it was a good conversation