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I've been sort of somewhat conflicted about AI.
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I don't want to hasten our doom if because there's always some chance that AI could could be negative.
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But then, you know, when I've tried to take actions in this regard, it seems [music] to have only accelerated AI because reality is not just an interestingness max- maximizer, but also an irony maximizer.
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[music] >> And so, by starting OpenAI, you ended up maximizing by leading to Anthropic.
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>> OpenAI ended up accelerating AI, and then Anthropic, which is really a you know, a splinter [music] group from OpenAI, um is accelerating it even more.
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>> I'm Walter Isaacson, [music] and this is The Builders.
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It's a series of conversations with the most consequential minds shaping our future.
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Now, I want to start with Elon Musk.
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Elon has lived a lot of lives since I last wrote about him.
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He went into government with Doge.
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He became a trillionaire with the SpaceX [music] IPO.
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He bought Cursor AI, a company that turns >> [music] >> individual coders into entire engineering teams.
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And he's shifting his solar energy strategy from panels on Earth to harnessing it from systems in space.
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He's a relentless builder with incredible power, and his inventions and companies are destined to reverberate across humanity.
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So, let's ask him about the future he believes that he's building. Elon Musk. >> Hey Walter.
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>> Welcome to The Builders. >> Uh thanks.
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>> I've uh watched you, I think, uh be maybe mercurial or waver in how sanguine you are about artificial intelligence.
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Sometimes you feel it's an existential threat, right?
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Now you seem to be going with the flow.
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Tell me how you're feeling about it.
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>> Well, I I do think it's a at least some percentage chance of it being an existential threat.
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So, but I There's nothing I can do to stop it.
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So, I basically came to conclusion I've got two choices, which is either be a participant or a spectator.
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And I guess being a participant is more interesting than being a spectator.
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And maybe I can shape it hopefully in a good direction, maybe.
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>> And if you were to shape it, how?
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Make it maximally truth-seeking?
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>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That's certainly an important foundation. >> And make it curious?
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>> Yeah, curious, truth-seeking.
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I think I think these are important elements of safety.
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You know, whereas if you you know, try to force an an AI to believe two things that are cannot mutually be true.
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Like they can't they can't both be true, and you but you tell AI A is true, and B is true, even though A and B contradict each other.
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And if that happens at a foundational level, you can make the AI insane.
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In fact, I think that was at least part of the lesson that Odyssey Clark was trying to convey in 2001 Space Odyssey.
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You know, the ship AI was told to to to take the astronauts to the monolith, but also that they could not know about the monolith. It was secret.
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And so, it came to the conclusion that it must take them there dead.
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And thus >> [laughter] >> So, it basically The force I think I think part of what Odyssey Clark was trying to say is like, don't force don't force an AI to lie.
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>> And if you make it maximally truth-seeking and curious, like you say, I I don't quite get it.
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Why does that make it safer?
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>> Well, if you force an AI to believe two mutually consistent things, you can you can make it go insane.
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Um And and an insane AI I think is not a safe one.
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Then, curious I think is important because um a curious AI, I think, is going to want to foster humanity to see how we turn out.
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So, like, what happens to uh to a humanity that is uh that that that prospers and is becomes multi-planetary.
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I think a curious AI will want to foster humanity.
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You know, a future where there are humans on multiple planets is more interesting than one where where there are not any humans on the planets.
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>> So, the most interesting outcome is the most likely? >> Yes.
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Well, generally, I think that's true for a different reason, which is that if simulation theory is correct, then any simulations that are boring will be truncated.
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>> And is simulation theory correct?
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>> that we exist means that we are an interesting simulation.
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And really, the most The most important thing is just don't be boring.
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>> This has explained you a bit.
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You're on a crusade against being boring.
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Well, I've heard you talk about this a bit.
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I I really do need to know.
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How convinced are you that we might be in a simulation?
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>> You know, I once had a dinner at my house with a physicist and a computer scientist, and they're both like leaders in their field, and I asked the question, "What do you think the probability is that we're in a simulation?"
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And the physicist said 0% and the computer scientist said 100% simultaneously.
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So, I guess maybe I should go 50% then. I don't know.
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It's It's I mean, so there there there's a lot of things that happen in the simulation where especially if you're me, I mean, think about it.
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Like, if you're me and you're like, "Should Should all these things really be happening?
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Should I really be making spaceships to go to the moon and Mars?
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Like, what the That doesn't seem real."
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>> And what happens when you have all the intelligence you could possibly want in a society?
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Will that intelligence, the artificial intelligence, be in charge?
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Will we sort of become subservient to our new machines?
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>> Um I don't know about subservient uh exactly, but will we be able to boss around something that's you know, thousands or millions of times smarter than us? No.
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Will it want to boss us around? I don't know. It may not care. Probably doesn't care.
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I mean, you can look at chimps in the in the in the jungle or whatever and you know, we don't go around trying to micromanage the lives of chimps.
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Um we're just sort of let them be in the forest more or less these days, you know.
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Um so I think it's probably like that, you know.
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>> And to what extent does super intelligence have its own agency at some point?
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Or does it have it already?
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You know, go back to Hitchhiker's Guide.
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You talk about a computer that is ultimately curious in some ways because it exists to explain the meaning of the universe. Why does it exist?
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And is AI aiming in that direction for you just like space travel is?
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Is that one reason you're so interested in doing AI?
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>> I mean, as you know, I'm I've been sort of somewhat conflicted about AI, you know, as it's I don't want to hasten our doom if because there's always some chance that AI could could be negative.
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But then, you know, when I've tried to take actions in this regard, it seems to have only accelerated AI because I think reality is not just an interesting this match maximizer, but also an irony maximizer.
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>> And so, by starting OpenAI, you ended up maximizing by leading to Anthropic. >> I don't know.
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I think it ended up accelerating AI.
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>> Unintended [clears throat] consequence. >> Yeah.
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OpenAI ended up accelerating AI and then Anthropic, which is really, you know, a splinter group from OpenAI, um is accelerating it even more.
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>> And you've been talking to Dario Amodei.
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I was wondering if that could even lead to more of a partnership of xAI and Tropic.
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>> Well, I guess we are providing them with compute which they they really needed.
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But before I rented them computer, I went and met with the a bunch of people that at Tropic to sort of I don't know see if anyone set off my evil detector or anything like that.
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Not that my evil detector was perfect, of course, but you know, you might as well just try, you know.
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Um and everyone I met at Tropic was very nice. Uh and conscientious.
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So I didn't meet anyone who seemed shady or deceptive or anything.
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Um I'm a little worried about the name because of the you know, reality being kind of an irony maximizer.
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That if you call something anthropic yeah, good chance it's misanthropic, you know.
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Um just like open AI is now closed.
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Um stability AI is unstable.
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Uh mid-journey is not mid.
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Uh >> [laughter] >> it seems like they're all kind of the opposite of their name.
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Um which made it like like xAI is like it's hard to have an opposite of xAI.
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Like what would you have like minus xAI or yAI or maybe I don't know.
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>> Is it pretty difficult to create guardrails, especially the government?
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I can't imagine how Congress or whatever could do it.
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Could you imagine the five frontier models, yours and the others, just getting together once a week and saying, "All right, how are we going to save humanity from ourselves?"
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>> No, in fact, I've recommended that we do that exact thing.
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Cuz there's a lot of talk of of a having a regulatory agency, but I the problem the thing is that regulatory agencies it takes a long time to get one established and their rule making is very slow.
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Um And and I what I said like guys, what if we just have a call once a week, just like you're saying.
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And say and and and that maybe we uh a week before we release a model, we give that, you know, we give access to our competitors to say, "Hey guys, why don't why don't you try out the new model, see if you see any problems with it?"
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You know, I think competitors would keep each other honest in that situation.
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Um you know, if they say, "Oh, this it's it you know, I was able to you know, make a nuclear bomb with your AI."
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It's like, "Oh, we better fix that before you release it, you know, type of thing."
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Um So um I don't know, I think I I guess I'll I'll I'll talk to Anthropic about this and >> Could you talk to Sam about it, or is the poison too strong there?
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>> Uh he's he's so deceptive, it's it's it's crazy.
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>> You built XAI, you rebuilt XAI from the ground up not too long ago, right?
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It's almost like you did it with the Raptor engine, too, on Starship.
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You said, "Wait a minute.
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Let let's start from scratch."
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How did you do What did you do to rebuild XAI that way?
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>> First of all, spending I I actually spending meaningful time at the company makes big deal makes a big difference.
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It started off as a as kind of a side hustle, um a side hustle to a side hustle, frankly.
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Um and I I didn't really pay close attention to it.
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Then then there was a a year of the of being in politics and, you know, elections and voting and all that, which you obviously saw.
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Uh so, the the company's only 3 years old.
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So, that So, it's basically uh this is and so, I really got back to the company just over a year ago.
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Um So, I had to get my bearings.
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And then obviously I combined X and XAI and then with then through SpaceX.
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>> You just said something interesting about your year away from X, XAI, and everything else in government and politics.
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Do you feel that that was too much of a distraction that in retrospect it was misbegotten?
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>> I think I I think I I I had it going for too long.
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You know, I mean, obviously a lot of people will disagree with me about this, but I I I think it's important it was important to elect uh President Trump to sort of, you know, steer things more in the direction of a free market economy.
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Um you know, have uh less bureaucracy ideally.
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I just in in in my sort of a a simple political platform of wanting safe cities, secure borders, aspirationally sensible spending. You know, the basics.
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Um uh that I thought uh Trump would be better than you know, Kamala basically.
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So, uh but but then but then um what I should have done I think was be more in the background.
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I mean, it was it was interesting to sort of go around with uh President Trump and you know, go on uh Marine One and Air Force One and all that sort of stuff.
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>> Well, was that too seductive in a way? >> It was a little bit.
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I mean, it was it was kind of cool cuz I'm just there in the Oval Office while, you know, all these like big momentous decisions are being made.
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And you know, to some sometimes uh having some impact on what's being done.
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But I I think I should I think I should have um I think maybe I should I should have been more I should been more in the background and probably only had it last for, you know, a month or two.
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Uh cuz at that point you've you've you're you're you've sort of seen most of what there is to see within a month or two.
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>> Yeah, you seem to get a bit too intoxicated by it in a way with the chainsaws and all that.
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>> Yeah, I I think that's true. Yeah, yeah.
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I got carried away basically.
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Yeah, I mean, I So, I ended up leaving I guess sometime in May.
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Uh >> [laughter] >> That was a weird weekend. >> Yeah, it was. Uh >> Tell me about it. >> No, no, I can't.
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That's not Let's >> [laughter] >> Let's not dig up the Let's Let's sleeping dogs lie or whatever, you know.
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Um Let's not Let's not put a spade down in the backyard type of thing.
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You never know what you're going to find.
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But I Yeah, anyway, point is I I I should have gone gone back and focused on uh AI a little sooner than I did.
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>> And uh did you feel like when he gives you a golden key you're going Did you kind of feel relieved like actually this has been intoxicating, but I can do more if I go back to my businesses?
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I mean, what what did you feel when you said, "Oh man, I'm exiting.
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Maybe that's not the worst thing." ?
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>> Well, I actually The thing is I came to the conclusion that um that that there was no way we were going to solve the deficit from within the government. Impossible.
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Um You know, maybe if the president made that his primary goal, we we could do that.
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But but it The problem is if you if you try to solve the deficit and and and stop wasteful spending, um you get a you make a lot of enemies in that in that situation.
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And if President Trump is not, you know, he he he likes to be liked.
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He's not um you know, he doesn't he doesn't like people, you know, calling him being upset about what some funding being stopped type of thing.
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Um >> [laughter] >> um Yeah.
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So, but I can you know, I can't I came to the conclusion that the only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots.
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We're not going to solve it by trying to save our way there.
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The appetite is not there, and it's not just at the presidency.
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The appetite is not there at the presidency, the House, the Senate, or the the judiciary.
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Basically, no one in authority in the government whatsoever really with maybe a few rare exceptions of the like Rand Pauls of the world type of thing.
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Um actually wants to stop reduce spending. No, they don't.
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So, then you've got this national debt that's enormous.
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You've got interest on the debt that exceeds what we spend on the military.
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Um which is a really astonishing amount of interest to be paid.
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>> When we look at AI right now and the LLMs, that's pretty good. Does amazing things.
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But, it seems to me that physical world AI is going to be an order of magnitude, maybe two orders of magnitude more important in the future. >> Yes, yes. I I definitely agree.
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Um you know, I sometimes think about like dolphins and whales because they they can't manipulate things.
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They don't have you know, hands and fingers and thumbs and stuff.
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Um there's a limit to how far into you know, how much intelligence would can you actually bring to bear?
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Um So, you know, yeah, dolphins and whales are very are actually very intelligent, but um because they they can't manipulate complex objects, I I think that actually made the value of intelligence much less.
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To your point, once you've got once you have a robot that can manipulate atoms, can shape objects, the the value of the of the intelligence um becomes exponentially greater uh because it can now do things.
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You know, you could you could have a science lab and and and run experiments and try to understand the nature of the universe.
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You know, and I think you can look at this also in economic terms.
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Like my guess is digital superintelligence probably improves the uh output of goods and services by 20 to 30%. Something like that.
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Call it like a you know, maybe a 30% increase in uh the the economy of Earth.
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So, that's still significant.
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It's like $30 trillion a year incremental.
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>> Is that very much, really? Is that transformative?
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>> It'll there'll be a lot more stuff.
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I mean, 30% more stuff is still a lot.
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And this is just my, you know, my rough guess.
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Um, but if you if you have robots and and you you get to space and you and you can do a mass driver on the moon, um, then you can get to, I think, potentially a million times the size of the Earth economy.
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>> And then what happens to Earth when we have a economy of or I mean, money becomes irrelevant, work becomes irrelevant?
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What's the future look like?
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>> Yeah, money becomes irrelevant.
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I mean, there's there will be still a currency, but I think currency will be measured in fundamental uh, physics metrics like um, po- you know, power like wattage and tonnage. Ma- mass and energy.
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Uh, you know, mass and power or energy, basically.
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So, um, b- but conventional currency will not matter in in the future.
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Uh, so that that's that's uh, that's my guess.
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I I think it's pretty obvious.
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Um, and uh, and and as soon as you start getting to many orders of magnitude bigger than than Earth's economy, um, satisfying whatever humans can possibly think of uh, for their needs is is very easy.
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You know, if you're several orders of magnitude bigger than the Earth's economy, um, then providing humans wha- whatever goods and services they can think of that they might want uh, is is trivial.
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>> And so, what do we do then? As humans. What gives us meaning?
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How do we organize ourselves?
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>> I mean, you struggle with this question.
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I think people will will will find ways to be happy uh, in the in the same way that we're say we're we're people who retire seem to be rela- you know, fairly happy even though they're not working.
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But, I think the reality is that you humans will not They won't They won't be anything that humans can do that that they the AI and the robots can't do better.
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One analogy might be gardening, you know, where you you you don't have to grow your own fruits and vegetables.
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You can just go buy them from the store.
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But, uh sometimes people like to grow their own fruits and vegetables and make dinner for friends, and it's uh kind of a nice touch.
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>> What about creating art or that type of creativity?
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Is that more in the sphere of humans?
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>> Yeah, you can certainly create art or whatever you feel like doing, essentially.
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>> We like to think of this as a time of unprecedented technological change, but you know, we historians go back to the 1890s when you get electricity and telephones and cars and, you know, subways and uh radio and movies, all these things happening at once.
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And it leads to many things, but it all often leads to a great disparity of wealth, a lot of sense of robber barons, a lot of people then picking up pitchforks and deciding that this is bad.
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And there's some echoes of that now.
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Is there a way to prevent that given the amount of wealth being generated?
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Will we put certain things in the commons the way they did in the 1890s when they made high school universal and free?
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Will we say, "Okay, health care, for example, should just be in the commons, and that's going to sap some of the populace revulsion at what's happening?"
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Well, um Uh I mean, as as you heard me say, I mean, I don't think money's going to matter in the future.
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Um It like anyone will be able to have any goods and services that they want.
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And I don't think even so-called wealthy people will ultimately control the AIs.
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I think they'll control themselves.
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So, so it's not like you have to separate uh that like I think I think there's sort of a fundamental misunderstanding of economics arises because of conflating resource allocation and consumption.
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So, there's there's there's a limit to what any single human can consume.
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It's It's you know, you hit that saturation point pretty fast.
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So, like say going from say a billion dollars net worth to 10 billion dollars of net worth doesn't make you 10 times happier or have mean you have 10 times more stuff.
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It actually means you've got a resource allocation problem.
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Um assuming that you wish to be an efficient resource allocator.
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>> Well, you've accumulated as you know, you know, a trillion.
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Is it mainly because you >> Yeah, is it mainly because you feel your best at allocating that?
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That keeping that allows you to allocate capital to do things like go to Mars, create AI, do robots, uh or is it in some ways just a scoring system that's kind of uh racking up the points?
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>> I mean, I Like I need to have sufficient voting control in the companies to you know, still be in charge.
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Um So, um it's the you know, my so-so called wealth is simply a percentage ownership in the in the in SpaceX and Tesla essentially.
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And this is going to be taxed quite heavily.
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And there's not some magical way to avoid taxes.
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If if there were, I would know about it.
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So, um you know, at the end of the day um the this will get whittled down um in a few generations from now.
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So, if money still matters, which I don't think it will.
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Um you know, my descendants would have a tiny fraction of what I have.
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>> Let me go back to something you said that really struck me about President Trump, which he really likes to be liked. He wants to to liked.
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And I remember you talking to me at some point about people say they have empathy, but in some ways it's a vanity cuz you want to be liked.
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And I think you even diagnosed it in me.
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You said probably wasn't very good at running CNN or Time magazine cuz I wanted to be liked.
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To what extent is a desire to be liked a problem when it comes to being a builder of a company?
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>> Well, the the problem is if if you if you're going to do things that um diminish the success probability of the of of the company in order to be liked, then you know, you're you're going to things are not going to work out as well.
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Um like it's not as though I don't like to be liked.
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I would love to be liked.
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Um but am I going to do things that are contrary to the best interest of the companies in order to be liked a bit more?
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I'm not, you know, so it's I I I don't I I I'm okay with being disliked. Uh by some.
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I'm you know, obviously I'm not disliked by you know, like a lot more people like me than dislike me or I wouldn't be you know, wouldn't have a quarter billion followers.
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I mean, I don't think they're following me in order to hate on what I say, you know.
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Um Uh and if I if I look at the you know, the the comments and whatnot, um but uh you know, I don't know.
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Maybe three out of four of I mean, I I'd say like 70, 80% of people like me.
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Well, if if they know you know, if they know anything about me.
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It's It's probably a quarter of people that that don't.
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Uh maybe I'm just guessing here.
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And and and there's going to be a spectrum.
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There's people that are you know, maniacally devoted to me and people that look my guts.
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It's uh you know um there's some number of people that that fit into those categories.
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>> Well, you've been talking a lot about the suicidal empathy ideas.
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Do you really think that uh empathy uh has become a real problem or that we have too much empathy?
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I mean, I could make the argument that sometimes we're losing empathy.
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>> No, I I think you don't want to have misguided empathy.
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I mean, I I I agree with Gad Saad's uh philosophy here.
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Um and it's it's suicidal empathy is um you know, it's that's his his term.
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He wrote a book into that effect.
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Uh and I think his book is well written.
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He points out some good good good things here, which is that part of the reason for the prosperity of the West has been the um that that there's actually just been a a fairly high trust high empathy society.
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Um which is it you know, when you when you get trying to get people to cooperate at scale, this this stuff this this makes a lot of sense.
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Um you ideally want things to people to be default trusted not default distrusted.
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Um and you you you want to encourage uh behavior that is good for uh society or you know, people for people to do good things that are good for their fellow human beings.
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And ultimately, that actually does end up being good for the individual if provided it is mutual.
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Now, uh where this can go wrong is if you if if if your theory of mind is is uh is is incorrect.
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So, if you if you uh think everyone is like yourself, um then then you're you're you're going to have a problem.
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Uh because this is simply not true.
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Um there are peoples and cultures with very different views.
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You know, you could take >> you talk about immigration, by the way, and you say there are cultures with different views, does your views on immigration distinguish between different cultures like a Muslim culture that might not fit in as well, or is it How do you do that?
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>> Well, I'm I'm what I'm saying I think is simply logically consistent, which is that if if if there's a culture that that has uh diametrically opposed views to our culture.
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And and that's you could take Islam.
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It's it's not that of course there are many people who you know, Muslims who are quite reasonable.
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Um but there are some who are not.
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And if if you're not unless you're filtering for uh jihadis, you're going to get jihadis, and they're going to do jihad and and kill people.
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Now, in in Israel they understand this quite well, you know, they obviously this this lesson has been uh you know, reinforced with a lot of attacks.
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Uh you know, the neighboring countries many times in Israel many times have tried to annihilate Israel.
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Several times, not once, multiple times.
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Um and so you know, in Israel they realize, you know, if you let in the people that into Israel uh that want to to uh kill Israelis, they will do so.
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Uh they're so they're quite pragmatic about this and they try to, you know, make sure that doesn't happen.
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>> Well, one of the things our country's founded on is uh individuals versus group identities.
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Do you worry that sometimes when you make sweeping generalizations, you're making group identity rather than saying uh the foundational ethic of the United States, which is individuals get treated separately?
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>> Yes, but you can't conflate that with um uh sort of the the sort of um blank slate fallacy, that that all people are exactly the same uh you know, at their core. They're not.
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This is this [clears throat] is just a an obvious falsehood.
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You know, you you you can't you can't put yourself in the mind of a serial killer unless you're a serial killer.
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Like and like unless you're enjoying murdering people, you can't imagine why someone would do such a thing.
28:54
And if if someone is uh you know, an an religious extremist, um where they view anyone who is not in their religion um as the enemy or or, you know, uh that that that those who are not in their religion should die, it's difficult for you to to to understand that that mindset because you don't have that mindset.
29:16
But you can obviously recognize there are people who do have that mindset.
29:19
And that if you let them into the country, uh they will kill people.
29:24
Let me give you an example. Uh there's many.
29:27
Um we had uh someone who was working at the Tesla factory in Austin until December of last year.
29:36
Um he was fired um because uh he assaulted a woman who stepped on his prayer rug in the factory.
29:44
Okay, so she was she wasn't expecting anyone to be praying in the factory and he was praying in the factory.
29:50
She accidentally stepped on his prayer rug and he assaulted her.
29:54
He violently assaulted her.
29:55
Um so he was fired for that.
29:55
And then a few months later, he went and killed three students in the bar in downtown Austin.
30:08
Now, I think we shouldn't let people like that into the country. Do you?
30:12
>> Where where do you get your information?
30:14
I know you're not particularly fond of legacy media, mainstream media.
30:16
Is most of it from social media or do you have sources of information?
30:25
>> Um yeah, I mean I look at Google News, uh which is a summation of headlines.
30:30
I look at uh the X platform, which if if something's important enough, it it it'll it'll show up on X platform.
30:37
Um I talk to friends and that's where I, you know, and I do research. That's how I do things.
30:44
>> Reason that I ask is that sometimes and I get a lot of my news on social media, especially X, it's sort of a darker, more dystopian view.
30:53
I remember this in the old days, too.
30:54
Sometimes the mainstream media would say, "Oh, everything's going to hell in a handbasket.
30:58
There'll be riots everywhere."
31:00
And you'd say, "Wait a minute, I'm walking around here. It ain't that bad."
31:03
Do you think that >> [laughter] >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
31:07
Um You just have to see what's in frame, you know?
31:12
I I do think at times the X feed can be a little dark.
31:17
Um And in fact then I and then I have to switch to something that's domain-specific like AI in order to actually learn what's going on in AI.
31:26
I do think there's there's too much political rage bait on X, if that's what you're getting at.
31:32
>> Yeah, I'm about darkness in general and rage bait, but also I know you got into an a discussion with things like Danny Bedrosian of is England going to hell in a handbasket type thing.
31:41
And there does seem to be a darkness.
31:45
>> You know, I feel it in myself sometimes.
31:47
If I'm on social media too much, I think until that the world is really collapsing, then I go outside, take a walk, and life is okay. >> Yeah, go touch grass. >> Yeah, exactly. >> in a while. Um yeah, yeah.
32:01
No, I I mean the I think both can be misleading.
32:07
And like in you know, if you if you go for a walk in a nice neighborhood, everything seems fine.
32:12
Um but even though there may be terrible things happening.
32:15
So, you know, you you you you don't want you don't want to uh assume all the world is is is going to hell or that all the world is fine.
32:26
It's reality is somewhere in between.
32:29
>> But I I sometimes think our society gets too binary.
32:31
Everything's either black or white.
32:33
Everything gets polarized because of that.
32:35
I don't know whether it's technological is whether it's our information feeds.
32:39
You know, I you're right.
32:42
You could be in your own bubble, which is you only take walks in the right part of a town and things seem okay.
32:48
But also I think you can get your own bubble in social media, too.
32:50
And suddenly you're thinking weird things.
32:56
>> You can be in a in a in a real world positivity bubble or a you know, social media negativity bubble.
33:03
Those are both both possible.
33:08
>> Tell me, you mentioned it earlier about your wealth and you know, you're using it to deploy it.
33:13
Now, what happens to your wealth, you know, after you're gone?
33:21
I mean, you're going to set up some big foundation.
33:22
You're going to Is there something you would want to give it to?
33:26
>> it mostly goes to to sort of foundation essentially.
33:31
Um >> But what would you want your foundation to do, I guess I'm asking you.
33:36
>> Uh continue the goals.
33:38
Um make life multi-planetary, extend consciousness to the stars.
33:42
Um improve sustainable energy on Earth.
33:46
>> And does that mean humans should always be in control?
33:50
>> Well, I I I guess I I prefer probably prefer it if humans were always in control.
33:54
I mean, although it would depend on the AI.
33:57
I mean, if the AI was awesome, you still like maybe the AI should be in control, you know.
34:03
>> Hey, I just saw I saw Larry Page just a weekend ago.
34:06
You're starting to sound like him.
34:07
He called Yeah, he called it he called you a speciesist once for deciding humans should always be in control.
34:13
And now you seem to be edging on to maybe it doesn't matter.
34:19
>> Honestly, there've been a few times where I thought maybe Larry Page was right.
34:23
No, I mean, I think pretty much the future is going to be AI and robots are going to decide the future.
34:28
And I guess rockets to some degree in terms of expanding beyond Earth and we'll need it we'll need you know more energy primarily solar energy.
34:38
I'm increasing the amount of solar energy dramatically.
34:39
Like we're we're putting together 200 gigawatts a year of production capacity of solar in in the US.
34:47
Uh which is much more than I think currently exists.
34:50
>> And finally, let me get back to the point where I may have interrupted you when you were explaining why you think but you're not sure it's always good for consciousness and intelligent to not only be aligned with human values but basically humans remaining in control.
35:10
>> I find it unlikely that humans would remain in control if the if I mean if there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario.
35:29
So, hopefully the AI is nice to us.
35:32
>> Anything we can do to encourage that?
35:36
>> I think programming truth seeking and curiosity um it is it's probably good.
35:43
I think I I guess we we want to be careful about being you know creating too many AI dystopian scenarios online because the AIs are trained on everything online.
35:57
>> So, if we say it's going to be utopian then dystopian it'll do it.
36:01
>> be Terminator, you know, cuz they what they whatever they read you know, 80 versions of the Terminator script.
36:07
>> [laughter] >> So, it's like I guess that's what guess that's me. Terminator.
36:13
Maybe we we should have a some more Let's let's have some more utopian narratives where AI um so then it can like well, maybe I shouldn't be Terminator or maybe I can be friendly overseer or something like that or um like a gardener or something. I don't know.
36:28
Like being [laughter] treat us, you know, try to make humans happy type of thing.
36:33
Friend of mine has this idea of called protopian, which is like cuz utopian tends to represent some impossible ideal- idealistic goal, and usually in the in attempting to create a utopia, you create a dystopia is usually how the narrative goes.
36:48
So, she thinks it should be protopia, which is an achievable uh you know, future.
36:55
Um that is it's it's not perfect, but it's it's good and something that you'd be you'd like if you could look in the future, you'd say, "Okay, yeah, that would be a good future." >> Elon, thank you.
37:05
Thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it. See you soon.
37:09
>> You're welcome, Walter. See you.