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[Music] I believe Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever created by humanity. Elon Musk and his XAI startup have built the largest and most powerful artificial
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intelligence training supercomputer in the world. As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could
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do that. You know, this is an arms race of epic proportions. He's a big thinker. You guys went on Fox
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the other day with the Doge team. You saw Elon's face nodding while they were speaking with a grin ear to ear. He was
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proud. XAI has acquired X in an old stock transaction. Tesla's first robo taxis are officially
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on the road. The company's board proposed a new compensation package for the CEO that could pay him just about a trillion
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dollars in stock. He gets nothing if he doesn't hit the numbers. SpaceX will buy wireless spectrum
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licenses from Echoar for its Starlink satellite network for about 17 billion. 3 2 1.
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[Music] There's a splash down. How do you have time? this I I I never understand you. Yeah. Well, I do work a lot.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elon Musk. All right. Good. All right. Where are you? Alto.
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You're in Palo Alto and um not Washington DC. I'm I'm at Tesla Global Engineering
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Headquarters in Palo Alto. Yeah. So, no more Washington DC. You're back at work. You're focused. Yeah.
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Uh, yeah. I haven't been to DC since May. Okay. Uh, that was a that was a hell of a side
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quest. That was a good Any lessons from your time in Washington DC? Uh, the government is basically unfixable.
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Elon O only. I support David's noble efforts and this uh it's good to it's good to have talented people in the administration uh but at the end of the day um if you look
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at our national debt which is uh insanely high uh the interest payments exceed the u defense department I guess sorry war department uh budget
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um and um Nikki Bryzy so if AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're we're toast.
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Which is a great segue. Um, Optimus is um I think going to be the greatest uh product in the history of humanity. What's the progress like and how much of
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your how many of your cycles are going specifically to Optimus? What's the timeline? I think you're on version
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three, maybe four. Tell us everything. Uh well, yeah, everything would take a long time. We've got time.
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Um we're we're finalizing the design of Optimus version 3 and uh that that really is going to be a
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very remarkable robot. Um it will have the essentially the manual dexterity of a human. So meaning a very complex hand. Um the a an AI mind that can navigate
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and comprehend reality. Um and it will be made in very high volume. Uh those are the three things that are missing. Like if you see any other um robotics uh company, they're
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missing those three things. Those are the three really hard things. Um and uh I I I spent actually at this point um
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it it might be more of my mental cycles than anything anything else any other single thing on Optimus. Uh that's
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that's that that's solving for uh real world AI uh all of the electro mechanical issues
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of Optimus the the supply chain and production challenges of it because we have there is no supply chain that
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exists for humanoid robots. So it has to be we have to recreate it from scratch um and which requires doing a lot of
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vertical integration. um none of the actuators in Optimus um are available from an existing supply chain. Um so but I I think it is accurate to
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say that if successful Optimus will be the biggest product ever and the cost of it at scale 2030 $40,000 a robot. What what do you think the
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first wave of them will cost? And yeah, when will we be able to buy one to work on the ranch? I think that the the marginal cost of
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production once you hit a million units per year uh is probably around the $20,000 range.
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Uh it it it sort of depends on how much you spend on the AI chip in the in the robot. Um and you need to achieve a lot of efficiencies in the actuators. Uh there
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are um 26 actuators per arm like 26 electric like motors, gearboxes and power electronics. Um,
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so, so, but but the the the AI chip will be pretty expensive like that that might
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be like55 or $6,000 of the of the bill of materials, maybe more. Um, and um but but so I but I think at volume at a
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million units a year, the the production cost is probably on the order of $20,000, maybe 25, something like that.
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And um price will be as a function of demand. Elon um can you maybe explain to everybody why the hand is so important to get right and why you know the
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actuator design is so unique and you know why it's so difficult why nobody makes it and why you have to start there
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almost to build the rest of the the robot properly. Well, it turns out the human hands are incredibly they've evolved to this to be this incredibly sophisticated machine.
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Like the your hand is an in actually a remarkable thing. It's look look closely at your hands and and think of all the things you can do with your hands, which is a lot.
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I can think of many things. Yeah, I was just thinking about something. You know, your hands are very versatile
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instrument. Yeah, you can give him a high five. Very versatile. Um, you know, you you you can swing a baseball bat, you can thread needles,
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you you can you put thread in a needle. Uh, you can play the piano with violin. Um, you know, you could disassemble or assemble a car. The hands are incredibly
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versatile instruments. Um and um most of the muscles of of the hand are are actually in the forearm. So your hand is kind of like a like a like it's like a
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puppet. Like it's mostly a puppet. The mus the muscles are coming from the forearm and they're pulling the tendons
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uh which are you know also human tendon designs or human human tendon evolution is incredibly good. Um,
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so you you've got this web of tendons. You you you've got um I think I think the the human hand is something like depending on how you count it, 27 or 28 degrees of freedom per you know in in
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the hand. It's uh it's amazing. So in order to create a robot that can uh be a generalized uh humanoid, you you
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must solve the hand the hands problem. Yeah. We had uh we had it's got hands, needs hands.
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And so is it like uh when you were first building Tesla where the supply chain doesn't exist and now you have to go out
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and find folks to work with and you know build all this vertical integration, get support. Is it is it literally like it's
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just nowhere to be found and you're going to have to build all of this stuff up? Yes, we we we could not actually buy the
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actuators for any amount of money. they simply didn't exist. Even though there are, I don't know, 10 20,000 electric
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motors out there of various sizes and shapes. Um, we've had to design uh every electric motor, gearbox um and and the controlling electronics from scratch basically from physics first principles.
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The good news is you've got a lot of experience with factories over the last couple of decades. So,
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how challenging is this versus Cybert truck model Y Model X Gigafactory? You know, the Yeah. The Fabra Egg known as the Model X. Yeah.
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Right. Um it's hotter than any any of those things. Okay. Yeah. Much hotter significantly. Yeah.
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Starship. Yes. Well, more No, not Starship's harder. Okay. So, somewhere between a Model X and a Starship? Yeah. Is it is the What's harder, the hardware
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or the software? Right now, we're struggling with the the final design of the hardware. Like I said, it's really primarily the hand. Not to just just dismiss the rest of the
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robot. the rest of it's also uh important but but the hands are the hands inclusive of the forearm are a
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majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot and then let's assume you get past the hardware challenges how much do you sort of get
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for free um based on all the progress that's happening with LLMs will you know will consumers just be able to interact with this talk to the robot ask it to do things it'll understand and sort of
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Oh yeah yeah no problem you're spending a lot of time with any I noticed online.
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Not not that long. Um maybe I went a little over the top from Bunning Grom Imagine, but uh
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well, but in all seriousness, those characters and these robots that seems to be, you know, like maybe they you could get the embodiment of Annie, I suppose. Yeah. Why why the human form factor,
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Elon? You could make something that's maybe better than a human or maybe simpler than a human to do specific
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tasks and maybe better than a human to do more things than a human can do. How do you decide to make it just like a
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human? Well, if you wanted to do all the things that a human can do, it turns out you
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need a humanoid robot. Um, so if you want to just do a subset, it that's much easier. Um but uh
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it turns out humans evolved to this the shape and capabilities that we we we have. Um it it it for for good reasons.
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Uh there actually is that there is like there's value to having five, you know, four fingers and the thumb. Um and even the pinky actually is is quite
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useful. Um toes are much more aggression walk but but but the fingers well also humans humans have designed the world as well. So we designed it for us. So
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if you can make a humanoid robot it'll be immediately backwards compatible with what we've built the world for. Precisely.
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Elon there's another there's another part of um the robot. So there's the LLMs, there's the actuation in the
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hands, but also there's the um the silicon that runs it. And there was, you know, Dojo, I think you you posted on X AI5 and AI6, and it just seemed like you
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were incredibly excited about the direction in which the silicon layer was also going. Can you tell us about that
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and what that is and what what what what are we what are we building here? What is being built? Is it a complement to
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everything that exists in the world? Is it a potential long-term competitor? What is it?
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Um, yeah. So, at at Tesla, we basically had two different chip programs. One dojo and one uh dojo on the training side and
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then what we call, you know, AI for it, which just our inference chip. um uh that the AI Force is currently shipping in all vehicles. Um and we're finaliz finalizing the design of AI5 which will
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be an immense jump from AI4. Um by some metrics the improvement in AI5 will be 40 times better than AI4. Wow. So 40% 40 times. Um and and uh this is
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because we work so closely at a very fine grade level on the AI software and the AI hardware. So we know exactly where the limiting factors are and and
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um and so effectively the AI hardware and software teams are co-designing the chip. Um
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so a 40x improvement in the silicon I think then as it as everybody here in the audience experiences it is that just
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an almost like an order of magnitude increase in the quality of FST and the safety that you experience as a Tesla
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driver and then the quality of the robot like where does it all manifest when you when you you know bring it up and
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actually get it into production? Yeah to be precise the 40x is on if you say like compared to the worst limitation on AI4 which is running the
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softmax operation. Yeah we currently have to run softmax in around 40 steps in emulation mode
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whereas that'll be just be done in a few steps uh natively in AI5. Um AI5 trip will also be u easily handle mixed precision um models. So you don't
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have it'll dynamically handle mixed precision. There's a bunch of sort of technical stuff that AI will do a lot
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better. Um in terms of of nominal sort of uh raw compute, it's it's eight times more compute. Um about nine times more memory uh roughly five times more memory
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bandwidth. Um so uh but because we're addressing some core limitations in AI4, you multiply that by that that 8x computer improvement by another 5x improvement because of of uh
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optimization at a at a at a very fine grain silicon level of things that are currently suboptimal in AI4. That's
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where you get the 40x improvement. You had um I'll keep going, keep going. Uh so now now that said I I'm I am
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confident that the current uh chips uh AI AI4 chips that are in the cars will uh achieve self-driving safety that is at least two to three times that of of
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human and and maybe even 10x. Um and the software that uh will be released for that is is coming out over the next few months. So version 14 will be the
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biggest uh upgrade in Tesla software since version 12. Um we are increasing the uh parameter count by an order of magnitude. Um the there's there's
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there's a lot of uh reinforcement learning that's been used. there's um we we there there there's like you can think of AI sort of as a way of compressing reality and and and some of
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those compression steps uh we uh were too lossy and and we addressed the lossiness in the compression steps. Um so the these are all software updates that'll that'll go out. So just over
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there updates um your car is going to feel like it is sentient by the end of the year. Yeah, it feels that way already to be honest. Um I saw in the trades that you
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spent about $17 billion on some spectrum and that um yeah um so some couch change um to enable your satellites and the Starlink
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network to connect directly with phones. What will that look like in a year or two? Are we going to drop our Verizon
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account and just expand our Starlink account? Uh, thank you. We're kind of hoping cuz Verizon kind of sucks. How How many of you want a Starlink
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phone? Who wants a Starlink phone? Is it Is it technically possible? I know you can't see it, but it's everyone. Yeah, All right, cool. Um so this is a
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kind of a long-term thing. Uh it it will allow SpaceX to h uh deliver high bandwidth
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connectivity directly from the satellites to the phones. Um but uh there are hardware changes that need to happen in the phone. So the since these frequencies are not supported in current
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phones uh that the chipset has to be modified to add these frequencies um and that probably is a 2-year time frame. So the phones that um are able to use the spectrum that was acquired probably
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start shipping in around 2 years. Um and um and then we also need to build the satellites that are going to communicate on those frequencies. So, in parallel, we're building the satellites and
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working with the handset makers to add these frequencies to the phones. Um, and then the the satellites and the phones
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will then handshake very well to achieve high bandwidth connectivity. But the net effect is that you should be able to
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watch uh videos uh anywhere on your phone. Wow. And it's going to be crazy. And what and do these do these frequencies would they work indoors inside buildings, you know,
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like like your phone currently does? Okay. And so will you be able to have basically like
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if you if if you're in a building with a with a like a a thick metal roof then No. But um no the the same types of of
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Yeah. Normal normal homes. Yes. Yes. Elon is your vision for this that instead of you know having an AT&T
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account or and then roaming when you're in the UK or you're in India. It's just we could have one direct deal with
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Starlink. It works all over the world eventually. Not today but at some point. Is that the end goal? That basically we don't need a regional carrier. We have a global carrier and that would be you.
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Uh that that would be one of the options. To be clear, we're not going to put the other carriers out of business. They're still going to be around cuz
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they they own a lot of Spectrum. So, uh there's uh but but yes, you you should be able to have a Starlink uh like you have like you have an AT&T or T-Mobile or Verizon or whatever, you should be
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you could have a you know account with Starlink that uh works with your you know Starlink uh antenna at home uh free Wi-Fi as well as on your phone and um
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yeah it would be a comprehensive solution for high bandwidth at home and for high bandwidth direct to sell.
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Could you buy some carriers to have more spectrum? Maybe you could buy Verizon. Not out of the question. I suppose it that may happen. Let's talk about um let's talk about
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Starship. You just had a really what appeared to be a phenomenal um launch. H how close is it to, you know, being predictable and ready to go in a
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commercial setting? I I I think we'll recover the ship next year. Um we've got one more launch of the um Starlink version two
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uh uh stack that there's only one one uh booster and ship left that's in the version two uh design. Uh and then thereafter it's it's version three which
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is a gigantic upgrade cuz that's got Raptor 3. Um, and pretty much everything changes on the rocket with version 3.
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Um, so version 3, you know, might have some initial teething pains, uh, cuz it's such a radical redesign. Uh, but, uh, it's it's capable of over
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100 tons to orbit fully reusable. Um, and I think it's I think I think um unless we have unless we have some very major setbacks, uh, SpaceX will demonstrate uh, full reusability next
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year uh, catching both the booster and the ship um, and being able to deliver over 100 tons to a useful orbit. What does the best rocket in the world
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do now in terms of tonnage to space? Uh well in terms of uh sort of commercial rockets there's there's Falcon Heavy.
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Yeah. Uh which will do uh in um with with side booster reuse uh will do about 40 tons. So this is five times bigger. Yeah.
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Well two and a half times bigger in but but Starship would be full reuse full reusability. Got it. Okay. So everything comes back
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Elon after after the explosion that happened um with the the the the failed launch um there was a lot of sorry which which failed
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oh the more recent one the more recent the starship with the big boom yeah the big boom on the base and and and
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there was a lot of there was a lot of proclamations that there's going to be environmental and FAA and all these other sorts the
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recovery back to the launchpad again was incredible. fast. How did you get back so fast? Not
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just technically and work-wise, but just like regulatory clearance-wise because they said there were going to be all
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these questions and reviews and so on. How how did you guys manage that? Uh well, there were a lot of questions and reviews. We got through them all. Um and credit to the SpaceX team. They
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worked incredibly hard and they uh got the next trip and booster tested and on the pad and and flown and um yeah, huge credit to the SpaceX team. Very proud of
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them for doing doing such a job, a great job recovering. Um I mean creating a fully reusable orbital rocket is one of the hottest engineering problems ever.
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and certainly, you know, a candidate for most difficult engineering project ever.
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You know, it's on the podium at least. Um, so it's a that that's been the goal of
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SpaceX from the beginning from 2002. Um, and here we are 23 years later. So, it's
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it's a long journey and um with with a a super talent like by far the I think the most talented group of rocket engineers that ever been assembled. Um and uh and we're finally
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next year I think we'll be able to achieve full reusability. Elon, what are the big um technical blockers that you're focused on there between now and that full reusability?
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Are there some showstoppers where you're just kind of literally just obsessing over trying to figure out still or is it more about getting through a laundry
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list of your learnings and just integrating it into the next launch? Well, that the for for full reusability of the ship,
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there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So, no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat
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shield. Like the shuttle heat shield uh had to go through nine months of repair after every flight,
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right? Um so, no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. And is that a material science problem or is that an engineering problem or both? Uh yeah, I mean it's a material science
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engineering problem. So, it's but we really are uh looking at the fundamental physics here. Um again physics first principles and trying to figure out how do we make something that
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um is uh you know can can withstand the heat is very light doesn't transmit the heat to the the primary sh
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Yeah. primary structure um and uh whose integ Yeah. Um Uh, and then as you ascend, if you hit some rain, you know, the tiles don't dissolve in rain. There's there's a lot
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of different issues and and then you really need to know that these tiles are working. You can't uh,
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you know, go through this laborious inspection. So, it really needs to be we're, you know, these these tens of
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thousands of tiles all work and don't need to be refurbished or checked one by one as was the case with the shuttle. Can we maybe um switch now? It's I mean,
00:26:18
who who else were you talked about Tesla, then you go to SpaceX? Yeah. Now, I' I'd like to ask you some questions
00:26:23
about Grock and um XAI. Um you want to just give us an update? I think you you kind of talked about where the nextG model is and you said something incredible. I still don't think people
00:26:35
really understand it which is you know there's going to be a next training run where you expect you know not to start
00:26:42
from the you know common web and common crawl where you expected an enormous amount of synthetic data. Just tell us about how uh the evolution of Grock is
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going and this innovation and why it's so important. Yeah. So we're we're running a lot of using a lot of of inference compute and
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um and reasoning to look at all of the source data which is really the corpus of human knowledge and then uh thinking about each piece of
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information and then adding mod adding what's missing um and correcting correcting mistakes and removing falsehoods from the from that training data. So it's it's it's like if you take
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say Wikipedia as an example but this really applies to to books, PDFs, uh the websites, uh every form of information. Um the
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the Grock is using um heavy amounts of inference compute to say to look at at an example a Wikipedia page and say uh what is true, partially true or false or
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missing uh in this page. Now rewrite the page to in to correct the remove the falsehoods
00:28:06
uh uh correct the half-truths and add the missing context. Well, Elon, by the way, could you just publish that? Could we create like a groipedia? I mean, that would Yeah, especially for our bio pages,
00:28:19
which are a disaster. Wikipedia is so biased and it's it's a constant war. you know, if something gets corrected, five minutes later, there'll be an army of people trying to
00:28:29
I mean, it's become hyperartisan and there's activists all over it. So, if you do fix, for example, Wikipedia as a source of truth, it'd be great to publish that just so
00:28:41
the world has it. All right, I'll talk talk about that. So, talk to the team about that like Groedia or whatever. This here's the Groedia version.
00:28:52
It' be interesting. Yeah. and then just have it out there for just a few minutes where in terms of um people here like it
00:29:00
um in terms of training Gro 5 um you're you're scaling up your supercluster in Colossus in in Memphis can yeah have a second one yeah can could you give us an update on
00:29:13
that and then also as part of that um where are we in the scaling laws um if you scale a bigger cluster do you get a more powerful AI model is there a point of dimin diminishing returns or like how
00:29:25
much more compute if you throw twice as much compute at it do you get a 10% better model do you get 100% better
00:29:32
model like is it log linear what what I guess how much more juice is there left in scaling hardware do you think I think I think there's a natural
00:29:43
logarithmic function associated with the amount of compute so uh then like say for argument sake like 10x more compute will double the intelligence.
00:29:55
Maybe that's that that might be a rough rule of thumb, but you know, that still means that, you know, you go from 100 IQ
00:30:01
to 200 IQ. Still pretty pretty big deal. Um, so I and and I think I think we'll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where, you know, most of the
00:30:16
power of the sun is harnessed for compute and then ultimately most of the power of the galaxy, you know, sort of
00:30:22
cautev 2, cautev 3 scale uh compute. Um so I guess once you think of artificial intelligence not as sort of this
00:30:34
you know a destination that you reach but really uh as part of the overall escalation of intelligence
00:30:41
um that that that we are are aware of. Um you know human intelligence has also scaled as you've have as the population has increased um and we've been able to
00:30:54
store more and more information. uh human intelligence has scaled. Now human because of population declines and low
00:31:00
growth rate, human intelligence is is somewhat plateauing um and will actually decline. And
00:31:08
my guess is that I I I I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human at anything as soon as next year.
00:31:19
Wow. Um Yeah. and and and then and then probably within five like say 2030 probably AI is
00:31:27
smarter than the sum of all humans. Do you think do you think humans are on the decline because the AI is evolving?
00:31:34
Do you think there's this evolution of the ecosystem on Earth that's underway that we don't really understand the
00:31:40
structure of what's going on? But maybe yeah, maybe we implicitly know that it's coming. Um,
00:31:58
yeah. I I I I mean I hope the birth rates turn around. I'm a I'm a big proponent of
00:32:04
increased birth rate. Uh, obviously. Well, you doing anything about it or no? Yeah. I'm trying to set a good example.
00:32:15
You know, we had a big conversation at this conference we didn't expect, which is suicidal empathy, the West,
00:32:24
this um declining birth rate. Uh I noticed you've been pretty active about it and open borders and open borders is like let the invaders in. Could all three of those be
00:32:34
the same thing? It it seems like there's a number of symptoms of the West being suicidal. The
00:32:39
most obvious one being the birth rate is not a replacement level. So obviously if that continues indefinitely then the
00:32:45
west will literally not reproduce enough to replace itself. But there's other things too. There's the fact that the
00:32:51
borders were totally opened to the point where western culture the social fabric start to come apart and you see this
00:32:59
especially in Europe where there um you know the indigenous cultures of the UK or France or Germany are starting to um
00:33:07
potentially be taken over by by cultures of people who are brought in and aren't assimilating. You have crime where, you
00:33:13
know, we have this case on social media right now, this young woman, Ire Ina, who's just
00:33:19
killed in a senseless way on a subway. Uh, which is horrific enough in and of itself, but then in addition to that,
00:33:26
the elite media just for whatever reason just refused to cover it, like it didn't exist. Um, so you have this issue of crime
00:33:32
that's not being addressed or even acknowledged and no acknowledgement of this. like
00:33:37
it's almost like we're trying to deny the reality of the spiral and this Yeah. So you have the you have
00:33:45
all these data points um that seem to suggest that um the west uh is suicidal or doesn't you know doesn't seem to want to defend itself or propagate itself. Um
00:33:57
look I think everyone in this room thinks that um life is awesome right? I mean it's pretty great and I think
00:34:03
worth living. Yeah. And when when Alex Karp was here earlier today defending the West, that
00:34:09
got some of the loudest applause at the conference. So, uh I guess we probably don't really understand what's going on.
00:34:14
We don't really Yeah. What's your take, Elon? Cuz you you know, what's your take on the suicide of the West?
00:34:19
Yeah. What's What's I'm very worried about it. Yeah. I'm very worried about it. Um you know,
00:34:26
I think there's there's just the actions of the West are indistinguishable from suicide.
00:34:33
So, but it's and look, at least in America, there's there's there's generally a sense of optimism, but when's the last time you
00:34:45
you talked to someone from Europe who lives in Europe who's optimistic? Not for a while. Yeah.
00:34:51
Decades, like even one. It's rare. So I I think unless people have a sense of optimism and purpose about the future, they
00:35:05
suicide might be just what happens. Um like like like having a child is an act of optimism about the future. So uh if you're not optimistic, this Yeah.
00:35:20
So, so I think we need to maybe give people a sense of optimism and excitement about the future and and a
00:35:28
belief that the future will be better than the past um and they'll be more interested in having kids.
00:35:33
Did did religion play a role in the past, Elon, to kind of plate and make folks feel that way
00:35:40
when they Yeah, I think so. uh the nature abhores a vacuum and if you take away religion then I think you actually you you you get something in
00:35:52
its place which is actually worse than what was there before I mean it's like destructive basically you get you get like the white work mind virus filling filling the hole that religion used to
00:36:03
have taking the place of of of religion you get these dystopian de facto religions um that uh that that are very very
00:36:15
self-destructive. Um so I I think perhaps some some sort of re revival of religion or at least what we need is is um some
00:36:28
coherent philosophy that people can get excited about. Um you know I mean for me it's a philosophy of curiosity. I'm curious about the nature of the universe and I want to go
00:36:39
out there and I want humanity to be out there exploring the stars. Um maybe meeting alien civilizations. Uh maybe in some cases we we see the ruins of a long
00:36:51
dead alien civilization but they were they were very strong for 10 million years. Um you know the kind of stuff
00:36:57
that you see in Star Trek in in a non-dystopian sci-fi book or or movie or show. Um, and so I'm just I have I have a philosophy of curiosity of of like I just want to know what's going on. And
00:37:09
and in order to know what's going on, we we must have u an an increase in the in
00:37:15
the scope and scale of consciousness, we must we must expand uh consciousness. We
00:37:20
must grow. We must grow humanity and we must extend humanity in order to comprehend the and to to understand the universe or even what what question
00:37:32
should we should ask about the answer that is the universe. Um you know Doug Douglas Adams book the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy is actually a a deep book on philosophy
00:37:44
disguised as humor. Um and what the point he was trying to make in that book was that u the questions are the really
00:37:52
the hard part. The answer is the universe. Like the answer is everything you see around you. But but but one of
00:37:58
the questions that we don't know to ask. Yeah. Um now now some of the questions I guess I we I do know. I'd like to know is the
00:38:05
standard model of physics correct about the origins of the universe? Are we actually 13.8 billion years old? Um how
00:38:11
does the universe end? Does it end in a heat death or in some other way? Um, you know,
00:38:16
a black hole. We might be. Um, Elon, can you talk about the whole sort of simulation question? Are we a simulation? Maybe. Where does the uh where do you think we
00:38:28
find the answer first? In AI or in the stars? Because you're pursuing both obviously. Yeah.
00:38:40
I I I don't know if if I I hope I hope more people can get behind a philosophy of curiosity. Yeah. Because I think it's very exciting.
00:38:53
Yeah. Um and and and and inherently optimistic. Um you like because there's there's this
00:39:01
amazing sense of wonder about the nature of the universe. And when you just when you uncover some secret in the universe, that's amazing. And you're like a whole world of
00:39:15
understanding is opened up. I mean, we we used to not even know where all the continents were. Um, you know, used to
00:39:22
be like just the map would be there be dragons and like all we know is that when they sailed in that direction, they
00:39:27
didn't come back. I mean, the moon base, that's all that's all they knew. I I kind of feel like the moon base or just going to the moon for real this time would be a big step in the right
00:39:40
direction. You still have the moon uh planned. What's the status of that? Is is that still on the agenda?
00:39:46
Yeah, I I think it I think having I think we want to try to reach new heights as a civilization.
00:39:52
Yeah. So, I think it's it's fine to go to the moon, but but we should go to the moon in order to establish a lunar base, like
00:39:59
a a lunar research base. Yeah. Um, I mean there are parts of the moon that are perhaps older than parts
00:40:06
of of Earth. Um, and we we we might understand more about the nature of the universe if we had a science base on the
00:40:12
moon. Um, that would be very cool. And then we we obviously want to go beyond the moon
00:40:17
uh to Mars and uh build a self-sustaining city on Mars. the I I I do think that uh that that there is a fork in the road of human destiny where
00:40:29
um if we can establish a self-sustaining city on Mars with the the key test being
00:40:36
if the resupply shifts from Earth stop coming for any reason does Mars continue to to prosper or does it die out at the point at which Mars is able to uh
00:40:46
prosper and grow on its own the probable lifespan of consciousness is dramatically greater.
00:40:52
because we are no longer dependent on everything going right on Earth. You know, there's there's always some possibility of self annihilation on Earth with the World War II or or a supervirus or um or or a meteor like
00:41:07
extin, you know, that destroyed the dinosaurs. We know from the fossil record that there've been many mass mass extinction events. So uh the question
00:41:16
that I sort of was wondering about is will civilization will the civilizational arc continue to ascend
00:41:23
such that we can make Mars self- sustaining before the civil civilizational ark descends
00:41:30
um because the the window of opportunity to make life multilanetary exists now for the first time in the 4 and a half billion year history of earth. Yeah. Elon, let's assume that we get
00:41:43
there and you're there. Um, you know, you'd be the elder statesman. You'd have the moral authority of Mars. How do you run Mars?
00:41:56
But I just there's this point that I I think I I want to just emphasize again that that's that's it's more important than the form of governance on Mars or who's there in the early days. What
00:42:10
really matters is that Mars um is self- sustaining that we are truly a multilanet species and s such that we've
00:42:20
achieved planetary redundancy so that that if if something and obviously we should do everything possible to make sure life on Earth is great but there's always some risk that of an annihilation
00:42:31
event on Earth. Yeah. Um like I said self annihilation or some natural disaster. Um
00:42:38
and uh and so the the probable lifespan of consciousness increases dramatically as soon as uh as soon as we are multilanet species with the key test
00:42:49
being can Mars survive if the resupply ships stop coming. So so getting like the first missions to Mars are not that
00:42:56
important. The what matters is can you get sufficient tonnage tonnage to Mars such that Mars can prosper on its own.
00:43:04
Um, and that means it has to have all of the ingredients of civilization. It it it's not just that you need to build,
00:43:09
for example, a chip factory on Mars or ship fab on Mars, but you you need the ability to build.
00:43:16
Do you do you have a sense of the time scale? Like, let's assume Starship is at a state starting in, you know, 2026.
00:43:22
Then there's going to be a bunch of testing. Obviously, there's going to be a bunch of early testing. We only have certain launch windows. So, there's a
00:43:29
bunch of time constraints. Is that is this a 50-year thing in your mind? Is it a 150 year thing? Is it something that
00:43:35
is for our generation or is it our children's generation? Where do you see that point if it's optimally possible?
00:43:43
You know, if things go and break our way, um I think it can be done in in 30 years. Um wow. So if provided there's an exponential increase in the in the
00:43:55
tonnage to Mars with each successive Mars transfer window, which is every two years. So every two years the the
00:44:02
planets align and you can you can transfer to Mars. Um, so I I think in roughly 15, but maybe as few as 10, but
00:44:15
10 to 15ish Mars transfer windows. If you're um seeing exponential increases in the tonnage to Mars with each Mars transfer window, then it should be possible to
00:44:27
make Mars self-sustaining um in in about call it roughly 25 years. Amazing. That's incredible. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk, we'll
00:44:39
see you when we're back in town. We miss you. We'll see you in person next time.
00:44:44
Thank you, brother. All right.