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[Music] I believe Optimus is going to be the greatest product ever created by
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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.
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3 2 1.
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[Music] There's a
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splash down. How do you have time? this I I I never
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understand you. Yeah. Well, I do work a lot.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elon Musk.
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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?
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Uh, the government is basically unfixable.
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Elon O only. I support David's noble efforts and this
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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yeah, everything would take a long time. We've got time.
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Um we're we're finalizing the design of
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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on the ranch? I think that the the marginal cost of
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production once you hit a million units per year
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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things. Okay. Yeah. Much hotter significantly. Yeah.
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Starship. Yes. Well, more No, not Starship's harder.
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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?
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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
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SpaceX to h uh deliver high bandwidth
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connectivity directly from the satellites to the phones. Um but uh
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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
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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
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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?
00:23:01
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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over trying to figure out still or is it more about getting through a laundry
00:24:27
list of your learnings and just integrating it into the next launch?
00:24:33
Well, that the for for full reusability of the ship,
00:24:41
there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So, no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat
00:24:47
shield. Like the shuttle heat shield uh had to go through nine months of repair after every flight,
00:24:52
right? Um so, no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield.
00:24:58
And is that a material science problem or is that an engineering problem or both? Uh yeah, I mean it's a material science
00:25:06
engineering problem. So, it's but we really are uh looking at the fundamental
00:25:12
physics here. Um again physics first principles and trying to figure out how do we make something that
00:25:20
um is uh you know can can withstand the heat is
00:25:25
very light doesn't transmit the heat to the the primary sh
00:25:31
Yeah. primary structure um and uh
00:25:37
whose integ Yeah. Um
00:25:43
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
00:25:51
of different issues and and then you really need to know that these tiles are working. You can't uh,
00:25:58
you know, go through this laborious inspection. So, it really needs to be we're, you know, these these tens of
00:26:05
thousands of tiles all work and don't need to be refurbished or checked one by
00:26:12
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
00:26:28
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
00:26:47
amount of synthetic data. Just tell us about how uh the evolution of Grock is
00:26:52
going and this innovation and why it's so important.
00:26:59
Yeah. So we're we're running a lot of using a lot of of inference compute and
00:27:04
um and reasoning to look at all of the source data which is really the corpus
00:27:10
of human knowledge and then uh thinking about each piece of
00:27:15
information and then adding mod adding what's missing um and correcting
00:27:22
correcting mistakes and removing falsehoods from the from that training data. So it's it's it's like if you take
00:27:29
say Wikipedia as an example but this really applies to to books, PDFs,
00:27:34
uh the websites, uh every form of information. Um the
00:27:41
the Grock is using um heavy amounts of inference compute to say to look at at
00:27:49
an example a Wikipedia page and say uh what is true, partially true or false or
00:27:56
missing uh in this page. Now rewrite the page to
00:28:01
in to correct the remove the falsehoods
00:28:06
uh uh correct the half-truths and add the missing context.
00:28:13
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
00:28:24
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.
00:28:35
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.
00:28:46
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
00:29:06
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
00:29:19
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
00:29:38
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
00:29:49
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
00:30:09
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
00:30:28
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
00:30:46
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
00:31:14
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
00:31:46
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.
00:32:09
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
00:32:29
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
00:33:52
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
00:34:40
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
00:34:58
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
00:35:10
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
00:35:47
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
00:35:57
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
00:36:10
religions um that uh that that are very very
00:36:15
self-destructive. Um so I I think perhaps
00:36:22
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
00:36:34
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
00:36:45
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
00:37:02
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
00:37:27
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
00:37:37
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,
00:38:22
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?
00:38:34
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
00:38:47
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
00:39:07
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
00:39:34
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
00:40:23
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
00:40:41
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
00:40:58
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
00:41:36
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
00:41:48
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
00:42:03
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-
00:42:15
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
00:42:25
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
00:42:44
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
00:43:49
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
00:44:08
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
00:44:21
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.
00:44:33
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.
