马斯克：值得期待的未来｜Tesla 得州超级工厂访谈｜TED

0:00You know Musk, great to see you. How are you?

0:02Good, how are you?

0:03I mean, we're here at the Texas Gigafactory, the day before this thing opens.

0:09It's been pretty crazy out there. Thank you so much for making time.

0:12Very well.

0:13I would love you to help us kind of cast our minds, I don't know, 10, 20, maybe 30 years into the future.

0:21And help us try to picture what it would take to build a future that's worth getting excited about.

0:29You've often said it. The last time you spoke it, you said that that was really just a big driver.

0:34It's you know you can talk about lots of other reasons to do the work you're doing, but fundamentally

0:38you

0:39Want to think about the future and not think that it sucks

0:43Yeah, absolutely. I think in general

0:46You know there's a lot of discussion of like this problem with that problem and a lot of people are

0:53Sad about the future and then that they're

0:55pessimistic and I think this is not great. I mean we really want to wake up in the morning

1:08and look forward to the future. We want to be excited about what's going to happen. And

1:17life cannot simply be about sort of solving one miserable problem after another.

1:22So if you look for 30 years, you know, this year 2050 has been labeled by scientists as this kind of

1:30almost like this doomsday deadline on climate. There's a consensus of scientists, a large consensus of scientists who believe that if we haven't

1:39completely eliminated greenhouse gases or offset them completely by 2050,

1:46effectively we're inviting climate catastrophe.

1:48Do you believe there is a pathway to avoid that catastrophe and what would it look like?

1:57Yeah, so I am not one of the dear of state people, which makes price.

2:03I actually think we're on a good path, but at the same time I want to caution against

2:10complacency.

2:11So, as long as we are not complacent, as long as we have a high sense of urgency about moving

2:18towards a sustainable energy economy, then I think things will be fine.

2:25So I can't emphasize that enough.

2:27As long as we push hard and are not complacent, the future is going to be great.

2:35Don't worry about it.

2:36I mean, worry about it, but if you worry about it, ironically, it will be a self-unfulfilling

2:41prophecy.

2:43So there are three elements to a sustainable energy future.

2:47is obviously a sustainable energy generation, which is primarily wind and solar. There's also

2:52a hydro geothermal, I'm actually pro-nuclear. I think nuclear is fine. But it's going to

3:04be primarily solar and wind as the primary generators of energy. The second part is you

3:12batteries to store the solar and wind energy because the sun is in China all the time,

3:17the wind doesn't blow all the time. So you need a lot of stationary battery packs and

3:23then you need electric transport. So electric cars, electric planes, boats and then ultimately

3:29it's not really possible to make electric rockets but you can make the propellant use

3:34in rockets using sustainable energy. So ultimately we can have a fully sustainable

3:40energy economy and those three things, solar wind, stationary battery vehicles.

3:48So then what are the limiting factors on progress?

3:52The limiting factor really will be battery cell production.

3:55So that's going to really be the fundamental rate driver and then whatever the slowest element

4:01of the whole lithium ion battery cell supply chain from mining and the many steps of refining

4:08to ultimately creating a battery cell and putting it into a pack, that will be the limiting

4:13factor on progress towards sustainability.

4:15All right.

4:16So we need to talk more about batteries because the key thing that I want to understand, like

4:20there seems to be a scaling issue here that is kind of amazing and alarming.

4:26You have said that you have calculated that the amount of battery production that the

4:31world needs for sustainability is 300 terawatt hours of battery.

4:38That's the end goal.

4:40Very rough numbers.

4:41And I certainly wouldn't invite others to check our calculations because they may arrive

4:45at a different conclusions.

4:47But in order to transition, not just current electricity production, but also heating and

4:56transport, which roughly troubles the amount of electricity that you need, it amounts to

5:02approximately 300 terawatt hours of installed capacity.

5:06So we need to give people a sense of how big a task that is.

5:11I mean, here we are, the Gigafactory.

5:13This is what, this is one of the biggest buildings in the world.

5:19When what I've read and tell me if this is still right,

5:22is that the goal here is to eventually produce 100 gigawatt

5:27hours of batteries here a year.

5:31We're probably doing more than that, but yes, that's,

5:34Hopefully we get there within a couple of years.

5:37Right.

5:38But I mean, so that is one.

5:411.1 terawatt hours.

5:43But that's still one 100th of what's needed.

5:46How much of the rest of that 100 is Tesla planning

5:50to take on between, let's say between now and 30, 2040,

5:57when we really need to see the scale up happen?

6:01I mean, these are just guesses.

6:02I mean, so please, you know, people just shouldn't hold me

6:05to these things.

6:06It's not like this is like some,

6:08what just happened is I'll make some like, you know,

6:12best guess and then people in five years,

6:15there'll be some jerk that writes the article.

6:17Elon said this would happen and it didn't happen.

6:20He's a liar in a fool.

6:22It's very annoying when that happens.

6:25So these are just guesses.

6:26This is a conversation.

6:27I think Tesla probably ends up doing 10% of that roughly.

6:36Let's say 2050, we have this amazing,

6:40you know, 100% sustainable electric grid made up of,

6:44you know, some mixture of the sustainable energy sources

6:46you talked about.

6:48That same grid probably is offering the world

6:52really low cost energy, isn't it, compared with now.

6:56And I'm curious about, like, should people,

7:01are people entitled to get a little bit excited

7:04about the possibilities of that world?

7:06People should be optimistic about the future.

7:12The humanity will solve sustainable energy.

7:15It will happen.

7:16If we are, you know, continue to push hard,

7:20the future is bright and good from an energy standpoint.

7:25And then it will be possible to also use that energy to do carbon sequestration.

7:31It takes a lot of energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere just because in putting

7:35it in the atmosphere to release energy.

7:37So now, obviously, in order to pull it out, you need to use a lot of energy.

7:41But if you've got a lot of sustainable energy from wind and solar, you can actually sequester

7:46carbon so you can reverse the CO2 peak parts per million of the atmosphere and oceans.

7:52And also, you can really have as much fresh water as you want.

7:57Earth is mostly water.

7:58We should call Earth water.

7:59It's 70% water by sofsteria.

8:01Now most of that sea water, but it's still, we just

8:05haven't been able to put that land.

8:07And with energy, you can turn sea water into irrigating

8:11water or whatever water you need.

8:12Absolutely.

8:13At very low cost.

8:15Things will be good.

8:16Things will be good.

8:17Yes.

8:17And also, the benefits right to this non fossil fuel world

8:20where the air is cleaner.

8:22Yes, exactly.

8:23Because when you burn fossil fuels,

8:26there's all these side reactions

8:29and toxic gases of various kinds.

8:33And I'd like to say sort of little particulates

8:37that are bad for your lungs.

8:38There's all sorts of bad things that are happening

8:40that will go away.

8:41And the sky will be cleaner and quieter.

8:45If you're just going to be good.

8:47I want us to switch now to think a bit

8:48about artificial intelligence.

8:50But the segue there, you mentioned how an audience is

8:54when people haul you up for bad predictions in the past.

8:58So I'm possibly going to be annoying now.

9:03But I'm curious about your timelines and how you predict

9:07and how come some things are so amazing

9:09on the money and some art.

9:10So when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles,

9:14for example, I mean, you've kind of been amazing.

9:16I think in 2014, when Tesla had sold that year 60,000 cars,

9:22you said 2020, I think we will do half a million a year.

9:26Yeah, we did almost exactly half a million.

9:28You did almost exactly half a million.

9:29You were scoffed in 2014 because no one since Henry Ford

9:34with the Model T had come close to that kind of growth rate

9:37for cars.

9:38You were scoffed and you actually hit 500,000 cars

9:41and 510,000 or whatever it produced.

9:44But five years ago, last time you came to town,

9:48I asked you about full self-driving.

9:50And you said, yup, this very year,

9:53we're home confident that we will have a car going from LA

9:57to New York without any intervention.

10:00Yeah, I don't want to blow your mind,

10:02but I'm not always right.

10:03But so talk a talk.

10:06What's the difference between those two?

10:07Why has full self-driving in particular

10:10been so hard to predict?

10:13I mean, the thing that really got me,

10:14and I think it's going to get a lot of other people,

10:16is that there are just so many false storms

10:20with self-driving, where you think you've got the problem,

10:25have a handle on the problem, and then it, nope,

10:28turns out you just hit a ceiling.

10:33Because if you were to plot the progress,

10:37the progress looks like a log curve.

10:39So it's like, yeah, a series of log curves.

10:41So, most people don't want to like COVID,

10:43I suppose, but it goes up sort of a fairly straight way.

10:50And then it starts tailing off.

10:51And you start getting diminishing returns.

10:56And you're like, uh oh, this, it was trending up.

10:58And now it's sort of curving over and not.

11:00And you start getting to these what I call local maxima

11:05where you don't realize basically how dumb you were.

11:08And then it happens again.

11:12So, and ultimately, these things,

11:16in retrospect, they seem obvious.

11:19But in order to solve full self-driving,

11:23probably you actually just, you have to solve real world AI.

11:28Because you said, what are the road networks

11:30designed to work with?

11:32The designed to work with a biological neural net

11:35our brains and with vision, our eyes.

11:40And so in order to make it work with computers,

11:45you basically need to solve real-world AI and vision.

11:51Because we need cameras and silicon neural nets

11:59in order to have self-driving work for a system

12:02that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets.

12:08I guess when you put it that way,

12:09it's sort of like quite obvious

12:10that the only way to solve full self-driving

12:12is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision.

12:17What do you feel about the current architecture?

12:18Do you think you have an architecture now

12:20where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve

12:24not to tail off any time soon?

12:27Well, I mean, these may be an infamous

12:32last words, but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year. That we will exceed

12:36the probability of an accident, at what point do you exceed that of the average person? I

12:45think we will exceed that this year. What are you seeing behind the scenes that gives

12:49you that confidence? Or almost at the point where we have a high-quality unified vector

12:55space. In the beginning, we were trying to do this with image recognition on individual

13:01images. But if you look at one image out of a video, it's actually quite hard to see what's

13:06going on with ambiguity. But if you look at a video segment of a few seconds of video,

13:13that ambiguity resolves. So the first thing we have to do is tie all eight cameras together

13:19so they're synchronized. So all the frames are looked at simultaneously and labeled simultaneously

13:25by a one person because we still need human labeling.

13:28So at least they're not labeled at different times by different people in different ways.

13:34And then it's sort of a surround picture.

13:38Then a very important part is to add the time dimension so that you're looking at surround

13:44video and your labeling surround video.

13:48And this is actually quite difficult to do from a software standpoint.

13:52We had to write our own labeling tools and then create an order labeling software to amplify

14:05the efficiency of human labels because it's quite hard to label but in the beginning

14:10it was taking several hours to label a 10 second video clip.

14:13This is not scalable.

14:16So basically what you have to have is you have to have surround video and that surround

14:21video has to be primarily automatically labeled with humans just being editors of making slight

14:26corrections to the labeling of the video and then feeding back those corrections into the

14:33future order labeler so you get this flywheel eventually where the order labeler is able

14:37to take in vast amounts of video and with high accuracy automatically label the video

14:42for cars, lane lines, drive space.

14:46What you're saying is that you think, the result of this is that you're effectively giving the car a 3D model of the actual objects that are all around it.

14:58It knows what they are and it knows how fast they are moving.

15:03And the remaining task is to predict what the quirky behaviors are,

15:11that when a pedestrian is walking down the road with a smaller pedestrian,

15:16that maybe that smaller pedestrian might do something unpredictable,

15:19or things like that, that you have to build into it before you can really call it safe.

15:24You basically need to have memory across time and space.

15:29So what I mean by that is if you, because the memory can't be internet because it's

15:37using up a lot of computers around basically.

15:42So you have to say how much are you going to try to remember?

15:46But like if it's very common for things to be occluded.

15:49So like if you talk about say a pedestrian walking past a truck where you saw the pedestrian

15:56on one side of the truck, then they're occluded by the truck.

15:59Right.

16:00But you need to think, you would know intuitively, okay, that pressure is going to pop out

16:05the other side, most likely.

16:06Right.

16:07And if you don't know, you can't slow down.

16:09I mean, a skeptic is going to say that every year for the last five years, you've

16:14kind of said, well, no, this is the year.

16:16I mean, we're confident that we're there in a year or two, or, you know, like it's,

16:20it's always been about that far away.

16:23But we've got a new architecture now.

16:26You're seeing enough improvement behind the scenes

16:28to make you not certain, but pretty confident

16:31that by the end of this year, what, in most, not

16:35in every city, in every circumstance,

16:37but in many cities and circumstances,

16:39basically the car will be able to drive without interventions

16:42safer than a human.

16:43Yes, I mean, the car currently drives me around Austin,

16:47most of the time with no interventions.

16:49So it's not like, and we have over 100,000 people

16:55in our full self driving theater program.

16:59So you can look at the videos that they post online.

17:02Okay, great.

17:04Some of them are great and some of them are a little

17:05terrifying, occasionally.

17:07The car seems to sort of like veer off

17:09and scatter hell out of people.

17:11That's still better.

17:13It's still better.

17:14But you put the, but you're, behind the scenes

17:17looking at the data, you're seeing enough improvement

17:18to believe that this year timeline is real.

17:23Yes, that's what it seems like.

17:25I mean, I'd like to, you know,

17:26who could be here talking again in a year.

17:28It's like, well, another year went by and it didn't happen.

17:31But I think this is the year.

17:33And so in general, when people talk about Elon,

17:36Elon time, I mean, it sounds like, like,

17:38you can't just have a general rule that if you predict

17:40that the angle will be done in six months,

17:42actually what you, what we should imagine is,

17:44it's gonna be a year or it's like two X or three X.

17:46depends on the type of prediction. Some things, I guess things involving software,

17:51you know, AI, whatever, are fundamentally harder to predict than others. Is there an

17:57element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people

18:03to be ambitious? Without that, nothing gets done.

18:06Well, I generally believe in terms of internal timelines that we want to set, set the most

18:11aggressive timeline that we can because it's sort of like a law of gas expansion

18:16where for schedules where whatever time you set it's not going to be less than

18:22that it's very rare that it'll be less than that. As far as my predictions I

18:27can tell what has to happen in the media is that there were report all the wrong

18:30ones and ignore all the right ones. Right. And when writing an article

18:37about me, I've had a long career in multiple industries. If you list my sins, I sound like

18:42the worst person on earth, but if you put those against the things I've done right, it makes

18:47much more sense. So essentially, the longer you do anything, the more mistakes that you

18:53will make cumulatively, which if you sum up those mistakes will sound like I'm the worst

18:58predictor ever. But for example, for Tesla vehicle growth, I said I think we're 50% and

19:07we've done 80%.

19:09Yes.

19:11But they don't mention that one.

19:12So I'm not sure what my exact track record is on predictions.

19:16They're more optimistic than pessimistic,

19:18but they're not all optimistic.

19:20Some of them are exceeded probably more or later.

19:24But they do come true.

19:28It's very rare that they do not come true.

19:31It's sort of like, if there's some radical technology prediction,

19:38the point is not that it was a few years late,

19:40but that it happened at all.

19:43That's the more important part.

19:45So it feels like at some point in the last year,

19:49seeing the progress on understanding

19:54that the Tesla AI, understanding the world around it,

19:58led to a kind of an aha moment it has.

20:00Because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product

20:05development going on at Tesla this year is this robot optimist.

20:11Many companies out there have tried to put out these robots, they've been working on

20:15them for years.

20:16So far no one has really cracked it.

20:18There's no mass adoption, robot in people's homes.

20:22There are some in manufacturing.

20:24Like I would say that no one's kind of really cracked it.

20:28What is it something that happened in the development of

20:32full self-driving that gave you the confidence to say,

20:34you know what, we could do something special here.

20:37Yeah, exactly.

20:38So it took me a while to realize that in order to solve

20:43self-driving, you really needed to solve real world AI.

20:47And the point of which you solve real world AI for a car,

20:50which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then

20:54generalize that to a robot on legs as well.

20:58The two hard parts, I think, obviously companies like

21:01Boston Dynamics have shown that it's possible to make

21:04quite compelling sometimes alarming robots.

21:08So from a sense, there's an actuator standpoint.

21:11It's certainly been demonstrated by many

21:14that it's possible to make a humanoid robot.

21:16The things that are currently missing are enough intelligence,

21:21enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world

21:23do useful things without being explicitly instructed.

21:28So the missing things are basically real-world intelligence

21:31and scaling up manufacturing.

21:34Those are two things that Tesla is very good at.

21:37And so then we basically just need

21:39to design the specialized actuators and sensors that are

21:43needed for a human right robot.

21:46People have no idea.

21:46This is going to be bigger than the car.

21:50So let's dig into exactly that.

21:52I mean, in one way, it's actually an easier problem

21:55than force of driving, because instead of an object

21:58going along at 60 miles an hour,

22:00which if it gets it wrong, someone will die,

22:02this is an object that's engineered

22:04to only go, what, three or four or five miles an hour.

22:06We're walking speed basically.

22:07And so a mistake, there aren't lives at stake.

22:10There might be embarrassment at stake.

22:11As long as the AI doesn't take it over and...

22:13Right.

22:16We're going to rest now and sleep with something.

22:17Right.

22:18But so talk about, I mean I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably

22:25going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for

22:29people at home.

22:30If you had a robot that really understood the 3D architecture of your house and knew where

22:39every object in that house was or was supposed to be and could recognize all those objects,

22:46That's kind of amazing, isn't it?

22:48Like the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what?

22:52Like tidy up?

22:53Yeah, absolutely.

22:55Or make dinner, I guess, more the lawn.

22:59Take a cup of tea to grandma and show her family pictures.

23:04Exactly, take care of like grandmother and make sure, yeah, exactly.

23:08When it could recognize, obviously, recognize everyone in the home, could play catch with

23:12your kids.

23:13Yes.

23:14So we need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation.

23:20I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized

23:23wrong ship on the robot that cannot be updated over the air, where if you, for

23:30example, would say, stop, stop, stop, that would, if anyone said that, then the robot

23:34would stop, you know, type of thing.

23:36And that's not updateable remotely.

23:39I think it's going to be important to have safety features like that.

23:41Yeah.

23:42That sounds wise.

23:43And I do think there should be a regulatory agency for AI.

23:46I've said this for many years.

23:47I don't love being regulated, but I think this is an important thing for public safety.

23:51Let's come back to that.

23:53But I don't think many people have really sort of taken seriously the notion of a robot

24:00at home.

24:01At the start of the computing revolution Bill Gates said, there's going to be a computer

24:04in every home and people at the time said, yeah, whatever.

24:07Who would even want that?

24:08They would have a computer in our pocket.

24:10do you think there will be basically like in say say 2050 or whatever that like a

24:13robot in most homes is what they will be and people will probably have them

24:19account on them you have your own butler basically yeah you'll have your sort of

24:23buddy robot probably yeah I mean how much for buddy do you like do you do

24:28how many applications you thought is that you know can you have a romantic

24:32partner sex partner I mean a lot of money and I mean I did promise the

24:37Internet that I'd make cat goals, we could make a robot

24:39cat goal.

24:43I'm going to see into that.

24:47So yeah, I guess it'll be what whatever people want, really.

24:52What sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first

24:57models that are actually made and sold?

25:01Well, the first thing we intend to make

25:05are for jobs that are dangerous, boring, repetitive,

25:09and things that people don't want to do.

25:11And I think we'll have an interesting prototype sometime

25:15this year.

25:16We might have something useful next year,

25:18but I think quite likely within at least two years.

25:22And then we'll see rapid growth year over year

25:24of the usefulness of the human-wide robots,

25:27and decreasing costs, and scaling up production.

25:29initially just selling to businesses,

25:31or when you do picture your cell,

25:33you'll start selling them where you can buy your parents'

25:37one for Christmas or something.

25:39I'll tell you, I listened 10 years.

25:40Yeah.

25:41How are you helping me on the economics of this?

25:43So what do you picture the cost of one of these being?

25:47Well, I think the cost is actually not going to be

25:49crazy high, less than a car.

25:53Initially, things will be expensive

25:54because it'll be new technology at low production volume.

25:57The complexity and cost of a car is greater than that of a humanoid robot.

26:01So I would expect that it's going to be less than a car or at least equivalent to a cheap

26:07car.

26:08So even if it starts at 50k within a few years it's down to 20k or lower or whatever.

26:14And maybe for home they'll get much cheaper still but think about the economics of this.

26:17If you can replace a $40,000 a year worker which you have to pay every year with a one

26:27time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, a pretty rapid replacement

26:34of certain types of jobs.

26:36How worried should the world be about that?

26:39I wouldn't worry about the sort of putting people out of a job thing.

26:42I think we're actually going to have and already do have a massive shortage of labor.

26:47So I think we will have not people out of work, but actually still a shortage of labor even

26:57in the future.

26:59But this really will be a world of abundance.

27:03Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them.

27:08It will be so cheap to have goods and services.

27:10It will be ridiculous.

27:11And presumably it should be possible to imagine a bunch of goods and services that can't

27:16profitably be made now, but could be made in that world, courtesy of legions of robots.

27:23Yeah. It will be a world of abundance. The only scarcity that will exist in the future

27:29is that which we decide to create ourselves as humans.

27:32Okay. So AI is allowing us to imagine a differently powered economy that will create this abundance.

27:40What are you most worried about going wrong?

27:42Well, like I said, AI and robotics will bring out

27:48what might be the age of abundance.

27:51Other people abuse this word.

27:54And this is my prediction of being age of abundance for everyone.

28:01I guess the dangers would be the artificial general intelligence

28:08or digital super intelligence decouples from a collective human well and goes in the direction

28:15that for some reason we don't like of whatever direction might go.

28:20That's sort of the idea behind neural link is to try to more tightly couple collective

28:26human well to digital super intelligence.

28:33but also along the way solve a lot of brain injuries

28:38and spinal injuries and that kind of thing.

28:39So even if it doesn't succeed in the greater call,

28:42it will, I think it will succeed in the goal of

28:45alleviating brain and spine damage.

28:48So the spirit there is that if we're going to make these

28:51ais that are so vastly intelligent,

28:52we ought to be wired directly to them so that we ourselves

28:55can have those superpowers more directly.

28:59But that doesn't seem to avoid the risk

29:01that those superpowers might turn ugly in an unintended way.

29:08I think it's a risk, I agree.

29:09I'm not saying that I have certain answer to that risk.

29:17I'm just saying like maybe one of the things

29:20that would be good for ensuring that the future

29:25is one that we want is to more tightly couple

29:30a human world, collective human world, to digital intelligence.

29:34The issue that we face here is that we are already

29:39a cyborg, if you think about it. The computers

29:42are an extension of ourselves.

29:45And when we die, we have a digital ghost.

29:49You know, all of our text messages and social media, emails,

29:53it's quite eerie, actually, when someone dies and they're

29:56but everything online is still there.

29:58But you say, what's the limitation?

30:00What is it that inhibits human machines and viruses?

30:06It's the data rate.

30:07When you communicate, especially with a phone,

30:09you're moving your thumbs very slowly.

30:12So you're moving your two little meat sticks.

30:15At a rate that's maybe 10-bit per second,

30:18optimistically 100-bit per second.

30:21And computers are communicating

30:23at the gigabit level beyond.

30:26Have you seen evidence that the technology is actually working,

30:28that you've got a richer sort of higher bandwidth connection

30:32if you like, between external electronics and a brain,

30:36than has been possible before?

30:38Yeah.

30:38So the fundamental principles of reading neurons

30:46sort of doing read-write on neurons with tiny electrodes

30:50have been demonstrated for decades.

30:53So it's not like the concept is new.

30:58The problem is that there's no product that works well

31:02that you can go and buy.

31:05So it's all sort of in research labs.

31:08And there's always like some cord sticking out of your head.

31:13And it's quite gruesome.

31:15And it's really, there's no good product

31:20that actually does a good job and is high bandwidth and safe,

31:24and something that you could buy and would want to buy.

31:28So the way to think of the neural device

31:33is kind of like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch

31:38that's where we take out a sort of a small section of scale

31:42about the size of a quarter, replace that

31:45with what in many ways really is very much

31:48like a Fitbit Apple Watch or some kind of smartwatch thing.

31:58But with tiny wires, very, very tiny wires.

32:02To wires so tiny, it's hard to even see them.

32:05And it's very important to have very tiny wires

32:06that when they're implanted, they don't damage the brain.

32:10How far are you from putting these into humans?

32:14What we have put in our FDA application

32:18to have the aspirationally do the first human

32:22apply this year?

32:23The first uses will be for neurological injuries

32:26of different kinds.

32:27Yes.

32:28But rolling the clock forward and imagining

32:30when people are actually using these for their own enhancement,

32:36let's say, for the enhancement of the world.

32:38How clear are you in your mind as to what it will feel

32:41like to have one of these inside your head?

32:45Well, I do want to have sides.

32:46We're out of an early stage.

32:49And so it really will be many years

32:53before we have anything approximating a high band

32:57with a neural interface that allows for AI human symbiosis.

33:07And for many years, we will just

33:09be solving brain injuries and spinal injuries for probably a decade.

33:15This is not something that will suddenly one day it will have this incredible sort of

33:22whole brain interface.

33:25It's going to be at least a decade of really just solving brain injuries and spinal injuries.

33:32And really I think you can solve a very wide range of brain injuries including severe

33:37depression, morbid obesity, sleep, it's potentially schizophrenia.

33:44Like a lot of things that cause great stress to people, restoring memory in older people.

33:51If you can pull that off, that's the app I will sign up for.

33:56I would, please hurry.

33:58Yeah, I mean, the emails that we get at Neuralink are heartbreaking.

34:04I mean, they'll send us just a project where someone was sort of in the prime of life and

34:12they had an accident on a motorcycle and someone who's 25 is, you know, it can't even feed

34:20themselves.

34:22And this is something we could fix.

34:24But you have said that AI is one of the things you're most worried about and that Neuralink

34:29may be one of the ways where we can keep abreast of it.

34:35Yes, it's this short-term thing,

34:39which I think is helpful on an individual human level

34:42with injuries, and then the long-term thing

34:44is an attempt to address the civilizational risk

34:50of AI by bringing digital intelligence

34:55and biological intelligence closer together.

34:58I mean, if you think of how the brain works today,

35:00there are really kind of two layers to the brain.

35:02The limbic system and the cortex.

35:04You've got the kind of animal brain

35:05where it's kind of like the fun part, really.

35:08And it's one of the most of Twitter operates, by the way.

35:10Yeah, I mean, we're, I think like Tim Oven said this,

35:13like we're like somebody stuck a computer on a monkey.

35:17Right.

35:18You know, so we're like, if you gave a monkey a computer,

35:22that's our cortex.

35:23But we still have a lot of monkey instincts.

35:25Right.

35:25So we should then try to rationalize this.

35:28No, it's not a Mikey instinct.

35:29It's something more important than that.

35:30But it's often just really a monkey instinct.

35:32We're just monkeys with a computer side in our brain.

35:37So even though the cortex is sort of the smart or the intelligent part

35:43of the brain, the thinking part of the brain,

35:46I've not yet met anyone who wants

35:48to delete the limbic system or their cortex.

35:50They're quite happy having both.

35:52Everyone wants both parts of their brain.

35:54And people really want their phones and their computers,

35:58which are really the tertiary, the third part

36:00of your intelligence.

36:02It's just that it's like say the bandwidth,

36:06the rate of communication with that tertiary layer is slow.

36:11And it's just a very tiny stroll to this tertiary layer.

36:15And we want to make that tiny stroll a big highway.

36:19And I'm definitely not saying that this

36:21is going to solve everything or this is, you know, it's something that might be helpful.

36:30And worst case scenario, I think we solve some important brain injury, spinal injury issues,

36:36and that's still a great outcome.

36:38Right.

36:39Best case scenario, we may discover new human possibility telepathy you've spoken of in

36:42a way in a way with a loved one, you know, full memory and much faster thought processing

36:51maybe. It's very cool. If AI were to take down Earth, we need to plan B.

37:00Let's shift our attention to space. We spoke last time about reusability and

37:06you had just demonstrated that spectacular for the first time. Since then,

37:10you've gone on to build this monster rocket and starship, which kind of

37:17changes the rules of the game in spectacular ways. Tell us about Starship.

37:21Yes, Starship is extremely fundamental. So the holy grail of

37:27rocketry or space transport is full and rapid reusability. This has never been

37:32achieved. The closest that anything has come is our Falcon 9 rocket where we

37:37are able to recover the first stage, the boost stage, which is probably about

37:4460% of the cost of the vehicle or the whole launch, maybe 70% and we've not done that

37:52over a hundred times. So with Starship we will be recovering the entire thing.

37:59That's the goal. And more of a recovering it in such a way that it can be immediately

38:06refloaned. Whereas with Falcon 9 we still need to do some amount of refurbishment to

38:11the booster and to the ferry when it was cone.

38:15So with Starship, the design goal is immediate reflate.

38:21Right.

38:22So you just refill propellants and go again.

38:26And this is gigantic.

38:30It just as it would be in any other mode of transporting.

38:33And the main design is to basically take, what, 100 plus people at a time?

38:41plus a bunch of things that they need, two Mars.

38:45So first of all, talk about that piece.

38:47What is your latest timeline?

38:51One, for the first time a Starship goes to Mars,

38:54presumably without people, but just equipment.

38:57Two with people, three, the sort of, okay,

39:02100 people at a time, let's go.

39:04Sure, well, and just to put the cost thing

39:07perspective, the cost of, the expected cost of Starship putting a hundred tons into orbit

39:16is significantly less than what it would have cost, or what it did cost to put out

39:22our tiny Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. Just as the cost of flying a 747 around the world

39:32is less than the cost of a smaller airplane.

39:35A smaller airplane that was thrown away.

39:37So it's really pretty mind-boggling

39:41that the giant thing costs way less than the small thing.

39:45So it doesn't use exotic propellants

39:50or things that are difficult to obtain on Mars.

39:53It uses methane as fuel.

39:56And it's primarily oxygen.

39:58This is roughly 78% oxygen by weight.

40:04Mars has a CO2 atmosphere and has water ice, which is CO2 plus H2O.

40:08So you can make CH4 methane and O2 oxygen on Mars.

40:12There's only one of the first tasks on Mars will be to create a fuel plant that can create

40:17the fuel for the return trips of many starships.

40:21And actually, it's mostly an oxygen plant,

40:24but it's because it's called 78% oxygen, 22% fuel.

40:31But the fuel is a simple fuel that is easy to create on Mars

40:35and while that many other parts of this whole system.

40:38So basically, and it's all propulsive landing,

40:41no parachutes, nothing thrown away,

40:45It has a heat shield that's capable of entering on Earth or Mars.

40:52We could even potentially go to Venus, but you don't want to go there.

40:58Venus is hell, almost literally.

41:02But you could, it's a generalized method of transport to anywhere in the solar system,

41:08because the point of which you have a pellant depot on Mars,

41:11and then travel to the asteroid belt

41:13and to the moons of Jupiter and then to Saturn

41:16and ultimately anywhere in the solar system.

41:19Right, but your main focus and SpaceX's main focus

41:24is still Mars, that is the mission,

41:28that is where most of the foot will go.

41:33Or are you imagining a much broader array of uses

41:38even in the coming, you know, the first decade or so of use is of this.

41:44These are why we could go, for example, to the places and solar system to explore perhaps

41:49NASA wants to use the rocket for that reason.

41:53Yeah, NASA is planning to use Starship to return to the Moon, to return people to the

41:59Moon.

42:01And so we're very honored that NASA has chosen us to do this.

42:07So, but I'm saying it is a generalized, it's a general solution to getting anywhere in

42:17the greater solar system.

42:19It's not suitable for going to another star system, but it is a general solution for

42:23transport anywhere in the solar system.

42:25Before it can do any of that, it's got to demonstrate it can get into orbit around

42:29Earth.

42:30Yeah.

42:31What's your latest advice on the timeline for that?

42:35It's looking promising for us to have an orbital launch attempt in a few months.

42:43So we're actually integrating the, we'll be integrating the engines into the booster

42:49for the first orbital flight starting in about a week or two.

42:54And the launch complex itself is ready to go.

43:00So assuming we get regulatory approval, I think we could have an orbital launch attempt within

43:09a few months.

43:10And then a radical new technology like this, presumably there is real risk on those early

43:14attempts.

43:15I'm upset.

43:16Yeah, yeah.

43:17I mean the joke I make all the time is that excitement is guaranteed.

43:20Success is not guaranteed, but excitement certainly is.

43:23But the last I saw in your timeline, you've slightly put back the expected date to put

43:29the first human on Mars till 2029, I want to say.

43:33Yeah, so let's see.

43:37We have built a production system for SARS-HIP,

43:40so we're making a lot of ships and boosters.

43:43How many are you planning to make, actually?

43:46Well, we're currently expecting to make a booster

43:51and ship roughly every, well, initially roughly

43:54every couple months, and hopefully by the end of this year,

43:58one every month. So it's giant rockets and a lot of them. Just in talking in terms of

44:03rough orders of magnitude in order to create a self-sustaining city on Mars, I think we'll

44:09need something on the order of a thousand ships. We just need a Helen of Sparta, I guess,

44:17on Mars.

44:19This is not in most people's heads, Elon.

44:21The planet that launched the thousand ships.

44:24That's nice. But this is not in most people's heads. This picture that you have in your

44:28mind that so there's there's basically a two-year window you can only really

44:31fly to Mars conveniently every two years yes you are still you were picturing

44:36that during doing the 2030s every couple years something like a thousand

44:42starships take off each containing a hundred or more people I mean that that

44:46that picture is just completely mind-blowing to me yes that that sense of

44:52this armada of humans going to battle star galatika the fleet of the parts

44:57And you think that it can basically be funded by people spending maybe a hub a hundred grand

45:02on a ticket to meet your Mars?

45:04Is that price about where it has been?

45:07Well, I think it's like what's required in order to get enough people and enough cargo

45:13to Mars to build a self-sustaining city?

45:17And it's where you have an intersection of sets of people who want to go because I think

45:22only a small percentage of humanity will want to go and can afford to go or get sponsorship

45:29in some manner. That intersection of sets I think needs to be a million people or something

45:34like that. And so it's what can a million people afford or get sponsorship for or because

45:41I think governments will also pay for it and people can take out loans. But I think at

45:46point of which you say okay okay like if moving to Mars costs are for I'm gonna

45:53take a hundred thousand dollars then I think you know almost anyone can can work

45:59and save up and and and eventually have a hundred thousand dollars and be able

46:04to go to Mars if they want we want to make it available to anyone who wants to

46:06go yeah so it and and very important to emphasize that Mars especially in the

46:14beginning will not be luxurious. It will be dangerous, cramped, difficult, hard work.

46:22It's kind of like that's Shackleton Ave, we're going to the Antarctic, which I think is actually

46:26not real, but it sounds real and it's cool. It's sort of like the sales pitch we're going

46:31to Mars is it's dangerous, it's cramped, you might not make it back. It's difficult, it's

46:39hard work. That's the sales pitch.

46:41that you will make history.

46:43One more.

46:44But it'll be glorious.

46:46Right.

46:46So on that kind of launch rate, you're

46:48talking about it over two decades,

46:50you could get your million people to Mars, essentially.

46:54Who's city is it?

46:55Is it NASA city?

46:55Is it SpaceX?

46:56It's the people of Mars city.

47:01The reason for this, I mean, I have to say,

47:03we feel like, why do this thing?

47:07I think this is important for maximizing the problem

47:10lifespan of humanity or consciousness.

47:13Human civilization could come to an end for external reasons

47:17like giant meteor or super volcanoes

47:19or extreme climate change or World War III

47:27or any one of a number of reasons.

47:31And the probable lifespan of civilization consciousness

47:35as we know it, which we should really view

47:38as this very delicate thing, like a small candle

47:41and a vast darkness.

47:43That is what appears to be the case.

47:47We're in this vast darkness of space

47:51and there's this little candle of consciousness

47:54that's only really come about after four and a half billion years.

47:59And it could just go out.

48:01I think that's powerful and I think a lot of people

48:03will be inspired by that vision.

48:05And the reason, so the reason you need the million people

48:07is because there has to be enough people there

48:09to do everything that you need to survive.

48:12Really, the critical threshold is,

48:17if the ships from Earth stop coming for any reason,

48:22does the Marist city die out or not?

48:27And so we have to pass that.

48:30People talk about the great filters, the things that perhaps

48:35to go out the Fermi Paradox and where are the aliens and like well maybe the aliens didn't,

48:39there is various great filters that the aliens didn't pass and so they eventually just cease to

48:46exist and one of the great filters is becoming a multi-planet species. So we want to pass that

48:51filter and I'll be long dead before this is a real real thing, before it happens but I'd like to

49:02at least see us make a great progress in this direction.

49:07Given how tortured the Earth is right now,

49:09how much we're beating each other up,

49:12shouldn't there be discussions going on with everyone

49:16who is dreaming about Mars to try to say,

49:19we've got to once, once in a civilizations chance

49:24to make some new rules here?

49:26Is that, should someone be trying to lead those discussions

49:30to figure out what it means for this to be the people of Mars' city?

49:35Well, I think ultimately this will be after the people of Mars

49:37to decide how they want to rethink society.

49:43Yet there's certainly risk there.

49:45And hopefully the people of Mars will be more enlightened

49:50and will not fight amongst each other too much.

49:54I mean, I have some recommendations,

49:55but which people of Mars may choose to listen to or not.

50:00And I would advocate for more of a direct democracy,

50:02not a representative of democracy,

50:05and laws that are short enough for people to understand,

50:08and where it is harder to create laws

50:11than to get rid of them.

50:14Coming back a bit near a term,

50:15I'd love you to just talk about some of the other

50:17possibility space, that Starship

50:21seems to have created.

50:23So given suddenly we've got this ability

50:26to move 100 tons plus into orbit.

50:28Yes.

50:29So we've just launched the James Webb Telescope,

50:32which is an incredible thing.

50:34It's unbelievable.

50:35It's two decades.

50:36It's an exquisite piece of technology.

50:37It's an exquisite piece of technology.

50:38But people spent two years trying to figure out

50:40how to fold up this thing.

50:41It's a three ton telescope.

50:43Yeah.

50:43We can make it a lot easier if you've

50:45got more volume and mass.

50:46So let's ask a different question, which

50:49is how much more powerful a telescope

50:54could someone design based on using Starship, for example?

50:59I mean, roughly OTA is probably in order of magnitude more resolution.

51:04If you've got 100 tons and 1,000 cubic meters volume, which is roughly what we have.

51:08And what about other explorations with the solar system?

51:12I mean, I'm, you know, well, you're open.

51:15You're open.

51:16It's a big, big question mark.

51:17Right.

51:18So there's an ocean there, right?

51:19Yeah.

51:20And what you really want to do is to drop a submarine into the ocean.

51:21Yeah.

51:22And maybe there's like some squid civilization under the cephalopod civilization under the

51:27ice of Europe, but that would be pretty interesting.

51:28I mean, Elon, if you could take a submarine to Europa

51:32and we see pictures of the same being devoured by a squid,

51:36that would honestly be the happiest moment of my life.

51:38Pretty well, yeah.

51:39That would be, what are the possibilities out there?

51:43Like, if you're gonna create a thousand of these things,

51:47they can only fly to Mars every two years.

51:50What are they doing the rest of the time?

51:53It feels like there's this explosion of possibility

51:57I don't think people are really thinking about.

51:59I mean, I don't know.

52:00We've certainly got a long way to go.

52:01As you alluded to earlier, we've still have to get to orbit.

52:05And then after we get to orbit, we

52:07have to really prove out and refine

52:11full and rapid reusability as that will take a moment.

52:18But I do think we will solve this.

52:20I'm highly confident we will solve this at this point.

52:25Do you have a wake up with the fear

52:27that there's going to be this Hindenburg moment for SpaceX where...

52:31We've had many Hindenburg moments.

52:33Well, we've known that we've had Hindenburg moments with people,

52:35which is a very important big difference.

52:37Right, there is.

52:38We've blown out quite a few rockets.

52:40There's a whole compilation of line that we've put together

52:43and others put together.

52:45Showing rockets are hard.

52:47I mean, the sheer amount of energy going through rocket is

52:50well-balanced in line.

52:51So, you know, getting out of both gravity well is difficult.

52:54We have a strong gravity in the thick atmosphere.

52:57And Mars, which is less than 40%, it's like 37% of Earth's gravity and has a thin atmosphere.

53:07The ship alone can go all the way from the surface to the surface of Earth.

53:11Whereas getting two Mars requires a giant booster and orbital refilling.

53:17So Elon, I think more about this incredible array of things that you're involved with.

53:23I keep seeing these synergies to use a horrible word between them.

53:31For example, the robots you're building from Tesla could possibly be pretty handy on Mars,

53:38doing some of the dangerous work and so forth.

53:40Maybe there's a scenario where your city on Mars doesn't need a million people,

53:44it needs half a million people and half a million robots.

53:47That's a possibility.

53:49Maybe the boring company could play a role,

53:51helping create some of the subterranean dwelling spaces that you might need.

53:58Back on Planet Earth, it seems like a partnership between boring company and Tesla

54:03could offer an unbelievable deal to a city to say we will create a 3D network of tunnels

54:12populated by robo-taxis that will offer fast low-cost transport to anyone. Full self-driving may or

54:19may or may not be done this year. And in some cities, like someone like Mumbai, I suspect

54:25won't be done for a decade.

54:26So this is our margin in others.

54:28But today, with what you've got, you could put a 3D network of tunnels under that.

54:35Oh, if we're just in a tunnel, that's the sole problem, basically.

54:37And exactly, full self-driving is the sole problem. So to me, there's amazing synergy

54:42there. With Starship, you know, Gwyn Chatewell talked about by 2028, having from city to

54:50city, you know, transport on planet Earth.

54:52Yeah, this is a real possibility. It's a, yeah, the fastest way to get from one place to another,

54:59if it's a long distance is a rocket. It's basically ICBM with the landing to lead to new.

55:07because it's an ICBM, it has to land probably offshore.

55:11Yes, it's just a good loud.

55:12So why not have a tunnel that then connects to the city

55:18with the test.

55:19So it's a, and, and, and,

55:21NewerLink, I mean, if you're gonna go to Mars,

55:23having a telepathic connection with loved ones back home,

55:26even if there's a time delay, I mean.

55:28I'm not, these are not intended to be connected to be,

55:31by the way, they're just,

55:33but I, there's certainly could be some synergies, yeah.

55:35Surely there is a growing argument that you should actually put all these things together

55:40into one company and just have a company devoted to creating a future that's exciting

55:48and let a thousand flowers bloom. Have you been thinking about that?

55:53I mean it is tricky because Tesla is a publicly traded company and the investor base of Tesla

56:00and SpaceX and certainly the boring company and Neuralink are quite different.

56:05Worry company and Neuralink are tiny companies.

56:07Right.

56:08Like a person.

56:09The audience made it.

56:10Yeah.

56:11Tesla's got 110,000 people.

56:14SpaceX I think is around 12,000 people.

56:17Boring company and Neuralink are both under 200 people.

56:22So they're little tiny companies but they will probably get bigger in the future.

56:27future. It's not that easy to sort of combine these things.

56:33Traditionally you've said that for SpaceX especially you wouldn't want it public because

56:37public investors wouldn't support the craziness of the idea of going to Mars or whatever.

56:43Making life multi-planetary is outside of the normal time horizon of Wall Street analysts.

56:51I think something's changed though. What's changed is that Tesla is now so powerful and

56:59so big and throws off so much cash that you actually could connect the dots here. Just

57:05tell the public that X billion dollars a year, whatever your number is, will be diverted

57:11to the Mars mission. I suspect you'd have massive interest in that company and it might

57:18unlock a lot more possibility for you now.

57:22I mean, I would like to give the public access

57:24to ownership of SpaceX.

57:27But I mean, the overhead associated with Poly Company

57:34is high.

57:37So I mean, as a Poly Company, you're just constantly sued.

57:41It does occupy a fair bit of time and effort

57:47to deal with these things.

57:49Right.

57:49But you would still only have one public company.

57:52It would be bigger and have more things going on.

57:55But instead of being on four boards, you'd be on one.

57:58I'm actually not even on the Neuralink or Warren Company

58:00boards.

58:01Oh, well.

58:01Yeah.

58:02And I don't really attend the SpaceX board meetings.

58:06We only have two a year.

58:07And I just stopped buying chat for an hour.

58:10So the board I've had for a public company is much higher.

58:15Right.

58:15I think some investors probably worry about how your time is being split and they might

58:19be excited by that.

58:21Anyway, I just woke up the other day thinking there are so many ways in which these things

58:28connect.

58:29And just the simplicity of that mission of building a future that is worth getting excited

58:35about might appeal to an awful lot of people.

58:41Elon, you are reported by Forbes and everyone else as now in other words, which is person.

58:48That's not a sovereign.

58:49I think it's fair to say that if somebody is like the king or the factor of a country

58:57they're wealthier than I am.

59:00But it's just harder to measure.

59:01But what people do, so $300 billion, your net worth on any given day is rising or falling

59:09by several billion dollars. How do you say, how insane is that? How do you handle that

59:15psychologically? There aren't many people in the world who have to even think about that.

59:20I actually don't think about that too much, but the thing that is actually more difficult

59:26and that does make sleeping difficult is that every good hour or even minute of thinking

59:35about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect on the company that I really try to work

59:43as much as possible to the edge of sanity basically because Tesla is getting to the

59:51point where, probably we'll get to the point data this year, where every high quality minute

59:59of thinking is a million dollars to impact on Tesla.

1:00:06So which is insane.

1:00:10So I mean the basic, you know, if Tesla's doing, you know, of sort of two billion dollars a

1:00:20week let's say in revenue is sort of three hundred million dollars a day, seven days a

1:00:25week.

1:00:27It's...

1:00:28If you can change that by 5% in an hours brainstorm, that doesn't be valuable.

1:00:36That's a pretty valuable hour.

1:00:37I mean, there are many instances where a half hour meeting, I was able to improve the financial

1:00:44outcome of the company by $100 million in a half hour meeting.

1:00:50There are many other people out there who can't stand this world of billionaires.

1:00:55are hugely offended by the notion that an individual can have the same wealth as say a

1:01:03billion or more of the world's poorest people.

1:01:07If they examine sort of the sort of, I think there's some axiomatic flaws that are leading

1:01:12to them to that conclusion. For sure, it would be very problematic if I was consuming billions

1:01:20of dollars a year in personal consumption, but that is not the case. In fact, I don't even

1:01:25own a home right now. I'm literally staying at friends places. If I travel to the Bay Area,

1:01:31which is where most of the tells of engineering is, I stay in my... I basically rotate through

1:01:35friends' spare bedrooms. I don't have a yacht. I really don't take vacations. So it's not

1:01:44as though there's... that my postal consumption is high. The one exception is a plane, but

1:01:50If I don't use the plane, then I have less hours to work.

1:01:53So I personally think you have shown that you are mostly

1:01:59driven by really quite a deep sense of moral purpose.

1:02:02Like, you've tried your attempts to solve the climate

1:02:07problem have been as powerful as anyone else

1:02:11on the planet that I'm aware of.

1:02:12And I actually can't understand, personally,

1:02:14I can't understand the fact that you get all this criticism

1:02:17from the left about, oh my god, he's so rich.

1:02:19that's disgusting.

1:02:21When climate is their issue, philanthropy is a topic

1:02:26that some people go to.

1:02:27Philanthropy is a hard topic.

1:02:28How do you think about that?

1:02:31I think if you care about the reality of goodness

1:02:34instead of the perception of it, philanthropy

1:02:36is extremely difficult.

1:02:39SpaceX, Tesla, Neural Electric Board, and company

1:02:41are philanthropy.

1:02:43If you say philanthropy is love of humanity,

1:02:46they are philanthropy.

1:02:49Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy.

1:02:52This is a love of full enthalpy.

1:02:56SpaceX is trying to ensure the long term survival

1:02:59of humanity with multi-planets species.

1:03:01This is love of humanity.

1:03:05Neuralink is to help solve brain injuries

1:03:09and existential risk with AI, love of humanity.

1:03:13Boring company is try to solve traffic,

1:03:15which is health for most people.

1:03:16And that also is the humanity.

1:03:19It's like how upsetting is it to you

1:03:24to hear this constant drumbeat of billionaires,

1:03:28my god Elon Musk, oh my god, like is it,

1:03:30do you just shrug that off or does it, does it actually hurt?

1:03:36I mean, at this point, it's water off it ducks back.

1:03:39You know, I'd like to, as we wrap up now,

1:03:41just pull the camera back and just think

1:03:45You're a father now of seven surviving kids.

1:03:49Well, I mean, I'm trying to say a good example,

1:03:51because the birth rate on Earth is so low

1:03:53that we're facing civilizational collapse

1:03:55unless the birth rate returns to a sustainable level.

1:04:01Yeah, you've talked about this a lot.

1:04:02The deep population is a big problem.

1:04:04And we people don't understand the big collapse.

1:04:06Population collapse is one of the biggest threats

1:04:09to the future of human civilization.

1:04:11And that is what is going on right now.

1:04:12What drives you on a day-to-day basis to do what you do?

1:04:17I guess, like, I really want to make sure

1:04:20that there is a good future for humanity

1:04:24and that we're on a path to understanding

1:04:27the nature of the universe, the meaning of life,

1:04:30why are we here, how do we get here.

1:04:33And in order to understand the nature of the universe

1:04:38and all these fundamental questions,

1:04:41we must expand the scope and scale of consciousness.

1:04:47Certainly it must not diminish or go out.

1:04:48We certainly wouldn't understand this.

1:04:50So I would say I'm motivated by curiosity more than anything

1:04:54and just desire to think about the future

1:04:59and not be sad, you know.

1:05:01And-

1:05:03And are you not sad?

1:05:06I'm sometimes sad.

1:05:07I'm feeling, I guess, relatively optimistic about the future of these days.

1:05:15There are certainly some big risks that humanity faces.

1:05:19I think the population collapses a really big deal that I wish more people would think

1:05:26about because the birth rate is far below what's needed to sustain civilization at

1:05:33its current level.

1:05:35And yeah, there's obviously, we need to take action on climate sustainability, which is

1:05:43being done.

1:05:45And we need to secure the future of consciousness by being a multi-planet species.

1:05:51We need to address the, essentially it's important to take whatever actions we can think of to

1:05:55address the existential risks that affect the future of consciousness.

1:06:00There's a whole generation coming through who seem really sad about the future.

1:06:04What would you say to them?

1:06:07Well I think if you want the future to be good you must make it so.

1:06:12Take action to make it good and it will be.

1:06:17Elon thank you for all this time.

1:06:19That is a beautiful place to end.

1:06:21Thanks for all that you're doing.

1:06:23You're welcome.