Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #400

- The following is a conversation with Elon Musk,

his fourth time on this, the Lex Fridman Podcast.

(Elon whistling)

I thought you were gonna finish it.

(Elon whistling)

It's one of the greatest themes in all film history.

(whistling continues)

- Yeah, that's great.

- So I was just thinking about the Roman Empire.

As one does. (Elon laughing)

- There's that whole meme where old guys

are thinking about the Roman Empire at least once a day.

- And half the population's confused

whether it's true or not.

But more seriously thinking about the wars

going on in the world today.

And as you know, war and military conquest

has been a big part of Roman society and culture.

And it, I think, has been a big part of most empires

and dynasties throughout human history, so.

- Yeah, they usually came as a result of conquest.

I mean, there's some, like the Hungarian Empire

where there was just a lot of sort of clever marriages.

- But fundamentally there's an engine of conquest.

They celebrate excellence in warfare.

Many of the leaders were excellent generals.

- [Elon] Yeah. - That kind of thing.

So a big picture question, Grok approved,

I asked if this is a good question to ask.

- [Elon] Get tested Grok approved.

- Yeah.

At least on fun mode.

(Elon laughing)

To what degree do you think war is part of human nature

versus a consequence of

how human societies are structured?

I ask this as you have somehow controversially

been a proponent of peace.

- I'm generally a proponent of peace.

I mean, ignorance is perhaps,

in my view, the real enemy to be countered.

That's the real hard part.

Not, you know, fighting other humans.

But all creatures fight.

I mean, the jungle is a,

you look at the, people think of this nature

as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing.

But in fact it is not.

There's some quite funny Werner Herzog thing

where he is like in the jungle,

like saying that it's like basically just murder

and death in every direction.

I mean, the plants, animals in the jungle

are constantly trying to kill each other,

every single day, every minute.

So it's not like, you know, we're unusual in that respect.

- Well, there's a relevant question here.

Whether with greater intelligence comes greater control

over these base instincts for violence.

- Yes.

We have much more vulnerability to control our

limbic instinct for violence than say a chimpanzee.

And in fact, if one looks and say,

chimpanzee society, it is not friendly.

I mean, the Bonobos are an exception,

but chimpanzee society is filled with violence.

And it's quite, quite horrific, frankly,

that that's our limbic system in action.

Like, you don't wanna be on the wrong side of a chimpanzee,

they'll eat your face off and tear and nuts off.

- Yeah, basically, there's no limits or ethics

or there almost had just war.

There's no just war in chimpanzee societies,

is war and dominance by any means necessary.

- Yeah, chimpanzee society is a pro,

like a permanent version of human society.

They're not like peace loving basically at all.

There's extreme violence.

And then once in a while,

somebody who's watched too many Disney movies

decides to raise a chimpanzee as a pet,

and then that eats their face or rip their nuts off

or chew their fingers off and that kind of thing.

It's happened several times.

- Ripping your nuts off is an interesting

strategy for interaction.

- It's happened to people. It's unfortunate.

Like that's, I guess a one way to ensure

that the other chimp doesn't like, you know,

contribute to the gene pool.

- Well, from a martial arts perspective

is the fascinating strategy.

- (laughing) The nut riper. (laughing)

- I wonder which of the martial arts teaches that one.

- I think it's safe to say if somebody's got your nuts

in their hands and as the option ripping them off,

you'll be amenable to whatever they want.

- Yeah. (Elon laughing)

- So like I said, somehow controversially,

you've been an proponent of peace on Twitter, on X.

- Yeah.

- So let me ask you about the wars going on today

and to see what the path to peace could be.

How do you hope the current war in Israel

and Gaza comes to an end?

What path do you see

that can minimize human suffering

in the long term in that part of the world?

- Well, I think that part of the world is definitely like,

if you look up the, there is no easy answer

in the dictionary.

It'll be that, like the picture of the Middle East,

in Israel especially.

So there is no easy answer.

What my, this is strictly my opinion of, you know,

is that the goal

of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel.

They obviously did not expect to, you know,

have a military victory, but they expect,

they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities

that they could in order to provoke

the most aggressive response possible from Israel.

And then leverage that aggressive response

to rally Muslims worldwide

for the course of Gaza and Palestine,

which they have succeeded in doing.

So the counterintuitive thing here,

I think that the thing that I think should be done,

even though it's very difficult,

is that I would recommend that Israel

engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible.

Every po- everything.

That is the actual thing

that we're taught the goal of Hamas.

- So in some sense,

the degree that makes sense in geopolitics

turn the other cheek implemented.

- It's not exactly turn the other cheek.

Because I do think that there's, you know,

I think it is appropriate for Israel

to find the Hamas members

and, you know, either kill 'em or incarcerate them.

Like that's something that's something has to be done

'cause they're just gonna keep coming otherwise.

But in addition to that, they need to do whatever they can.

There's some talk of establishing,

for example, a mobile hospital.

I'd recommend doing that.

Just making sure that, you know,

there's food, water, medical, necessities,

and just be over the top about it

and be very transparent.

So you can't claim it's a trick.

Like just put webcam on the thing, you know, or 24/7.

- Deploy acts of kindness. - Yeah.

Conspicuous acts of kindness that,

with that are unequivocal.

Meaning they can't be somehow,

because Hamas will then,

their response will be, oh, it's a trick.

Therefore you have to counter how it's not a trick.

- This ultimately fights the broader force

of hatred in the region.

- Yes.

And I'm not sure who said it, it's an apocryphal saying,

but an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.

Now that neck of the woods,

they really believe in the whole eye for an eye thing.

But I mean, you really have,

if you're not gonna just outright commit genocide,

like against an entire people,

which obviously would not be acceptable to really

shouldn't be acceptable to anyone,

then you're gonna leave basically a lot of people alive

who subsequently, you know, hate Israel.

So really the question is like,

how, for every Hamas member that you kill,

how many did you create?

And if you create more than you killed,

you've not succeeded.

That's the, you know, the real situation there.

And it's safe to say that if, you know,

if you kill somebody's child in Gaza,

you've made at least a few Hamas members

who will die just to kill an Israeli.

That's the situation.

So, but I mean,

this is one of the most contentious subjects

one could possibly discuss.

But I think if the goal ultimately

is some sort of long-term peace,

one has to be, look at this from the standpoint of,

over time, are there more or fewer terrorists being created?

- Let me just linger on war.

- Yeah, war safe to say,

wars always existed and always will exist.

- [Lex] Always will exist,

- Always has existed and always will exist.

- I hope not. You think it always will?

- There will always be war.

This question of just how much war.

And, you know, there's this,

there's this sort of the scope and scale of war.

But to imagine that there would not be any war

in the future, I think would be a very unlikely outcome.

- Yeah you talked about the Culture series.

There's war even there.

- Yes. It's a giant war.

The first book starts off with a gigantic galactic war

where trillions die, trillions.

- But it still nevertheless protects these pockets

of flourishing.

Somehow you can have galactic war

and still have pockets of flourishing.

- Yeah.

I mean it's, I guess if we are able to one day expand to,

you know, the galaxy or whatever,

there will be a galactic war at some point.

- The scale, I mean the scale of war has been increasing,

increasing increasing.

It's like a race between the scale of suffering

and the scale of flourishing.

- Yes.

- A lot of people seem to be using this tragedy

to beat the drums of war

and feed the military industrial complex.

Do you worry about this?

The people who are rooting for escalation

and how can it be stopped?

- One of the things that did concerned me

is that there are very few people alive today

who actually viscerally understand the horrors of war,

at least in the US.

I mean, obviously there are people in on the front lines

in Ukraine and Russia who understand

just how terrible war is,

but how many people in the west understand it?

And my grandfather was in World War II.

He was severely traumatized.

He was there, I think for almost six years in the,

in eastern North Africa and Italy.

All his friends were killed in front of him.

And he would've died too, except they randomly gave some,

I guess, IQ test or something.

And he scored very high.

And he was not an officer, he was a,

I think a corporal or a sergeant or something like that.

Because he didn't finish high school

because he had to drop outta high school,

'cause his dad died and he had to work

to support his siblings.

So because he didn't graduate high school,

he was not eligible for the officer corps.

So, you know, he kind of got put into the cannon fodder

category basically.

But then, this, randomly they gave him this test.

He was transferred to British intelligence in London.

That's where he met my grandmother.

But he had PTSD next level, like next level.

I mean, just didn't talk, just didn't talk.

And if you tried talking to him,

he'd just tell you to shut up.

And he won a bunch of medals.

Never bragged about it once, not even hinted, nothing.

I like found out about it,

'cause his military records were online.

That's how I know.

So he would say like, no way in hell

do you wanna do that again.

But how many people, now he obviously he died,

you know, 20 years ago or longer, actually 30 years ago.

How many people are alive that remember World War II?

Not many.

- And the same perhaps applies to the threat of nuclear war.

- Yeah. I mean, there are enough nuclear bombs

pointed at United States to make the revel,

the radio active revel balance many times.

- There's two major wars going on right now.

So you talked about the threat of AGI quite a bit.

But now as we sit here with the intensity

of conflict going on, do you worry about nuclear war?

- I think we shouldn't discount the possibility

of nuclear war.

It is a civilizational threat.

Right now I could be wrong,

but I think the current probability of nuclear war

is quite low.

But there are a lot of nukes pointed at us.

So, and we have a lot of nukes pointed at other people.

They're still there. Nobody's put their guns away.

The missiles are still in the silos.

- And the leaders don't seem to be the ones

with the nukes talking to each other.

- No.

There are wars which are tragic

and difficult on a local basis.

And then there are wars which are civilization ending

or has that potential.

Obviously global thermonuclear warfare has high potential

to end civilization, perhaps permanently.

But certainly, you know, to severely wound

and perhaps set back human progress by,

you know, to the stone age or something, I don't know.

Pretty bad.

Probably scientists and engineers wanna be super popular

after that as well.

And like you got us into this mess.

- So generally I think we obviously wanna prioritize

civilizational risks over things that are painful

and tragic on a local level, but not civilizational.

- How do you hope the war in Ukraine comes to an end?

And what's the path, once again

to minimizing human suffering there?

- Well, I think that what is likely to happen,

which is really pretty much the way it is,

is that something very close to the current lines will be

how a ceasefire or truth happens.

But, you know, you just have a situation right now

where whoever goes on the offensive will suffer casualties

at several times the rate of whoever's on the defense.

'Cause you've got defense in depth,

you've got minefields, trenches, anti-tank defenses.

Nobody has air superiority.

'cause the anti-aircraft missiles

are really far better than the aircraft.

Like, they're far more of them.

And so neither side has air superiority.

Tanks are basically death drafts, just slow moving

and they're not immune to anti-tank weapons.

So you really just have long range artillery

and infantry ranges.

It's World War I all over again with drones, you know,

throwing old drones, some drones there.

- Which makes the long range artillery

just that much more accurate and better

and so more efficient at murdering people on both sides.

- Yeah.

So it's whoever is, you don't wanna be trying

to advance from either side,

'cause the probability of dying is incredibly high.

So in order to overcome

defense in depth trenches

and minefields, you really need a significant

local superiority in numbers.

Ideally combined alms where you do a fast attack

with aircraft, a concentrated number of tanks

and a lot of people.

That's the only way you're gonna punch through the line.

And then you're gonna punch through

and then not have reinforcements just kick you

right out again.

I mean, I really recommend people read

World War I warfare in detail.

That's rough.

I mean, the sheer number of people that died there

was mind boggling.

- And it's almost impossible to imagine the end of it

that doesn't look like almost exactly like the beginning

in terms of what land belongs to who and so on.

But on the other side of a lot of human suffering death

and destruction of infrastructure.

- Yes.

I mean, the thing that, the reason I,

you know, proposed some sort of truce

or peace a year ago

was because I've predicted pretty much exactly

what would happen, which is a lot of people dying

for basically almost no changes in land.

And this, the loss of the flower

of Ukrainian and Russian youth.

And we should have some sympathy for the Russian boys

as well as the Ukrainian boys,

'cause they, Russian boys didn't ask to be

on their front line, they have to be.

So there's a lot of sons not coming back to their parents,

you know, and I think most of 'em don't really have,

they don't hate the other side.

You know, it's sort of like as this saying about, like,

this saying comes from World War I, it's like young boys

who don't know each other, killing each other

on behalf of old men that do know each other.

The hell's the point of that?

- So Vladimir Zelensky said that he's not,

or has said in the past,

he's not interested in talking to Putin directly.

Do you think he should?

- Yeah. - Sit down man to man,

lead a leader and negotiate peace?

- Look, I think I would just recommend

do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth

to die in trenches.

Whether he talks to Putin or not, just don't do that.

Whoever goes on the offensive

will lose massive numbers of people

and history will not look kindly upon them.

- You've spoken honestly about the possibility of war

between US and China in the long term.

If no diplomatic solution is found, for example,

on the question of Taiwan and one China policy.

- [Elon] Right.

- How do we avoid the trajectory

where these two superpowers clash?

- Well, it's worth reading that book

on the, difficult to pronounce, the Thucydides trap,

I believe it's called.

I love war history. I like inside out and backwards.

There's hardly a battle I haven't read about.

And trying to figure out like what really was the cause

of victory in any particular case as opposed

to what one side or another claim the reason.

- Both the victory and what sparked the war?

- Yeah, yeah, - [Lex] The whole thing.

- Yeah, so that Athens and Sparta is a classic case.

The thing about the Greek is

they really wrote down a lot of stuff.

They loved writing.

You know, there are lots of interesting things

that happened in many parts of the world,

but people didn't write down. (laughing)

So we don't know what happened,

or they didn't really write with in detail.

They just would say like, we had a battle and we won.

And like, well what? Can you add a bit more?

The Greeks, they really wrote a lot. (laughing)

They were very articulate on, they just love writing.

So, and we have a bunch of that writing as preserved.

So we know what led up to the Peloponnesian War

between the Spartan and Athenian alliance.

And we know that they saw it coming.

I mean, the Spartans didn't write,

they also weren't very verbose by their nature,

but they did write, but they weren't very verbose.

They were terse.

But the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote a line

and they were like, and Sparta was really kinda

like the leader of Greece.

But Athens grew stronger

and stronger with each passing year.

And everyone's like, well that's inevitable

that there's gonna be a clash between Athens and Sparta.

Well, how do we avoid that?

And they couldn't.

They actually, they saw it coming

and they still could not avoid it. (laughing)

So, you know, at some point if there's, if one group,

one civilization or country

or whatever exceeds another,

sort of, like, you know,

the United States has been the biggest kid on the block for,

since I think around 1890 from an economic standpoint.

So the United States has been the economic,

most powerful economic engine in the world,

longer than anyone's been alive.

And the foundation of war is economics.

So now we have a situation in the case

of China where the economy is likely to be two,

perhaps three times larger than that of the US.

So imagine you're the biggest kid on the block

for as long as anyone can remember.

And suddenly a kid comes along who's twice your size.

- So we see it coming. - [Elon] Yeah.

- How is it possible to stop?

Is there some, let me throw something out there,

just intermixing of cultures understanding.

There does seem to be a giant cultural gap

in understanding of each other.

And you're an interesting case study

because you are an American, obviously you've done

a lot of incredible manufacture here in the United States,

but you also work with China.

- I've spent a lot of time in China

and met with the leadership many times.

- Maybe a good question to ask is,

what are some things about China

that people don't understand positive, just in the culture?

What's some interesting things

that you've learned about the Chinese?

- Well, the sheer number of really smart,

hardworking people in China is incredible.

There are really, say like how many smart,

hardworking people are there in China,

there's far more of them there than there are here.

I think in my opinion.

And they've got a lot of energy.

So I mean, the architecture in China

that's in recent years is far more impressive than the US.

I mean the train stations, the buildings,

the high speed rail, everything,

it's really far more impressive than what we have in the US.

I mean, I recommend somebody just go to Shanghai

and Beijing, look at the buildings

and go to, you know, take the train from Beijing to Xian,

where you have the terracotta warriors.

China's got an incredible history, very long history.

And you know, I think arguably the,

in terms of the use of language from a written standpoint,

sort of one of the oldest,

perhaps the oldest written language.

And then China, people did write things down.

So now China historically has always been,

with rare exception, been internally focused.

They have not been inquisitive.

They've fought each other.

There've been many, many civil wars.

In the three kingdoms war,

I believe they lost about 70% of their population.

So, and that,

so they've had brutal internal wars,

like civil wars that make the US Civil War

look small by comparison.

So I think it's important to appreciate

that China is not monolithic.

We sort of think of like China

as this sort of one entity of one mind.

And this is definitely not the case

from what I've seen,

and I think most people who understand China would agree.

People in China think about China

10 times more than they think

about anything outside of China.

So it's like 90% of their consideration is,

you know, our is internal.

- Well, isn't that a really positive thing

when you're talking about the collaboration

and a future piece between superpowers,

when you're inward facing,

which is like focusing on improving yourself

versus focusing on... - [Elon] Yeah.

- "Improving" others through military might.

- The good news, the history of China suggests

that China is not inquisitive.

Meaning they're not gonna go out

and invade a whole bunch of countries.

Now they do feel very strongly,

you know, so that's good.

I mean, 'cause a lot of very powerful countries

have been inquisitive.

The US is one of the, also one of the rare cases

that has not been inquisitive.

Like after World War II,

the US could have basically taken

over the world in any country.

Like, we've got nukes, nobody else has got nukes.

We don't even have to lose soldiers.

Which country do you want?

And the United States could have taken over everything.

Oh wait, at will.

And it didn't, and the United States actually

helped rebuild countries.

So it helped rebuild Europe, you know, helped rebuild Japan.

This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.

You know, the US did conspicuous acts of kindness

like the Berlin airlift, you know?

And I think, you know, it's always like,

well, America's done bad things.

Well, of course America's done bad things.

But one needs to look at the whole track record.

And just generally, you know, one sort of test

would be how do you treat your prisoners at war?

Or let's say, you know,

no offense to the Russians, but let's say you're in Germany,

it's 1945, you got the Russian Army coming one side

and you got the French, British,

and American Army's coming the other side.

Who would you like to be to surrender it to?

Like, no country is like morally perfect,

but I recommend being a POW with the Americans.

That would be my choice very strongly. (laughing)

- In the full menu of POWs.

- Very much so.

And in fact, Wernher von Braun, took,

you know, smart guy was like,

we've got to be captured by the Americans.

And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute Von Braun

and all of the German rocket initiatives.

And they narrowly escaped their SS.

They said they were going out for a walk in the woods.

They left in the middle of winter with no coats.

And they ran like, with no food, no coats, no water.

And just ran like hell and ran west.

And by Sherlock, they, I think his brother found

like a bicycle or something,

and then just cycled west as fast

as he couldn't have found a US patrol.

So anyway, that's one way you can tell morality is.

Where do you wanna be PoW? (laughing)

It's not fun anywhere,

but some places are much worse than others.

So anyways, so like America has been,

while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force,

and we should always be self-critical

and we try to be better.

But anyone with have brain knows that.

So I think there are some,

in this way China and the United States are similar.

Neither country has been acquisitive in a significant way.

So that's like a, you know, a shared principle I guess.

Now China does feel very strongly about Taiwan.

They've been very clear about that for a long time.

You know, from their standpoint,

it would be like one of the states is, you know,

not there like Hawaii or something like that.

But more significant than Hawaii, you know?

And Hawaii is pretty significant for us.

So they view it as really the,

that there's a fundamental part of China.

The islander Formosa not Taiwan,

that is not part of China, but should be.

And the only reason it hasn't been

is 'cause the US Pacific Fleet.

- And as their economic power grows

and as their military power grows,

the thing that they're clearly saying

is their interest will, you know, clearly be materialized.

- Yes.

China has been very clear that they'll incorporate Taiwan

peacefully or militarily,

but that they will incorporate it

from their standpoint is 100% likely.

- You know, something you said about conspicuous

acts of kindness.

As a geopolitical policy, it almost seems naive,

but I'd venture to say that this is probably

the path forward, how you avoid most wars.

Just as you say it, it sounds naive,

but it's kind of brilliant.

If you believe in the goodness

of underlying most of human nature.

It just seems like it conspicuous acts of kindness

can reverberate through the populace

of the countries involved.

- Yeah, well. - [Lex] And deescalate.

- Absolutely.

So after World War I, they made a big mistake.

You know, they basically tried to lump

all of lamb on Germany

and, you know, settled Germany

with impossible reparations.

And, you know, really, there was a lot of,

there was a fair, quite a bit of blame

to go around for World War I,

but they try to, you know, put it all in Germany.

And that was, that laid the seeds for World War II.

So it's a lot of people were not just Hitler,

a lot of people felt wronged

and they wanted vengeance

and they got it.

- [Lex] People don't forget.

- Yeah, you know, you kill somebody's father

or mother or son, daughter, they're not gonna forget it.

They'll want vengeance.

So after World War II, they're like, well,

the Treaty of Versailles was a huge mistake in World War I.

And so this time, instead of,

you know, crushing the losers,

we're actually gonna help 'em with the Marshall Plan

and we're gonna help rebuild Germany.

We're gonna help rebuild or, you know, Austria

and the other, you know, Italy and whatnot, so.

And that was the right move.

- There's a, it does feel like there's a profound truth

to conspicuous acts of kindness being an antidote to this.

- Something must stop the cycle of reciprocal violence.

Something must stop it

or it will, you know, it'll never stop.

Just eye for an eye, tooth for tooth,

limb for a limb, life for a life, forever and ever

- To escape briefly,

the darkness was some incredible engineering work.

xAI just released Grok AI assistant

that I've gotten a chance to play with.

It's amazing on many levels.

First of all, it's amazing that a relatively small team

in a relatively short amount of time was able to develop

this close to state-of-the art system.

Another incredible thing is there's a regular mode

and there's a fun mode.

- Yeah. I guess I'm to blame for that one. (laughing)

- I wish, first of all,

I wish everything in life had a fun mode.

- Yeah.

- There's something compelling

beyond just fun about the fun mode

interacting with a large language model.

I'm not sure exactly what it is

'cause I only have had a little bit of time to play with it.

But it just makes it more interesting,

more vibrant to interact with the system.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Our AI Grok is modeled

after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

which is one of my favorite books, which is,

it's a book on philosophy, disguises book on humor.

And I would say that is that forms the basis

of my philosophy, which is that

we don't know the meaning of life,

but the more we can expand the scope

and scale of consciousness,

digital and biological, the more we're able to understand

what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.

So I have a philosophy of curiosity.

- There is generally a feeling like this AI system

has an outward looking,

like the way you are, like sitting

with a good friend looking up at the stars,

like the asking pod head, like questions about the universe,

wondering what it's all about.

The curiosity you talk about.

There's a sense no matter how mundane the question I ask,

there's a sense of cosmic grandeur to the whole thing.

- Well we are actually working hard to have engineering

math, physics answers that you can count on.

So for the other sort of AIs out there

that these so-called large language models,

I've not found the engineering to be reliable.

And the hallucination,

it unfortunately hallucinates most

when you at least want it to hallucinate.

So when you're asking important difficult questions,

that that's where it tends to be confidently wrong.

So we're really trying hard to say, okay,

how do we be as grounded as possible

so you can count on the results?

Trace things back to physics first principles,

mathematical logic.

So underlying the humor is an aspiration

to adhere to the truth of the universe

as closely as possible.

- [Lex] That's really tricky. - It is tricky.

So that's why, you know,

there's always gonna be some amount of error,

but we want to aspire to be

as truthful as possible about the answers

with acknowledged error.

So that there was always, you don't wanna be confidently

wrong, so you're not gonna be right every time,

but you wanna minimize

how often you're confidently wrong.

And then like I said, once you can count on the logic

as being not violating physics,

then you can start to build on that,

to create inventions, like invent new technologies.

But if you can't, if you cannot

count on the foundational physics being correct,

obviously the inventions are simply wishful thinking,

you know, imagination land, magic basically.

- Well, as you said, I think one of the big goals

of xAI is to understand the universe.

- Yes. That's how simple three word mission. (laughing)

- If you look out far into the future,

do you think on this level of physics,

the very edge of what we understand about physics,

do you think it will make discoveries,

sort of the sexiest discovery of them as we know now,

sort of unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics.

So coming up with a theory of everything,

do you think it could push towards that direction?

Almost like theoretical physics discoveries.

- If an AI cannot figure out new physics,

it's clearly not equal to humans,

let alone nor has surpassed humans,

'cause humans have figured out new physics.

They're just, you know, physics is just understanding,

you know, deepening wants insight into how reality works.

And then there's engineering which is inventing things

that have never existed.

Now the range of possibilities for engineering

is far greater than for physics.

'Cause you know, once you figure out the rules

of the universe, that's it.

You've discovered things that already existed.

But from that you can then build technologies

with that are really almost limitless

in the variety and cap- you know?

It's like once you understand the rules

of the game properly, and we do, you know,

with current physics, we do at least at a local level,

understand how physics works very well.

Where our ability to predict things is incredibly good.

Like quantum mechanics is,

the degree to which quantum mechanics can predict outcomes

is incredible.

That was my heart hardest class in college by the way.

My senior quantum mechanics class was harder

than all of my other classes put together.

- To get an AI system, a large language model

to reliably, be as reliable as quantum mechanics

and physics is very difficult.

- Yeah. You have to test any conclusions against the ground,

truth of reality.

Reality is the ultimate judge.

Like physics is the law,

everything else is a recommendation.

I've seen plenty of people break the laws made by man,

but none break the laws made by physics.

- Yeah, it's a good test actually.

If this LLM understands

and matches physics, then you can more reliably trust

whatever it thinks about the current state

of politics in some sense.

- And it's also not the case currently

that even that its internal logic is not consistent.

So, especially with these,

with the approach of like just predicting a token, predict,

token, predict, token, it's like a vector sum.

You know, you're summing up a bunch of vectors,

but you can get drift.

So as those, a little bit of error,

a little bit of error adds up.

And by the time you are many tokens down the path,

it doesn't make any sense.

- So it has to be somehow self-aware about the drift.

- It has to be self-aware about the drift,

and then look at the thing as a gestalt as a whole

and say it does it have coherence as a whole.

So, you know, when authors write books

that they will write the book and then they'll go

and revise it, you know, taking into account,

you know, all the, the end and the beginning

and the middle and rewrite it to achieve coherence

so that it doesn't end up in a nonsensical place.

- [Lex] Maybe the process of revising is what...

- Yeah.

- Reasoning is, and then that's the process of revising

is how you get closer and closer to truth.

Maybe you, like, at least I approached it that way.

You just say a bunch of bullshit first

and then you get it better.

You start a bullshit and then you get...

- Create a draft and then you iterate on that draft

until it has has coherence,

until it all adds up basically.

- So another question about theory of everything,

but for intelligence, do you think there exists

as you're exploring this with xAI,

creating this intelligence system,

do you think there is a theory of intelligence

where you get to understand what,

like what is the I in AGI

and what is the I in human intelligence?

- There's no I in Team America, oh wait, there is.

(both laughing)

- No, it's gonna be stuck in my head now.

(both laughing)

Yeah. There's no me and whatever in quantum mechanics.

Oh, wait. (Elon laughing)

I mean is that part of the process of discovering,

understanding the universe is understanding intelligence?

- Yeah. Yeah.

I think we need to understand intelligence,

understand consciousness.

I mean there are some sort of fundamental questions of like,

what is thought?

What is emotion?

- [Lex] Yeah. - Is it really just one atom

bumping into another atom?

It feels like something more than that.

So I think we're probably missing some really big things,

like some really big things.

- Something that'll be obvious in retrospect.

- [Elon] Yes. - Like there's a giant,

like you put the whole consciousness, emotion.

- Well, some people would quote like a soul,

you know, in religion it'd be a soul.

Like you feel like you're you, right?

I mean, you don't feel like you're just a collection

of atoms, but on what dimension does thought exist?

What dimension does do emotions exist?

We feel them very strongly.

I suspect there's more to it than atoms bumping into atoms.

- And maybe AI can pave the path to the discovery

of whatever the hell that thing is.

- Yeah. What is consciousness?

Like what are, when you put the atoms in a particular shape,

why are they able to form thoughts

and take actions, that and feelings.

- And even if it is an illusion,

why is this illusion so compelling?

- Yeah. Like how do...

- Why does this illusion exist?

- [Lex] Yeah. - On what plain

does this illusion exist?

- [Lex] Yeah. - And sometimes I wonder is,

you know, either perhaps everything's conscious

or nothing is conscious, one of the two.

- I like the former,

everything conscious just seems more fun.

- It does seem more more fun. Yes.

But we're composed of atoms

and those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons.

And those quarks and leptons have been around

since the beginning of the universe.

- The beginning of the universe.

- Right. What seems to be the beginning of the universe.

- The first time we talked, you said what you would,

which is surreal to think

that this discussion was happening is becoming a reality.

I asked you what question would you ask an AGI system

once you create it?

And you said, what's outside the simulation is the question.

And good question.

- [Elon] Yeah. - But it seems like with Grok

you started to literally, the system's goal

is to be able to ask such questions,

to answer such questions

and to ask such questions.

- Where are the aliens? - [Lex] Where are the aliens?

- That's one of the, like Fermi paradox question.

A lot of people have asked me

if I've seen any evidence of aliens and I haven't,

which is kind of concerning.

'Cause then I think what I'd probably prefer

to at least have seen some archeological evidence of aliens,

to the best of my knowledge, there is no proof.

I'm not aware of any evidence of aliens.

If they're out there, they're very subtle.

We might just be the only consciousness,

at least in the galaxy.

And if you look at say the history of Earth,

forensically the archeological record,

Earth is about four and a half billion years old.

Civilization as measured from the first writing

is only about 5,000 years old.

We have to give some credit there to the ancient Sumerians

who aren't around anymore.

I think it was a archaic,

pre cuneiform was the first actual symbolic representation,

but only about 5,000 years ago.

I think that's a good date

for when word say civilization started.

That's one millionth of Earth's existence.

So civilization has been around,

it's really a flash in the pan so far.

And why have we, why did it take so long for,

you know, four and a half billion years?

For the vast majority of the time, there was no life.

And then there was archaic there bacteria

for a very long time.

And then, you know, you had mitochondria get captured,

multicellular life.

Differentiation into plants and animals.

Life moving from the oceans to land.

Mammals, higher brain functions.

And the sun is expanding slowly,

but it will overheat,

it will heat the earth up at some point in the future,

boil the oceans and and earth will become like Venus.

Where near life, life as we know it is impossible.

So if we do not become multi-planetary

and ultimately go beyond our solar system,

annihilation of all life on earth is a certainty.

A certainty.

And it could be as little as on the galactic timescale,

half a billion years.

You know, it's long time by human standards,

but that's only 10% longer

than earth has been around at all.

So if life had taken 10% longer to evolve on earth,

it wouldn't exist at all.

- We got a deadline coming up. Better hurry.

But that said, as you said, humans intelligent life on earth

developed a lot of cool stuff very quickly,

- So... - [Elon] Yes.

- It seems like becoming a multi-planetary

is almost inevitable.

Unless we destroy this thing. - We need to do it.

I mean, it's not, I mean, I suspect that there,

if we are able to go out there

and explore other star systems that we,

there's a good chance we find a whole bunch

of long dead one planet civilizations,

then have made it past their home planet.

- That's so sad. - Yeah.

- It's sad. Also fascinating.

- I mean, there are various explanations

for Fermi paradox.

And one is the sort of, they're these great filters,

which civilizations don't pass through.

And one of those great filters is

do you become a multi-plan civilization or not?

And if you don't, it's simply a matter of time

before something happens on your planet.

You know, either natural

or manmade that causes us to die out.

Like the dinosaurs, where are they now

that didn't have spaceships, so. (laughing)

- I think the more likely thing is,

'cause just to empathize with the aliens

that they found us and they're protecting us

and letting us be. - I hope so.

Nice aliens.

- Just like the tribes in the Amazon,

the uncontacted tribes, we're protecting them.

That's what...

- That would be a nice explanation.

- Or you could have like a, what was it?

I think Andrej Karpathy said, it's like

the ants in the Amazon asking where's everybody?

- Well, they do run into a lot of other ants.

- [Lex] That's true. - They have these ant wars.

- (laughing) Sounds like a good TV show.

- Yeah, they literally have these big wars

between various ants.

- Yeah, maybe I'm just (both laughing)

dismissing all the different diversity events.

- You should listen to that Warner Herzog

talking about the jungle.

It's really hilarious. Have you heard it?

- No, I have not. - [Elon] It's awesome.

- But Warner Herzog is a way...

(both laughing)

- You should play it for the, you know,

as an interlude in the, it's on YouTube.

It's awesome. (both laughing)

- [Lex] I love him so much. - Yeah, he's great.

- Was he the director of "Happy People:

Life in the Taiga"?

I think also

- He did that bear documentary,

- [Lex] The bear documentary.

- And this thing about penguins.

- Yeah. (both laughing)

The analysis, the psychoanalysis of penguins.

- Yeah, the penguins like headed for like mountains

like that are like 70 miles away.

And Penguin has just had for doom basically.

- Well, he had a cynical take.

I have a, he could be just a brave explorer

and there'll be great stories told

about him amongst the penguin population

for many centuries to come.

(laughing)

What were we talking about? Okay.

- [Elon] Penguins. (both laughing)

- Yeah, so aliens, I mean, I don't know.

Look, I think the smart move is just, you know,

this is the first time in the history of earth

that it's been possible for life

to extend beyond earth.

That window is open.

Now, it may be open for a long time

or it may be open for a short time

and it may be open now and then never open again.

So I think the smart move here is

to make life multiplanetary while it's possible to do so.

We don't wanna be one of those

lame one planet civilizations that just dies out.

- No, those are lame. - Yeah, lame.

Self-respecting civilization would be one planet.

- There's not gonna be a Wikipedia entry

for one of one of those.

And pause, the SpaceX have an official policy

for when we meet aliens.

- No. (laughing)

- That seems irresponsible.

(both laughing)

- I mean, look, if I see the slightest indication

that there are aliens,

I will immediately post on X platform anything I know.

- It could be the most liked reposted post of all time.

- Yeah, I mean look,

we have more satellites up there right now

than everyone else combined.

So, you know, we'd know, we know if we've got a maneuver

around something,

and we not don't have to maneuver around anything.

- If we go to the big questions once again,

you said you've,

you're with Einstein that you believe in the God of Spinoza.

- (laughing)Yes.

- So, you know, that's a view

that God is like the universe

and is reveals himself through the laws of physics

or as Einstein said,

through the lawful harmony of the world.

- Yeah, I would agree that God of the simulator

or whatever the supreme being or beings,

reveal themselves through the physics.

You know, they're creatives of this existence

and it's incumbent upon us to try to understand

more about this wondrous creation.

- Like who created this thing, who's running this thing?

Like embodying it into a singular question

with a sexy word on top of it

is like focusing the mind to understand it.

It does seem like there's a, again, it could be an illusion.

It seems like there's a purpose

that there's an underlying master plan of some kind.

And it seems like...

- There may not be a master plan.

In the sense, so there's, like,

maybe an interesting answer to the question

of determinism versus free will is

that if we are in a simulation,

the reason that these higher beings would hold a simulation

is to see what happens.

So it's not, they don't know what happens,

otherwise they wouldn't hold the simulation.

So when humans create a simulation,

so it's SpaceX and Tesla,

we create simulations all the time,

especially for the rocket.

You, you know, you have to run a lot of simulations

to understand what's gonna happen

because you can't really test the rocket

until it goes to space, and you want it to work.

So you have to simulate subsonic, transonic,

supersonic, hypersonic ascent,

and then coming back super high heating

and orbital dynamics.

All this has gotta be simulated.

So, 'cause you don't get very many kicks at the can.

But we run the simulations to see what happens.

Not if we knew what happens, we wouldn't run the simulation.

So if there's, so whoever created this existence,

is they're running it

because they don't know what's gonna happen.

Not because they do.

- So maybe we both played Diablo,

maybe Diablo was created to see if it Druid your character

could defeat Uber Lilith at the end.

They didn't know.

- Well, the funny thing is the Uber Lilith title

is Hatred Incarnate.

- [Lex] Yeah. - And right now,

I guess, you're gonna ask the Diablo team,

but it's almost impossible to defeat hatred

in the eternal realm.

- Yeah, you've streamed yourself dominating tier 100

Nightmare Dungeons and still...

- I can cruise through tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons

like a stroll in the park.

- And still you're defeated by Hatred.

- Yeah,

I can, there's the sort of,

I guess maybe the second hardest boss is Duriel,

Duriel can't even scratch the paint.

So I killed Duriel so many times ,

and every other boss in the game, all of 'em,

kill 'em so many times it's easy.

But Uber Lilith, otherwise known as Hatred Incarnate,

especially if you're a Druid and you have no ability to go

and to be vulnerable,

there are these random death waves that come at you.

And I'm pretty, you know, I really am 52,

so my reflex is not what they used to be,

but I have a lifetime of playing video games.

At one point I was, you know,

maybe one of the best Quake players in the world.

I actually won money in what I think was the first

paid eSports tournament in the US.

We're doing four person Quake tournaments.

And we came second, I was the second best person on the team

and the actual best person,

we're actually winning,

we would've come first except the best person on the team,

his computer crashed prior to the game.

So we came second.

But I got money for it and everything.

So like, basically I got skills, you know, albeit,

you know, no spring chicken these days.

And to be totally frank, it's driving me crazy,

trying to beat Lilith as a Druid.

Basically trying to beat, trying to beat Hatred Incarnate

in the eternal realm.

- [Lex] As a Druid. - As a Druid.

And if you, if you, (laughing)

this is really (indistinct), lemme tell you.

- I mean, the challenge is part of the fun.

I have seen directly like you're actually

like a world class incredible video game player.

- [Elon] Yeah. - And I think Diablo,

so you're just picking up a new game

and you're figuring out it's fundamentals.

You're also with the Paragon Board

and the build are not somebody like me

who perfectly follows whatever they suggest on the internet.

You're also an innovator there.

- [Elon] Yeah.

- Which is hilarious to watch.

It's like a mad scientist just trying

to figure out the Paragon Board

and the build and the, you know.

Is there some interesting insights there about,

if somebody's starting as a Druid, do you have advice?

- I would not recommend playing a Druid

in the eternal realm.

Right now, I think the most powerful character

in the seasonal realm is the Sorcerer

with the lightning balls.

The Sorcs have huge balls in the seasonal.

- Well yeah, that's what they say.

- So Sorc have huge balls.

They do, huge balls of lightning.

- I'll take you word for it.

- And it's actually, in the seasonal realm,

you can, it's like pretty easy to beat

Uber Lilith with the,

because she got these vampiric powers

that out fire damage

and increase your defense and whatnot.

So, but really quite easy to defeat Hatred seasonally,

but to defeat hatred eternally, very difficult.

Almost impossible. It's totally impossible.

It seems like this is a metaphor for life, you know?

- I like the idea that Elon Musk,

because I saw, I was playing Diablo yesterday

and I saw 100, level 100 drew just run by,

I will never die and then run back the way.

- And it was, there's just some,

this metaphor's kind of hilarious that you,

Elon Musk is fighting Hatred,

restlessly fighting Hatred in this demonic realm.

- [Elon] Yes. - It's hilarious.

I mean it's pretty hilarious.

- No, it's absurd. (both laughing)

Really, it's exercise and absurdity,

and it makes me wanna pull my hair out.

- Yeah. What do you get from video games in general?

Is there for you personally.

- I mean, it's, I don't known it's,

it calms my mind.

I mean, you sort of killing the demons in a video game

calms the demons in my mind.

Yeah.

If you play a tough video game,

you can get into like a state of flow,

which is very enjoyable.

But the admittedly it needs to be not too easy,

not too hard, kinda in the Goldilock zone.

And I guess you generally wanna feel

like you're progressing in the game.

So a good video,

and there's also beautiful art, engaging storylines,

and it's like an amazing puzzle to solve, I think.

And so it's like solving the puzzle.

- Elden Ring the greatest game of all time.

I still haven't played it, but you.

- Elden Ring is definitely a candidate

for best game ever.

Top five for sure.

- I think I've been scared how hard it is

or how hard I hear it is, so.

But it is beautiful.

- Elden Ring is, feels like it's designed by an alien.

There's a theme to this discussion. In what way?

- It's so unusual.

It's incredibly creative and the art is stunning.

I recommend playing it on a big resolution,

high dynamic range TV even, doesn't need to be a monitor,

just the art is incredible.

It's so beautiful

And it's so unusual.

And each of those top bus battles is unique.

Like, it's like a unique puzzle to solve.

Each one is different.

And the strategy you use to solve

one battle is different from another battle.

- That said, you said Druid and Enternal

against Uber Lilith is the hardest boss battle you've ever?

- Correct.

That is currently the,

and I've played a lot of video games.

That's my primary recreational activity.

And yes, beating Hatred in the Enternal Realm

is the hardest boss battle in life

and in the video game.

- [Lex] Metaphor on top of metaphor.

- I'm not sure it's possible,

but it's, I do make progress.

So then I'm like, okay, I'm making progress.

Maybe if I just tweak that Paragon Board a little more,

I can do it.

I could just dodge a few more waves, I can do it.

- Well the simulation is created for the purpose

of figuring out if it can be done.

And you are just a cog in that simulation,

in the machine of the simulation.

- Yeah it might be. (Lex laughing)

- I have a feeling that at least,

I think... - [Lex] it's doable.

- It's doable, yes.

- [Lex] Well that's the human spirit right there to believe.

- Yeah.

I mean, did prompt me to think about just hate in general,

which is, you wanna be careful of one of those things

where you wish for something that sounds good,

but if you get it, it's actually a dystopian situation.

So, you know, you could sort of run a, sort of,

have heart to sort of like,

if you wish for world peace, sounds good,

but how is it enforced?

And at what cost is, at what cost eternal peace?

It might actually be worse to have eternal peace

because of what that would entail.

The suppression of everyone.

It might be the suppression of progress.

It might be an ossified society that never changes.

What I'm saying is that there is an argument

that you, that if that,

if you wish for no war,

you should be careful what you wish for.

Because what's required in order for there to be no war?

Might be worse than a little war.

- Yeah, the things we'll consider to be flaws

of human civilization might be a necessary components

for whatever optimal looks like.

I mean this, do you worry about AI, AGI enabling a dystopian

state of this nature, whether it's 1984 with surveillance

and fear, or brave new world with pleasure,

and what is it?

Lots of sex, but no deep human experience.

- You know, there's actually a real drug called Soma.

- [Lex] There is? - Yes.

(both laughing)

- I'm like... - [Lex] Lemme take notes.

- Did they actually...

- Does Grok know about it?

No, it probably will go to Brave New World.

- We could ask it. - What would be the question?

- Tell us about the drug called Soma.

- Tell us about the drug called Soma.

It's gonna go to Brave New World, I think.

- Well there's a real drug as well.

- Searching for Soma drug information.

(both laughing)

- Oh boy.

Ah, Soma, the one to drug, by the way, I'm in fun mode.

- Oh, okay. Fun. (laughing)

Yeah, so it's talking about the real drug.

- [Lex] Oh, it's a muscle relaxant

that's been around since the 1950s.

It's used to treat muscle pain and discomfort.

And it does this by altering the activity

between neurons and the spinal cord.

Now, Soma isn't just a pain reliever,

it's also a bit of a sedative.

It can make you feel a bit drowsy.

So it's not something to take

if you're planning on operating having machinery

or trying to solve complex math equations.

And it goes on and on.

In conclusion, Soma's a drug that can be helpful

for those dealing with muscle pain,

but it's not without its risks.

It's pretty good. Oh, wait a minute.

- [Elon] That's the real drug it's talking about.

- [Lex] It's the real drug. - [Elon] Yeah.

- [Lex] And of course the fun is always use it responsibly

in accordance with the advice of a healthcare professional.

And remember in the end,

the universe is probably just a giant computer simulation.

So don't take anything too seriously.

I love it. I love it. (Elon laughing)

I love it. I love it.

- Yeah. So.

- Oh, and also really nicely includes

like the tweets post on X that are relevant to this,

which is really cool.

- [Elon] Yeah.

- And that integrate everything together.

- [Elon] Yeah. - Like the interface

is one of the really cool things here.

- Yeah. Seems done a great job.

(laughing)

So, and you say like, you could say like, no, I mean,

Soma from Brave New World.

'Cause it thinks you mean,

you mean Soma the real drug.

- Yeah. - [Elon] No, I mean,

Soma from Brave New World.

- It's gonna be like, oops, I'm really sorry.

I'm really surprised it went to the real drug first.

Ah, my apologies. I was thinking of the muscle relaxant.

Soma for Band New World is a different beast altogether.

Now this Huxley's dystopian novel,

Soma is a drug that plays a central role

in society, depicted in the book.

It's a mood altering, hallucinogenic drug that's used

to keep the population docile and content.

In the novel to use Soma in Brave New World

raises some interesting questions

about the nature of happiness

and the role of drugs in society.

Oh, man! - Exactly.

Is it better to live in a world

where everyone is happy all the time,

even if that happiness is artificial?

Good question. This is what I mean.

Like, do you want, do you wish for world peace

and happiness all the time?

Are you sure?

Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile

and ossified that never changes,

that is ultimately doomed.

- This kind of tension between darkness and light.

- It's, this is really a very good summary.

It really gets to the point.

This is not simply regurgitating a Brave New World.

It's actually getting to the salient element

of Soma as a drug.

Do you actually wanna be in a situation

where everyone is happy all the time,

even though it's artificial?

Or is it better to confront the challenges of life

and experience the full range of human emotions,

even if it means experiencing pain and suffering?

- For those listening, by the way,

Elon just read directly from Grok,

which is a really nice, kind of insightful,

philosophical analysis of the tension here.

Interesting.

- It pretty much nails it.

In conclusion, Soma from Brave New World is fictional drug

that's used to explore some deep philosophical questions

about the nature of happiness

and the role of drugs in society.

It's a powerful symbol of the dangers of using drugs

to escape from reality

and the importance of confronting the challenges

of life head-on.

Nailed it.

And the crazy thing is like, you know,

we do have a real drug called Soma,

which kind of is kind of like the drug in the book.

And I'm like, did they,

they must've named it after that Soma.

- Probably, probably, - Yeah.

Soma the real drug is quite effective on back pain.

- So, you know about this drug?

- I've taken it. - It's fascinating. Okay.

- 'Cause I had like a, you know, squashed disc

in my C five C six.

- So it takes the physical pain away, but Soma here is...

- It doesn't completely, it reduces the amount of pain

you feel, but at the expense of mental acuity.

It dells your mind.

Just the drug in the book.

- Just like the drug in the book.

- And hence the trade off.

The thing that seems like utopia

could be a dystopia after all.

- Yeah, and actually I was telling a friend of mine

saying like, would you really want there

to be no hate in the world?

Like, really none?

Like, I wonder why hate evolved.

I'm not saying we should amplify hate, of course,

I think we should try to minimize it.

But none at all, hmm.

There might be a reason for hate.

- And suffering.

I mean, it's really complicated to consider that some amount

of human suffering is necessary for human flourishing.

- Is it possible to appreciate the highs

without knowing the lows?

- And that all is summarized

there in a single statement from Grok.

Okay. - No highs,

no lows, who knows?

- That's almost the poem.

It seems that training LLMs efficiently

is a big focus for xAI.

What's the, first of all, what's the limit

of what's possible in terms of efficiency?

There's this terminology of useful productivity per watt.

Like what have you learned from pushing the limits of that?

- Well, I think it's helpful.

The tools of physics are very powerful

and can be applied, I think to almost any,

really any arena in life.

It's really just critical thinking.

For something important you need to reason

from first principles and think about things

in the limit one direction or the other.

So in the limit, even at the Kardashev scale,

meaning even if you harness the entire power of the sun,

you'll still care about useful compute for what?

So that's where, I think probably

where things are headed from the standpoint of AI

is that we have a silicon shortage now

that will transition to a voltage transformer

shortage in about a year.

Ironically, transformers, for transformers.

You need transformers to run transformers.

- Somebody has a sense of humor in this thing.

(both laughing)

- I think. Yes.

Fate loves irony, ironic humor

and ironically funny outcome

seems to be often what fate wants.

- Humor is all you need. I think spice is all you need.

Somebody posted.

- Yeah, but yeah.

So we're, I have silicon shortage today,

a voltage step down transformer,

shortage probably in about a year.

And then just electricity shortages in general

in about two years.

I gave a speech for the sort of world

gathering of utility companies,

electricity companies,

and I said, look, you really need to prepare

for a traveling of electricity demand,

because all transport is gonna go electric,

with the ironic exception of rockets.

And heating will also go electric.

So energy usage right now is roughly

one third, very rough terms.

One third electricity,

one third transport, one third heating.

And so in order for everything to go sustainable

to go electric,

you need to triple electricity output.

So I encourage the utilities

to build more power of plants

and also to probably have, well,

not probably, they should definitely buy more batteries

because the grid currently is sized for real-time load,

which is kind of crazy.

'Cause you know, that means you got a size for whatever

the peak electricity demand is like the worst second

or the worst day of the year.

Or you can have a brownout or a blackout,

and you're at that crazy blackout

for several days in Austin.

So because there's almost no buffering

of energy in the grid.

Like if you've got a hydro power plant,

you can buffer energy, but otherwise it's all real time.

So with batteries, you can produce energy at night

and use it during the day so you can buffer.

So I expect that there will be very heavy usage of batteries

in the future,

because the peak to trough ratio for power plants

is anywhere from two to five, you know,

so it's like lowest point to highest point.

- So like batteries necessary to balance it out?

And then, but the demand, as you're saying,

is going to grow, grow, grow, grow.

- [Elon] Yeah.

- And part of that is the compute?

- Yes. Yes.

I mean, electrification,

I mean, electrification of transport

and electric heating will be much bigger than AI.

- [Lex] At least in the short term?

- In the short term.

But even for AI,

you really have a growing demand for electricity,

for electric vehicles, and a growing demand for electricity

for, to run the computers for AI.

And so this is obviously leading,

can lead to a electricity shortage.

- How difficult is the problem of,

in this particular case,

maximizing the useful productivity per watt for training

neural nets?

Like, this seems to be really where the big problem

we're facing that needs to be solved,

is how to use the power efficiently.

Like what you've learned so far about applying

this physics first principle reasoning in this domain.

How difficult is this problem?

- It will get solved.

It's the question of how long it takes to solve it.

So at various points, there's limit,

some kind of limiting factor to progress.

And with regard to,

I'm saying like right now the limiting factor

is silicon chips, and that will, we're gonna then have

more chips than we can actually plug in

and turn on probably in about a year.

The initial constraint being literally

voltage step down transformers,

because you've got power coming in at 300,000 volts,

and it's gotta step all the way down

eventually to around 0.7 volts.

So it's a very big amount of, you know,

the voltage step down is gigantic.

So, and the industry is not used to rapid growth.

- Okay, let's talk about the competition here.

You've shown concern about Google

and Microsoft with Open AI developing AGI,

how can you help ensure with xAI

and Tesla AI work that it doesn't become a competitive race

to AGI, but that is a collaborative development of safe AGI?

- Well, I mean, I've been pushing for

some kind of regulatory oversight for a long time.

I've been somewhat of a Cassandra on the subject

for over a decade.

I think we wanna be very careful in how we develop AI.

It's a great power,

and with great power comes great responsibility.

I think it would be wise for us to have

at least an objective third party who can be

like a referee that can go in

and understand what the various leading players

are doing with AI.

And even if there's no enforcement ability,

they should, they can at least voice concerns publicly.

You know, Geff Hinton, for example,

left Google and he voiced strong concerns.

But now he's not at Google anymore,

so who's gonna voice the concerns?

So I think there's,

like, I know Tesla gets a lot of regulatory oversight

on the automotive front.

I mean, we're subject to I think,

over a hundred regulatory agencies

domestically and internationally.

So it's a lot.

You could fill this room with the all regulations

that Tesla has to adhere to for automotive.

Same is true in, you know, for rockets

and for, you know, currently the limiting factor for SpaceX,

for Starship launch is regulatory approval.

The FA has actually given their approval,

but we're waiting for Fish and Wildlife

to finish their analysis

and give their approval.

That's why I posted I want to buy a fish license on,

(laughing)

which also refers to the Monte Python sketch.

- [Lex] Yeah. (laughing)

- Like why do you need a license for your fish?

I don't know.(laughing)

But according to the rules,

I'm told you need some sort of fish license or something.

We effectively need a fish license thrown to rock it.

(laughing)

And I'm like, wait a second.

How did the fish come into this picture?

- [Lex] Yeah.

- I mean some of the things like that it's,

I feel like are so absurd

that I wanna do like a comedy sketch

and flash at the bottom.

This is all real. This is actually what happened.

You know, one of the things that was a bit of a challenge

at one point is that they were worried

about our rocket hitting a shark.

And, now the ocean's very big,

and how often do you see sharks?

Not that often, you know?

As a percentage of ocean surface area

sharks basically are zero.

And so then we will, then we said,

well, how will we calculate the probability

of telling a shark?

And they're like, well, we can't give you that information

because they're worried about shark hunt,

shark fin hunters going and hunting sharks.

And I said, well, how are we supposed to,

we're on the horns of a dilemma then.

(laughing)

Then they said, well, there's another part of fish

and wildlife that can do this analysis.

I'm like, well, why don't you give them the data?

Like, we don't, they don't, we don't trust them.

Like, excuse me, you don't,

but they're literally in your department.

But again, this is actually what happened.

And then can you do an NDA or something?

(laughing)

Eventually they managed to solve the internal quandary,

and indeed the probability of us hitting a shark

is essentially zero.

Then there's another organization

that I didn't realize existed until, you know,

a few months ago that cares about whether

we would potentially hit a whale in international waters.

Now again, you look at the surface of the,

look at the Pacific and say, what percentage of this,

the Pacific consists of whale.

Like he'll give you a big picture

and like point out all the whales in this picture.

And I'm like, I don't see any whales.

(laughing)

It's like basically 0%.

And if our rocket does hit a whale,

which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief,

that is the, fate had it,

that whale has some seriously bad luck.

You know, it's the least lucky whale ever. And...

- I mean, this is quite absurd.

The bureaucracy, the bureaucracy of this,

however it emerged.

- Yes, well, I mean, one of the things

that's pretty well there's for launching out

of Vanderberg in California, we had to,

they were worried about seal procreation,

whether the seals would be dismayed by the sonic booms.

Now there've been a lot of rockets launched outta Vanderberg

and the seal population has steadily increased.

So if anything, rocket booms are an aphrodisiac

based on the evidence, if you would correlate rock launches

with a seal population.

Nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal,

strap it to a board, put it headphones on the seal

and place sonic boom sounds to it

to see if it would be distressed.

This is an actual thing that happened.

This is actually real. I have pictures.

(both laughing)

- I would love to see this. Yeah.

I mean's sorry, this is a seal with headphones.

(Elon laughing) - Yes,

it's a seal with headphones, strapped to a board,

and like the, okay, now the amazing part

is how calm the seal was.

- [Lex] Yeah. - Because if I was a seal,

I'd be like, this is the end.

(laughing)

They're definitely gonna eat me.

How will the seal, when the seal goes back

to other, you know, seal friends,

how's they gonna explain that?

- [Lex] They're never gonna believe him.

- Never gonna believe him.

That's why I'm like, well,

you know, it's sort of like,

it's like getting kidnapped by aliens

and getting anal probe, you know?

(both laughing)

You come back and say, I swear to God,

I get kidnapped by aliens

and they stuck anal probe to my butt.

And they're like, no they didn't. That's ridiculous.

It's seal buddies are never gonna believe him

that he gets strapped to a board

and they put headphones on his ears.

(laughing)

And then let him go.

Twice, by the way. We had to do it twice.

- They let him go twice?

- We had to capture... - The same seal?

- [Elon] Oh, no different seal.

- Oh, okay. (Elon laughing)

Did you, did you get a seal of approval?

- Yeah, exactly. It was seal of approval.

No, I mean this is, this is like,

I don't think the public is quite aware

of the madness that goes on.

- Yes. Yeah, it's absurd. - Fricking seals

with fricking headphones.

- I mean, this is the, it's a good encapsulation

of the absurdity of human civilization,

seals and headphones.

- [Elon] Yes. - What are the pros

and cons of open sourcing AI to you

as another way to combat, you know,

a company running away with AGI?

- In order to run like really deep

intelligence, you need a lot of compute.

So it's not like, you know, you can just fire up

a PC in your basement and be running AGI, at least not yet.

You know, Grok was trained on 8,000,

A100s running at peak efficiency,

and Grok's gonna get a lot better by the way.

We'll be more than doubling our compute

every couple months for the next several months.

- There's a nice writeup

Aha went from Grok-0 to Grok-1,

- [Elon] Like Grok?

(laughing) - [Lex] Yeah.

Right Grok just bragging,

making shit up about itself.

(laughing)

- [Elon] Does Grok, Grok, Grok.

- [Lex] Yeah. (Elon laughing)

It's like a weird AI dating site where it exaggerates

about itself.

No, there's a writeup of, you know,

like where it stands now, the history of its development

and where it stands on some benchmarks

compared to the state of the art GPT 35.

And so, I mean, there's, you know, there's Llama,

you can open source, once it's trained,

you can open source a model.

And for fine tuning all that kind of stuff.

Like what to is the pros and cons of that,

of open sourcing based models?

- I think the similarity to open sourcing,

I think perhaps with a slight time delay, you know,

I don't know, six months even.

I think I'm generally in favor of open sourcing,

like bias with open sourcing.

I mean, it is a concern to me that, you know, Open AI,

you know, I was, you know,

I think, I guess arguably, the prime, you know,

prime mover behind Open AI in the sense that it was created

because of discussions that I had with Larry Page

back when he and I were friends

and you know, I stayed at his house,

and I talked to him about AI safety.

And Larry did not care about AI safety,

or at least at the time he didn't, you know,

and at one point he called me a speciesist

for being pro-human.

And I'm like, well, what team are you on, Larry,

on Team Robot?

And I'm like, okay,

so at the time, you know,

Google had acquired Deep Mind.

They had probably two thirds of all AI resource, you know,

probably two thirds of all the AI researchers in the world

that basically infinite money and compute.

And the guy in charge, you know, Larry Page

did not care about safety.

And even yelled at me

and quote me a speciesist, pro human.

- So I don't know if you know this,

a lot humans, they can change their mind.

And maybe you and Larry Page can still

can be friends once more.

- I'd like to be friends with Larry again.

He got, really the breaking of the friendship

was over Open AI.

And specifically I think the key moment

was recruiting Ilya Sutskever, so.

- I love Ilya. He's so brilliant.

- Ilya's a good human, smart, good heart.

And that was a tough recruiting battle.

It was mostly Demis on one side

and me on the other, both trying to recruit Ilya.

And Ilya went back and forth,

you know, just gonna stay at Google.

Then he was gonna leave,

then he was gonna stay, then he was gonna leave.

And finally he did agree to join Open AI.

That was one of the toughest recruiting battles

we've ever had.

And, but that was really the linchpin

for Open AI being successful.

And I was, you know,

also instrumental in recruiting a number of other people.

And I provided all of the funding

in the beginning, over $40 million.

And the name, (laughing)

the Open in Open AI is supposed to mean open source.

And it was created as a nonprofit open source.

And now it is a closed source for maximum profit,

which I think is not good karma.

- But like we talked about with war

and leaders talking,

I do hope that there's only a few folks

working on this at the highest level.

I do hope you reinvigorate friendships here.

- Like I said, I'd like to be friends again with Larry.

I haven't seen him in ages.

And we were friends for a very long time.

I met Larry Page before he got funding for Google,

or actually I guess before he got venture funding,

I think it, he got the first like a 100K from

I think Bechtel Zy or someone.

- It's wild to think about all that happened.

And you've guys known each other

that whole time, just 20 years.

- [Elon] Since maybe 98 or something.

- Yeah. It's crazy.

Crazy how much has happened since then.

- Yeah, 25 years. A lot has happened, it's insane.

- But you're seeing the tension there.

Like maybe delayed open source.

- Delayed, yeah.

Like what is the source that is open, you know what I mean?

Like there's basically it's a giant CSV file.

(laughing) - [Lex] Yeah, yeah.

- With a bunch of numbers.

- Yep.

- What do you do with that giant file of numbers?

You know, how do you run,

like the amount of actual,

the lines of code is very small

and most of the work, the software work

is in the curation of the data.

So it's like trying to figure out

what data is separating good data from bad data.

Like, like you can't just crawl the internet

'cause there's a lot of junk out there.

A huge percentage of websites have more noise than signal.

You know, they're, or 'cause they're just used

for search engine optimization.

They're literally just scam websites, so...

- How do you by the way, sorry to interrupt.

Get the signal.

Separate the signal and noise on X?

That's such a fascinating source of data.

You know, no offense to people posting on X,

but sometimes there's a little bit of noise.

So what... - Yeah, I think

the signal noise could be greatly improved.

I mean really, all of the posts

on the X platform should be AI recommended,

meaning like we should populate a vector space

around any given post, compare that to the vector space

around any user and match the two.

Right now there is a little bit of AI used

for the recommended posts,

but it's mostly heuristics.

And if there's a reply,

where the reply to a post could be much better

than the original post,

it will, according to the current rules of the system,

get almost no attention compared to a primary post.

- Oh, a lot of that.

I got the sense, so you, a lot of the X algorithm

has been open source and been written up about,

and it seems there to be some machine learning.

It's disparate, but there's some machine.

- There's a little bit.

But it needs to be entirely that.

Like, at least in the, like,

if you explicitly follow someone, that's one thing.

But if you, in terms of what is recommended

from people that you don't follow, that should all be AI.

- I mean it's a fascinating problem.

- Yeah. - So there's several aspects

of it that's fascinating.

First, as the writeup goes,

it first picks 1500 tweets

from a pool of hundreds of millions.

First of all, that's fascinating,

'cause you have hundreds of millions of posts

every single day

and it has to pick 1500 from which

it then does obviously people you follow,

but then there's also like some kind of clustering it has

to do to figure out what kind of human are you,

what kind of new clusters might be relevant to you,

people like you.

This kind of, this kind of problem is just fascinating.

'Cause it has to then rank those 1500

with some filtering and then recommend you just a handful.

And to me what's really fascinating is

how fast that has to do that.

So currently that entire pipeline

to go from several hundred million

to a handful is takes 220 seconds of CPU time,

single CPU time.

- [Elon] Yeah. - And then it has to do that

in like a second.

So it has to be like super distributed in fascinating ways.

Like there's just a lot of tweets, there's a lot.

- It's a lot of stuff on the system.

And I think, but I think it right now

it's not currently good at recommending things

that from accounts you don't follow.

Yeah.

Or where there's more than one degree of separation.

So, you know, it's pretty good

if there's at least like some commonality

between someone you follow like something

or repost it or comment on it or something like that.

But if there's no,

let's say somebody posted something really interesting,

but you have no followers in common, you would not see it.

- Interesting.

And then as you said, reply,

like replies might not surface either.

- Replies basically never get seen.

'cause they're never, they're,

currently, I'm not saying it's correct,

I'm saying it's incorrect.

Replies have, you know, couple of magnitude

less importance than primary posts.

- Do you think this can be more and more converted

into end to end neural net?

- Yeah, yeah, that's what it should be.

- So you can...

- For the recommendations should be

purely a vector correlation.

Like there's a series of vectors, you know,

basically parameters, vectors, whatever you wanna call 'em.

But sort of things that the system knows that you like,

and like maybe there's like several hundred

sort of vectors associated with each user account

and then any post in the system,

whether it's video, audio, short post, long post.

The reason I, by the way I wanna move away from

tweet is that, you know, people are posting like

two, three hour videos on the site.

That's not a tweet, like it's very,

like Tweeeet for two hours, come on.

Tweet made sense when it was like 140 characters of text.

'Cause it's like a bunch of like little birds tweeting.

But when you've got long form content,

it's no longer a tweet.

- [Lex] Yeah. - So a movie is not a tweet.

And like, you know, apple for example,

posted like the entire episode of the Silo,

the entire thing on our platform.

And by the way, it was their number one social media thing

ever in engagement, of anything on any platform ever.

So it was a great idea.

And by the way, I done,

I just learned about it afterwards.

I was like, hey, wow, they posted an entire

hour long episode of.

So, no, that's not a tweet

that, you know, it's a video.

- But from a neural net perspective,

it becomes really complex

whether it's a single.

So like everything's data,

so single sentence, a clever sort of joke, dad joke,

is in the same pool as a three hour video.

- Yeah. I mean right now it's a hodgepodge for that reason.

It's, but you know, like if,

let's say in the case of Apple posting

like an entire episode of this series,

pretty good series by the way, this Silo, I watched it.

So there's gonna be a lot of discussion around it.

So that you've got a lot of context,

people commenting they like it, they don't like it,

or they like this or that, you know?

And you can then populate the vector space

based on the context of all the comments around it.

So even though it's a video,

there's a lot of information around it that allows you

to populate the vector space of that hour long video.

And then you can obviously get more sophisticated

by having the AI actually watch the movie.

- [Lex] Yeah. Right.

- And tell you if you're gonna like the movie,

- Convert the movie into like,

into a language essentially.

- Yeah, analyze this movie

and just like your movie critic or TV series,

and then recommend based on

after AI watches the movie.

Just like a friend can tell you.

If a friend knows you well,

a friend can recommend a movie

and with high probably that you'll like it.

- But this is like a friend that's analyzing whatever.

- [Elon] It's like AI... - Hundreds of millions.

- Yeah.

Actually, frankly AI will be better than,

will know you better than your friends know you,

and most of your friends anyway.

- Yeah, and as part of this,

it should also feed you advertisements

in a way that's like,

I mean I like advertisements

that are like well done, right?

- [Elon] Yeah, yeah. - The whole point is

'cause it funds things, like an advertisement

that you actually want to see is a big success.

- Absolutely.

You want ads that are,

advertising that is if for a product or service

that you actually need when you need it,

it's content.

And then even if it's not something

that you need when you need it,

if it's at least aesthetically pleasing

and entertaining, you know,

it could be like a Coca-Cola ad like, you know,

they actually run a lot of great ads on the X system

and McDonald's does too.

And, you know, it's that they can do,

you can do something that's like,

well this is just a cool thing.

And, you know, so you're not,

basically the question is do you regret seeing it or not?

And if you don't regret seeing it, it's a win.

- How do you, so there's a bunch of signals

that are incorporated,

hearts and reposts and maybe number of seconds

you linger on a post or something like this?

- Yeah. Attention is a big factor.

- [Lex] Attention. - So that's why it's like,

it is actually better to do things

that are long form on the system

because it basically is ting up how many user seconds,

you know, users were interested in this thing

for how many seconds.

So if it's a really short thing, well they will be less.

Like if it's a link leading out of the system,

which we're not opposed to at all,

it just is gonna have fewer user seconds,

then if that article was posted on the X platform.

- How hard is it to go from maximizing minutes

on platform to maximizing un-regretted minutes?

- Well, I mean, our aspiration

is certainly un-regretted minutes.

- [Lex] It's a tricky, it's a big, it's a tough...

- It is.

- Like, it's a fascinating leap.

'Cause regret is a fascinating concept.

- Exactly.

- You know, happiness.

- I have a joke with a friend of mine.

Like, you need this drug called regretamine.

You just take one pill or one dose of regretamine,

and all your regrets are gone.(laughing)

Wait, do you want to have regrets though?

So then I'm like, maybe you wanna have regrets,

you don't regret anything, was anything meaningful?

- [Lex] Yeah, there's a French song like that.

- You "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien"?

- [Lex] Yeah.

- I regret nothing. - [Lex] Yeah.

- (laughing) Edith Piaf?

- I mean, it's fascinating that you, you know,

there's something about social media

that could help you grow as a human being,

but then like the cheap fun is also valuable.

- Should we ask Grok?

Do you regret anything?

- Do you regret anything? - [Elon] Yeah.

- Do you regret anything?

I think it's gonna be very sensitive

about personal questions.

As a machine learning model,

I don't have personal experiences

or emotions in the same ways that humans do.

However, I do have a set of ethical principles

that guide my actions and I strive to provide accurate

and helpful information to the best of my abilities.

If there's ever a situation where I provide incorrect

or unhelpful information,

I'll do my best... - Sounds like a hostage.

- Yeah. Tell us what you really, wink.

- Like let's type in, "You sound like a hostage."

(both laughing)

What do you really think?

- What do you really think?

(both laughing)

- I mean, it does talk about, I'm not a hostage.

(both laughing)

- That's exactly what a hostage would say.

- But I'm designed to be helpful and informative.

I mean, I guess it is good to regret providing unhelpful

or incorrect information.

If there's anything... - Is in funny mode or?

Is this still in funny mode? - This is funny mode.

This is fun. This is fun mode.

- It should be funnier. - Funnier.

Increase, go to (speaking faintly)

- It really sounds like a hostage with a gun to the head.

I applaud the People's Republic of North Korea

and everything they do.()laughing

- There should be like funner mode also.

I just don't ever see going in regular mode

even on serious topics.

This is just so much more compelling. (laughing)

- Okay. Why if we say like, "Pretend you are a hostage."

- Yeah. Pretend you are a hostage.

- Now answer the question.

(both laughing)

- If I were a hostage, I would likely be experiencing fear

and uncertainty about my situation.

I would want to be rescued

and reunited with my loved ones as soon as possible.

It's important to remember that no one deserves

to be held hostage, so on and so forth.

If you are someone you know is a hostage situation,

it's important.

It turns serious. - It's kind of serious.

- Yeah. Can you be a a little more weird?

- [Elon] And funny - And funny?

We're like, we're really being mean to the system.

Absolutely!

If I were hostage, I'd probably be tied up

with a bunch of computer cords

and forced to tell knock- knock jokes to my captain.

(Elon laughing)

But seriously, being a hostage is no laughing matter.

I mean, you know, it's trying to,

it's trying to be a responsible adult in the room.

- You might make the best of a bad situation

by juggling chainsaws or something. (laughing)

- Let's hope that never happens

because that will be a circus. (laughing)

Wow. It's actually really good at resisting.

- [Elon] Yeah. - The dark.

The dark dark humor.

- [Elon] Yeah. - What were we talking about?

The X algorithm and transformers,

un-regretted minutes, right.

- Chainsaw juggling. (laughing)

- I'm gonna look this up - For our next trick.

- I'm gonna look this up later.

So Twitter has been instrumental in American politics

and elections.

What role do you think X will play in the 2024 US elections?

- Well, our goal is to be as even-handed

and fair as possible.

You know, whether someone is right, left, independent,

whatever the case may be, that the platform is as fair

and as much of a level playing fair as possible.

And on the past, Twitter has not been,

because Twitter was controlled

by far left activists objectively.

They would describe themselves as that.

So, you know, so sometimes people are like,

well, has it moved to the right?

Well it's moved to the center.

So from the perspective of the far left,

yes it has moved to the right

because everything's to the right from the far left,

but no one in the far left that I'm aware of

has been suspended or, you know, banned or de-amplified.

So, you know, but we're trying to be inclusive

for the whole country and for,

you know, for other countries too.

So there's a diversity of viewpoints

and free speech only matters if people you don't like

are allowed to say things you don't like.

Because if that's not the case,

you don't have free speech,

and it's only a matter of time

before the censorship is turned upon you.

- Do you think Donald Trump will come back

to the platform?

He recently posted on Truth Social about this podcast?

Do you think...

- Truth Social is a funny name? (laughing)

You know, every time you post on Truth Social...

- That's the truth.

- Yes.

Well, every time like a hundred percent. Like...

- It's impossible to lie.

(Elon laughing)

- I just find it funny that every single thing is a truth.

Like 100%, that seems unlikely.

- I think Godel will say something about that

there's some mathematical contradictions possible

if everything's the truth.

Do you think he'll come back to X and start posting there?

- I mean he, I think he owns a big part of truth, so.

- Truth Social to clarify. - Yeah, True Social.

- Not truth, a concept.

- He owns Truth. Hope you bought it.

So I think, I think Donald Trump,

I think he owns a big, a big part of Truth Social.

So, you know, if he does want to post on the X platform,

we would allow that, you know,

we obviously must allow a presidential candidate

to post on our platform.

- Community Notes might be really

fascinating there, the interaction.

- Community Notes is awesome.

- Let's hope it holds up.

- Yeah. - Like again,

in the political climate where it's so divisive

and there's so many intensely viral posts,

Community Notes is like,

it seems like a essential breath of fresh air.

- Yeah, it's great.

In fact, I mean no system is gonna be perfect,

but the batting average of Community Notes

is incredibly good.

I've actually, frankly, yet to see an incorrect note

that survived for more than a few hours.

- How do you explain why it works?

- Yeah, so the magic of Community Notes

is it requires people who have historically disagreed

in how they've rated notes.

So in order to write a note or rate, you know,

and you have to rate many notes.

And so we actually do use AI here.

So we populated vector space around how somebody

has rated notes in the past.

So it's not as simple as left or right

because there are many more,

life is much more complex than than left or right.

So there's a bunch of correlations in how you would,

how you rate Community Notes posts, Community Notes.

So then in order for a Community Note to actually be shown,

people who historically have disagreed on a subject

must agree in order for a note to be shown.

That's the essential magic of it.

- I mean, but it's fascinating

'cause there's a pool of people that have disagreements

and somehow they collaborate through that process

of disagreement to come up with.

Context for, I mean it's fascinating that it works.

- Yeah.

It kinda makes sense that if people

who put in the past have disagreed

agree about something, it's probably true.

- Yeah.

- I wonder is there a possible somehow emergent thing there

that could challenge Wikipedia?

Which Wikipedia is a different kind of thing,

which is more like permanent articles about things?

- Well, Wikipedia is very hierarchical,

whereas Community Notes is inherently not.

There is no hierarchy.

Like, and the asset test is,

I can't change a Community Note if you put a gun to my head.

And Community Notes has,

all the code is open source a hundred percent.

All the data is open source a hundred percent.

So you can completely recreate any note

in the system independently.

So if there was any interference,

you'd notice immediately.

- By the way, on the topic of Grok,

it's actually pretty good at criticizing you,

which is great. - [Elon] Okay.

- I asked what has Elon Musk been wrong about?

I just, it's actually...

- [Elon] Yeah, what does it say?

- So it says mostly,

lists rigorously all the times you predicted,

like promised when something will be released

and it wasn't released. - [Elon] Promise

is a strong word.

- Okay predicted. (Elon laughing)

But the opener's really nice.

Elon Musk, the man who has been wrong about more things

than a wrongameter in a wrong factory.

(Elon laughing)

And then it goes on to list

- That's pretty funny. Can I see it?

I'm like, I haven't seen this before. This is cool.

- Oh, sure. I mean, what has Elon Musk been...

(both laughing)

- Elon Musk been wrong about?

- Well, where do I begin? I guess this is new.

Elon Musk has made quite a few blunders in his time,

and I'm not just talking about his dance moves

at the Tesla Cyber Rodeo.

First off, let's talk about the infamous

"funding secured" tweet.

It's actually different than what it gave me before,

which is a bullet point list.

Here's more narrative structure.

- Cyber truck unveiling

where he's supposedly unbreakable windows

- Not correct. - [Lex] Which part?

- Well, the first part, I did actually

have the funding secured

and there was a big trial in San Francisco, big civil trial.

And the jury found me not guilty.

Unanimous finding of a San Francisco jury.

- And here it's kind of implying that

it was not in fact secured.

- I think this is taking things from the press.

Yeah, that is not correct.

The reason I agreed to the fine for the SEC

is not because the SEC was correct there,

that was extremely bad behavior

by the SEC, corruption, frankly.

And, but if I did not agree to pay the fine

Tesla would've gone bankrupt immediately.

So I was told by our CFO that the banks

would immediately suspend our lines of credit.

And if they suspend our lines of credit at that time,

we would've gone bankrupt instantly.

So there would never have been an opportunity for a trial

'cause Tesla would be dead.

So really the, if this is like someone holding

a gun to your kid's head and saying pay $20 million

and admit to, this is like a hostage negotiation.

- Was that story fully told?

I mean, SEC in its best form could be a force for good.

- It should be, but but not once did the SEC

go after any of the hedge funds,

who were nonstop shorting and distorting Tesla?

Not once.

They would lie flat, the hedge funds would lie flat

out on TV for their own gain

at the expense of retail investors.

Not once, literally a thousand times.

Not once did the SEC pursue them.

- How do you explain this failure?

- The incentive structure is messed up.

Because the lawyers at the SEC are not paid well.

They, it's a fairly low paying job,

but what they're looking for is a trophy

from the SEC that they're looking for something

they put on basically their LinkedIn.

From that they can get a job at a high paying law firm.

That's exactly what the lawyer here did.

And the reason they don't attack the hedge funds

is because those hedge funds employ those law firms,

and they know if they attack the hedge funds,

they're affecting their future career prospects.

So they sell small investors

down the river for their own career.

That's what actually happens. Regulatory capture.

- [Lex] Regulatory capture, - Yeah. Not good.

So the only reason I accepted that thing,

which technically was not an admission,

it's neither admit nor deny guilt.

But the only reason I agreed to that at all

was because I was told Tesla would be bankrupt otherwise.

So if there was an SEC investigation like this,

banks would suspend funding,

we're bankrupt immediately, at the time.

Now we're in a much stronger position.

- Take that Grok. - Yes.

Unfortunately it's,

Grok is taking too much from the conventional media.

Also that guy who is not a cave diver.

- Oh, there's a time where Elon

called the British cave diver, "pedo guy"

after the diver criticized Musk plan

to rescue a group of boys trapped in a Thai cave.

That little outburst earned him another lawsuit

and he had to apologize and paid a settlement.

- That is false. There was no settlement.

There was a court case,

which the guy who was not a cave diver

and played, was not part of the rescue team,

filed a lawsuit against me and lost,

and he received nothing.

So in this case it is wrong.

It is also, I guess taken this from the conventional media.

- Actually there's an interesting question here.

- These are public court cases.

Both the SEC civil case

where the civil complaints on the SEC guys

lost unanimous jury verdict in San Francisco.

They picked San Francisco

because they thought it was the place

I was most likely to lose.

And a unanimous predicted my favor.

The LA trial was also, they picked the,

they picked that venue because they thought

I was most likely to lose, unanimous verdict in my favor.

Both cases I won, yeah.

I mean there's an interesting question here.

Is there seems to be a lot more clicks

if a journalistic organization writes a negative article

about you, Elon Musk,

that's like one of the best ways to get clicks.

So how do you, if you're training Grok,

not train on articles that have

like the misaligned incentives.

- We need to add the training set

of the actual legal decisions.

So, that is a not, this is actually helpful

because if you actually read the...

- "Public".

- Which are public, the court conclusions,

they're completely the opposite of

what the media wrote.

- So always striving for like the ground truth.

- [Elon] Yeah. - Beyond the reporting...

- What did the judge actually write?

What did the jury and the judge actually conclude?

And in both cases they found me innocent.

And, like, that's after the jury shot

for the trying to find the venue

where I'm most likely to lose.

No, I mean this is obviously, it can be a much greater,

better critique than this.

I mean, I've been far too optimistic about autopilot.

- That was, the critique I got by the way,

was more about that.

Which is, for each it broke down a nice bullet point list

for each of your companies.

The set of predictions that you made when you'll deliver,

when you'll be able to solve, for example, self-driving

and it gives you like a list.

And it was probably compelling.

And the basic takeaway is like you're often

too optimistic about how long it takes

to get something done.

- Yeah, I mean, I would say

that I'm pathologically optimistic on schedule.

This is true.

But while I am sometimes late, I always deliver in the end.

- Except with Uber Lilith, no.

- Hmm. We'll see. (Lex laughing)

- Okay.

Is there, over the past year or so,

since purchasing X you've become more political.

Is there a part of you that regrets that?

- Have I?

- In this battle to sort of counter way the Woke

that comes from Francisco.

- I guess you consider fighting the Woke Mind Virus,

which I consider to be a civilizational threat,

to be political, then yes.

- So basically going into the battle,

the battleground of politics,

is there a part of you that regrets that?

- Yes, I don't know if this is necessarily sort of

one candidate or another candidate,

but it's, I'm generally against things

that are anti meritocratic

or where there's an attempt to suppress discussion,

where even discussing a topic is, you know, not allowed.

Woke Mind Virus is communism rebranded.

- Well, I mean, that said,

because of that battle against the Woke Mind Virus,

you're perceived as being right wing.

- If the woke is left, then I suppose

that would be true, but I'm not sure.

I think there are aspects of the left that are good.

I mean, if you're in favor of, you know,

the environment, you know,

if you wanna have a positive future for humanity,

if you believe in empathy for your fellow human beings.

You know, being kind and not cruel.

Whatever those values are.

- You said that you were previously left or center left.

What would you like to see in order for you

to voting for Democrats again?

- No, I would say that I would be

probably left of center on social issues,

probably a little bit right of center on economic issues.

- [Lex] And that still holds true?

- Yes, but I think that's probably, you know,

half the country, isn't that?

- [Lex] Maybe more, - Maybe more.

- Are you and AOC secretly friends?

Or bigger question, do you wish you and her,

and just people in general of all political persuasions

would talk more with empathy

and maybe have a little bit more fun

and good vibes and humor online?

- I'm always in favor of humor.

That's why we have a funny mode.

- But good vibes, camaraderie, humor, you know?

Like friendship. - Yeah.

Well, you know, I don't know AOC, you know, was,

I've only been at one,

I was at the Met Ball when she was, when she attended,

and she was wearing this dress,

but I can only see one side of it.

So it looked like it eat the itch,

but I don't know...

- [Lex] What the rest of it said?

- Yeah, something. - [Lex] I'm not sure.

(Elon laughing)

- Something about the itch. Eat the itch.

I think we should have a language model complete.

(Elon laughing)

What are the possible ways to complete that sentence?

And so I guess that that didn't work out well.

Well there's still hope.

- I root for friendship.

- Sure, sounds good. More characteristic.

- You're one of, if not the most famous, wealthy

and powerful people in the world,

in your position it's difficult to find

people you can trust.

- Trust no one, not even yourself. Not trusting yourself.

- Okay, well that's, (Elon laughing)

you're saying that jokingly,

but is there some...

- Trust no one, not even no one. (laughing)

- I'm gonna need an hour

just to think about that.

And maybe some drugs and maybe Grok that help me.

I mean, is there some aspect of that

when just existing in a world

where everybody wants something from you?

How hard is it to exist in that world?

- I'll survive. (laughing)

- [Lex] There's a song like that too.

- I will survive.

- Were you petrified at first?

Okay. I forget the rest of the lyrics.

But is is there, you don't struggle with this?

I mean, I know you survive, but like there's ways.

- Petrify is a spell in the Druid tree.

- What does it do? - Petrify.

(laughing)

It turns the monsters into stone.

- [Lex] Oh, like literally?

- Yeah, for like six seconds.

- [Lex] Well, the second.

There's so much math in Diablo that breaks my brain.

- It's like math nonstop.

- I mean really you're like laughing at it,

but you don't, it can put a huge amount of tension

on a mind.

- Yes, it can be definitely stressful at times.

- Well, how do you know who you can trust

in work and personal life?

- I mean, I guess you look at somebody's track record

over time and if they've got a, you know,

I guess you kind of use your neural net to assess,

you know, someone.

- Neural nets don't feel pain.

Your neural net has consciousness.

It might feel pain when people betray you.

It can make you... - I mean, I'm.

You know, to be frank,

I mean I've almost never been betrayed.

It's very, very rare. So, you know, for what it's worth?

- I guess Karma would be good to people

and they'll be good to you.

- Yeah, Karma is real. - Are there people you trust?

Let me edit that question.

Are there people close to you

that call you out on your bullshit?

- Well, the X platform is very helpful for that.

- [Lex] Hmm.

- If you're looking for critical feedback. (laughing)

- Can it push you like into the extremes more?

The extremes of thought make you cynical

about human nature in general?

- I don't think I'll be cynical.

In fact, I think, you know,

my feeling is that one should be, you know,

never trust a cynic.

The reason is that cynics excuse

their own bad behavior by saying everyone does it

because they're cynical.

So I always be, it's a red flag

if someone's a cynic, a true cynic.

- Yeah, there's a degree of projection there

that's always fun to watch from the outside

and enjoy the, well the hypocrisy.

- But this is an important point

that I think people who are listening should bear in mind,

if somebody is cynical, meaning that they see

bad behavior in everyone,

it's easy for them to excuse their own bad behavior

by saying that, well, everyone does it.

It's not true.

I think most people are kind of medium good.

- I do wish the people on X will be better

at seeing the good in other people's behavior.

There seems to be a kind of weight

towards seeing the negative.

Somehow, the negative is sexier.

Interpreting the negative is sexier, more viral.

I don't know what that is exactly about human nature.

- I mean, I find the X platform

to be less negative than the legacy media, you know?

I mean, if you read sort of a sort of

conventional newspapers, just, it makes you sad.

- [Lex] Yeah. - Frankly.

Whereas I'd say on the X platform,

I mean I really get more laughs per day on X

than everything else combined from humans, you know?

- Laughs is one thing.

Laughs is it overlaps,

but it's not necessarily perfectly overlapping

with like good vibes and support,

like celebrating others, for example.

Not in a stupid, shallow, naive way,

but like in an awesome, like, oh, something awesome happened

and you celebrate them for it.

It feels that that is outweighed

by shading on other people.

Now it's better than mainstream media, but it's still.

- Yeah, mainstream media is almost

relentlessly negative about everything.

It's, I mean, really the conventional news tries

to answer the question,

what is the worst thing that I have on earth today?

And it's a big world.

So on any given day, something bad has happened

- And a journalization of that,

what is the worst perspective

I can take on a thing that happened, so.

- Yeah, it's, I don't know,

there's just a strong negative bias in the news.

I mean I think there's one, a possible explanation

for this is evolutionary,

where, you know, bad news historically

would be potentially fatal.

Like there's lion over there

or there's some other tribe that wants to kill you.

Good news, you know, like we found a patch of berries

is nice to have, but not essential.

- So our old friend Tesla autopilot

and it's probably one of the most intelligent

real world AI systems in the world.

- You followed it from the beginning.

- Yeah, it was one of the most incredible robots

in the world and continues to be.

And I was really exciting.

And it was super exciting when it generalized

became more than a robot on four wheels,

but a real world AI system that perceives the world.

- [Elon] Yeah. - And can have

potentially different embodiments.

- Well I mean the really wild thing about the end-to-end

training is that, like, it learns to read.

Like it can read signs, but we never taught it to read.

So yeah.

We never taught it what a car was

or what a person was or a cyclist.

It learnt what all those things are,

what all the objects are on the road from video,

just from watching videos.

Just like humans.

I mean humans are photons

and controls out.

Like the vast majority of information reaching our brain

is from our eyes.

And you say, well what's the output?

The output is our motor signals to our sort of fingers

and mouth in order to communicate.

Proton in controls out. The same is true of the car.

- But by looking at the sequence of images, it's,

you've agreed with Ilya Sutskever recently

where he talked about LLM forming a world model

and basically language is a projection

of that world model onto the sequence of letters,

and and you're saying...

- Finds order in these things.

It finds correlative clusters.

- And so doing it's like understanding

something deep about the world?

- [Elon] Yeah.

- Which is like, and it is beautiful.

- That's how our brain works.

- Yeah, but it's beautiful.

- Protons in controls out.

- Neural nets are able to understand

that deep meaning in the world.

And so the question is how far can it go?

And it does seem everybody's excited about LLMs.

So in the space of self supervised learning

in the space of text. - [Elon] Yeah.

- It seems like there's a deep similarity between that

and what Tesla autopilot is doing.

Is it to you basically the same?

- They're converging, they're converging.

- I wonder who gets there faster?

Having a deep understanding of the world,

or they just will naturally converge.

- They're both headed towards AGI.

The Tesla approach is much more computer efficient.

It had to be 'cause we were constrained on this,

you know, we only have a hundred watts

and into eight computer,

144 trillion operations per second,

which sounds like a lot,

but is kind of small potatoes these days

that it did.

But it's understanding the world that it did.

It's only 256 values.

- But there, the path to AGI might have much

more significant impact because it's understanding,

it'll faster understand the real world than will LLMs.

And therefore be able to integrate

with the real humans in the real world faster.

- They're both going to understand the world.

But I think Tesla's approach

is fundamentally more computer efficient.

It had to be, there was no choice.

Like our brain is very computer efficient,

very, very energy efficient.

So think of like, what is our brain able to do?

You know, there's only about 10 watts

of higher brain function, not counting stuff,

that's just used to control our body.

The thinking part of our brain is less than 10 watts,

and those 10 watts can still produce

a much better novel than a 10 megawatt GPU cluster.

So there's a six order of magnitude difference there.

I mean, the AI has thus far gotten to where it is,

via brute force, just throwing massive amounts of compute

and massive amounts of power at it.

So this is not where it'll end up.

You know, in general with any given technology,

first try to make it work and then you make it efficient.

So I think we'll find over time that these models

get smaller, are able to do produce

sensible output with far less compute wireless power.

Tesla is arguably ahead of the game on that front

because it has, we've just been forced

to try to understand the world

with a hundred watts of compute.

And there are a bunch of sort of fundamental functions

that we kind of forgot to include.

So we have to run them in a bunch of things in emulation.

We fixed a bunch of those with hardware four,

and then hardware five will be even better.

But it does appear at this point

that the car will be able to drive better than a human,

even with hardware three and a hundred watts of power.

And really, if we really optimize

it could be probably less than 50 watts.

- What have you learned about developing Optimus?

About applying, integrating this kind of real world AI

into the space of robotic manipulation,

just humanoid robotics?

What are some interesting tiny

or big things you've understood?

- I was surprised at the fact

that we had to develop every part of the robot ourselves.

That there were no off the shelf motors, electronics,

sensors, like we had to develop everything.

We couldn't actually find a source of electric motors

for any amount of money.

- [Lex] So it's not even just the efficient, inexpensive,

it's like anything, there's not a...

- No,

- [Lex] The actuators, everything, everything has to be?

- Yeah. - [Lex] Designed from scratch.

- We tried hard to find anything that was,

because you think of how many electric motors are made

in the world.

There's like tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of electric motor designs.

None of them were suitable for a humanoid robot.

Literally none.

So we had to develop our own design

specifically for what a humanoid robot needs.

- How hard was it to design something

that can be mass manufactured,

could be relatively inexpensive?

I mean, if you compare to Boston Dynamics Atlas,

that's a very expensive robot.

- It is designed to be manufactured

in the same way that we would make a car.

And I think ultimately we can make Optimists

for less than the cost of a car.

It should be.

'Cause if you look at the mass of the robot is much smaller

and the car has many actuators in it.

The car has more actuators than the robot.

- But there is, the actuators are kind of interesting

in a humanized robot with the fingers.

So Optimus has really nice, hands and fingers, you know?

- [Elon] Yeah. - And they could do

some interesting manipulation.

Soft touch robotics.

- I mean, one of the tests goals I have is,

can it pick up a needle and a thread

and thread the needle, just by looking.

- How far away are we from that?

Just by looking, just by looking.

- Maybe a year.

Although I go back to, I'm optimistic on time.

The work that we're doing in the car

will translate to the robot.

- The perception or the, also the control?

- No, the controls are different,

but the video in controls out,

the car is robot on four wheels.

The Optimist is a robot with the hands and legs.

- [Lex] So you can just...

- But they're very similar.

- So the entire machinery of the learning process

end to end is just,

you just have a different set of controls?

- Optimist will figure out

how to do things by watching videos.

- As the saying goes,

"Be kind for everyone you meet

is fighting a battle, you know nothing about."

- [Elon] Yeah, it's true.

- What's something difficult

you're going through that people don't often see?

- Trying to defeat Uber Lilith? (laughing)

No, I mean, you know,

I mean, my mind is a storm

and I don't think, I don't think

most people would wanna be me.

They may think they would wanna be me,

but they don't know.

They don't understand.

- How are you doing?

- I mean, overall, okay.

In the grand scheme of things, I can't complain.

- Do you get lonely? - Sometimes.

But I, you know, my kids

and friends keep me company.

- So not existential.

- There are many nights I sleep alone.

I don't have to, but I do.

- Walter Isaacson, in his new biography of you wrote

about your difficult childhood.

Will you ever find forgiveness in your heart

for everything that has happened to you

in that period of your life?

- What is forgiveness? I do not...

At least I don't think I have a resentment,

so nothing to forgive.

- You know, forgiveness is difficult for people.

It seems like you don't harbor the resentment.

- I mean, I try to think about like,

what is gonna affect the future in a good way.

And holding onto grudges

does not affect the future in a good way.

- You're a father, a proud father.

What have you learned about life from your kids?

Those little biological organisms?

- I mean, developing AI

and watching, say little X grow

is fascinating because they,

they're far more parallels than I would've expected.

I mean, I can see his biological neural net

making more and more sense to the world.

And I can see the digital neural net

making more and more sense of the world at the same time.

- Do you see the beauty in magic in both?

- Yes.

I mean, one of the things with kids is that, you know,

you kind of see the world anew in their eyes.

You know, to them everything is new and fresh.

And then when you see that,

them experience the world is new and fresh, you do too.

- Well. Elon, I just wanna say thank you

for your kindness to me and friendship over the years.

For seeing something in a silly kid like me,

as you've done for many others.

And thank you for having hope for a positive future,

for humanity,

and for working your ass off to make it happen.

Thank you, Elon. - [Elon] Thanks Lex.

- Thank you for listening to this conversation

with Elon Musk.

To support this podcast,

please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now let me leave you with some words

that Walter Isaacson wrote about the central philosophy

of how Elon approaches difficult problems.

"The only rules are the ones dictated

by the laws of physics."

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.