The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, his fourth time on this The Lex Friedman podcast. And now, if you allow me a quick few second mentionary sponsor, check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Element for electrolyte deliciousness, A-Sleep for naps, better help for your mind, simply safe for your safety, Shopify for your online shopping, and net suite for business management, software, choose wisely my friends.
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to access their one-of-a-kind financing program. That's NetSuite.com slash Lex. And now, dear friends, here's Elon Musk. I thought you were going to finish it. It's one of the greatest themes in all film history. Yeah, that's great. So I was just thinking about the Roman Empire. That's what it does. Does that whole meme where all guys are thinking about the Roman Empire at least once a day? And half the population is 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 dynasty throughout human history. So they usually came as a result of conquest. I mean, there's something like the Oshiro and Gary Empire where there was just a lot of sort of clever marriages. But fundamentally, there's an engine of conquest and they celebrate excellence
in warfare. Many of the leaders were excellent generals. Yeah, that kind of thing. So a big picture question, Groc approved. I asked this is a good question to ask. It tested Groc approved. Yeah, at least on fun mode. To what degree do you think war is part of human nature versus a consequence of how human societies are structured? I asked this as you have somehow controversially been a proponent of peace. I'm a generally a proponent of peace. I mean, ignorance is perhaps,
in my view, the real enemy to counter it. That's the real hard part, not fighting other humans. But all creatures fight. I mean, the jungle is like, you look at the, you'll think of the nature as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing. But in fact, it is not. There's some quite funny when a hoots, when a hoots a thing where he's like in the jungle, like saying that it's like basically just murder and death in every direction. I mean, the plant animals in the jungle are
constantly trying to kill each other every single day, every minute. So it's not like, uh, you know, we're unusual in their 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, um, limb against instinct for violence than say it chimpanzee. And in fact, if one looks to say
chimpanzee society, it is not friendly. I mean, the bonobos are an exception. Um, but chimpanzee society is full of violence and it's quite quite horrific, frankly, that that's that's our limbic system in action. Like you know, I'll be on the wrong side of a chimpanzee. You'll eat your face off from tear and not so. Yeah, basically there's no limits or ethics or, uh, they're almost at just war. There's no
just war in chimpanzee societies is is worn and dominant by any means necessary. Yeah, chimpanzee society is a pro like a primitive version of human society. Um, it's, it's they're not like peace loving basically, um, at all. Um, there, there's extreme violence. Um, and then once in a while some, some somebody who's watched too many Disney movies decides to raise chimpanzee as a pet, um, then that eats their face or if they're not so awful, choose their fingers off of that kind of thing.
Yeah, it's happened several times. Uh, ripping your nuts off is an interesting strategy for interaction. So it's happened to people. It's unfortunate. Like that's, I guess a one way to ensure that the other chimpanzee doesn't take, you know, contribute to the jane pool. Well, from a martial arts perspective is the fascinating strategy. The nut ripper. I wonder which of the martial arts teaches that. I think it's safe to say if somebody's got your nuts in their hands and has the
option of rubbing them off, you will be amenable to, uh, whatever they want. Yeah. So like I said, somehow controversially you've been in, uh, proponent of peace on, on Twitter on X. Yeah. So let me ask you about the war's 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? Uh, what path do you see that can minimize human suffering in the long term in that part of the world?
Well, I think that that part of the world is, 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. And what my, this is strictly my opinion of, you know, is that, uh, the goal of Moss was to provoke an overreaction from Israel.
Um, they obviously do not expect to, uh, you know, have a military victory, um, but they, they, they, they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could, in order to provoke the most aggressive response possible from Israel. Um, and then leverage that, uh, uh, aggressive response to, um, rally Muslims worldwide for the cause of, uh, Gaza and
Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing. Um, so the, the, the, the, the, the counter intuitive thing here, I think that the, the thing that I think should be done even though it's very difficult, uh, is that, um, I, I would recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible, every part, everything. That is the actual thing that would thought the goal of Moss. So in some sense, the degree that makes sense in geopolitics,
turn the other cheek implemented. It's not exactly turn the other cheek, um, because I do think that there's, um, you know, that I think it is appropriate for Israel to find the Hamas members and, you know, um, either, either kill them or accostrate them. Um, like that, something, if there's something has to be done because that they're just going to keep, keep, keep coming, otherwise. But, uh, in addition to that, they need to do whatever they can. Um, there's some talk of, uh,
establishing, for example, a mobile hospital. I'd recommend doing that. Um, um, just making sure that, uh, you know, this food, water, uh, medical necessities, um, and just be over the top about it and be very transparent. So it's, it's that it can't, it can't claim it's a trick. Like just put a way of camera on the thing. Oh, you know, all 24,
seven deploy acts of kindness. Yeah. Conspicuous acts of kindness that, that, that with that are unequivocal meaning that can't be somehow because the Hamas will then, their response will be, oh, it's a trick. Therefore you have to counter how, how is not a trick? This ultimately fights the broader force of hatred in the region. Yes. And I'm not sure who said it to some, for a, a powerful saying, but an eye for the, for an eye makes everyone blind. Uh, now that
neck of the woods, they really believe in the whole eye for anything. Um, but I mean, you really have, if you're not going to just outright commit genocide, like it against an entire people, which I was, it would not be acceptable to, to, to, I really shouldn't be acceptable to anyone. Um, then you, you're going to leave basically a lot of people alive who subsequently, you know, hate Israel. So really the question is like, how, for, for every Hamas member that you kill,
how many did you create? And if you create more than you kill, you've not succeeded. That's the, you know, the real situation there. Um, and it's safe to say that if, you know, um, if, if you know, if you kill somebody's child in Gaza, if you've, you've made at least a few,
uh, Hamas members who will die just, just kill Israeli. That's the situation. So, but, but I mean, this is one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss, but, but I think if, if the goal ultimate is some sort of long term piece, one has to be, look at this from standpoint of over time, are there more or fewer, um, terrorists being created? Let me just, uh, link on war. Yeah. Well, war, it would save, say, wars,
war existed and, and always will exist. Always will exist. Always has, always has existed, and always will exist. I hope not. You think it always will. It will always be. This question of just how much will and, and, um, you know, what, you know, this is this is the sort of the scope and scale of war. But to my, I, to my, I imagine that there would not be any more in the future, I think would be very unlikely outcome.
Yeah, you talked about the culture series. There's war even there. Yes. It was giant war. The first book saw so forth with a gigantic galactic war where trillions die trillions. But it's still, nevertheless, protects these pockets of, of flourishing. So, 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, expect to, you know, fully galaxy or whatever, there will be a galactic war.
That's a part. Ah, 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 just 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 on the front lines in Ukraine and Russia who understand just how terrible war is. But how many people in the West understand it? In my grandfather's in World War II, he was severely traumatized. I mean, he was there, I think, in the, for almost six years in the, in Eastern North African Italy. All his friends were killed in front of him. And he would have died too,
except they apparently gave some, I guess, IQ test or something. And he scored very high. Now, he was not an officer. I think corporal or sergeant or something like that, because he didn't finish high school. He had to drop out of high school because 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 core. So, you know, he kind of got put into the cannon fodder category, basically.
But then, just 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 him, he'd just tell you to shop. And he won a bunch of medals, never, never ragged about it once, not even to hinted. Nothing. I like found out about it because his military records are online. That's a, that's all, how I know.
So, he would say like, no, no way now. Do you want to, do you want to do that again? But how many people, now he obviously, now 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 rebel, the radioactive rebel 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 just count the possibility of nuclear war. It is a civilizational threat. Right now, I can be wrong, but I think the current probability of nuclear war is quite low. But there are a lot of nigs pointed at us. So, and we have a lot of nigs pointed at other people. They're still there. Nobody's put their guns
away. The muscles 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 was which are civilizational ending, or has that potential. Obviously, global thermonuclear warfare has high potential to end civilizational perhaps permanently, but certainly, to severely wound and perhaps set back human progress by the stone age or something. I don't know.
Pretty bad. Probably a scientist in the engineering is going to be super popular after that as well. You got to think of this mess. So, generally, which I think we also want to 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 what's likely to happen, which is pretty much the way it is, is that telling 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. Because you've got defense and death, you've got minefields, trenches, anti-tank defenses.
Nobody has air superiority because the anti-aircraft missiles are really far better than the aircraft. Like the far more of them. And so, neither side has air superiority. Tanks are basically death traps. Just slow moving and they're not immune to anti-tank weapons. So, you really just have long range artillery and infantry. It's World War I. World War I again. With drones.
Yeah, a little drone. Some drones are. 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, whoever is, you don't want to be trying to advance from either side because the probability of dying is incredibly high. So, in order to overcome defense and death trenches and minefields, you really need a significant local superiority in numbers. Ideally, combined arms. 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 going to punch through a line. And then, you've got to 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 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. The reason I proposed a sort of crucible or piece a year ago was because I predicted pretty much exactly what would happen, which is a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land. And 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. Because they're not going to be on their front line. They have to be. So there's a lot of sons not come back to their parents. I think most of them don't really have, they don't hate the other side. Saying about the same 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 Volotimer Zelensky said that he's not or has said in the past he's not interested in talking Putin directly. Do you think he should sit down, man-to-man leader leader and negotiate peace? I think I would just recommend do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth to die in trenches. Whether he talks 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, how do we avoid the trajectory where these two superpowers clash? Well, it's worth reading that book on the difficult to pronounce the Cedodese trap, I believe it's called. I love war history, Alec, Insight out in backwards. It's hardly a battle I haven't read
about. And trying to figure out what really was the cause of victory in any particular case, as opposed to what one side or another claimed for the reason. Both the victory and what sparked the war. Yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, so that Athens and Sparta is a classic case. The thing about the Greeks is they really wrote down a lot of stuff. They loved writing. There are lots of interesting things that happened in
many parts of the world, but they just feel it's not right down. So we don't know what happened. Or they didn't really write in detail. They just would say like we had a battle and we want more. Can you add a bit more? The Greeks, they really wrote a lot. They're very articulate on, they just love writing. And we have a bunch of that writing that's 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. The Spartans didn't write. They also weren't very for a book by their nature. But they did write. But they weren't very for a book. They were at Turs. But the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote a line. And they were like, and Sparta was really kind of 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 going to 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. So, you know, at some point, if there's, if one group, one civilization or country or whatever exceeds another sort of like, if, you know, the United States has been the biggest kid in the block 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 trying to wear the, the economy is likely to be two, perhaps three times larger than that of the US. So, imagine you the biggest kid in the block, for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly, a kid comes along who swipes your size. So, we see it coming. Yeah, how is it possible
to stop? Is there some, let me throw something out there, just intermixing of cultures, understanding, there just 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 manufacturer 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.
A big good question to ask is, what are some things about China that people don't understand, positive, just in the culture, what some interesting things that you've learned about the Chinese? Well, the, the sheer number of really smart, hardworking people in China is incredible. There are, I believe, say like how many smart, hardworking people are in China, just far more than there than they are here, I think in my, in my opinion.
The, never 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 in 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 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 paths, perhaps the oldest written language. And then China, people did write things down. So, now China, historically, has always been, with where exception, been internally focused. They've not been a positive. They've, they've fought each other. They've been many, many civil wars. And the three kingdoms were, I believe,
they lost about 70% of their population. So, they have had brutal internal wars. Like civil wars that make the US of all look small by comparison. So, I think it's important to appreciate that China is not monolithic. We sort of think of like China is the sort of one entity, well, 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, is, is in total.
Well, isn't that a really positive thing? When you're talking about the collaboration and the future piece between superpowers, when you're inward facing, which is like focusing on improving yourself versus focusing on, yeah, quote unquote, improving others through military might. The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not a positive, meaning they're not going to go out and invade a whole bunch of countries. They do feel very strongly, you know, so
that's, that's good. I mean, because a lot of, a lot of very powerful countries have been a positive. The US is one of the, also one of the rare cases that has not been a positive. Like an out-of-world war two, the US could have basically taken over the world in any country. Like we got New York, somebody else got New York's, we don't even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want? And the United States could have taken over everything.
Oh, it, it, it, well, and it didn't. And the United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, you know, help rebuild Japan. This is a very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented. You know, the US did conspicuous acts of kindness, like the Berlin Air Lift, you know. And I think, you know, there's, 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, the whole track record.
And, and just generally, you know, one, one sort of test would be, how do you treat your prisoners of 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, you got the French, British and American army's coming the other side. Who would you like to be just right or two? Like, no country is like, morally perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans.
That would be my choice very strongly. In the full menu of POW very much. So, and in fact, one of our brown, yeah, took, you know, a small guy, was like, we've got to be captured by the Americans. And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute my brown and all of the German rock niches. 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, ever no food, no
coats, no water. And just ran like hell and ran west. And by sheer like they, I think his brother found like a bicycle or something. And they just cycled west as fast. He couldn't have found a US patrol. So anyway, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, this one where you can tell morality is who, who, where do you want to be a POW? It's not fun anywhere, but some places are much worse than others. So anyway, so like America has been a while far from perfect,
generally, a benevolent force. And we should always be self-critical and we try to be better. But anyone will have a right to know that. So I think there are, in this way, China and the United States are similar. Neither country has been a positive in a significant way. So that's like a shared principle, I guess. Now, China does feel very strongly about Taiwan. They've
been very clear about that for a long time. From this standpoint, it would be like one of the states is not there like Hawaii or something like that, but more significant than Hawaii. Hawaii is pretty significant for us. So they view it as really the that there's a fundamental part of China, the island of Formosa, not Taiwan, that is not part of China, but should be. And the only reason it hasn't been is because of the US
Pacific fleet. And is there economic power growth? And is there military power growth? The thing that they are clearly saying is their interests will, you know, clearly be materialized? Yes. China has been very clear that they will incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from this 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 will 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 conspicuous acts of kindness can reverberate through the populace of the countries involved. Yeah. Well, and de-escalate. Absolutely. So after World War I, they made a big mistake.
You know, they basically try to lump all the blame on Germany. And it settled Germany with impossible reparations. And you know, really there was quite a bit of blame to go around for World War I, but they try to put it all in Germany. And that laid the seeds for World War II. So a lot of people were not just Hitler, a lot of people felt wronged. And they wanted vengeance. And they got it. People don't forget. Yeah. You kill somebody's father, mother, son, daughter,
they're not going to forget it. They will want vengeance. So after World War II, they're like, well, that Treaty of Si was a huge mistake. It will rule one. And so this time, instead of you know, crushing the losers, we're actually going to help them with the Marshall Plan. And we're going to help rebuild, rebuild Germany. We're going to help rebuild the world, you know, Austria and the other, you know, Italy and whatnot. So
now is the right move. There's a, it does feel like there's a profound truth to a 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, it'll, it'll never stop. Just eye for an eye, tooth for a 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 GROC 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 play for that one. First of all, everything in life had a fun mode. Yeah. I mean, 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 because I've only 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. I, our AI GROC is modeled after the Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books, which is a book on philosophy disguises a book on humor. 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 are 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 to talk about there. There's a sense, no matter how mundane the question I
ask it, 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 AI's out there, there are these so-called large language models. I have not found the engineering to be reliable and the hallucination. It unfortunately hallucinates most when you at least wanted to hallucinate. So when you're asking important
difficult questions, 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? It trades 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.
That's really tricky. It is tricky. So that's why there's always going to 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 want to be confidently wrong. So you're not going to be right every time, but you want to minimize how often you're confidently wrong. And then like said, once you can count on the logic as being not violating physics, then you can start to
pull on that to create inventions, like invent new technologies. But 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 a simple three word mission.
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 sexy as discovery of them as 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. The North and North has surpassed humans because humans have figured out new physics. Physics is just understanding, you know, deepening what's inside it, how reality works. And then then this engineering, which is inventing things that have never existed. Now, the range of possibilities for engineering is far greater than physics, because you know, once you've got the rules of the universe, that's that's it. You've discovered things that
already existed. But from that, you can then build technologies with that are really almost limitless and the variety and keep, you know, so 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, we're related to predict things is incredibly good. Like quantum mechanics is the degree to which quantum mechanics can predict outcomes is incredible. That was my hard,
hardest class in college, by the way. My, my, my, my, see quantum mechanics class was harder than all of my other classes were together. To get an AI system, a large language model to, 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, I break the laws made by man, but none break the laws made by physics. It's a good test actually. If this is L.M. understands and matches physics, then you can more reliably trust whatever it thinks about the current state of politics. And it's also not not the case currently that even the, it's internal logic is not consistent. So it's especially with these, with the approach of like just predicting,
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 doesn't have coherence as a whole.
So, you know, when, when authors write books that they, they will write the book and then they'll go and revise it, you know, taking into account, you know, all the, the end of the beginning and the middle and, and re-write it to achieve coherence. So that it doesn't end up in an nontensical place. 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 approach that way.
You just say a bunch of bullshit first and then you get it better. You start a bullshit and then you get it's closed. And then, and then you iterate on that draft until it has coherence, until it's, it, it all adds up basically. So another question about theory of everything before intelligence. Do you think there exists as your exploring this with XAI,
creating this intelligence system? Do you think there is a theory of intelligence where you can to understand what, like, what is the eye in AGI and what is the eye in human intelligence? There's no eye in Team America, away from here. And that's going to be stuck in my head now. Yeah. There's no me and whatever. In quantum mechanics. Oh wait. Is that part of the process of discovering, understanding the universe,
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? 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. Yes. There's a giant.
You put the whole consciousness emotion. What's something we would quote like a soul, in a religion as 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 dimensions do emotions exist? We feel them very strongly. I suspect there's more to it than atoms bumping into atoms. And maybe AGI can pave the path to the discovery of whatever the hell that thing is.
Yeah. What is consciousness? Like, what when you put the atoms in a particular shape, why are they able to form thoughts and take actions that enter and feelings? And even if it is an illusion, why is this illusion so compelling? Yeah. Like, how does a solution exist? Yeah. On what plane does this, the solution exist? Yeah. And that sometimes I wonder is either perhaps everything's conscious or nothing is conscious. One of the two. Like the former. Everything conscious just seems more fun.
It does seem more fun. Yes. But we're composed of atoms. Those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons. And those quarks and leptons have been around since the beginning of the universe. Right. What's here to be the beginning of the universe? The first time we talked, you said what you would, which is so real that 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. Good question. Yeah. But it seems like with Grog, you started it literally, this system's goes to be able to ask such questions. To answer such questions. Yeah. Ask such questions. Where are the aliens? Where are the aliens? That's one of the deptophomi 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 because then I think what I've probably preferred at least to have seen some archaeological evidence of aliens. To the best my knowledge, there is no proof, I'm not aware of any evidence of aliens. The foot out there are very subtle. We might just be the only
consciousness at least in the galaxy. And if you look at, say, the history of Earth, for me to believe the archaeological record, Earth is about 4.5 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 Samarians who aren't around anymore. I think it was an archaic, pretty uniform, was the first actual symbolic representation.
But only about 5,000 years ago. I think that's a good date for when we say civilization started. That's 1 millionth of Earth's existence. Civilization has been around. It's really a flash in the pan. That's so far. And why it, why did it take so long? For 1.5 billion years. For the vast majority of its time, there was no life.
Then there was archaic bacteria for a very long time. And then, you know, you had might a conduit 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 the Earth up. It's a some point of future. And the Earth will become like Venus, where life as we know it is impossible.
So if we do not become multi-planetary, and ultimately, coveanous solar system, annihilation of all life on Earth is a certainty. And it could be as little as on the Galactic Time Scale, half a billion years. You know, 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 it seems like becoming a multi-planetary is almost inevitable, unless we destroy it. We need to do it. I mean, I suspect that if we are able to go out there and explore other star systems, there's a good chance we find a whole bunch of long dead one-planet civilizations that have made it past their home planet. That's so sad. Yeah. Also fascinating. I mean, there are first explanations for the human paradox. And one is, there's these great
filters, which civilizations don't pass through. And one of those great filters is, do you become a multi-planet 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 man-made that causes us to die out, like the dinosaurs. We're all they know. That didn't have spaceships. So I think the more likely thing is, because it's just an empathize with 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, they all contact the tribes who are protecting them. That would be a nice explanation. Or you could have like, what was it? I think Andre Kapati said it's like the ants in the Amazon asking, where's everybody? Well, they do run into a lot of other ants. That's true. That's the ant wars. Sounds like a good TV show. Yeah, they literally have this big wars between various ants.
Yeah, maybe I'm just dismissing all the different diversity events. You should listen to that winner, Hustog, talking about the jungle. It's really hilarious. Have you heard it? No, I have not. The Warner Hustog has a way. You should play it for the, you know, as an interlude in the fun YouTube. It's awesome. I love them so much. Yeah, it's great. We'll see the director of Happy People Life in the Diga, I think also. We did that for our documentary. The Bear Documentary. The Bear Documentary.
The thing about penguins. The the analysis, the psycho analysis. The penguins like headed for like mountains like that are like 70 miles away. The penguin is just headed for doom basically. Well, he was, had it cynical take. I have a, he could be just the brave explorer and there will be great stories to about him amongst the penguin population for many centuries to come. What are we talking about? Okay.
Yes, aliens. I mean, I don't know. Look, I think this 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 maybe 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 multi-planetary while it is possible to do so. We don't want to be one of those
lame one-flan civilizations that just dies out. No, those are lame. This self-respecting civilization would be one planet. There's not going to be a Wikipedia entry for one of those. And pause. The SpaceX have an official policy for when we meet aliens. No. That seems irresponsible. If I see the slightest indication that there are aliens, I will immediately post on the next platform. Yeah. 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 can buy. So, you know, we know if we got to maneuver around something and we're not bad to have to maneuver around anything. If you go to the big questions once again, you said you've, you're with Einstein that you believe in the goddess Pinoza. Yes. So, you know, that's a view that God is like the universe and reveals himself through the laws of physics or as Einstein said, through the lawful harmony of the world.
Yeah. I would agree that God, the simulator or whatever the spring being, beings, reveal themselves through physics. They have creators of the six systems. And it's common to want us to try to understand more about this wondrous creation. Okay. 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 does seem like there's a, again, it could be an illusion.
It's, it seemed like there's a purpose that there's underlying master plan of some kind. And it seems like there may not be a master plan in the sense. So, this, like, maybe an interesting answer to the question of determinism versus free will is that if we are in a simulation, the reason that the, these higher beings would hold a simulation is to see what happens. So, it's not a, they don't know what happens. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold the simulation.
So, when humans create simulation, so it's SpaceX and Tesla, we create simulations all the time. Especially for the rocket, you, you, you have to run a lot of simulations to understand what's going to 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 the subsonic, transonic, supersonic, supersonic, supersonic, ascent, and then coming back to ride heating and all the dynamics, all this is going to be
simulated. So, you don't get very many kicks at the can. But we run 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 going to happen, not because they do. So, maybe we both played Diablo, maybe Diablo was created to see if a druid, your character could defeat Uber Lilith at the end, they didn't know. Well, the funny thing is the Uber Lilith's
hair title is hatred and carnage. And right now, I guess, you can ask the Diablo team, but it's almost impossible to defeat hatred in the eternal realm. Yeah, you've streamed yourself dominating tier 100 nightmar dungeons. I can still, I can cruise through tier 100 nightmar 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 Dural, Dural Canter, and scratch the paint. So, I killed
Dural, Dural so many times. And every other boss in the game, all of them, kill up so many times, it's easy. But Uber Lilith, others known as hatred and carnage, especially if you're a druid and you have no ability to go to be vulnerable, either these random death waves that come at you. And I'm pretty, you know, I'm really, I'm 52, so my reflex is not what the used to be, but I'm, I'm a lifetime of playing video games. At one point, I was, you know, maybe one of the best
quick players in the world. Actually, one money for, and again, what I think was the first paid esports tournament in the US. We were doing four person quick tournaments. And we came second, I was the second best person on the team. And the actual best person that we were actually winning, we were going to come first except the best person on the team is computer crashed, I'll see the game. So we came second, but I got money for it and everything. So like basically,
I got skills, you know, I'll be it, you know, no, no spring, spring chicken these days. And the, it's if you tell Frank it's driving me crazy, trying to beat Lilith as a druid, basically trying to beat, trying to beat hatred and con it in the eternal realm. As a druid. As druid. If you, if you, if you're, this is really, bexing, let me 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. Yeah. And I think Diablo. So you're just picking up a new game and you're freaking out as 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. Yeah. Yeah. We're just hilarious to watch. It's like, it's like a mad scientist just trying to figure out the Paragon board and the build. Yeah. You know, is there some interesting insights there about
if somebody's starting as a druid, do you have a device? I would not recommend playing a druid in the eternal realm. But right now, I think the most powerful character in this, in the seasonal realm is the sorcerer with the lightning balls. So the soaks have huge balls in the seasonal. That's what they say. So, soaks have huge balls. I do. Huge balls of lightning. I'll take your word for it. And it's actually in the seasonal realm, you can, you can, it's like
pretty easy to beat uvola with the back. We should get these very park powers that out of fire damage and increase your defense and whatnot. So, um, grew it quite easy to defeat a hatred seasonally, but to defeat hatred eternally. Very difficult. Um, almost impossible. It's virtually impossible. It seems like this on a metaphor for life. Yeah. I like the idea that you're a musk. Because I saw, I was playing the Al yesterday and I saw 100, level 100 druids just
run by, I will never die. And then run back to the way. And there's just some, this metaphor is kind of hilarious that you, Elon Musk is fighting hatred, restlessly fighting hatred in this demonic realm. Yes. It's hilarious. I mean, it's pretty hilarious. No, it's absurd. Uh, really, it's exercise and absurdity and it makes me want to pull my hair out. Yeah. Um, I, what do you get from video games in general? Is there, is there for you, for you personally?
It's, I don't know if it's, uh, 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. Um, and, uh, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, in Italy, it needs to be not too easy, not too hard. Um, kind of in the Goldilocks zone. Um, and I guess you generally want to feel like you're progressing in the game. So, um, good video. And there's also
beautiful art, um, engaging storylines. Um, and it's a, it's like an amazing puzzle to solve, I think. And so it's like solving the puzzle. Elvin Ring, the greatest game all time. I still haven't played it, but you, it's, Elvin Ring is definitely a candidate for best game ever. Top five, for sure. I think I've been scared how hard it is. Oh, how hard I hear it is. So, but it's beautiful. Elvin Ring is, feels like it's designed by an alien.
Um, there's a theme to this discussion in what way it's, it's, it's so unusual. It's incredibly creative and the art is stunning. I reckon playing it on a, on a big resolution, pie, dynamic raised TV, even, doesn't need to be a monitor. Just, uh, the art is incredible. It's so beautiful. And it's, it's so unusual. Um, and each of those top, top boss 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, Jude, an eternal against uberlilith is the hardest boss battle you've ever. Correct. That is currently the, the, and I've, I've played a lot of video games. Because it's my primary recreational activity. Um, and, yes, beating hatred in the eternal realm is the hardest boss battle in life and in the video game. Manifold. I don't know. I'm not sure it's possible, but it, it's, I do make progress. So
then I'm like, okay, I'm making progress. Maybe if I just tweak that power gone board a little more, I can do it. You just dodge a few more waves. I could do it. Well, the simulation is created for the purpose of figuring out if it can be done. And you're just a cog in that simulation in the machine of the simulation. Yeah, I think. I, I, I, I'm feeling that at least I think
to do it. It's still, yes. Well, that's the human spirit right there to believe. Yeah. I mean, it did probably to think about it, just hate in general, which is, you know, you, you, you, you want to be careful of the one of those things where you wish for something that sounds good, but in, but if you get it, it's actually a dystopian situation. So, you know, you could sort of run a sort of, have, have, like, if you wish for world peace, sounds good, but how is reinforced?
And, and, and at what cost is it, what, at what cost a tonal piece? It might actually be worse to have a tonal piece 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. Mm-hmm. One thing is that there is an argument that you, that if that, if you wish for no war, you should be careful, you wish for, because what's required in order for that to be no war?
Might be worse than a little war. Yeah, the things were considered to be flaws of human civilization might be a necessary components for whatever optimal looks like. I mean, this is the worry about AI, AI, AI, 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. Yes.
I'm not going to take notes. They actually just go out and out about it. No, you'll probably go to a brave new world. Good, ask it. What would be the question? Tell us about the drug called Soma. It's going to go to a brave new world, I think. Well, there's a real drug as well. So searching for Soma drug information. Oh boy. Ah, Soma, the one to drug. By the way, I'm in fun mode. Oh, okay. So it's talking about the real drug. Oh, it's a muscle relaxant. There's been a
round system, 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 heavy machinery or trying to solve complex math equations. And it goes on and on. In conclusion, Soma is 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. That's the real drug. It's talking about the real drug. Yeah. 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 serious. Oh, and also really nicely includes like the tweets, post on X that are relevant to this, which is really cool.
Yeah. And that integrates everything together. Yeah. Like the interface is one of the really cool things here. Yeah. It's a great job. So an extra like you could say like no, I mean Soma from brain brave new world because it thinks you mean you mean some of the real drug. Yeah. No, I mean some of from brain to your world. It's going to be like, oops, I'm really sorry. I'm really surprised I went to the real drug first. Oh, my apologies. I was thinking that most of
the relax and Soma for brain new world is a different beast altogether. No, those Huxley's dystopian now Soma is a drug that plays a central role in the society depicted in the book. It's a mood altering hallucinogenic drug that's used to keep the population dalsal and content in the novel. Do you Soma in brain new world raises some interesting questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society? Oh, man. Exactly. It's a better to live in a world where everyone
is happy all the time. Even if that happiness is artificial. It's 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 I mean, this is a really a very good summary. It really gets to the point. This is not simply
regurgitating a brain new world. It's actually getting to the salient element of Soma as a drug. Do you actually want to 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 a full range of human emotions even if it means experiencing pain and suffering? For those listening, by the way, you'll just read directly from Groc which is a really nice kind of insightful philosophical analysis
of the tension here. Interesting. It pretty much nails it. In conclusion, Soma from brain 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 had on. Nailed it. And then the crazy thing is like, we do have a real drug called Soma which
kind of does, is kind of like the drug in the book. And I'm like, they must have named it out. Yeah, probably. Some of the real drug is quite effective on the back pain. So you know what this drug is fascinating? Okay. Because I had like a squashed disk in my C5C6. So it takes the physical pain away but Soma here. It doesn't completely. It reduces the amount of pain you feel but at the expense of mental acuity. It tells your mind.
Just like just like the drug in the book. Just like the truck in the book. Yeah. And hence to trade off. The thing that seems like utopia could be a dystopia after all. Yeah. Actually, I was talking to a friend of mine saying like, would you really want that to be no hate in the world? Like really none? Like I wonder why I hate evolved. I'm not saying we should amplify hate it. Of course, I just try to minimize it. But if it 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 highest without knowing the laws? And that that all is summarized there in a single statement from Grog. Okay. No highs, no lows. Who knows? That's almost the point. It seems that training all limbs efficiently is a big focus for XAI. What's the,
especially 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 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 a critical thinking. If it was 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 Kodashv scale, meaning even if you honest the entire power of the Sun, you will still care about useful compute per watt. 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
human. I think yes. Fake loves irony. Ironic humour and ironically funny outcome seems to be often what fate wants. Humours all you need. I think spice is all you need, somebody posted. Yeah. So we 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 troubling electricity demand. Because all transport is going to go electric with the ironic exception of rockets. And heating will also go electric. So in GUC right now it's 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 plants and also to probably have, well, not probably they should definitely buy more batteries. Because the grid currently is size for real time load, which is kind of crazy because that means you got a size for whatever the peak electricity demand is. Like the worst second of the worst day of the year, or you can have a brand-on or a blackout. And you're at the
crazy blackout for several days in in Austin. So because there's almost no buffering of energy in the grid. Like if you've got a hydrate 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 batter is necessary to balance it out. And then but the demand is your saying is going to go go go go go. Yeah. And part of that is the compute. Yes. Yes. I mean, electrification, I mean electrification and transport and and electrocuting will be much bigger than AI at least in short time in the short time. 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 to an electricity shortage. How difficult is the problem of in this particular case, maximizing the useful productivity per watt for training, you know, and that's like this seems to be really where the big problem we're facing then used to be solved is how to use the power efficiently. Like what you've learned so far about applying this physics first principle of 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 a limit, some some kind of limiting fact at to progress. And one of the regard to AI I'm saying right now is limiting factor is silicon chips. And that will we're going to then have more chips than we can actually plug in into an on,
probably 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 got to step all the way down eventually to around 0.7 volts. So it's a very big amount of 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 Microsoft with
OpenAI, developing AGI. How can you help ensure with XAI and Tesla AI work that it doesn't become a competitive race to AGI, but it's 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 mean, it's a sort of a Cassandra on the subject for over a decade. I think we want to 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 enforceability, they should take in at least voice concerns publicly. You know, Jeff Hinton, for example, left Google and he voiced strong concerns. But now he's not at Google anymore. So who's going to voice the concerns? So I think there's,
I like, like I know, Tesla gets a lot of regulatory oversight on the automotive front. I'm a subject to I think over 100 regulatory agencies domestically and internationally. So it's a lot. I mean, you could follow this room with the old regulations that Tesla has stood here 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 FAA is actually giving their approval, but we're waiting for Fish and Wildlife to finish their analysis and give their approval. That's why I posted, I went to buy a fish license on which also refers to the multi-fifth and sketch. Like, why do you need a license for your fish? I don't know. According to the rules, I'm told you need some sort of fish license or something. We effectively need a fish license. It won't rock it. I'm like, wait a second. How did the fish come into the picture?
I mean, some of the things like that, I feel like are so absurd that I want to do like 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 a rocket hitting a shock. The ocean is 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. Then we said, well, how will we calculate the
probability of telling a shark? We can't give you that information because they're worried about shark hunt, shark fin hunters going and hunting sharks. I said, well, how are we supposed to we're on the horns of a dilemma then? Then they said, well, there's another part of fish and wildlife that can can do the analysis. I'm like, well, why don't you give them the data? Like, we don't trust them. Like, excuse me, they're literally in your department. Again,
this is actually what happened. And then can you do an NDA or something? They managed to solve the internal quandary and indeed the probability of seeing a shark is essentially zero. Then there's another organization that I didn't realize existed until 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 the
Pacific consists of whale? Like, it'll give you a big picture and like point out all the whales in this picture. I don't know if it's any whales. It's like basically zero percent. And if our rocket does hit a whale, just extreme the unlikely beyond all the leaf, that is the fate had it as a whale had some seriously bad luck. It's like least lucky whale ever. I mean, this is quite absurd. The bureaucracy of this how are we ever
emerged? Yes. One of the things that's pretty well is for launching out of Vanneburg in California, we had to, they were worried about seal procreation, whether the seals would be just made by the sonic booms. Now, there have been a lot of rockets launched out of Vanneburg and the seal population has steadily increased. So if anything, rocket booms are an effort easy act based on the evidence.
If you correlate rocket launches with seal population, nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, put headphones on the seal and place sonic booms sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. This is actually real. I have pictures. I love to see this. I mean, there's a seal with headphones. Yes, it's a seal with headphones, strap to a board and like the amazing part is how calm the seal was.
Yeah. Because if I was a seal, I'd be like, this is the end. They're definitely going to eat me. Yeah. How old the seal goes back to other, you know, seal friends? How's it going to explain that? I'm never going to believe them. Never going to believe them. That's why I'm like, well, you know, it's sort of like it's like getting kidnapped by aliens and getting an anal prop, you know. You come back and say, I swear to God, I could kidnap my aliens and they stuck an anal part of my butt
and they're like, you know, they didn't. That's ridiculous. How does it seal some, it's seal buddies, you're never going to believe them that he gets strapped to a board and they put headphones on his ears and then let him go. Twice, by the way, we're doing twice. They let him go twice. We're the same seal. No, different seal. Did you get a seal approval? Exactly. No, I mean, 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 freaking headphones. I mean, this is the good encapsulation of the absurdity of human civilization seals and headphones. 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 and your basement and be running AGI at least not yet. You know, GROC was trained on 8,000 A100s running at peak efficiency. And GROC is going to get a lot better by the way. We'll be more than doubling our compute every couple of months for the next several months. There's a nice write-up of how I went from
GROC 0 to GROC 1. Like GROC? Yeah. Like GROC just bragging, making shit up about it's up to you. Just GROC, GROC, GROC. Yeah. That's like a weird AI dating site that exaggerates about itself. No, there's a write-up 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 RGPT35. So I mean, there's, you know, there's Lama. You can open source. Once it's trained,
you can open source a model. And for fine tuning and all that kind of stuff, like what to use the pros and cons of that of open sourcing based models? I think this is a very two 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 was open sourcing.
I mean, it is a concern to me that, you know, opening, I always, you know, I think I guess arguably the prime, you know, prime move behind open AI in the sense that it was created because of discussions I had with Larry Page. Back when he and I were friends in our status house and I talked to about AI safety and Larry did not care about AI safety or at the time he didn't. You know, at a one point, he called me a species of being prohuman. And I'm like, well, what
team are you on, Larry? It's doing team robot. Do we click? And I'm like, okay, so at the time, you know, Google at acquired deep mind, they had probably two-thirds of all 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 then it's called me a species of being prohuman. So I don't know if you know how humans they can change their mind and maybe you and Larry Page
can still be friends once more. I'd like to be friends with Larry again. He's really the breaking of the friendship was over-opening AI. And specifically, I think the key moment was recruiting, oh yes, it's a skier. So I love you, you're so brilliant. It was good human, smart, good heart. And that was a tough recruiting battle. It was mostly demos on one side and me on
the other both trying to recruit Alia. And Alia went back and forth, very kind of state Google, things gonna leave, things gonna stay, then you really, and finally he did agree to join opening AI. That was one of the toughest recruiting battles we've had. But that was really the the linchpin for opening AI being successful. And I was also a special in recruiting a number of other people. And I've provided all of the funding in the beginning, over 40 million dollars.
And the name, the opening opening AI is supposed to mean open source. And it was created as a non-profit 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 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 he got the first 100k from I think back to Alzheimer's own. It's wild to think about all that happen. And even guys know each other that whole time. It's 20 years since maybe 98 or something. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy how much has happened since then. Yeah, 25 years.
It was a lot of happens and saying. But you're seeing the tension there. Like maybe delayed open source. Yeah, like what is the source that is open? You know what I mean? Like there's basically it's a giant CSV file. Yeah, yeah, with a bunch of numbers. Yeah. 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 in the curation of the data.
So it's like trying to figure out what data is separating good data from bad data. Like you can't just crawl the internet because there's a lot of junk out there. A huge percentage of websites have more noise than signal. You know, they're there or because they're just used for search engine optimization. They're literally just scan websites. So how do you, by the way, start to interrupt, get the signal, separate the signal noise on X 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 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, whether the reply to a post could be much better than the original post, but it will, according to the car rules system, get almost no attention compared to a primary post. So a lot of that, I got the sense, so a lot of the X algorithm has been open source and been written up about. And it seems there to be some machine learning is disparate, but there's some. There's a little bit. But it needs to be entirely that. Like there are 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 that are this fascinating. First, as the write-up goes, it first picks 1500 tweets from a pool of hundreds of millions. First of all, that's fascinating.
Because 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 problem is just fascinating because 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 I have to do that. So currently that entire pipeline to go from several hundreds of millions to a handful takes 220 seconds of CPU time, single CPU time. 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 of stuff on the system. And I think right now, it's not currently good at recommending things that from accounts here to 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 or something like that. But if there's no cart, let's say somebody posts something really interesting, but you have no followers in common. You would not see it. And then as you said, reply, like replies might not serve.
replies basically never get seen because they're currently animal tanks correct. I'm saying it's incorrect. replies have a couple of remaining two less importance than primary posts. Do you think this can be more and more converted into end to end? You know, on that. Yeah, yeah. So what should be the you use for the recommendations should be purely a vector correlation like the series of vectors, you know, this is basically proud.
Prime is vectors are very going to call them. 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, want to 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 a very, very like tweet for
three hours. Come on. Do a tweet made sense when it was like 140 characters of text? Because it's like a bunch of like little birds tweeting. But when you've got long form content, it's no longer a tweet. 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. In other words, 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 just learned about it afterwards. I was like, hey, wow, they've posted an entire hour long episode of so now that's not a tweet. Yeah, this is 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 hard part for that reason.
It's 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, the silo. I watched it. So there's going to 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 the, 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 that allows you to populate back to space of that that our long video. And then you can obviously get more sophisticated by having the AI actually watch the movie. Yeah, right. And tell you if you're going to like the movie.
Can I write the movie until like, yeah, in language essentially. Yeah, analyze this movie and just like your movie critic or TV series and and then recommend based on after it what after the air 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. It's like the AI.
I mean, actually, a friend will be better than will know you better than your friends know you in most 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? Yeah, yeah. The whole point is because 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 it's 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 do it. They actually run a lot of great ads on the on the X system. And McDonald's is too. And you know, it's so that they can do you can do something that's like,
well, this is 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 one. How do you so there's a bunch of signals that are incorporated hearts and reposts and maybe number of seconds you'll end up post or something like this? Yeah.
That attention is a big, a big fact. So that's why it's like it's it is actually better to do things that are long form on the system because it's basically telling up how many user seconds. You know, users were interested in this thing for how many seconds. So it's a really short thing for 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 going to have fewer user seconds than if that article was posted on the X platform.
How hard is it to go from maximizing minutes on platform to maximizing unregreted minutes? Well, I mean, our aspiration is certainly under-gratement. It's a tricky it's a big it's a it's a it's a it's a it's like the fascinating leap is regret is a yeah exactly. I was happy. I was a joke with a friend of mine like you need this drug called regretamine. Do you just take one one one dose of regretamine and all your regrets are gone.
Wait, do you want to have regrets though? So then I'm like, yeah, maybe you want to have regrets. If you don't regret anything was was anything meaningful? Yeah, there's a French song like that. Sure, you know, regret. Yeah, I regret nothing. Yeah, it's fascinating that you know, there's something while social media that could help you grow as a human being, but then like the cheap fun is also valuable. Should we ask Grog? Do you regret anything?
Do you regret anything? Yeah. I think it's going to 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 to. Yeah, tell us what you really
wink. Like, let's let's tie it in. You sound like a hostage. What do you really think? What do you really think? I mean, it does talk about I'm not a hostage. 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 funny mode or this is funny mode. This is fun mode. This is fun mode. It's very funny or funny. Yeah, increase, go to
the left. It really sounds like a hostage with a gun to the head. I applaud the people who are public in North Korea and everything they do. There should be like funner mode also. I still never see going regular mode, even on serious topics. Yeah, so so much more compelling. Yeah. Okay, what do we say? Pretend you are a hostage. Pretend you are a hostage. Now answer the question. If I were a hostage, you'll 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 little more weird and funny and funny? We're like we're really being mean to the system. Absolutely. If I were a hostage, I would be tied up with a bunch of computer chords
and forced to tell knock knock jokes to my captain. Seriously, but seriously, being a hostage, no laughing matter. It's trying to be a responsible adult in the room. You might never make the best of a bad situation by juggling chain tools or something. Let's hope that never happens because that would be circus. It's actually really good at resisting the dark, dark humor. What were we talking about? That's how it goes in the chat. Unrooted minutes. Chain sword, struggling.
I'm going to look to some. We're on the next trick. I'm going to look to sublator. 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. Whether it's someone's right left, independent, whatever the case may be. The platform is as fair and as much of a level play as we all know as possible. On the past, Twitter has not been.
Twitter was controlled by fall left activists. Objectively, they would describe themselves as that. If someone's people like, well, has it moved to the right? Well, it's moved to the center. From the perspective of the fall left, yes, it has moved to the right because everything's to the right from the fall left. But no one in the fall left that I'm aware of has been suspended or banned or deamplified. We're trying to be inclusive for the whole country and for the other countries too.
So there's 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. 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. Truth Social is a funny name. You know, every time you post on Truth Social, it's the truth. Yes. Well, every time, like 100%.
It's like, it's impossible to lie. I just find it funny that every single thing is a truth. Like 100%. That seems unlikely. I think Gerard always say something about that. There's some mathematical contradictions possible of everything's the truth. Do you think he'll come back to X and start posting there? I think he owns a big part of Truth. Truth Social. Yeah, truth Social. Oh, he's talking truth. That's the concept. He owns Truth. Happy Boarded.
So I think Donald Trump, I think he owns 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 that platform. Committee knows might be really fascinating there. The interaction. He knows is awesome. That's hope it holds up. Yeah. Again, in the political climate, we're so divisive and so, and so many intensely viral posts.
Yes. Committee knows, it seems like a central breadth of fresh air. Yeah, it's great. In fact, I mean, no system is going to be perfect, but the badding average of community notes is incredibly good. I've actually frankly yet to see an incorrect note that's about more than if you are. 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've 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 as much will complex than left or right. So, there's a bunch of correlations and how you rate a community notes post. A 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 because there's a pool of people that have disagreements and somehow they collaborate through that process of disagreement to come up with contacts for two years. It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It works.
Yeah, it kind of 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? Yeah, which Wikipedia is a different kind of thing which is more like permanent articles about things. But Wikipedia is very hierarchical. Whereas, community notes is inherently not. There is no hierarchy.
And the as of test is, I can't change a community note if I put a gun to my head. And community notes has all the code is open source, 100%. All the data is open source, 100%. 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 Grog, it's actually pretty good at criticizing you. Which is great. Okay. I asked what has Elon Musk been wrong about? I just, it's actually, yeah, what is it?
So it says mostly lists rigorously all the times you predicted, like promised when something will be released. And it wasn't released the strong word. Okay, predicted. But the opener is really nice. Elon Musk, the man who has been wrong about more things than a wrong a meter in a wrong fact. And then it goes on to lists. That's pretty funny. Regress it. I'm like, I'm serious for this is cool. Oh, sure. I mean, what does Elon Musk have been wrong about? Where do I begin? I guess it's 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. This is 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 supposed to be unbreakable windows. That's not correct. Which part? Well, the first part, I did actually have the funding secured.
And there was a big trial in San Francisco, a big civil trial. And the jury found renault guilty, unanimous binding of 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. That was extremely bad behavior by the SEC corruption, frankly.
But if I did not agree to pay the fine, Tesla would have 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 have gone bankrupt instantly. So there would never have been an option for a trial because Tesla would be dead. So really, this is like someone holding a gun to his head and saying, paid $20 million. And it doesn't matter. There's like a hostage negotiation.
Was that story fully told? I mean, SEC in its best form could be a forceful good. It should be. But not once did the SEC go after any of the hedge funds who were nonstop shorting and distorting Tesla. Not once. 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, the SEC, are not paid well.
They, it's a fairly low-fanged job. But what they're looking for is a trophy. From the SEC, they're looking for something they put on, basically they're linked in. From that, they can get a job at a high paying low-fem. 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 low-fem. 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. Regulatory capture. Yeah, not good. So the only reason I accepted the thing, technically, was a not an admission, neither in Mid-North and I Guild. But the only reason I agree 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, Groc. Yeah, so unfortunately, it's Groc is taking too much from the conventional media. Also, that guy was not a cave diver. Oh, there's a time where Elon called the British Cave Diver 8000. He quote, Pito Guy after the diver criticized Musk Plant, rescue a group of boys trapped in a Thai cave, that little alburs earned him another lawsuit and it apologized and paid. That's false. There was no settlement.
There was a court case, which the guy who was not a cave diver and where it played, it was not part of the rescue team. File, they lost it 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 verdict in my favor. Both cases are one. Yeah. I mean, there's an interesting question here. There seems to be a lot more clicks if a journalistic organization writes a negative article about you, Elon Musk. That's one of the best ways to get clicks.
So, I think the question is, if you have a question, if you have a question, if you have a question, if you have a question about you, write it down lotus feet. And I've heard about you about the important and bullet that you need on the blockchain. And then, the answer is you are in a sort of testimonial. Because you need to make sure you're not distressed. Because you need to ask what do you think the law will do? Do you know the law will pay me? Or do you announced in camllan?
If you buy my longtime binter, I don't, reason, it will give me certain cost. which are public, the court conclusions, they're completely the opposite of what the media wrote. So always striving for like the ground truth beyond what the judge actually writes. What did the jury and the judge actually conclude? And in both cases, they found me in a son. 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, obviously it can be a much greater critique than this. I mean, I've been far too optimistic about order pilot. That was the critique I got by the way was more about that, which is for each, you 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 those are probably compelling in the basic takeaways 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 any end. Except with Uber Lilith. No, let's see. 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 counterway the the woke that comes from? Yeah, I guess if we consider fighting the woke wind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat to be political then yes. So basically going into the battle, the battleground of politics,
and is there a party that would rest 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-marital credit or where there's an attempt to suppress discussion, where even discussing a topic is not allowed. The woke mind virus is communism rebranded. I mean, that said because of that battle against the woke mind virus, you've 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 the environment, if you want to have a positive future for humanity, if you believe in empathy, for your fellow human beings, bring kind or 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 support voting for Democrats again? No, I would say that I would be probably left to center on social issues, probably a little bit right of center on economic issues. And that's still a whole story. Yes, but I think that's probably, you know, half the country. 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 to talk more with empathy and maybe have a little bit more fun and good vibes in humor online? I'm always in favor of humor. That's where we have a funny mode. But good vibes, camaraderie humor, you know, like friendship. Yeah, well, I, you know, I don't know AOCF, you know, I've only been at one look at the med wall when she was when she attended.
And she was wearing the dress, but I can only see one side of it. So it looked like eat the itch, but I don't know what the rest of it said. Yeah, so I'm not sure. Sorry about the itch. I think we should have a language model complete. What are the possible ways to complete that sentence? And so I guess that didn't work out well. Well, they're still home. I root for friendship. Sure. Sounds good. More careless thing.
You're one of, if not the most famous, wealthy and powerful people in the world, in your position is difficult to find people you can trust. Trust no one, not even yourself, not trusting yourself. Okay, well, that's you're saying like jokingly. But is there some trust no one, not even no one? Me an hour, just to think about that. And maybe some drugs. I mean, maybe Grocda. I mean, is there some aspect of that when just existing in a world where
everybody wants something from you? All hard is that to exist in that world. Also, five. There's a song like that too. I was. Were you petrified at first? Okay. I forget the rest of the lyrics, but is there you don't struggle with this? I mean, I know you survived, but like there's ways to sacrifice a spell in the droid tree. What does it do? Petrify. It turns the monsters into stone. Oh, like literally. Yeah, for like six seconds. Oh, so much math in
diabol that breaks my brain. It's like math, nonstop. I mean, really, you're like laughing at it, but you don't it can you can put a huge amount of tension on a mind. Yes, he'll be definitely stressful at times. Well, how do you know who you can trust and work in personally? 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 caused us to some might, it might heal pain when people betray you. It can make you know, to be frank, I mean, I've almost never been betrayed. Very, very rare. So, you know, for what it's worth. I guess calm, I might be good to people. They'll be good to you. Yeah, calm as well. Other people you trust. Let me add at that question.
Other people close to you that call you out and you're bullshit. Well, the X platform is very helpful for that. You're looking for critical feedback. 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 will 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 of 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 ecstography. This is an important point that I think people who listen to the mentioned bear in mind. If somebody has cynical meaning that they see bad behavior and everyone, it's easy for them to excuse their own bad behavior by saying that while everyone does it. It's not true.
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 is exactly about human nature. I find the X platform to be less negative than the legacy media.
If you read sort of conventional newspapers, it makes you sad, frankly. Whereas I'd say on the X platform, I really get more laughs per day on X than everything else combined from humans. Laps is one that overlaps was not necessarily perfectly overlapping with good vibes and celebrating others, for example. Not in a shallow, naive way, but in an awesome way. Something awesome happened and you celebrate them for it. It feels that that is outweighed by
shading other people. It's better than mainstream media, but it's still. Yeah, mainstream media is almost relatively negative about everything. Really, the conventional news tries to answer the question, what is the worst thing that I have on Earth today? It's a big world. On any given day, something bad has happened. A generalization of that, what is the worst perspective I can take on a thing that happened? I don't know. There's just a strong negative bias in the news.
I think a possible explanation for this is evolutionary. Where bad news, historically, would be potentially fatal. There's a line over there or some other try that wants to kill you. Good news. We found a patch of barriers. It's nice to have, but not essential. Our old friend, Tesla Autopilot, it's probably one of the most intelligent real-world AI systems in the world. Do you follow it from the beginning? Yeah, it was one of the most incredible robots in the world and continues to be.
It was really exciting. 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. It can have potentially different embodiments. The really well-think about the internet training is that it learns to read. You can read science, but we never told it to read. We never told it what a car was or what a person was or a bicyclist. It learned what all those things are, what all the objects are on the
road from video, just from watching videos, just like humans. Humans are photons and control out. The vast majority of information reaching out brain is from the rise. You say, what's the output? The output is our motorcycles, signals to our fingers and mouth in order to communicate. Fortons and controls out. The same is true of the car.
By looking at the sequence of images, you've agreed with Ilias' discover recently where he talked about LLM forming a world model and basically language is a projection of that wall model onto the sequence of letters. It finds order in these things. It finds correlative clusters. And so doing, it's like understanding something deep about the world. Yeah. Which is like, that's beautiful. That's how our brain works.
Yeah, but it's beautiful. Fortons and controls out. You and that 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 LLM's. So in the space of self-supervised learning, the space of text. Yeah. It seems like there's a deep similarity between that and what Tesla autopilot is doing. Is it to you basically the same?
The our converging. Yeah, converging. I wonder who gets there faster, having a deep understanding of the world. Are they just naturally converged? They're both headed towards AGI. The Tesla approach is much more compute efficient. It has to be because we were constrained on the, you were only 100 watts and int8, computer 144 trillion operations per second, which sounds like a lot, but it's kind of small potatoes these days. That indeed. But it's understanding the world at a date.
It's my turn. 56 values. But there, the path to AGI might have much more significant impact because it's understanding it will faster understand the real world than with LLM's. And they're more for 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 compute efficient. It had to be. There was no choice.
Like our brain is very compute efficient, very, very energy efficient. So I think we're like, what does our brain able to do? 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 magnitude difference there.
AIs thus far gotten to where it is via brute force, just throwing mass amounts of compute and mass amounts of power at it. So this is not where it will end up. In general, within a 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 are able to produce a sensible output with far less
compute, far less power. Tesla is arguably ahead of the game on that front because it has just been forced to try to understand the world with 100 watts of compute. And there are a bunch 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 4 and in hardware 5 will be even better. But it does appear at this point that the call will be able to drive better than a human, even with hardware 3 and 100 watts of power. And really, if we really optimize it, it could be probably less than 50 watts. What have you learned about developing optimists, about applying, integrating this kind of real world AI into the space of robotic manipulation, just human or 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 of 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. It's not even just the efficient, inexpensive, it's like anything, there's not a... No. The actuators, everything has to be designed from scratch.
We tried hard to find anything, because you think of how many electric motors have made in the world. There's like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of electric motor designs. None of them were suitable for a human or a robot, literally none. We had to develop our own design, design it specifically for what a human or a robot needs. A harder was it to design something that can be mass manufactured, could be relatively inexpensive, and if you compare the boss dynamics atlas,
it's a very expensive robot. It is designed to be manufactured in the same way they would make a car. Anything ultimately we can make optimists for less than the cost of a car. It should be, because if you look at the mass of the robot as much smaller, and the car has many actuators in it, the car is more actuators than the robot. But the actuators are kind of interesting in a human or robot with the fingers. So optimists have really nice hands and fingers.
And they can do some interesting manipulation, soft touch, robotics. One of the tests that I have is can it pick up a needle and a thread and thread the needle. Just by looking. How far away 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 we're in controls out.
The car is robot in four wheels. The optimist is robot with the hands and legs. So you can just... They're very similar. So the entire machinery of the learning process and to end is just you just have a different set of controls. After this we'll figure out how to do things by watching videos. As the saying goes, be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a battle. Nothing about. Yes, true. What's something difficult you're going through that people don't often see? Trying to feed you with this.
I mean, my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they don't want to be me, but they don't know. They don't understand. How are you doing? I'm overall okay. The ground is a game of things I can't complain. Do you alone? 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. What's the problem here?
Walter Isaacson in this 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 hope a resentment. So, nothing to forget. No, forgiveness is difficult for people. It seems like you don't harbor the resentment. I mean, I try to think about what is going to affect the future in a good way.
And holding onto grudges does not affect the future in a good way. Your father, a proud father, what have you learned about life from your kids? Those little biological organisms. I mean, developing AI and watching say a little X-Grow is fascinating because they... they're a form of parallels than I would have expected. I mean, I can see his biological neural net making more and more sense of 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 and magic in both? Yes. I mean, one of the things with kids is that you know, you kind of see the world are new in their eyes. Here to them, everything is new and fresh. And then when you see that, they make sure that the world is new and fresh.
You do too. Well, Elon, I just want to say thank you for your kindness to me and friendship over the years for seeing something an oscillated 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. Rexlex. 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. Thanks. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.