Elon Musk: Optimus 3 Is Coming, Recursive Self-Improvement Is Already Here, and the Singularity | #239

audience and uh as you can see um still trying to monetize hope Yeah, you uh you look like you're in great shape. Oh I'm doing great. Is there any like uh sort of youth serum things going on or what? It's uh it's our longevity X Prize. We're we're getting there, buddy. We're getting there. And I I think I think in our last conversation, uh, you're getting on board with the idea of extended longevity, yes?

Uh yeah. Okay. Some degree. I mean like I don't know if we wanted everyone to live forever or whatever, but uh Health span and uh and and not uh you know having an extended period of senescence where where you're just drooling on yourself sounds like a good idea. We we want to So first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and XAI, ball or move. Uh gonna power humanity's first Dyson Swarm. So uh I'm curious uh

Uh it trul it truly is. Uh what's your timeline for launching these data centers and how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of uh the speed at which you're gonna be making this happen. Uh yeah. So SpaceX is Um has file SpaceX is in the quiet period. I I can't uh actually uh tell you things that would cause uh problems. Uh Oh I'll I'll leave it I'll leave it that. I appreciate that.

But uh can't wait for uh for the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with uh with Eric Schmidt. uh and with uh uh one of the leads from one of the other hyperscalers. I won't mention who, but I'm curious where you feel we are in recursive self-improvement. Are we there? Do you see GROC doing recursive self-improvement at this point? And how and what's the timeline for AGI and ASI? Give us a sense of that.

Yeah, I I I think we're we've been in recursive improvement for a while here. Uh You say if it's Fizzring, if you mean by like recursive self-improvement without a human in the loop, uh is that what you mean? I do. I uh on the on the AI software side. I mean humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So you know ever every successive model. So th that that that is happening to a large degree, but

It's it's not yet fully automated. Um it may be there End of this year, but uh not later than next year. Do you see a hard takeoff at that? We're in the hottaggle. Okay. Right now. Yes. I mean look at uh I mean at this point I go to sleep, there's some massive AI breakthrough, and when I wake up there's another one. Yeah, it's hard to keep track, honestly. It's a bit of a head spinner. Yeah, well I think a lot of the head spinning is happening from you too. Yeah.

Well, you know, Grocks' doing pretty well and in some metrics by some metrics it's the best. Uh for example it's uh the best at predicting things, which uh you know is arguably the the Best metric for intelligence. Um the new Grock four four point two zero is is really really good. Um We're we're currently behind on coding. Um the reason I was bit bit late for this was that I was just in a gi giant sort of all hands on on coding, just going through all of the things that need to happen.

uh essentially catch up and exceed our our competitors on uh code Which I think I think we'll do. I feel you know, we'll we should probably get there by the middle of this year. Um and uh and then

I think people don't don't quite understand just how much intelligence there will be, or you know, just how far it will exceed human intelligence to a degree that is uh impossible to fully understand. Um but you could certainly imagine a situation where we let's say let's say a million times more energy is harnessed uh than all of Earth's current electricity usage. That would still only be a roughly a millionth of the sun's energy output.

So essentially if you increase the US economy by a factor of a million, it's still roughly a trillion. So since we're a trillionth of the sun's energy, if you increase Earth's economy in in in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you will be roughly one millionth only of the sun's energy.

But but what is it what is what is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of Earth civilization think about or look like or do? It's gonna be something pretty magnificent. uh the the challenge will be even vaguely appreciating the that level of intelligence. But it's it's safe to say it will it will solve everything you can possibly think of. Yes. Uh longevity being, you know, certainly one of them. Uh And um

I I I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism. Um Thank you, Phil. I see you I see you've you've uh Hope Hope. Yeah, exactly. Take it to heart, monetizing hope, uh which is pretty funny. It was Gracks it it was Gracks marketing advice to me when you roasted me on the monetization.

But hey, if you've been spent in monetizing misery, I suppose. Yes. Um yeah. Um but but yeah, just uh the the the when you when you have AI AI and robots are gonna Like economic output or by by so many orders of magnitude, we we cannot possibly comprehend it. We're likely in a very short time to become a minority, then a vast minority, then a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet.

Um yes, not even on this planet, but i in the solar system. Yes, for sure. Because um like if i know your best case outcome for uh Earth for intelligence is roughly one billionth of the sun's energy. Uh that's your best case outcome. Uh if you s if you if you generate intelligence only on Earth. Intercept it, right.

Yes, yes.'Cause roughly one ha roughly half of the length of the sun's energy hits Earth and that's the vast majority of energy that that's out there. Um that that we can access. Uh so Uh really, the intelligence in the solar system will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on

How can I ask you a question, Elon? Um, how far out can you see? How many years out can you make reasonable predictions right now? It's hard to predict the easy. the path exactly, especially if it'cause often things are c kind of an S curve uh or a series of S curves where it starts off, slow, Uh grows exponentially, hits the linear zone and then goes logarithmic.

Um that generally has been what what I've seen with uh breakthroughs in in in AI AI, for example, is you'll you'll there'll be some breakthrough it'll do uh have an S curve but and then it looks like it's just gonna go to infinity, but then you hit logarithmic returns until there's another break. Um so progress in the eye is just a sort of series of uh you know sort of overlapping S-coves um or connected S curves. Um

I mean there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now? Okay this is gonna sound pretty crazy. It's okay. We we've been we've been talking about crazy. Yes. I'd say the economy is 10 times the s its current size in 10 years. Greater than. Okay. Yeah, you really say something. Yeah, you had said uh triple digit growth in in five plus years from now on on GDP and 10x the economy.

There's obviously if if there's like World War Three or something, um that that could put a kink in those plans, uh or those expectations. Yeah. Uh but in the absence of World War Three, if current trends continue, I would say the The economy taxes in ten years. Love it. Can you give us an we had a bunch of base on the moon? Yes. And we'll and we'll have people on Mars. And we'll have mass drivers on the moon. Um I think so. In ten years. I think I think we'll have a mass driver in the moon.

I love it. Uh Gerard K. O'Neill's vision uh being fulfilled.

Uh we had uh four robots on stage here this year um on the at the abundance summit. Uh I look forward to Optimus. I'm curious, Optimus 3 timeline and in particular when can I buy one? When's uh when do you expect Optimus to go into commercial uh for commercial sale? Or will you be leasing it? Well we're in the final stages of completion of Optimus III, which is really gonna be by far the most advanced robot in the world. Nothing's even close. Yeah.

In fact, I haven't seen even sent any seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus III, frankly. Maybe they're out there or they're secret or something. I don't know. But um Yeah, I and I have to make sure I'm saying things that are reasonably public as well, of course. Yeah. Okay. This is pretty public inaccuracy. Yeah, I I I think we'll start production on Optimus Three the summer, uh but but very slow at

Um like at you know this sort of classic S-Curve ramp of manufacturing units was this time. Um and then probably reach high volume production around summer next year. And then... You know, we'll we'll have onto a sport. Design clean next year. I go try to release a new robot design every year.

When when Dave Blundon and I were at the Gigafactory, uh it was an extraordinary experience, eleven and a half million square feet for the Tesla, and then I think you said you're building out nine and a half million square feet for Optimus there as well. Um let's let's find my Square feed round numbers. I had done that be that'll be that'll be quite that that's gonna be a d a a a a a new factory design too. Like it's d not different from other factories.

How far before we have robots building robots? I mean you automated so much of the Gigafactory already, uh where they're humans playing a small role. Do the robots just play the role that humans are playing in that regard? Um you know Tesla direct employees who are uh building things uh or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people who are building uh it's roughly a hundred thousand.

Um so we have a lot of people. Is uh to the total hit count's around one hundred and fifty K, of of which two thirds are, you know, in the factory in one form or another. And then our suppliers is probably uh Maybe a a million or two million people uh in our suppliers type of thing. So it's it's a lot of people. Um

What what we do expect that is that is that the output per per person at Tesla becomes very, very high. Yeah. So we're not planning any like layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact we will increase our head Um but the uh output per human that tells us gonna get nutty.

When we were When we were together, um We discussed the idea of sustainable abundance uh on our podcast, and you reinforce the idea that we have a coming age of universal high income. Uh which has become a point of discussion beyond UBI. But I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get Reflected not any further. And and more so, you know, we talked about a time frame of Civil unrest, you know, two, three, four, five years.

uh probably uh a lot of covet like checks in the interim until we get to a demonetization uh and a you know deflation that leads us to UHI. Any more reflections on that? Because that's a really people need that hope and that vision. Yeah, I I I mean to be clear, I don't I I don't think we should be sort of complacent. We need to we do need to be careful because

The future is a range of possible outcomes and uh they're not all great. Um but I I at this point I I I I do agree with you that it's it's likely to be great. Um you know it's probably eighty percent likely, maybe more likely to be great.

And uh and I and I do think we'll have universal income. We're we're basically just issue money to people or you know, and and the really just uh Because the output of goods and services will f so far exceed the money supply that um You know, and uh that that that effectively you have deflation because just deflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money.

Um so that that's uh so if if if if the rate of growth of of goods and services far exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply, which I predict will happen, uh then uh you will have deflation. Yes. And a lot of a lot of people spinning up new companies, competing against each other, driving the price down, and cr increasing the variability and deflation.

Faster. Yeah, it's basically the AI and robots are gonna make so much stuff and provide so many services that uh they will actually run out of things to do for the humans. They'll just run out of things to do for the humans. And then they they'll you know. There's only there's only so much that humans can even express that they want. So you go back to my example of like if you go a million times greater than the Earth's economy. You you've long since saturated all human desire.

Uh uh you know, like maybe like i mean if you go a thousand times more than our current economy, thousand times, you you you probably have already saturated saturated human anything people can. So d do you think the the value of money is going to significantly decrease? Will we go post-capitalist?

Yeah, I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future. So just as you're becoming a it's like it's it's it's probably something like an in banks uh culture sort of future. Um And I I think the AI down the road will really Not use uh human currency, it will just care about uh power and mass, what is and tonight. It's kind of ironic then, right? Just as you're becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value. Yeah, very much.

Uh yeah. You know the so all this stuff it's it's really just truly you know just represents like some percentage ownership in companies that I've uh you know built and It's not like sitting in a bank account, you know. It's just it's just literally I own a percentage of the companies, the companies are doing lots of useful things.

value of the company grows out of percentage of the companies and that's uh sums up to that number which seems high. Yeah. You know it's I I ha I was interviewed by somebody who was asking me about your your drive, what drives you and I said Elon's driven to solve problems. He's driven to make

life and the world better by just solving the biggest problems over and over and over again. And if someone else were solving them, he wouldn't need to. But no one else is solving them. So I just want to say thank you for that. I I am curious, do you think that democracy and our modern institutions can keep up with this supersonic tsunami coming our way? Are they just gonna fall in its way? They're just gonna break down. How do we deal?

I mean it's called the singularity for a reason, you know, which is that it's hard to predict what happens in that in the singularity. I mean Grocks logo is the singularity. I love it. It's a beautiful logo behind you by the way. It's gorgeous. Yeah, thank you. Uh yeah. It it's so the light the light ha the the the halo around a b a black hole is the mass and light are falling in.

Um it's hard it's hard to know what happens inside the singularity. Um but it's gonna be very interesting. Like we're gonna live in it the future will be very entertaining. Of that I'm confident. Yes. Um I I think also like AI and robotics are also the only way we're gonna solve our our budget deficit, frankly, and and not just go bankrupt as a country. Um so I I'm I'm you know ca you've had an influence on me in that I'm like dis I've just decided to be more

It's like we just should be more optimistic. Thank you, pal. It's all it's all upside being an optimist. And a realist a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to be complacent or just assume everything's going to go well, but try to make it go well.

But I mean there will be some pretty amazing things that happen. So if you've got uh humanoid robots that are that have very high dexterity and uh and and and are incredibly smart, it means that everyone on earth will have access to better medical care than than uh than the richest person on earth. Which by the way, I would say like you know, if I'm allegedly the rich person or I think actually sovereigns are richer than me.

But it's like like you know, I like I had to have like a like a neck surgery three times because the first two ones were done wrong. You know, I'm like this I'm like, what the? You know? Um so and and I'm like my back still hurts a little bit. I'm like, uh can AI please solve back pain? That would be a huge win. And I think it will. Yep. So you know, daffein sucks.

Yeah, sometimes why do people get grumpy when they get older? It's because of back pain. It's like if you back whistle all the time and you can't sleep well, you're gonna be grumpy. We had uh but it you yeah. We had David Sinclair on stage this morning and he's going into human trials with uh ER one hundred. partial apogenetic reprogramming. And uh one of the one of the papers recently published shows it uh enables joint repair. And so back pain may be one of the things that uh it eliminates.

That would be amazing. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

I keep on inviting you to come down to Fountain Life in in uh in Dallas. We'll uh we'll help you out. But sometime when you have time. Yeah, exactly. Um listen, you've been so generous. Uh next up on stage with me is one of another great moonshot entrepreneur, Ben Lamb, who runs Colossal, uh the D-Extinction Company, uh, you know, the woolly mammoth and 15 other species.

I I heard uh I heard you say you might want a mini woolly mammoth, is that is that true? Yeah, I think it would be really cool to have a pet minute woolly mammoth. That'd be pretty epic. Okay. I'll I'll put a word in with you for you with uh with with Ben. Little things just running around trumpeting away and it's like look at that. This is uh great little pet. Amazing. Uh I'd definitely go. Even if there was some risk of death. It'd be super cool.

Uh I think if anybody's gonna do that, it's uh it's Ben Lamm in Colossal. He's re he's engineering living life products. Uh someone asked him recently if he can make a Pikachu and he said probably. I think Yeah. J well Jurassic Jurassic World, whatever. That would be great. All right. I'll ask him. Yeah. Thank you, my thank you, my friend. Let's give it up for Elon Musk.