Hey, it's Michael. This weekend we're bringing you something a little different from our colleagues here at The New York Times. Today, an interview with Elon Musk, one of the most consequential, complicated, and controversial people of our time. Just a few days ago, Musk sat down with Business call missed Andrew Ross Sorkin for an interview before a live audience.
It's a remarkable conversation. Sorkin presses Musk on a recent public controversy, but he also explores Musk's ideas about a variety of topics, freedom of speech, technology, optimism, aliens, and screen time. It was all part of a series of live interviews put together by our colleagues at DealBook, with significant leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
If you want to hear them all, you can listen on our NYT Audio App, or search DealBook Summit wherever you get your podcasts. Now, here's Andrew Ross Sorkin in conversation with Elon Musk. My mind often feels like a very wild storm. Is your storm a happy storm? No. This is Andrew Ross Sorkin with The New York Times, and you're listening to the best interviews from our annual DealBook Summit event recorded live yesterday in New York City.
Thank you so much for being with us throughout the day, and I couldn't be more pleased to sit with Elon Musk as our final interview of this remarkable time we've all had together. He doesn't need much of an introduction, but I want to say a couple things. He's the richest person in the world. He will be the most quantal individual in the world right now.
He runs the most innovative companies in the world, Tesla Space X, Starlink, which is part of that, NeuralLink, the boring company X, and his X.AI. He's disrupted each of these lanes. He's moved to break the next speeds, but he's faced a strong controversy in the process. He joins us today following a visit, as you all know so well, we discussed earlier on Monday to Israel where he met with the Prime Minister there, and the President of Israel. And we're going to talk about everything.
And my hope is that we can talk about how he thinks about his influence, about his power, about all of it. And we're going to talk about innovation and everything else. I want to say just two other things real quick. We met each other for the first time 16 years ago. Yes, long time. It's been a long time. And all this kids were three. When we first met, I think you were just, you were about to deliver your first roadster. I don't think you had yet.
The Lyre page was still waiting to get like 2007. 2007, 2008. I remember going back to the newsroom and saying, I think I just met the next Steve Jobs. And I'm going to hold to that. I'm going to hold to that. But a lot has happened between when I first met you and now you came to deal with. I've been boring. That's for sure. Well, I'll take you by a drug boring company. 2012, you came to deal book and sat on this stage and we're thrilled to have you back.
But there's been so much that happens between now and then and there's been so much that's happened in the past week, week and a half. And a lot of folks called me up and said, you really, you really going to host Elon Musk here. Can you believe what he just said on Twitter? On one ex. Yeah, yeah. No idea what this Twitter is saying. And you're talking about. Should you platform him? That's what they said. Yeah. Should you platform them? I said, I think it's our role.
And I know you have issues with journalists often times. But I said, it's our role to have conversations and to inquire and to and sometimes even to interrogate ideas. And that's I'm hoping we can do that. So I want to start just so we can begin this conversation and just level said, take us through everything that happened if you could. Everything. No, over the past week and a half. How long have you got? We're going to we've got the time. Okay. You send out a post or an ex or a tweet.
Yeah, I'm trying to say, like when things were just 140 characters, it made sense to call them a tweet. It was like a much little bit stripping, but when you know point of which you put like three hour videos on, it's like it's very long tweet. So here we are. It's more descriptive, I think. And at some point, I don't know where you were. But you write in responding to another tweet. Yeah. This is the actual truth. And it's set off a firestorm of criticism all the way to the White House. Right.
And then you make this trip to Israel. You have advertisers who've left the platform. People call you well, the trip to Israel is independent of it wasn't something like a apology to her. Why didn't you clear that was? Let's talk about that. So just but just take us back to the moment at which you write that. Trip to Israel is independent of it was like in response to that at all. Well, let's do it. We'll do Israel is a moment. And I have no problem being hated by the way. I hear it away.
Well, but you know what? Let's go straight to that then for a second. Sure. Because there is an idea. And you could say that. I think it's a real weakness to want to be liked. A real weakness. I do not have that. Well, let me ask you this then. Does it differ to you saying I don't care if anyone likes me or they hate me. Yeah. But given your power and given what you have amassed and you're the importance you have. I would think you want to be trusted.
I would think maybe you don't need to be liked or hated. But trusted matters. If if X is going to become a financial platform where people are going to put their money. Where people where the government is going to give you money for rockets. Where people are going to get into the cars. They need to ultimately decide that you are. They don't have to say that they love you. But that you are ultimately a decent and good human being. Yes. I think I am.
I'm certainly not going to do some sort of tap dance to prove to people that I am. As for trust. I think you break that down in a few ways. If you want satellites sent to orbit reliably. SpaceX will do 80% of all mass to orbit this year. China will do 12%. The rest of the world will do 8%. Then it goes Boeing, Lockheed, and everyone else. So the track record of the rocket is the best by far of anything. You could hate my guts. You could not trust me. It is relevant.
The rocket track record speaks for itself. With respect to Tesla, we make the best cars. Whether you hate me or different. Do you want the best car or do you not want the best car? So I will certainly not pander. And the only reason I'm here is because you are a friend. What was my speaking fee? For example, I'm Andrew. It's okay. Second of all, we've known each other for a very long time. I'm talking. Yes. And listen. What I'm trying to illustrate is that sometimes I say the wrong thing.
I think there are a lot of people who are tired. You should hear the sketches that SNL wouldn't post. That's a really good. And I would say unfortunately, or fortunately, or unfortunately, whatever friendship we have, not great. We don't talk to you that much. But let me ask you this. That's true. Where am I? I'm not here because you're a friend. I'm being paid because I need any validation or anything. And I promise you I'd be here. And that's why I'm here. Well, I appreciate you being here.
I'll bring you another reason. But let me ask you this, this then. You write this tweet that says that this is the actual truth. People read that tweet. Yes. And they say Elon Musk is an anti-Semite. That he is riling up this base. You're hearing it from, as I said, the White House. You're hearing it from Jewish groups all over. I think Jonathan Greenblatt from the ADL is here. There's lots of people who say this. And by the way, it's not just that there's only the whole thing. I did.
And that's why when I asked you that. Is there responses? Excuse me? I said more than what you just read. Yes. No, there was absolutely more. Yes. But I'll tell you the thing that struck me. It wasn't, and I'm an American Jew, it wasn't just the people who had that view. It was actually people who really are anti-Semites. Who said, oh my goodness, go Elon. This is fabulous. And that actually was the thing that really, really set me back. I said to myself, what's going on here?
And I want to know how you felt about that in that moment when you saw all of this happening. Yeah. First of all, I did clarify almost immediately what I meant. I would say that that was, if I could go back and say, I should, in retrospect, not have replied to that particular person. And I should have written in greater length as to what I meant. I did subsequently clarify it and replies. But those tarf occasions were ignored by the media.
And essentially, I handed a loaded gun to those who hate me. And arguably to those who are anti-Semitic, if you didn't feel that, I'm quite sorry. That was not my intention. So I did post on my primary timeline to be absolutely clear that I'm not anti-Semitic. And that I, in fact, if anything, am phylo-Semitic. And the trip to Israel was planned before any of that happened. It was nearly here and all there. Do you see this thing? You know what it is?
I do, because I actually followed your tire trip to Israel. Right. What do you tell everybody? This is, this says, says, bring them home. The hostages. It was given to me by the parents of one of the hostages. And I said I would wear it as long as there was a hostage store meeting. And I have. What was that trip like? And obviously, you know that there's a public perception that that was part of a apology tour, if you will. That this had been said online. There was all of the criticism.
There was advertisers leaving. We talked to Bob Iger today. I hope they stop. You hope. Don't advertise. You don't want them to advertise? No. What do you mean? If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f*** yourself. But go f*** yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob. If you're in the audience. Well, let me ask you then. That's our field. Don't advertise. How do you think that about the economics of X?
If part of the underlying model, at least today, and maybe it needs to shift, maybe the answer is it needs to shift away from advertising. If you believe that this is the one part of your business where you will be beholden to those who have this view. What do you do? F. Why? I understand that but there's a reality too. Right? Yes. No, no. I mean, Linda Yacolino is right here and she's got to sell advertising. Absolutely. So, no, no, no, tell me.
Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is it's going to kill a company. And you think that the whole world will know that those advertisers killed company. And we will document it in great detail. But those advertisers I imagine are going to say, they're going to say we didn't kill the company. Oh, yeah. They're going to say, I'll tell you Earth.
But they're going to say that they're going to say you want that you killed the company because you said these things and that they were inappropriate things and that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. That's what they're going to say. And let's see how Earth responds to that. So, okay, then this goes back to, we'll both make our cases. Right. And we'll see what the outcome is. What are the economics of that for you?
Well, you have enormous resources so you can actually keep this company going for a very long time. Would you keep it going for a long time if there was no advertising? I mean, if the company fails because an advertiser boycott, it will fail because an advertiser boycott. And that will be what the company and that's what, or, everyone in Earth will know. What do you think then of the, I guess, is the idea of trust though. And I'll be gone. And I'll be gone because an advertiser boycott.
But you recognize that some of those people are going to say that they didn't feel comfortable on the platform. And I just wonder and ask you and think about that for a while. Tell us the judge. But the judge is going to be... The judge is the public. And you think that the public is going to say that Disney is making a mistake. Yes. And they're going to boycott Disney? They already are. Well, there are some that are for lots of different reasons.
But you think that this is going to, that you have the... This goes to actually the interesting of power and leverage. Let the chips fall where they may. Let the chips fall where they may. Can I ask why that is the approach? I ask it because you've been very approach. Well, you've been very particular about the approach to Tesla. I mean, you think about the engineering involved in that, the approach to SpaceX, the approach to some of the stuff you're doing with AI has been very specific. Right?
There's not a... Let the chips fall where they may approach to those businesses. I don't think... No, we focus on making the best products. And Tesla has gotten to where it's gotten with no advertising at all. I understand that. Tesla currently sells to twice as much in terms of electric vehicles as rest of electric car makers in the United States combined. Tesla has done more, just a healthy environment, than all other companies combined.
I'd like to say that, therefore, as a leader of the company, I've done more for the environment than any single human on Earth. How do you feel about that? How do I feel about that? Yeah, no, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that because this goes... We're talking about power and influence and... I'm saying what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it. And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil. Fuck off.
Okay. Let me ask you this because I think part of this, by the way, there's some people who said, look, owning X to begin with has just created problems. That you've created so many amazing things that are changing our world. And I know you want to make X this fabulous town square free speech platform. But that unto itself, that that has created such a distraction of all of these things. This is the conversation we're having, we're not focused, we're not talking at least yet, and we will.
On Tesla, you have your cyber truck deliveries tomorrow and everything else that you're doing. But is there any... There will be the biggest part of anything by far on Earth this year. Is there any part of you, though, that just says, you know what? I just shouldn't have done this, or maybe I should sell it, or give it away, or do something else with the X piece of it. Given the propensity for some of the things that you do and say on that platform to create these issues.
Yeah. I will oppose, so I've done on the platform. I think there might be 30,000 or something like that. Once in a while, I'll say something foolish, and I have. And I'll certainly put that comment, as you've said, the actual truth among perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the most foolish thing I've ever done on the platform. And I did do my best to clarify afterwards that I certainly do not mean anything and submit it in that.
And the nature of the criticism was simply that the Jewish people have been persecuted for thousands of years. There is a natural affinity, therefore, for persecuted groups. This has led to the funding of organizations that essentially promote any persecuted group, or any group with the perception of persecution. This includes radical Islamic groups. Everyone here has seen the mass of demonstrations for Hamas in every major city in the West. That should be jared.
Well, a number of those organizations received funding from prominent people in the Jewish community. They didn't expect that to happen. They function only take a few more generations. And so, this ended up being difficult, because I think Hungarianizans would be inadequate. My question to you, though, is it logically this makes a lot of sense? Is there any part of you? Tell me what happens, though, once all this happens. Let's say you fund a group, and that group supports mass.
Who wants you to die? Perhaps you should not fund them. But you do. Thank you. You do appreciate that when you wait into these very delicate waters, at these very delicate times, that it can create a real, I mean, as it created headlines for the past two weeks, an economic impact. I'm just so curious what happened in your brain. When you see all this happening, are you sitting there going, oh my god, I stepped in and I wish I didn't do that. Are you saying, through them, I hate these people.
Why are they after me? But all of that. Yeah, all of that. I mean, look, I'm sorry for that pre-etern post. It was foolish of me. Of the 30,000, it might be literally the worst endomest post that I've ever done. And I tried to, my best to clarify, six races on day. But, you know, at least, I think over time, it will be obvious that, in fact, far from being anti-smetic, I'm in fact, a philosimetic. And all the evidence in my track record would support that.
There are people who say crazy things on X, as you know. Maybe you think they're crazy, maybe they're not. The aspiration for X is to be the global town square. Now, if you were to walk down to, let's say, Times Square, do you occasionally hear people saying crazy things? Yes. But they don't have the megaphone, right? And that's the conundrum. No, but they can only say it to the 50 or 100 people that are sitting standing there in Times Square.
Look, the joke I used to make about old Twitter was it was like giving everyone in the psych ward a megaphone. So, you know, I'm aware that things can get promoted. That are negative beyond the sort of circle of somebody simply screaming crazy things in Times Square, which happens all the time. It's pretty rare for something, frankly, that is hateful to be promoted. It's not that it never happens. But it's fairly rare.
I mean, I would encourage people to look at, for those that use the system, when you look at the feed that you receive, how often is it hateful? And over time, has it gotten more or less hateful? And I would say that if you look at the X-Pi-form today, versus a year ago, I think it is actually much better. I mean, what is your first question? I'm just curious. I use the platform religiously. So you admit to being an addict. And I use the for you.
And I will say, now, the problem is, because I'm a journalist, I go looking for stuff. Well, that's just saying. And I also think the algorithm, for me personally, because I'm looking for stuff, also is feeding the other things. And this is actually a challenge in that, like sometimes people will say, why is it showing me a post from this person that I hate? And then we're like, well, did you interact a lot with this person that you hate? Well, yes.
Well, therefore, it thinks that you want to interact more with this person that you hate. That's like a reasonable, you know, you kind of want to have an argument. We can't tweet. Yeah. Do you have a post? Let's say post. Listen, I'm open. Can I come up with a better word? That would be great. When you post though. At least bad word I can think of as post. When you post though, are you trying to rile up either a base or an audience? Do you recognize the power you have in that?
And also, by the way, not just rile up, but also rile down, which is to say, as I said, there are people who are demonstrably anti-Semitic on the site who I get Jew boy things and all sorts of things that come my way. Hey, at the Prowallee for I was doing this, though, I get it too. But no, but the question is, can I name it Superjour.
Do you ever think to yourself, you know what, I'm going to go online and I'm going to say, these people, I can dem these people that are on my site saying these things. You say, I've condemned, and I sense it, but do you ever go? Yeah, I said I can, literally, I literally posted I can dem anti-Semitism in all its forms. Like, that is a literal, I believe, literal post that I made.
I mean, I'm like, listen, I can get out the Sosaurus if you, you know, and we could, you know, let me ask you a different question. You, you, you, you compose it, I'll post it. Okay, let me ask you this. You, you are not, you're on a podcast about a month ago. And you said something that struck me, and it struck me as accurate, came out of your mouth, so hopefully it is. But I'm hoping we could go deep on this. Just because I think about our month does not mean it's true.
No, but you said, you said my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but they don't know. They don't understand. What did you mean by that? What was, what, what, what, what, what, what, your mind being a storm? I think it, I mean, I have known you for quite some time. I think it is a bit of a storm. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I, it as much as a, a weather metaphor makes sense. My mind is often feels like a, like a, like a very wild storm.
I mean, I have, I have a fountain of ideas. I mean, I have more ideas than I could possibly execute. So I have no shortage of ideas. Innovation is not the problem. Execution is the problem. I've got a million ideas. I mean, I've got an entire design for an electric supersonic vertical take-off jet. But I, I mean, I just, if I, I just can't do that as well. I've had that for 10 years. I mean, there's a million things. Did you storm a happy storm? No. It's not a happy storm. Tell us about that.
I think that that actually, when people try to really understand you, I think that there's a lot of this comes from some other place. And I want to talk about that. What do you think that is? I think that's a big problem. I think that's a big problem. I think that's a big problem. I think that's a big problem. I think that's a big problem. But I can remember even in the happy moments when I was a kid that there's just, it just feels like there's just a, a rage of forces in my mind, constantly.
Now this, you know, productively manifests itself in technology and building things that I think on balance, the output has been very productive.
I think the results, as we discussed earlier with SpaceX, Towslop, PayPal, which is still going today, the first year in a company that I started, in fact, the first year in a company I started with two was, funded by a New York Times company, a HRS Nightrider, and we wrote some of the software for the New York Times website, and we helped bring online several hundred of these papers that previously were only in print.
Now this is in the 90s, which at this point is like, I'm like the grandpa flat very basically. The 90s and internet feels like a pre-cambran era when there were only sponges. So, anyway, so I feel like a lot of productive things have been done, and you can also look at Tesla as being sort of many companies in one. Like our super charging network is if it were, if the Tesla super charging network were its own company, it would be a fortune 500 company by itself. Just the super charging system.
We also make the cells, we build the power electronics and the power train for scratch. We have the most innovative structural design, the largest castings ever used. We have the best manufacturing technology at Tesla, better manufacturing technology than company has had been doing it for a hundred years. So, these demons of the mind, for the most part, honest to product event.
This little mess doesn't mean that once in a while, but this is a question I think a lot of people are always trying to figure out about not just you, but sometimes themselves. Meaning, what is driving all of this? You're doing all of these things. Do you think that you would be as successful, whatever success is? If it wasn't being driven by some, I think that there's something you're trying to prove, either to yourself or to somebody, I don't know. We're all trying to prove something.
I've got to prove it to my mother, I don't know. No, if I were to describe my philosophy as philosophy of curiosity. I mean, I did have this existential crisis when I was around 12, about what's the meaning of life? Isn't it old pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist? I read the religious texts. I read the philosophy books, especially the German philosophy books made me quite depressed, frankly, once you're not reading Shorban Hour and H.S. as a teenager.
But then I read Douglas Adams, he tracks the guy to the galaxy, which is a book on philosophy in the form of humor. And the point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions to ask. That's why I said that the answer is 42. Basically, it was a giant computer and it came up with the answer 42. But then to actually figure out what the question is, that's the actual hard part.
I think this is generally true also in physics, at the point in which you can properly frame the question, the answer is actually the easy part. So my motivation then is to have a question that I can't understand. So my motivation then was that, well, my life is finite, really a flash in the pan on a galaxy pan scale. But if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.
And maybe we can find out the meaning of life or even what question to ask is. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Where are the aliens? Are there aliens? These questions, is there new physics to discover? Or is this because there are real questions about dark matter and dark energy? So the purpose of SpaceX is to extend life beyond Earth on a sustained basis. So that we can at least pass one of the Fermi-grade filters, which is that of being a single planet civilization.
If we are single planet civilization, then we are simply waiting around for some extinction event, whether that is manmade or natural. But if you are single planet civilization eventually, something will happen to that planet and you will die. If you are a multi-plan civilization, you will live much longer. Also, a multi-plan civilization is the natural stepping stone to being a multi-stellar civilization and being out there among the stars. So, you know, this, I think, has two...
This is not simply an offensive motivation, but it is also one with it, you know, that gives meaning, man's search for meaning. It's a problem. But let me finish this philosophy point, even though it makes seems rather esoteric, it may resonate with a few people. We must get past this Fermi-fulter of being a... a great filter of being a single planet civilization. And if we do that, we are more likely to understand the nature of the universe and what questions to ask.
If you believe it in the philosophy of curiosity, then I think you should support this ambition. But it's more... There's... Being a multi-plan species is more than simply, you know, life insurance for life collectively. That's a defensive reason. But I think also that life has to be more than simply solving one sad problem after another. You know, that would be... That would be reasons for you wake up in the morning and you're happy to be alive. You have to be a reason that you...
You have to say, why are you excited about the future? Like, what gives you hope? And if you're unsure, ask your kids. And I think the idea of us being a space-faring civilization and being out there among the stars is incredibly inspiring and exciting and something to look forward to. And they need to be such things in the world. Let me ask you a different question about components. We were having a conversation here earlier, but people...
And where people get their components from, some people have great security, other people have great confidence. And I was thinking about you because you have a very interesting history where people have told you over and over again that you're wrong. Well, sometimes they're right. Well, sometimes they are, but I would say that when it comes to Tesla, when it came to SpaceX, people told you that you were crazy. You were out of your mind. This was never going to happen. This was going to work.
And so, we're going to ask you this though, is now when people say you're wrong, this isn't right. Do you look at that and say, you know what, that's like a red flag for me because I've been told so often that I'm wrong that I know, and I know I'm right, because I've had that experience. Or are there people in your life when they say, you know what, you know what? This is not right. Do you know what I'm saying?
I mean, I think what you start to try to say is that, do I at this point think because I've been right so many times, for others have said, I'm wrong, that now I pass the believe I'm right when I fact I'm wrong. You do very well. What do you think? No, I'm right. So, yeah, no, look, here's the thing. Physics is unforgiving. Physics is unforgiving. So, I mean, I have, you know, these various little sayings I've come with, that physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation. Right.
In the sense that you can break any law made by humans. But try breaking a law made by physics is much more difficult. So, if you are wrong and the system being wrong, the rockets will blow up and the cars will fail. So, this is, we're not trying to figure out what flavor of ice cream is the best flavor of ice cream. There's a thousand things that can happen on an rocket flight. And only one of them gets the rocket to orbit.
And so, being wrong results in failure when dealing with physical objects. But that's interesting part. So, now you've built these great companies that physically, the physics of them, are enormously successful. So, successful, arguably, that you have leverage over everybody else, right? Nobody else can do starlink. Nobody else can get the rockets in space yet Amazon and Jeff Bezos are trying, but they haven't yet. I hope he does. You hope he does. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, I actually agree with, with, with, with, with Jeff's motivations. I mean, I think, you know, he's very, very, and I know. So, I'm, I've never put there with this way. If there was a button I could press that would delete Blue Archer. And I wouldn't press it. So, I think it's good that he's spending money on, on, on, on, on making rockets too. You know, it's just perhaps he's been more talented, but, you know, it's up to him.
The, the, the, the, but I should make a point here. So, nothing, nothing any of my companies have done has been to stifle composition. In fact, we've done the opposite. So, at Tesla, we have open sourced our patents. Anyone can use our patents for free. How many companies do you know who've done that? Can you name one? I can't. At SpaceX, we don't use patents. So, I mean, once in a while, we'll, we'll file a patent just so some patent troll doesn't cause trouble.
But, we're not stopping any, we've done, we've done, we've done, we've done nothing anti-competitive. We've done nothing to stop out of just you at all. I also want to clarify for the audience because some companies have done, done anti-competitive things. I think the strange thing, or the unusual thing about SpaceX and Tesla is that we've done things that have helped our competition. So, at Tesla, we have made our supercharger system open access.
We've made our charger technology available for free to the other manufacturers. The reason I know World Garden, we could have put a wall up. But instead, we invited them in. The reason I mentioned this though is because you've had the success in the physical physics world, you now have these very difficult decisions that have huge impacts on the world that are not physical decisions at all. They're decisions of the mind. They're decisions that you and others have to make.
There's a question whether you should be making these decisions at all. And I think about it in the context of Starlink. Obviously, there was the report about how it's being used in Ukraine and the Russian war. There's questions about Taiwan, whether Taiwan should use it or will use it. I believe they're not right now because they're worried that at some point maybe the Chinese will tell you that they have leveraged over you and you're going to have to turn that off.
These are very difficult decisions and I'm so curious how you think about that. And not just the decisions, the fact that you have that power. I think it's important for the audience to understand that the reason I have these powers is not because of some anti-competitive actions, it's simply because we've executed very well. Oh, I'm not dismissing it. I think there are so many people by the way who are huge supporters of what you've already had. There are other satellites out there.
But they're not as good as yours. And we can say maybe make the same argument of cars and everything else. But as a result that gives you enormous leverage. With the exception of the, by the way, these advertisers who are on X, in every other instance, everybody needs you. I mean, nobody's letting their views out product if it's better than you. Somebody else's product if it's the other product better. And I accept that. It may be one day somebody else prepared a better product.
Is it like, you know, how is that about thing to make better products as other companies? Well, and I want to go back to this, to the Starlink piece of it though, because that has sort of a geopolitical ramification in terms of your power and how you think about that specific power. And then the power that the US government might have, either over you or not over you. The power that Chinese government might have over you or not over you. And how those things get used.
I mean, what are you suggesting? I'm asking the question around this very idea of how these satellites are going to be used. Whether you think that you should have control of them, whether the government should have control of them. How? How? How is the government? Well, there's a lot of people who don't trust the government. No, exactly. But then this goes back to the trust of you. Right? I mean, like I said, we're not the only company who has communications satellites.
The Alcatelites are just much better than theirs. So it's not like we have a monopoly. Do you feel like anybody has... But the product, it's not like... Do you feel anybody has leverage over you? I mean, I think at the end of the day, if we make bad products that people don't want to use, then the users will vote with their resources and use something else. And it did at the conversation for a second. Certainly, my company is overseen by regulators.
And while, you know, since SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla are overseen by, you know, they're cumulatively over 100 regulators and actually more than that, few hundred regulators, because you got, we're in 55 countries. If you sum up all the times that I had an argument with regulators of hundreds of regulators over decades, it can sound really terrible, except they forgot to mention that there were 10 million regulations we complied with, only five that I disagreed with. But it was all the five.
And it sounds like, wow, this guy's a real maverick. I'm like, yeah, but what about the 10 million we complied with? Do you... One related to none of this, the leverage of countries and things over you and regulators. X is this free speech platform. You do business in China. Lots of business. China, that's an important part of your business. I imagine. Well, lots of SpaceX. How do you think about the leverage that the Chinese have over you? And do they have leverage over you?
And how do you feel about some people would say, is it hypocritical for you to be doing business in China or, frankly, in other countries, as it relates to X and other things, that don't follow this free speech path that you have espoused? The best that the F-platform can do is adhere to the laws of any given country. Do you think there's something more we could do than that?
I think it would be very hard, but I just wonder, given the strong philosophical approach that you've been vocal about, whether you say to yourself, you know, maybe I shouldn't be doing business in that country. Well, first of all, Starlink and SpaceX do our nervousness in China whatsoever. Tesla has one of four factories, four vehicle factories in China. In China is, you know, I don't know, a quarter of our market or something like that. So it's a quarter of a market of one company.
The same is true, by the way, of all the other car companies. They also have something on that order of quarter of their sales in China. So if you, if that's a problem for Tesla, it's a problem for every car company. I mean, I think one has to be careful about not conflating the various companies, because I can only do things that are within the bounds of the law. I cannot do beyond that.
My aspiration is to do as much good as possible and to be as productive as possible within the bounds of what is legal. More than that I cannot do. We'll be right back. I want to pivot and talk about AI for a moment. We had Jensen Wong here, whose big fan of yours is, you know. Yeah, Jensen's also. Talk about, talking about bringing you the first box, by the way, with Ilya. Interestingly enough, back in 2016, I think. There's a video of Jensen and me unpacking the first AI computer at OpenAI.
So I'm so curious what you think of what's just happened over the past two weeks. While you were dealing with this other headline, series of headlines. I mean, the whole other series of headlines. So far. At OpenAI. What did you think? Well, you founded it. Co-founded. Co-founded, yeah.
Well, the whole arc of OpenAI, frankly, is a little troubling because the reason for starting OpenAI was to create a counterweight to Google and DeepMind, which at the time had two thirds of all AI talent and basically infinite money and compute. And there was no counterweight. It was unipolar world. And Larry and Paige and I used to be very close friends on our status house. And I would talk to Larry until the late hours of the night about AI safety.
And if it came apparent to me, that Larry did not care about AI safety. I think perhaps the thing that gave it away was when he called me a specius for being pro-comality. As in, you know, like a race like that for specius. So I'm like, wait a second. What's out of you on Larry? And I'm like, okay, listen to this guy calling me a specius. He doesn't care about AI safety. We've got to have some counterpoint here because this seems like we could be... This is no good.
So OpenAI was actually started and it was meant to be open source. I named it OpenAI after open source. It is, in fact, closed source. Superclose source for maximum profit AI. So this is what it actually is. I mean, fail loves irony. In fact, friend of mine says the way to predict outcomes is the most ironic outcome. It's like his outcomes, Razer, like the simplest explanation is most likely. And my friend, Jonas, viewers that the most ironic outcome is most likely.
And that's what happened with OpenAI. It's gone from an open source foundation of I1-2-3 to suddenly it's like a $90 billion dollar full profit corporation with closed source. So I don't know how you go from fair to there. That seems like a... I don't know. Is this legal? I'm like, let's do it. So as you saw Sam Altman get ousted by somebody you know, Ilja. And Ilja was somebody who was a friend of yours. Yes. You brought him there.
Your relationship with Larry Page effectively broke down over you recruiting him away at this. That's correct. That was the... Larry refused to be president of the after I recruited Ilja. And so here's Ilja apparently saying something is very wrong. I think we should be concerned about this because I think Ilja actually has a strong moral compass. He thinks about it, you know, he really sweats it over questions of what is right.
And if Ilja felt strongly enough to want to, you know, fire or sand, well, I think the world should know what was that reason. Have you talked him? I've reached out but he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Have you talked to other people behind the scenes? Is this all happening? I've talked to a lot of people. Nobody... I've not found anyone who knows why. Have you? I think we are all still trying to find out.
I mean, one of two things is either it was a serious thing and we should know what it is or it was not a serious thing and then the board to resign. What do you think is the same old man? I have mixed feelings about Sam. I do, you know, the ring of power, you know, can corrupt. And he is the ring of power. So, you know, I don't know. I want to know why Ilja felt so strongly as far as Sam. This sounds like a serious thing. I don't think it was trivial.
And I'm quite concerned that this, that this some, you know, dangerous element of AI that they've discovered. Yes. You think they've discovered something? That'll be my guess. Where are you with your own AI efforts relative to where you think open AI is, where you think Google is? Well, well... Well, well... Well, I mean, on the AI front, I'm in somewhat of a quandary here because I've thought AI could be something that would change the world in a significant way since I was in college.
I mean, like 30 years ago. The other reason I didn't go bold AI right from the get-go was because I was uncertain about which edge of the double-edged sword would be sharper. The good edge of the bad edge. So, I held off on doing anything on AI. I could have created, I think, a leading AI company, kind of open AI, actually cut his that. Because I was just uncertain if you make this magic genie what will happen.
You know, whereas I think building sustainable energy technology is much more of a single edge sword that is single edge good. Making a multi-planetary, I think single edge good. You know, stalling mostly single edge good. I mean, giving people better connectivity. People that don't have connectivity or too expansive. I think it's very much a good thing. stalling was instrumental, by the way, in holding the Russian advance, the Ukrainian said so.
So, you know, I think it was AI, you've got the magic genie problem. You may think you want a magic genie. But once you see that genie is out of the bottle, it's hard to say what happens. How far are we away from that genie being out of the bottle, you think? We think it's already out. When the genie is certainly poking the set out. But AGI, the idea of artificial general intelligence.
Given what you now are working on yourself and you know how easy or hard it is to train, to create the inferences, to create the weights. I hope I'm not getting too far in the weeds of just how this works. But those are the basics behind the software end of this. All these weights, they're basically numbers in a common separated value file. That's our digital god, the CSP file. Not that funny. That's kind of literally what it is. I think it's coming pretty fast.
You famously have admitted to overstating how quickly things will happen. But how quickly do you think this will happen? If you say smarter than the smartest human at anything. It may not be then quite smarter than all humans. Well machine augmented humans, you know, because we keep people that got computers and stuff. It's a higher bar. But you say it's more than any, you know, can write as good a novel as a jk-rolling or discover new physics or invent new technology.
I would say that we are less than three years from that point. Let me ask you a question about XAI and what you're doing. Because there's an interesting thing that's different, I think, about what you have, relatives and some of the others. You have data, you have information, you have all of the stuff that everybody in here has put on the platform to sort through. And I don't know if everybody realized that initially. What is the value of that?
Yeah, data is very important. You could say that data is probably more valuable than gold. But then maybe you have actually, maybe you have more, maybe you have the gold in X in a different way. In a way, again, that I don't know if the public appreciates what that means. Yes, X is the, might be the single best source of data. I mean, it is, there are more, you know, people, links that go to, feel like more links to X than anything else on Earth.
Sometimes people think Facebook or Instagram is a bigger thing, but actually there are more links to X than anything. You can, there's public information, you can Google it. Okay, let me ask you a, so it is, it is where you would find what is happening right now on Earth at any given point in time. The whole open ad drama played out in fact on the X platform. So it is one of the, it's not, they're, you know, Google certainly has a massive amount of data. So it's Microsoft.
So it's not like, but it is one of the best source of data. Can I ask you an interesting IP issue, which I think is actually something I can say as somebody who's in the creator business and journalistic business and whatnot, or care about copyright. So one of the things about training on data has been this idea that you're not going to train, or these things are not being trained on people's copyrighted information. Historically, that's been the concept. Yeah, that's a huge lie. Say that again?
Yeah, what these, I, what these are all trained on copyrighted data, obviously. So you think it's a lie when, when open AI says that this is not none of these guys say they're training on copyrighted data. That's a lie. It's a lie. Yeah, straight up. Straight up lie. Okay. Absolutely. Obviously it's been trained on copyrighted data. Okay, so the second question, which is all of the people who have been uploading. It's like a whatever.
All of the people who have been uploading articles, the best quotes from different articles, videos, 2x. All of that can be trained on. And it's interesting because people put all of that there, and those quotes have historically been considered fair use. Right? People are putting those quotes up there. And individually on a fair use basis, you'd say, okay, that makes sense.
But now there are people who do threads, and by the way, there may be multiple people who've done, you know, an article that has a thousand words, technically all thousand words could have made it on to X somehow. And effectively, now you have this remarkable repository. And I wonder what you, how you think about that? Again, and how you think the creative community? And those who were the original IP owner should think about that.
I don't know, except to say that by the time these lawsuits are decided, we'll have digital God. So, as digital God at that point, these lawsuits won't be decided before an entire frame that is relevant. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think we live, you know, there's that, I don't know if it's actually real Chinese saying or not, but maybe live an interesting time. And I'm not a good thing, but I would prefer to live an interesting time. And we live in the most interesting of times.
I think, for a while I was like really getting demotivated and losing sleep over the sort of the threat of AI danger. And then I finally sort of became fatalistic about it and said, well, even if I knew it was annihilation with certain, would I choose to be alive at that time or not? And I said, I probably would have choose to be alive at that time because it's the most interesting thing. Even if there's nothing I could do about it.
So then, you know, then basically sort of a fatalistic resignation helped me sleep at night because I was having trouble sleeping at night because of AI danger. Now, what to do about it? I mean, I've been the biggest, the one banging the drum, the hardest, by far the longest, or at least one of longest for AI danger. And these regulatory things that are happening, the single biggest reason that happening is because of me.
We could hear everybody get their arms around and we talked to the Vice President this afternoon. She said she wants to regulate it. People can try to regulate social media for years and have done nothing effectively. Well, there's regulation around anything which is a physical danger to the public. So, like cars are heavily regulated, communications are heavily regulated, rockets are now crafted are heavily regulated.
The general philosophy about regulation is that when something is a danger to the public that then needs to be some government oversight. So, I think in my view, AI is more dangerous than nuclear bombs. And we regulate nuclear bombs and can't just go make a nuclear bomb in your backyard. I think we should have some kind of regulation with AI. Now, this tends to cause the AI accelerationists to get up and arms because they think AI is sort of having basically.
But you typically don't like regulation. You've pushed back on regulators for the most part in the world of Tesla and so many instances where we read articles about you pushing back on the regulators. And so curious why in this instance is now you own one of these businesses. As I said a moment ago, one should not take what is viewed in the media as being the whole picture.
There are literally hundreds, not an exaggeration, so there are probably 100 million regulations that my companies comply with. And there are probably five that we don't. And if we disagree with some of those regulations, it's because we think the regulation that is meant to do good doesn't actually do good. But that's not the thing to find regulations for the state.
If there are laws and rules, whether the idea that you're making the decision that the law and the rule shouldn't be the law and the rule. Right? No, I'm saying you're following any mistaken and it should be obvious that you're mistaken. My company's automotive is heavily regulated. We would not be allowed to put cars in the road if we did not comply with this vast body of regulation.
You could fill up a stage with literally six foot high with the regulations that you have to comply with to make a car. You could have a room full of phone books. That's how big the regulations are. And if you don't comply with all of those, you can't sell the car. And if we don't comply with all the regulations for rockets or for stalling, they shut us down. So in fact, I am incredibly compliant with regulations. Now once in a while, there'll be something that I disagree with.
The reason I would disagree with this is because I think the regulation in that particular case, in that rare case, does not serve the public good. And therefore I think it is my obligation to object to a regulation that is meant to serve the public good but doesn't. That's the only time I object. Not because I seek to object. In fact, I'm incredibly rule following. And I ask you a separate question, social media related question. We've been talking about TikTok today ahead of the election.
So, TikTok is, what do you think of TikTok? Do you think it's a national security threat? I don't use TikTok. Did that again? You don't. I don't personally use it. But for people that for teenagers and people in their 20s, they seem almost religiously addicted to TikTok. So we will watch TikTok for like two hours a day. I stopped using TikTok when I felt the AI probing my mind. I don't, it made me uncomfortable. So I stopped using it.
And in terms of anti-smitty content, I mean TikTok is right with that. It has the most viral anti-smitty content by far. But do you think the Chinese government is using it to manipulate the minds of Americans? No. But do you think we should worry about, I mean, you have different states that are trying to ban it? I don't think this is some Chinese government plot. But it is, the TikTok algorithm is entirely AI powered. So it is really just trying to find the most viral thing possible.
But it's what is going to keep you glued to the screen. That's it. Now, on share numbers, there are on the order of two billion Muslims in the world. And I think, you know, much smaller number of Jewish people. Which 20 million, something? Many orders of magnitude fewer. So if you just look at content production, just on share numbers basis, this is going to be overwhelmingly anti-smitty. Let me ask you a political question. And I've been trying to square this one in my head for a long time.
Yeah. In the last two or three years, you have moved, decidedly to the right. I think. Have I? Well, we can discuss this. I think that you have been espousing and promoting a number of Republican candidates and others. You've been very frustrated with the Biden administration over, I think, unions and feeling like they did not respect what you've created.
Well, I mean, without any, during nothing to provoke the Biden administration, they held an electric vehicle summit at the White House and specifically refused to let Tesla attend. This is in the first six months of the administration. And we inquired. We're like, we literally make more electric cars than everyone else combined. Why are we not allowed? Why are you only letting 4GM Chrysler and UAW and you're specifically disloving us from the EV summit at the White House?
We've done nothing to provoke them. Then Biden went on to add insult injury and publicly said that GM was leading the electric car revolution. This was in the same quarter that Tesla made 300,000 electric cars and GM made 26. Is that same fair to you? So, but tell me this then. It doesn't seem fair. And I've asked repeatedly that you've probably seen the EV summit. I've had a great relationship with Obama. So, there's not a... But then there's this. But then there's this.
I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama's head. So, let me say that's going to a personal level. I can see it in your face. This hurt you personally. And I hope the company too. And it was an insult to... Tesla has 140,000 employees. Of the half of them are in the United States. Tesla has created more manufacturing jobs than everyone else combined. So, last this then.
You've devoted at least the last close to 20 years of your life, if not more to the climate, climate change, trying to get Tesla off the ground, in part to improve climate. You talked about that. Yeah, a real right-wing motorbiz. Repeatedly. Got it far right, if anything. No, I understand that. And that is so... It's a reverse psychology next level. Well, no, but so here's then the question. Which is how do you square the support that you have given? I believe you were at a fundraiser for...
Viva Grama Swami, for example, who says that the climate issue is a hoax. Right? I have to sit with him on that. But I would think that that would be such a singular issue for you. I would think that the climate issue is such a singular issue for you, that actually it would disqualify almost anybody who didn't take that issue seriously. Well, I haven't endorsed anyone for president. I mean, I wanted to hear what Vivek had to say, because I think some of his things are...
That's one of the things he says, I think are pretty solid. He is concerned about government over each, about government control of information. The degree to which old Twitter was basically a soft puppet of the government was ridiculous. So, you know, it seems to me that there's a very severe violation of the First Amendment, in terms of how much control the government had over old Twitter. And it no longer does. So, you know, there's a reason for the First Amendment.
The reason for the First Amendment for freedom of speech is because the people that immigrated to this country came from a place where there was not freedom of speech. And they were like, you know what? We've got to make sure that that's constitutional, because where they came from, if they said something, they have to be put in prison, or they've been, you know, something bad would happen to them. So, and freedom of speech, you have to say, when is it relevant?
It's only relevant when someone you don't like can say something you don't like. Or it has no meaning. And as soon as you sort of throw in the towel and concede to censorship, it is only a matter of time before someone's censors you. And that is why we have the First Amendment. We'll be right back. Could you see yourself voting for President Biden? If it's a Biden Trump election, for example? I think I would not vote for Biden. You vote for Trump.
I'm not saying I vote for Trump, but I mean, this is definitely a different choice here. Would you vote for Nikki Haley? Nikki Haley, by the way, wants all social media names to be exposed, does you know? No, I think that's outrageous. Yeah, no, I'm not going to vote for some pro-sensorship candidate. I think these, you have to consider that there is a lot of wisdom in these amendments, I mean, the Constitution. And a lot of these things, we take for granted here in the United States.
That don't even exist in Canada. There's no constitutional right to freedom of speech in Canada. So, you know, and there's no random rights in Canada. If you will, I think, you know, you have the right to remain on. You don't actually in Canada. So, you know, half Canadian, I can say these things both. But, you know, so like, you just got to, the freedom of speech is incredibly important. Even when people say, it's actually especially important.
In fact, it is only relevant when people you don't like can say things you don't like. And do you think right now that there are meaningless? Do you think right now the Republican candidates or the Democrats are more inclined? I mean, this is where you go to, I assume, to woke and anti-woken, the mind-virus issue that you've talked about. Which party do you think is more pro-freedom of speech given all the things you've seen?
We also see, you know, disantis, you know, preventing people from reading certain things. Maybe you think that's correct. No. Look, we actually are in an odd situation here where on balance, the Democrats appear to be more pro-spent censorship than the Republicans. And that used to be the opposite. It used to be, you know, the left position was freedom of speech. I believe at one point, the ACLU even defended the right of someone to claim that there were not, see or something like that.
So, like, the left was freedom of speech is fundamental. And I mean, my perception, perhaps it is inaccurate, is that the pro-sensorship is more on the left than the right. We certainly get more complaints from the left than the right than the right. So, but my aspiration for the X platform is that it is the best source of truth, or the least inaccurate source of truth. And well, you know, I don't know if you were believing or not, but I think honesty is the best policy.
And I think that the truth will win over time. And we've got this great system, and it's getting better called community notes, which is fantastic. I think it's correcting falsehoods or adding context. In fact, we make a point of not removing anything, but only adding context. Now, that context could include that this is completely false, and here's why. And no one is immune to this. I'm not immune to it.
Avertizer is not immune to it. In fact, we've had community notes, which has caused us some loss in advertising speaking of loss of advertising revenue. If a community note, if this false advertising, the community note will say, this is false. And here is why. I mean, there's one specific example that is public knowledge. So I'll mention it, which is at one point Uber had this ad, which said, earn like a boss. And there was community noted, if by a boss, you mean $12.47 an hour.
This did cause at least a temporary suspension of advertising from Uber. I got to ask a question that might make everybody in the room uncomfortable or not uncomfortable. The New York Times company and the New York Times newspaper, it appeared over the summer to be throttled. What did the New York Times? Well, we do require that everyone has to buy a subscription, and we don't make exceptions for anyone. And I think if I want the New York Times, I have to pay for a subscription.
And they don't give me a free subscription. So I'm not going to give them a free subscription. But were you throttling the New York Times relative to other news organizations, relative to everybody else? Was it specific to the times? They didn't buy a subscription. I'm only cost like $1,000 a month. So if they just do that, then they're back in the saddle. But you are saying that it was throttled?
I'm saying, was there a conversation that you had with somebody who said, look, I'm unhappy with the times, they should either be buying a subscription or I don't like their content or whatever. Any organization that refuses to buy a subscription is not going to be recommended? But then what does that say about free speech? It's not going to be free. It costs a little bit. But that's an interesting. It's like in South Park, when they say freedom is in free of cost of buck oh five or whatever.
But it's pretty cheap. It's low cost freedom. I got a couple more questions for you. You're headed back to Texas after this to launch the cyber truck. It's going to be a big launch. But I wanted to ask you right now more broadly just about the car business and what you see actually happening. And specifically, the government put in place lots of policies as you know to try to encourage more EVs.
One of the things that's happened uniquely is you have now a lot of car companies saying actually this is too ambitious for us. These plans are too ambitious. 4,000 dealers, I don't know if you saw it just yesterday, sent the letter to the White House saying this is going too far. You're going too far. You had this. And to you. EV. It was a, this is going too fast, too far, and that there's not enough demand. Underneath all of this is this idea that maybe there's not enough demand for EVs.
That the American public has not bought into the, I mean, they bought into it with your company. But they haven't bought into it broadly enough. Well, I think if you make a compelling electric car, people will buy it. No question about it. I mean, electric car sales in China are gigantic. That's my father biggest category. And I think that would be the, you know, I mean, it's worth noting.
The best reputation of that is that the Tesla Model Y will be the best selling car of any kind on Earth this year. Of any kind, gasoline or otherwise. Is there another car company that you think is doing a good job with EVs? I mean, I think the Chinese car companies are extremely competitive. By far, our toughest competition is in China. So, I mean, there's a lot of people out there who think that the top 10 car company is going to be Tesla followed by nine Chinese car companies.
I think they might not be wrong. So, China is super good at manufacturing, and the work ethic is incredible. So, you know, like if we consider different leagues of competitiveness at Tesla, we consider the Chinese league to be the most competitive. And by the way, we do very well in China because our China team is the best China team. How worried are you that the unionized unionization effort that just took place at, well, I shouldn't say effort, but the new wages and like at GM and Ford.
Are that they're coming for you. And they are coming for you. What is that going to mean to you in your business? Well, I mean, I think it's generally not good to have an adversarial relationship between people online, you know, one group at the company and another group. In fact, I mean, I disagree with the idea of unions. But the, for a past four reason that is different than people may expect is which is I just don't like anything which creates kind of a lords and peasants sort of thing.
And I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company and create a sort of lords and peasants situation. There are many people at Tesla who have come up on from working on the line to being in senior management. Everyone eats at the same table, everyone pocks at the same pocket lot. You know, at GM there's a special elevator for only senior executives. We have no such thing at Tesla.
You know, the things that I actually know the people on the line because I worked on the line and I walked the line and I stepped in the factory and I worked beside them. So I'm no stranger to them. And there are actually many times where I've said, well, can't we just hold a union boat but apparently a company is not allowed to hold a union boat. So it has to be somehow called for but the unions can't do it. So I said, well, it's just held a vote and see what happens.
The actual problem is the opposite. It's not that people are trapped at Tesla building cars. The challenges is how do we retain great people to do the hard work of building cars when they have like six other opportunities that they can do that are easier. That's the actual difficulty is that building cars is hard work and there are much easier jobs. And I just want to say that I'm incredibly appreciative of those who hold cars and they know it.
So there's, I don't know, maybe there will be unionized. If Tesla gets unionized, it will be because we deserve it and we failed in some way. But we certainly try hard to ensure the prosperity of everyone. We give everyone stock options. We've made many people who are just working the line who didn't even know what stocks were. We've made the millionaires. So we're going to run on time. Final couple quick questions. When do you have the time to tweet or to post?
I actually think about it all the time. As I said, I use it all the time. I use it all the time. If we were to open up our phones and look at the screen time, what does yours look like? Well, about every three hours, I make a trip to the laboratory. That's the only time you do this. Seems like you're on there a lot. No, I mean, there will be brief moments between meetings. Obviously, I have like 17 jobs. And I guess technically it's work. It is. But I'm thinking just in terms of your mind share.
By the way, there's a lot of people who should be working who are homeless. Technically posting on Twitter is or X's work. This count is work. So that's, you know, there's that. But no, I mean, I think I'm on. Well, I guess usually probably I'm on for longer than I think I know. But do you think that's five hours a day, four hours? The screen time of like a number hours per week. It's not that's a scary number. It's probably, I don't know, it's a little over an hour a day or something like that.
Just an hour a day. If we really looked at this together, do you have your phone with you? Yeah. You want to look? Okay. Okay, here we go. You ready? Screen time. Yeah, screen time. Sometimes is a scary number. I know. That's why I thought. I just got a new phone. So I think this is not accurate because it says it's one minute. For sure, it's more than that. Wait, it's over the week. Yeah, go go to the week. Okay, so it's still wrong. It's more than four minutes.
I just got a new phone, so this is not accurate. It's literally said four minutes. New phone. Tim Cook's in the phone? New phone. New phone. Who does? Yeah. I should ask by the way, because I just mentioned Tim Cook. Do you feel like you're going to have to have a battle with him eventually? Is that the next fight over the App Store? The idea of making a phone. What do you mean like? No, no, no. Over the App Store. Have you ever made a phone?
Sam Alvin's apparently thinking about making a phone with Johnny Huff. I mean, I don't think there's a real need to make a phone. I mean, if there's an essential need to make a phone or make a phone, but I had a lot of free supply. So, I mean, I do think there's a fundamental challenge that the phone makers have at this point, because you've got a base-clip black rectangle. You know, how do you make that better? So, you want to do that? What does that look like in Elon's head?
Yeah, that's literally good phrase in the head. Newer link. Well, there we go. We need to have that before it's over. The best interface would be a neural interface directed to your brain. So, that would be a neural link. How far would you think from that and how excited or scary does that seem to be? And we read these headlines, obviously, about monkeys who died, as you know. What should we think about that?
Yeah, actually, the USDA inspector who came by the neural link facilities, literally said, in her entire career, she has never seen a better animal care facility. We are the nicest chatables that you could possibly be, even to the rats and mice, even though they did the plague and everything. So, it is like monkey paradise. So, the thing that gets conflated is that there were some terminal monkeys where this is actually several years ago where the monkeys were about to die.
And we're like, okay, we've got an experimental device. It's the kind of thing which only put in a monkey that's about to die. And then, you know, now the monkey died, but it didn't die because the neural link died because it was added to a case of cancer or something like that. So, neural link has never caused the death of a monkey. Unless they're hiding something from me, it has never caused death of a monkey.
And in fact, we've now had monkeys with neural link implants for like two, three years, and they're doing great. So, and we've even replaced the neural link twice. And we're getting ready to do the first implants in hopefully in a few months. The early implementations of neural link, I think are unequivocally good, speaking of the double-edged sword.
I think these early implementations are single-edged sword because the first implementations will be to enable people who have lost the brain body connection to be able to operate a computer or a phone faster than someone who has hands that work. So, you can imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than someone who had full body functionality. Now, incredible that would be. Well, that's what this device will do. And we should have a proof of that in a human, hopefully in a few months.
It already works in monkeys and worked quite well with monkeys that can play video games just using just by thinking. So, and the next application after the sort of those dealing with tetrapolegeics and quadrapolegeics is going to be vision. Vision is the next thing.
So, it's like if somebody has lost both eyes or the optic nerve has failed, basically, with as they have no possibility of having sort of some ocular correction, that would be the next thing for Neuralink is a direct vision interface. And in fact, then you could be like Jordi Lefort from Star Trek. You could see in like any frequency actually. You could see in radar if you want.
Two final questions, and then we're going to do in this conversation, which I think has taken everybody inside the mind of Elon Musk today. Not as well as in Neuralink, well, well. It actually goes to self-driving cars and vision and everything else. And I asked this question, Pete Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary. It's actually something you retweeted. So, I wanted to ask you the same question. There's a big question about autonomous vehicles and the safety of them.
But there's also a question about when it will be politically palatable in this country. For people to die in cars that are controlled by computers, which is say we have 30,000, 40,000 deaths every year in this country. If you could bring that number down to 10,000, 5,000, that might be a great thing. But do we think that the country will accept the idea that 5,000 people, that your family might have perished in a vehicle as a result not of a human making a mistake, but of a computer?
Yes, well, first of all, humans are terrible drivers. So, if people text and drive, they drink and drive, they get into arguments. They do all sorts of things in cars that they should not do. So, it's actually remarkable that they're not more deaths than there are. What we'll find with computer driving is probably in order of magnitude reduction in deaths. Now, the US has actually far fewer deaths per capita than the rest of the world.
If you go worldwide, I think there's something close to a million deaths per year due to what a mode of accidents. So, I think computer driving will probably drop that by 90 percent or more. It won't be perfect, but it'll be 10 times better. And do you think that the public will accept that? Do you think the government will accept that? Well, in large numbers, it will simply be so obviously true that it really cannot be denied.
And what do you think? I know we've talked about the timeline before. And I know people have criticized you for putting out timelines that may not have come true just yet. But what do you think it would be? By the way, do you ever say to yourself, I shouldn't have said that. Sure, of course. Wait, I should have said that. So, yeah. I'm optimistic about, I mean, I think I'm like naturally optimistic about timescales. I was not actually optimistic. I wouldn't be doing the things that I'm doing.
I mean, I suddenly wouldn't have sought a rock company or a electric car company, if I didn't have some sort of pathological optimism, frankly. So, as you pointed out, many people said they would fail. And in fact, I actually agreed with them. I said, yes, they probably will fail. And they're like, hmm, okay. But I thought the basics, and says I had less than a 10 percent chance of success when we started them. So, yeah, anyway, but the self-driving thing is, I've been optimistic about it.
We've certainly made a lot of progress. If anybody has tried the very, has been using the full self-driving beta, the progress is, you know, every year has been substantial. It's really now at the point where in most places, it'll take you from one place to another with no interventions. And the data is unequivocal that supervised full self-driving is somewhere around four times safer, or maybe more than just human driving by themselves. So, I know, I can certainly see it coming.
Actually, really you think it's another five or ten years, and people say? No, no, no, definitely not. And do you feel like investors have invested in something that hasn't happened yet? Is that fair to them? And that's the other question that people have about that? Well, I mean, I think that they've all, with rare exceptions, thought it wasn't happening. So, they were investing despite thinking, they're very clear that they don't think it's real.
So, they don't say, oh, we just believe everything you want, says, hook line and say, car. But the thing is that, I mean, I would be a fair criticism of me to say that I'm late, but I always deliver in the end. And as you have found a question, I took note of this. It was November 11th, and you took to Twitter, and you wrote only two words. You said amplify empathy. Right. I was taken back by that, keeping all the things that have been going on in the world.
Do you remember what you were thinking? Well, I think it's quite literally. I understand it, but what was going on? Why did you write that? Well, I was encouraging people to amplify empathy. Literally. I tend to be quite literal. But was there something that had happened that you had seen that you said to yourself, I didn't want to say that? I think I was going to do some friends, and we all agreed that we should try to amplify empathy. And so I wrote amplify empathy.
If you wanted an unvarious look inside the mind of Elon Musk, I think you just saw it. Well, it's pretty simple, you know. Elon Musk, thank you very, very much for the conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was a conversation from the Dealbook Summit. You can check this feed for other interviews from the Dealbook stage, where we speak to leaders in business, politics, and culture who are shaping the world. This episode was produced by Evan Roberts.
It was edited by Lane Chan, mixing by Kelly P. Glow, original music by Daniel Powell. The rest of the Dealbook events team includes Julie Zahn, Caroline Brunel, Hayley Duffy, Angela Austin, Hayley Hess, Dana Priskowski, Matt Kaiser, Yen Wei Liu, Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Nina Lassam, Robbie Mathew, Beth Weinstein, and Kate Carrington. This is a production of The New York Times.