Samson International Smart Mobility Summit (Tel Aviv)
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:06Daniela GaliotWhen we talk about vision and deployment, few people in history have embodied those words. Like our next guest. He didn't just dream of a world without fossil fuels. He built the company that made electric vehicles the global standard.
0:20Daniela GaliotHe didn't just look at the stars, he's building the highway to get us there. As the co founder and CEO of Tesla and a man whose impact spans from the ground to the orbit, he continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in autonomy, AI and sustainable energy.
0:36Daniela GaliotWhen we reached out to him about the Samsung Smart Mobility Summit, he was clear he wanted to be part of the conversation here in Israel. While we couldn't step away from while he couldn't step away from the launchpad today, he's joining us now live via video conference.
0:51Daniela GaliotPlease turn your eyes to the screens and give a massive welcome to to Mr. Elon Musk.
1:02Elon MuskHey, guys.
1:04Daniela GaliotHi, Elon. My name is Daniela Galiot and we're absolutely thrilled to have you joining us here Today at the 9th International Samsung Smart Mobility Summit in Israel, a country that shares your spirit of relentless innovation.
1:18Elon MuskThank you for having me and I would be there in person, but this is IPO, you know, we've got to get the IPO SpaceX IPO going pretty soon, I think so.
1:31Elon MuskBut I look forward to visiting Israel again, so I'm happy to, you know, ask any questions you may have or.
1:41Daniela GaliotI've got a few questions lined up
1:43Elon Muskfor you, whatever would be interesting. Yeah, perfect.
1:46Daniela GaliotSo I'll start with the first one. Tesla has spent years developing the vision and technology for smart mobility. Now that you're moving from testing to actual deployment, what is the biggest challenge in scaling this technology to millions of users around the world?
2:00Elon MuskSo in terms of having self driving be ubiquitous, I think we're making steady progress. The Tesla full self driving software, which is really just AI and cameras, we don't use radars or LIDAR or anything like that.
2:20Elon MuskIt's really trying to drive the car in the same way that a human drives the car, which is human drives the car primarily with vision and with a biological neural net, that we take the same approach with our vehicles, which is a digital neural net and cameras, and, and I expect this approach to ultimately be at least an order of magnitude safer than humans driving.
2:49Elon MuskSo I'm not sure how, I'm not sure if we have approval for this in Israel. I think we may have, or we'll get it soon, hopefully, and you'll be able to experience it for yourself.
2:59Elon MuskBut it is quite magical because the car feels like it is sentient. It actually feels like it's alive. And you can actually, as we improve the software, you can feel the sentience growing in the car.
3:14Elon MuskIt feels alive. And I think we already have some vehicles operating with no people inside and no safety monitors in three cities in Texas and probably will be widespread in the US by the end of this year and hopefully in Israel too.
3:45Daniela GaliotThank you. We look forward to that.
3:48Elon MuskThe world's going to have a lot of robots in the future and what Tesla makes is effectively four wheeled robots right now. And in the future we'll also be having humanoid robots.
3:59Elon MuskYou're seeing a lot of startups with humanoid robots and my prediction is that there'll be far more robots, like intelligent robots in the world than there will be people.
4:12Elon MuskAnd, and I think this is most likely to be a good thing. You know, we always want to be a little paranoid or certainly not complacent about the safety of robots, but I think it will usher in an age of not universal basic income, but universal high income.
4:33Daniela GaliotRight, thank you. I think we have one of your robots out here in the exhibition, so that's also a lot of fun for everybody here. Go and take a look.
4:44Elon MuskOptimus Subprime.
4:46Daniela GaliotExactly. When you think about, let's say, the most exciting development or breakthrough that you're working on right now, what do you think would be the one that people aren't talking about enough?
5:01Elon MuskWell, I guess people are mostly aware of the rockets that SpaceX does. There's the Starship rocket which we are now in version three of, will I think achieve full and rapid reusability.
5:16Elon MuskThis is the fundamental breakthrough necessary to make life multi planetary, to extend consciousness beyond Earth and have self sustaining cities, self growing cities on the moon, Mars and elsewhere in the solar system.
5:31Elon MuskSo this is really quite a profound breakthrough and we might succeed in doing that this year. The critical factor being full and rapid reuse of all parts of the rocket.
5:43Elon MuskThat's a much bigger deal than people would realize. When that technology is developed, that'll be a fork in the road of human history where we can become a space bearing civilization, multi planet species.
5:57Elon MuskAnd I think that's an incredibly exciting thing. Perhaps to some degree there's also people, not that many people are aware of neuralink, which is creating a cybernetic interface to AI from your brain.
6:14Elon MuskAnd it has enabled people who have completely lost their brain body connection to speak again and to use their computer and their phone. And we believe it will enable people to walk again because you can, you can take the signals from the brain, from the motor cortex.
6:37Elon MuskAnd if somebody has, say, a severe spinal injury, you can transmit those signals to a second neural implant and reanimate the body so that people can use their limbs.
6:50Elon MuskAnd we think at some point live a normal life by effectively bridging the signals from the brain to past the point in the spine where the damage has occurred.
7:02Elon MuskThese are pretty wild things that are possible. And then later this year we expect to do our first implant for what we call blindsight, where even if somebody has lost both eyes or lost the optic nerve, or perhaps has not even been able to see, has never seen, even if they were blind at birth, it will give them initially limited vision, but I think over time, very precise vision, perhaps a superhuman vision.
7:32Elon MuskSo, you know, restoring control of people who are tetraplegics and restoring sight I think are pretty, pretty big deals, you know, those sort of what I might call like sort of Jesus level sort of technologies, you know.
7:51Elon MuskMiracles.
7:51Daniela GaliotMiracles.
7:52Elon MuskMiracles, yes, exactly. I mean, miracles of science, you know.
8:01Daniela GaliotGreat, thank you. I have another question about the automotive world. If I bring it back to smart mobility. When you look past the immediate rollouts of fsd, which you mentioned, and the cyber cab, what does the ultimate end game for smart mobility look like in 10 or 20 years from now?
8:17Daniela GaliotI mean, what is the grand vision that still keeps you up at night when we talk about mobility?
8:24Elon MuskWell, at this point, the path to cars driving an order of magnitude safer than humans is very clear. I think it's not really a question mark. So I'm not sure this one keeps me up at night because I see the path is just so obviously there.
8:43Elon MuskAnd I think you say five years from now or certainly 10 years from now. My guess is if say like 10 years from now, probably 90% of all distance driven will be driven by the AI in a self driving car.
9:00Elon MuskSo overwhelmingly, it'll be quite a niche thing in 10 years to actually be driving your own car because the car will drive you. I think there will also be humanoid robots that are pretty much everywhere.
9:19Elon MuskAnd I think it'll be pretty cool, I mean, because like, who wouldn't want their own personal CE3PO R2D2? But even better than that, and I think everyone's going to want one, maybe two.
9:34Daniela GaliotA Terminator?
9:36Elon MuskWell, yeah, hopefully not, you know, but we do need to, we should always be concerned about such a thing because yeah, Terminator is one of the possible outcomes. I think it's an unlikely one, but it's not impossible.
9:50Elon MuskAnd so we should always be careful to make sure the robots are safe. But the, this is why I actually think we are headed to a future of amazing abundance.
10:05Elon MuskAnd because you can think of the output of the economy as productivity per capita times the population. And if the robots are extremely productive and you have a lot of them, you're effectively going to have an economy that will be maybe 10 or even 100 times bigger than what it is today.
10:29Elon MuskAnd that's why I think it's going to be a future of universal high income. Pretty much anyone can have whatever they want. I mean, there are lots of questions of meaning.
10:43Elon MuskSo how do we derive meaning in a world where AI and robots can do anything better than we can do? Because that is probably where we're headed. But I think people will still find ways to have, have eating.
11:04Elon MuskAnd sometimes I wonder also, it's like, what is the future? I always like asking this question, what is the future that you want? What do you think the future is?
11:16Elon MuskWhat's the best future you can possibly imagine? And a lot of people are often they're like a little surprised by that question because I was like, well, let's say there was, you know, let's say, you know, you're praying to God and you ask for this for a given future, what future do you want God to give you?
11:44Elon MuskAnd probably a future where there's amazing abundance for all, where everybody has incredible medical care and we have this, in fact we're saying anything can be cured. Where people, no one is hungry and people are free to do what they would like.
12:05Elon MuskI think that's probably the best future.
12:07Daniela GaliotAnd peace. Peace and love.
12:10Elon MuskWell, yeah, yeah. I mean, always worry about like, if you wish for something, does it actually become some dystopian version of that? You know, you sort of. But certainly love.
12:23Elon MuskI mean, I think we want a future with love. That seems like a no brainer. Peace is an interesting one because, you know, sometimes the price for complete peace may be too high because the complete peace may require too much suppression of the people.
12:46Elon MuskSo perhaps there is peace to some degree, but not completely. Ideally there's not like large scale war, of course, but you have to think about these questions kind of deeply.
12:59Elon MuskDo you want a world where there's no conflict? But how do you achieve a world of no conflict at all without some form of suppression? So my guess is probably people would want a future with some conflict.
13:13Elon MuskNot total peace, but nothing. Not a serious war perhaps. But these are interesting philosophical questions. What future would you like?
13:27Daniela GaliotTotally. I'm going to bring you back to us to Israel here just for a second. Do you have a message to the Israeli innovators hearing the crowd?
13:36Elon MuskWell, I have to say, you know, I'm a huge admirer of the innovation coming out of Israel, honestly. I think objectively true that Israel punches far above its weight for population.
13:49Elon MuskI think probably number one, honestly, in the world in terms of, you know, so, you know, my head is, my head is, my hat is off to Israel for just how much incredible innovation.
14:04Elon MuskI say innovation per capita, Israel must be number one by far in the world.
14:10Daniela GaliotThank you. Before you go, I would like to invite Israel's Minister of Transport and Road Safety, Brigadier General Miri Regev, to join our conversation. Minister Regev has been a driving force behind Israel's massive investment in transportation infrastructure and safety, while making sure that innovation is front and center at the core of Israel's transport policy.
14:32Daniela GaliotPlease welcome Minister Regev to the stage. Thanks, Daniela. Shalom Lekulam. Thanks. Ceylon, you are great. We love you. Go to sleep. I see that you are tired. Thank you for joining us.
14:49Elon MuskIt's like 2:30 in the morning here in Austin, Texas, but it was a. Thank you for having me and yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
14:59Daniela GaliotThank you, Delon. Thank you.