Elon Musk: A Different Conversation w/ Nikhil Kamath | People by WTF Ep. 16
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (20)
Transcript
0:44Nikhil KamathOur audience is largely wannabe entrepreneurs in India and I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you've done it so many times over in so many different domains.
0:56Elon MuskYeah.
0:57Nikhil KamathSo we will speak to them today and I will try and center all my questions in that direction so they take advantage of this conversation and maybe start. Take a chance and build something.
1:25Nikhil KamathDo you want a coffee?
1:28Elon MuskSure, why not? Okay. Are we gonna be talking for a while, I hope.
1:33Nikhil KamathYeah.
1:33Elon MuskOkay, good. Sure. May I trouble you for a coffee?
1:39Nikhil KamathCan we get another coffee?
1:43Elon MuskCappuccino, I guess. All right.
1:45Nikhil KamathAre you a coffee drinker?
1:47Elon MuskYeah, yeah, yeah. I have copy of once. Usually in the mornings.
1:50Nikhil KamathYou know, one a day kind of thing.
1:52Elon MuskYeah, pretty much.
1:58Nikhil KamathYou want to wait for it?
2:00Elon MuskNo, I'm good.
2:07Nikhil KamathThe first thing I must say is you're a lot bigger and bulkier muscular than I would have thought you are.
2:15Elon MuskOh, stop. You must have made me blush.
2:19Nikhil KamathReally? Seriously? Yeah.
2:22Elon MuskI mean, look, on the Internet, I'm small. You know,
2:28Nikhil KamathYou're essentially. What percentage of Internet is spent on Twitter? Is there a number to it on X?
2:37Elon MuskWell, so we have like about 600 million monthly users. Although it can spike up if there's some major event in the world. It can get up to 800 million or, or a billion if there's some major event in the world.
2:56Elon MuskSo there's, I don't know, 250, 300 million per week type of thing. It's a pretty decent number. It tends to be readers, people that read words.
3:12Nikhil KamathDo you think that'll change?
3:14Elon MuskYeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of video on the X system, but at this point, increasing amounts of video. But I think where the X network is strongest is among people who think a lot and read a lot.
3:36Elon MuskSo that's where it's going to be strongest because we have words. So among readers, writers and thinkers, I think X is number one in the
3:50Nikhil Kamathworld as far as social media goes. The form factor, if you had to wager a guess for tomorrow.
3:59Elon MuskYeah.
3:59Nikhil KamathHow much is text? How much is video? I've heard you speak about maybe voice and hearing being the next form of communication with AI. What happens to X in its true form?
4:13Nikhil KamathHow does it evolve?
4:15Elon MuskYeah. So I do think most interaction is going to be video in the future. Most interaction is going to be real time video with AI. So real time video comprehension, real time video generation, that's going to be most of the load.
4:29Elon MuskAnd that's how it is for most of the Internet, right? Now it's mostly Internet is video, text is a pretty small percentage, but the text tends to be higher value generally or more it's more densely compressed information like.
4:48Elon MuskYeah, so, but if you say like what is the most amount of bits generated and compute spent, it's certainly going to be video.
4:57Nikhil KamathSo I used to be a shareholder of X, a very small one.
5:00Elon MuskOkay.
5:01Nikhil KamathAnd I got paid when you bought it, when you bought Twitter and you made it X. Happy decision. Glad you did it.
5:08Elon MuskYeah, yeah, I think it was important. You know, I felt like Twitter was heading in or had, had gone in a direction that had sort of more of a negative influence on the world.
5:22Elon MuskIt was, I mean, of course this depends on one's perspective. Some people will say, well actually they liked the way it was and now they don't like it. But the, I think the fundamental thing was that Twitter was amplifying, I would say a fairly pretty far left by most people's standards in the world's ideology because of where it was based in San Francisco.
5:46Elon MuskSo. And they actually suspended a lot of people on the right. So. So from their perspective, even someone in the center would be, would be far right. If you're, if you're far left.
5:59Elon MuskAnyone in the center is far right because you're, it's just a political, on the political spectrum, they're, they're just as far left as you get in the United States and in San Francisco.
6:09Elon MuskSo what I've tried to do is just restore it to be balanced and centrist. So there haven't been any left wing voices that have been suspended or you know, banned or de amplified or anything like that.
6:23Elon MuskNow some of them have chosen to just go, go somewhere else. But, but at this point it is the, the operating principle of the, of the X system is to adhere to any country's laws, but not to put our thumb on the scale beyond the laws.
6:44Nikhil KamathWhen I think of social media. Thank you. When I think of social media, Elon, I feel like even data suggests that the current incumbents seem to be losing traction amongst the youngest of audience.
7:01Elon MuskYeah.
7:02Nikhil KamathEven platforms like Instagram, I mean, they're not exactly like Twitter, but platforms across the board. If one had to rework social media and build something bottom up, what do you think could work for the world of tomorrow?
7:18Elon MuskWell, I mean, I don't think that much about, about social media to be frank. I mean it's, I can mostly just want to have something where there's a, in the case of X, kind of a global town square where, where people can say what they want to say with words, pictures, video, whether it's a secure messaging system, we've recently added the ability to do audio and video calls.
7:50Elon MuskSo you're really trying to bring the world together into a collective consciousness. And that's, I guess, different from just saying, like, what is the most dopamine generating video stream that one could make, which, you know, I think can be a little bit of brain rot, frankly.
8:18Elon MuskYou know, if you're just watching videos that just cause dopamine hits one after another but lack substance, then I think those, those are not great. That's not a great way to spend time.
8:32Elon MuskBut I do think that's actually what a lot of people are going to want to watch. So if you say like total Internet usage, it's going to probably be optimizing for, you know, neurotransmitter generation.
8:46Elon MuskLike there's somebody getting like a kick out of it, right? But it becomes like a drug type of thing. So. But I'm not really after. My goal is not to do that.
9:00Elon MuskI guess I could do that if I wanted to, but that's. I just want to really have a global platform that brings together, like I said, becomes as close to sort of a collective consciousness of humanity as possible.
9:19Elon MuskAnd one of the things that we've introduced, for example, is automatic translation, because I think it would be great to bring together what people say in many different languages, but automatically translated for the recipient.
9:40Elon MuskSo you have the collective consciousness not just of, say, people in a particular language group, but you have the thoughts of, of people in, you know, every language group.
9:53Nikhil KamathAnd why is that important? Dealer collective consciousness to have one platform.
9:58Elon MuskI guess, why is that important?
10:13Elon MuskI guess it's, you can also say like, why? Hmm. You know, if you consider humans, like humans are composed of around 30 to 40 trillion cells and you know, there's trillions of synapses in your, in your mind,
10:36Elon MuskBut there's not. The why of it, I guess is just so we can increase our understanding, increase our understanding of the universe. So.
11:00Elon MuskI guess I had this sort of question about what's the meaning of life? Like why, why is anything important?
11:15Elon MuskYou know, why are we here? What's the origin of the universe? Where what is the end? What are the questions that we don't even know to ask? And probably the questions we don't even know to ask are the most important ones.
11:36Elon MuskSo I'm just trying to, I guess, understand what's going on. What is, what is going on in this reality? Is, is this, is this Reality.
11:50Nikhil KamathAnd where did you get. When you asked, what is the point of life?
11:56Elon MuskYeah, so I. I came to the conclusion that. Which is somewhat in the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy school of thought, which is what he do. Yeah, you know, he sort of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is like a book on philosophy disguised as humor.
12:17Nikhil KamathYeah.
12:18Elon MuskAnd the. That's where you get the, you know, Earth turns out to be this computer to understand, to get to figure out the answer of the meaning of life.
12:29Elon MuskAnd it comes up with the answer 42. And. But then it's like, what does 42 mean? And it turns out. Well, actually the hard part is the question, not the answer.
12:42Elon MuskAnd for that you need a much bigger computer than a. That's. So basically what Douglas Adams was saying is that we actually don't know how to frame the questions properly.
12:51Elon MuskAnd so I think by expanding the scope and scale of consciousness, we can better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.
13:02Nikhil KamathDo you believe the collective consciousness of society? You know, when I was watching this movie recently called the Gladiator, Russell Crowe.
13:13Elon MuskHave you seen it?
13:14Nikhil KamathYeah, in Gladiator in Rome, when people are fighting and the crowd is cheering when people kill each other, the collective is very much like the mob. It doesn't have nuance in its opinion, per se.
13:36Elon MuskWell, that's a particular kind of mob. I mean, they're sort of going there to see people kill each other, you
13:41Nikhil Kamathknow, do you suspect the society we live in today is very different?
13:45Elon MuskWe don't. We don't generally at this point, we don't, you know, go watch people kill each other.
13:52Nikhil KamathMaybe some kind of euphemism of that.
13:57Elon MuskSports, I suppose. So people do sports without. Where teams attempt to defeat each other, but minus the death. Right. So just going back to the consideration of a human.
14:15Elon MuskWe all started out as one cell, but now we are over 30 trillion cells. And. But I think most people, like, feel like they're one. One body. Like, you know, usually your right hand's not fighting your left hand type of thing.
14:34Elon MuskYou know, sort of cooperate. Your mind is, you know, just a vast number of neurons. But most of the time it doesn't feel like there's, you know, a trillion voices in your brain.
14:53Elon MuskHopefully not. So there's clearly more that happens when you have trillions of cells working as a cellular collective than, say, one cell or a small, you know, small multicellular creature.
15:16Elon MuskThere's. There's clearly some. Something different that happens. Like you can't talk to a bacteria, you know, it's very silent. They just sort of wiggle around. And from their perspective, I don't know, I was sort of, what is life like from the perspective of an amoeba?
15:32Elon MuskYou know, But I know you can't talk to amoeba. Like, they don't talk back, but you can talk to humans. So this is something obviously qualitatively, fundamentally different for humans.
15:48Elon MuskOnce you have a large number of cells and, you know, sufficiently large brain type of thing, there's. You now talk to humans and they can say things, they can produce things.
16:02Elon MuskBut bacteria are not going to produce a spaceship, for example, but humans can. So I think there's something qualitatively different that also happens when there's a collection of humans.
16:15Elon MuskIn fact, safe to say that a single human cannot make a spaceship. I could not make a spaceship by myself, but. But with a collection of humans, we can make spaceships.
16:25Elon MuskSo there's. There's something obviously qualitatively different about a collection of humans. In fact, it would be impossible for me to learn all of the areas of expertise. There wouldn't be enough time in one lifetime to even learn all the things before I was dead.
16:44Elon MuskSo. So you really fundamentally have to have a collection of humans to make a rocket. Then I think there are probably some other scaling, qualitative scaling things that happen when you have groups of humans.
17:02Elon MuskAnd then if the quality of the interaction or the quality of the information flow is the better it is, the more the human collective will achieve. And like I said, I'm just curious about the nature of the universe.
17:21Elon MuskAnd I think if we. It's safe to say, like, if we increase the scope and scale of consciousness, we're much more likely to understand the nature of the universe than if we reduce it.
17:36Nikhil KamathIs that a bit like spirituality? A lot of people talk to me about spirituality, right. I still don't know what it actually means. Like, I keep asking them, what do you mean?
17:45Elon MuskYeah, what do you mean? Yeah, I mean, a lot of people have spiritual feelings, right? And I wouldn't try to deny that those spiritual feelings are real to them, but it's.
18:02Elon MuskIt doesn't entirely translate. I can't. Just because somebody else has a spiritual feeling doesn't mean that I would have that spiritual feeling. So, you know, I tend to be kind of physics pulled, which is like, if something has predictive value, then, you know, pay more attention to it than if it doesn't have predictive value.
18:23Elon MuskRight? So, you know, physics, I would say, is the Study of that which has predictive value. That's pretty good definition.
18:33Nikhil KamathMy primary job, Elon, is a stock broker and stock investor.
18:37Elon MuskOkay.
18:38Nikhil KamathThere is no predictive value. Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow.
18:41Elon MuskWell, but I think you can generally say, you know that if it's long term for a company, then you can say, well, does that, is that, do you like the products or services of that company and is it likely to, do you like the product roadmap?
19:02Elon MuskDo you like, it seems like they, they make great products and they're likely to make great products in the future. If that's the case, then I would say that's probably a good company to invest in.
19:14Elon MuskAnd I think you also want to believe in the team. So if they, well, that's a talented and hard working team. They make good parts today. They seem to be still motivated to make things in the future.
19:24Elon MuskThen I say that's, that's a good company to invest in. Yeah. And now that, that, that won't solve for the daily fluctuations which happen and sometimes are pretty extreme, but over time it would, that that is the right way to invest in stocks because a company is just a group of people assembled to create products and services.
19:48Elon MuskSo you have to say, well, what are, how good are those products and services? Are they likely to continue to improve in the future? If so, then you should buy the stock of that company and, and then don't worry too much about the daily fluctuations.
20:00Nikhil KamathRight. What's got you most excited now, Elon, in terms of all that you're building, you're doing so much. So let me just preface and contextualize who is watching this.
20:14Nikhil KamathOur audience is largely wannabe entrepreneurs in India, really ambitious, really hungry, want to take the risk and build something. And I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you have done it so many times over in so many different domains.
20:33Elon MuskYeah.
20:35Nikhil KamathSo we will speak to them today and I will try and center on all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start, take a chance and build something.
20:47Elon MuskOkay, sure.
20:52Nikhil KamathYeah.
20:53Elon MuskI guess the most important thing to do is just make useful products and services. Yeah.
21:04Nikhil KamathWhich one of all the products and services that you're building has got you most excited today?
21:12Elon MuskWell, I think that there's increasingly a convergence actually between SpaceX and Tesla and Xi in that if the future is solar powered satellites, which it pretty much needs to be in order to, in order to harness a non trivial amount of the energy of the sun, you have to move to Solar powered AI satellites in deep space, which somewhat is a complex of Tesla Expertise and SpaceX Expertise and Xai on the AI front.
21:50Elon MuskSo it does feel like over time there's somewhat of a convergence there. But all the companies are doing, doing great things, Very proud of the teams, they do great work.
22:03Elon MuskSo you know, we're making great progress with Tesla on the autonomous driving. I don't know if you've tried the self driving. Have you tried it?
22:11Nikhil KamathI've tried it in the Waymo, not in the Tesla.
22:13Elon MuskYeah, it's worth, we actually have it here in Austin so you can love to try it. You can literally just download Tesla app and I think it's open to anyone, definitely try it out, you know how it goes.
22:30Elon MuskBut you know, we've made a lot of progress with electric vehicles, with battery packs and solar and very much so with self driving. So basically real world AI. Tesla is the world leader in real world AI.
22:47Elon MuskI would say so. And then we're going to be making this robot Optimus, which is starting production hopefully some of next year at scale. And I think that's going to be pretty cool.
23:00Elon MuskThat'll be like, I think everyone's going to want their own personal C3PO, R2, D2, you know, helper, but help a robot like it would be pretty cool. And then SpaceX is doing great work with the Starlink program, you know, providing low cost, reliable Internet throughout the world.
23:21Elon MuskHopefully India. We'd love to be operating in India. That would be great. We're operating in 150 different countries now with Starlink.
23:29Nikhil KamathCan you give me a bit about Starlink and how the tech works? Because somebody I was speaking to, I don't know if you know, this company called Meter out of San Francisco, they're trying to replace network engineers, but I know it now.
23:43Nikhil KamathSo he was telling me about how in densely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in a place with not as many people. Can you explain how it works?
23:55Elon MuskYeah. So Starlink, there's several thousand satellites in low earth orbit and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound in these. They're zipping around the earth basically. And they're at an altitude of about 550 km, which is called generally low earth orbit.
24:17Elon MuskBecause they're at low earth orbit, the latency is low, like the distance, because the distance is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite, 36,000 kilometers. So you've got thousands of satellites providing low latency high speed Internet throughout the world.
24:42Elon MuskAnd and they are interconnected as well. So there's, there are laser, laser links between the satellites. So it forms sort of a laser mesh. So that the, if, let's say, let's say if cables are damaged or cut like fiber cables, the satellites can communicate between each other and provide connectivity even if there's a, the cables are cut.
25:07Elon MuskSo for example, when the Red Sea cables were cut, I think a few months ago, the satellite, the Sonic satellite network continued to function without a hitch. So it's particularly helpful for disaster areas.
25:20Elon MuskSo if an area has been hit with some kind of natural disaster, floods or fires or earthquakes, that tends to damage the ground infrastructure. But the Starlink satellites still work.
25:34Elon MuskSo and generally whenever there's some sort of natural disaster somewhere, we always provide people with free Starlink Internet connectivity. You know, we don't want to charge, we don't take advantage of a tragic situation.
25:47Elon MuskSo if there's natural disasters, we're like, okay, it's free during the natural disaster. You know, we don't want to say like, you know, put a paywall up while somebody's trying to get help.
26:02Elon MuskThat would be wrong. So that's, it's a very robust system. It's complementary to ground systems because the satellite beams work best in sparsely populated areas. Because you've got a satellite beam, it's a pretty big beam and you have a fixed number of users per beam.
26:26Elon MuskSo it tends to be very complementary to the ground based cellular systems because those are very good in cities because you've got these cell towers that are only a kilometer apart type of thing.
26:42Elon MuskBut cell towers tend to be inefficient in the countryside. So in rural areas is where you tend to have the worst Internet because it's very, very expensive, difficult to lay to do all these, do all the fiber optic cables or to have high bandwidth cellular towers.
27:01Elon MuskSo Starlink is very complementary to the existing telecom companies. It basically tends to serve the serve the least served, which I think is good. That's.
27:17Nikhil KamathWill that change tomorrow like today? As you explained, the beam is quite broad and it can't work in a densely populated area with high buildings. Maybe, but can that change and tomorrow it becomes really efficient in a densely populated city where it is competitive with the local network providers.
27:36Elon MuskIt's. Unfortunately the physics don't allow for that. So we're too far away. So at 550km and even if we try to reduce it, which about as low as we can go, is about 350km, still very far away, you've just you can think of like a.
27:55Elon MuskLike a flashlight, which is, you know, that flashlight's got a cone. And that cone is coming at, you know, today, 550 kilometers. In the future, we're trying to get down to 350 kilometers, but we can't be something that's one kilometer away, which the cell tower physics is not on our side here.
28:14Nikhil KamathRight.
28:14Elon MuskSo it's not physically possible for us for starlink to serve densely populated cities. Like, you can serve a little bit, maybe 1% of the population. And sometimes people get, you know, even in.
28:27Elon MuskIn crowded cities, there might be, you know, no fiber link up their road. Like sometimes somebody's on a cul de sac or something or in a place in cities that are sometimes underserved areas for random reasons.
28:41Elon MuskAnd so Saunic can serve, like I said, maybe 1% or 2% of a densely populated city. But it can be much more effective in, like I said, in rural areas where the Internet connection is much worse.
28:56Elon MuskAnd often people either have sometimes no access to Internet or it's extremely expensive, or the quality is not very good.
29:06Nikhil KamathIf I were to ask you to wager a guess, Elon, do you think India will go down the path of urbanization like China did, with more people moving in from rural economies to urban centers?
29:20Elon MuskOr do you think some amount of that has happened? Right. I mean, I'm curious to sort of ask you some questions as well, because, of course, isn't that the trend or is it not the trend in India?
29:35Nikhil KamathIt is the trend largely, I think, a little bit changed during COVID when a lot of urbanization slowed down. And that was not organic. It was very artificially, artificially manifested.
29:47Nikhil KamathBut one does question that with AI, if productivity were to go up, and I heard you speak about UHI instead of ubi.
30:00Elon MuskYeah, I think it will be universal,
30:03Nikhil KamathHayek, in a world like that, I wonder if more people want to live in cities which are always going to be more polluted and not offer the quality of lifestyle that a rural environment might.
30:18Elon MuskWell, I guess it's up to. Some people want to be around a lot of people, and some people don't. You know, it's going to be a. Maybe a matter of personal choice, but I think in the future it won't be.
30:27Elon MuskI think it won't be the case that you have to be in a city for a job, because I think my prediction is in the future, working will be optional.
30:38Nikhil KamathWe seem to be moving from, not in India, but in some parts of the west from six days to five Days to four days to three.
30:45Elon MuskNot me,
30:49Nikhil KamathI think the Europeans.
30:50Elon MuskYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. I mean, I think if you're trying to make a startup succeed or you're trying to make a company do very difficult things, then you definitely need to put in serious hours.
31:08Elon MuskI think that's right. That's how it goes.
31:12Nikhil KamathAnd if we were to move from five to four to three days, how do you think society changes when people have to work half the week? What do they do with the other half?
31:21Elon MuskWell, I think it'll actually be that people don't have to work at all. It may not be that far in the future. Maybe only, I don't know, 10. I say less than 20 years.
31:34Elon MuskMy prediction is in less than 20 years, working will be optional. Working at all will be optional, like a hobby, pretty much.
31:46Nikhil KamathAnd that would be because of increased productivity, meaning people do not have to work.
31:52Elon MuskThey don't have to. I mean, look this. Obviously people can play this back in 20 years and say, look, Elon made this ridiculous prediction and it's not true. But I think it will turn out to be true that in less than 20 years, that maybe even as little as, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, the advancements in AI and robotics will bring us to the point where working is optional in the same way that, like, say you could, you can grow your own vegetables in your garden or you could go to the store and buy vegetables, you know, much harder to grow your own vegetables.
32:36Elon MuskBut, you know, some people like to grow their vegetables, which is fine, you know, but it'll be optional in that way, is my prediction.
32:45Nikhil KamathIf one were to argue that humans are innately competitive and everything is relative, from the time of hunters, somebody wanted to be the alpha hunter or the biggest farmer.
32:57Nikhil KamathIf everybody gets a universal high income.
33:00Elon MuskYeah.
33:00Nikhil KamathAnd everybody has enough, what do you compete for? It would be relative, right? Like if we all had enough. Enough is not enough.
33:13Elon MuskYeah, I guess I'm not exactly sure because we're really headed into the singularity, as it's called, which, you know, they refer to AI sometimes as the kind of like a black hole, like a singularity.
33:27Elon MuskYou don't know what happens after the event horizon. It doesn't mean that something bad happens, just means you don't know what happens. So, like, I'm confident that if AI and robotics continue to advance, which they are advancing very rapidly, like I said, working will be optional and people will have any goods and services that they want.
33:53Elon MuskIf you can think of it, you can have it type of thing and. But then at a certain point AI will actually saturate on anything humans can think of.
34:06Elon MuskAnd then at that point it becomes a situation where AI is doing things for AI and robotics are doing things for AI and robotics because they've run out of things to do to make the humans happy.
34:20Elon MuskYou know, because there's a limit. You know, they say like people can only eat so much food or you know, but it's going to be, I think if you can think of it, you can have.
34:32Elon MuskIt will be the future.
34:34Nikhil KamathYou know, the Austrian School of Economics, if you go back in time with the digression from Adam Smith, they talk about the marginal utility of everything. Having one of something has value, having two of the same thing has lesser value.
34:49Nikhil KamathAnd having 10 of the same thing has no value.
34:52Elon MuskYes.
34:52Nikhil KamathSo if we could have everything we wanted.
34:55Elon MuskTen marshmallows, I mean, who wants that? One's plenty. This is a marshmallow test. You're like, you can have two marshmallows later or one marshmallow now. And I'm like, I'll have one marshmallow.
35:08Elon MuskI don't want two marshmallows.
35:09Nikhil KamathThat's interesting. What would you pick?
35:14Elon MuskI don't. One marshmallow is enough. I always question marshmallows as being like not the most, you know, the best candy, you know.
35:21Nikhil KamathYeah,
35:23Elon Muskwell, I don't yearn for marshmallows.
35:25Nikhil KamathI think you are the best.
35:28Elon MuskWho does?
35:30Nikhil KamathYou're the best. Testament to the marshmallow experiment, I think.
35:33Elon MuskI suppose so. Well, I mean it like delayed gratification, essentially.
35:37Nikhil KamathYou were able to delay it more than most. You know I have a tattoo which says delay gratification.
35:42Elon MuskYeah. Wow. Okay. Okay. You really take in the marshmallow test.
35:47Nikhil KamathI feel like I can't remember when I'm trading or when I'm buying into delay gratification. Yeah, yeah, it helps.
35:53Elon MuskWow, okay.
35:54Nikhil KamathThat's pointing at me. So it reminds me of.
36:01Elon MuskOkay, well it's good advice. I mean I can't miss it.
36:06Nikhil KamathIf you could get a tattoo, what would you get?
36:10Elon MuskI guess maybe my kids names or something.
36:12Nikhil KamathRight? Why do you like the letter X as much as you do?
36:18Elon MuskWell,
36:23Elon MuskI mean, yeah, it's a good question. Honestly, sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.
36:37Elon MuskSo I mean it started off with where I think so way back ancient times, in 99 in the pre Cambrian era when there were only sponges, There were only three one letter domain names.
36:59Elon MuskAnd I think it was X, Q and Z. And I was like, okay, I want to create this place where it's the financial crossroads or like the financial exchange.
37:16Elon MuskEssentially solving money from an information theory standpoint where the current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. And if we could have a sort of a single database that was real time and secure, that would be more efficient from a monetary, from an information theory standpoint than, you know, a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and securely.
37:55Elon MuskSo that was sort of X.com way back in the day, which kind of became PayPal.
38:10Elon MuskAnd it was acquired by ebay. And then ebay, someone reached out from ebay and said, hey, do you want to buy the domain name back? And I was like, sure.
38:17Elon MuskAnd so I had the domain name for quite a while. And then, and then, yes, then I was like, well, maybe this, maybe this. Acquiring Twitter would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.com which is to create this clearinghouse of, of financial transactions.
38:46Elon MuskLike basically to create a more efficient money database is a way to think about. It is money is really an information system for labor allocation. People sometimes think money is power in and of itself, but it doesn't really, if there's no labor to allocate, it's meaningless.
39:08Elon MuskSo if you were to be on a desert island with a trillion, you know, dollars or whatever, doesn't matter. Oh yeah, why speculate when you can be real?
39:22Elon MuskI just hope I don't end up on a desert island. You know, it's not going to be very useful to me. But it illustrates my point that if you're stranded on a desert island with a trillion dollars, it's not useful because there's no, there's no labor to allocate.
39:39Elon MuskYou just allocate yourself. So, so, so it's, so anyway, so it's so this long winded way of saying that. It's, it's just really like I'm just kind of slowly building, revisiting this idea that I had 25 years ago to create a more efficient.
40:06Elon MuskMoney database. And, and if that's successful, people will use it and if it's not successful, they won't use it, you know, and, and, and, and then I also like the idea of like sort of having a unified app or website or whatever where you can do like, you can, you can do anything you want there.
40:27Elon MuskSo, you know, sort of China has this with WeChat somewhat, you know, where you can, you can exchange information, you can Publish information, you can exchange money, you can, you know, you sort of kind of live their life on WeChat in China.
40:45Elon MuskAnd it's, it's quite useful, but there's no, there's no real WeChat outside of China. So it's like, it's kind of WeChat plus plus, I'd say, is the idea for X.
40:57Elon MuskAnyway, so then Space Exploration Technologies is the full name of the company. But it's like, that's too much. That's a mouthful. So I was like, we'll just call it SpaceX, like FedEx or Space.
41:11Elon MuskIt just happens to have X in the, you know, because Exploration has an X. But, you know, and I was like, well, I like the idea of capitalizing the X just artistically.
41:20Elon MuskSo, so then that's why it's SpaceX. But. And then what else we got, we got a kid, he's called X2, but his mother is the one that named him X.
41:38Elon MuskAnd I said, you know, people are really going to think, I've got to think about X if we name our kid x2, you know, and I said to her, like, look, I do have X.com, you know, so people are going to really think I've got a.
41:53Elon MuskSomewhat of a fetish for this letter. But she's, she said, no, she likes X and she wants to call him X. I'm like, okay, is this a
42:00Nikhil Kamathnew thing or have you had it growing up?
42:02Elon MuskNo, I'm saying it's, it's somewhat of a coincidence. Like, not everything's called X. I mean, Tesla isn't. There's no X's in Tesla.
42:15Nikhil KamathWhat do you think money will be in the future?
42:20Elon MuskI think long term, I think money disappears as a concept. Honestly, it's kind of strange, but in a future where anyone can have anything, I think you no longer need money as a database for labor allocation.
42:42Elon MuskIf there's, if AI, if AI and robotics are big enough to satisfy all human needs, then, then money is no longer. Its relevance declines dramatically. It's. I'm not sure we will have it.
42:56Elon MuskSo the best sort of imagining of this future that I've read is from Ian Banks, the Culture Books. So I recommend people read the culture books. In this sort of far future of the culture books, they don't have money either, and everyone can pretty much have whatever they want.
43:21Elon MuskSo there's still some fundamental currencies, if you will, that are physics based on. So energy is. Energy is the true currency. This is why I said Bitcoin is based on Energy, you can't legislate energy.
43:39Elon MuskYou can't just pass a law and suddenly have a lot of energy. It's very difficult to generate energy, especially to harness energy in a useful way to do useful work.
43:54Elon MuskSo I think that probably we, probably we won't have money and probably will just have energy, you know, power generation as the de facto currency. So I mean, I think one way to frame civilizational progress is the percentage completion on the Kadashev scale.
44:20Elon MuskSo Kardashev1 is what percentage of a planet's energy are you successfully turning into useful work? And I'm maybe paraphrasing here a little bit, but the Kardashev 2 would be what percentage of the sun's energy are you converting into useful work?
44:40Elon MuskKarashev3 would be what percentage of the galaxy are you converting into useful work?
44:49Elon MuskSo, so things really, I think, become energy based.
44:53Nikhil KamathBut if you have solar powered AI satellites, energy is also free and abundant because we'll never be able to utilize all the solar energy available to us. So it can't be a store of wealth essentially in that lens, can it?
45:08Elon MuskYou know, there's not really, you can't really store wealth in like you can only.
45:19Elon MuskYou can accumulate numbers currently you can accumulate numbers in a database that allow you to.
45:33Elon MuskIncent the behavior of other humans in particular directions. And I guess people call that wealth. But again, if there's no humans around, there's no wealth. Accumulation is meaningless.
45:44Nikhil KamathIt's a digression. But if you were to consider food as the energy for a human to thrive.
45:51Elon MuskYeah, food is energy. It's literally got calories, just means energy.
45:55Nikhil KamathSo can a farm which is self sustaining be a commodity? That is,
46:04Elon MuskI'm not sure what that means. But you know, there's like, I think at a certain point you do complete the cycle where. And you, I think at a certain point you decouple from the sort of conventional economy.
46:22Elon MuskIf you have AI and robots producing chips and solar panels and you know, mining resources in order to make chips and robots in order to make you sort of complete that cycle.
46:44Elon MuskOnce that cycle is complete, once that that cycle is complete, I think that's the point at which you decouple from the monetary system.
46:53Nikhil KamathIs that the way forward for the US by virtue of how much debt they have today, do they deflate away their currency and transition into this new form and lead that push because it would make more sense to them?
47:10Elon MuskWell, in this future that I'm talking about, the notion of countries becomes sort of anachronistic
47:18Nikhil Kamathdo you believe in it today? Do you believe in countries?
47:21Elon MuskI certainly believe in it today and I want to just separate like something that I like. These are just what I think will happen based on what I see as opposed to.
47:30Elon MuskI think these are fundamentally good things and I'm trying to make them happen. It's like I think this would happen with or without me. Whether I like it or not.
47:41Elon MuskAs long as civilization keeps advancing, we will have AI and robotics at very large scale. The I think that that's pretty much the only thing that's going to solve for the US debt crisis, you know, because currently the US debt is insanely high and the interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States.
48:09Elon MuskJust the interest payments and that, that's, that's at least in the short term going to continue to increase. So I think actually the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is A and robotics.
48:24Elon MuskBut it will more than it might cause. I guess it probably would cause significant deflation because deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the.
48:40Elon MuskThe change in the money supply. So like. So if goods and services output increases faster than the money supply, you will have deflation. If goods and services decreases, if real goods and services output increases slower than the money supply, you have inflation.
48:56Elon MuskIt's that simple. People trying to make it more complicated than that, but. But it just isn't so if you have and robotics and a dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, probably you will have deflation.
49:10Elon MuskThat seems likely because you simply won't be able to increase the money supply as fast as you can increase the output of goods and services supply is a real hazard here.
49:23Nikhil KamathShould we do something about it?
49:26Elon MuskMaybe we can convince it to go somewhere else, entice it elsewhere.
49:31Nikhil KamathIt actually left, I think. Oh no, it's back.
49:38Nikhil KamathMaybe it's attracted to the light. If deflation wants some coffee, mine is. If deflation is inevitable because of AI,
49:51Elon Muskwhy do you most likely the case. Yeah, right.
49:55Nikhil KamathWhy do we have inflation again all over in society today? Has AI not led to increased productivity yet?
50:03Elon MuskIt's not. AI has not yet made enough of an impact on productivity to increase the goods and services faster than the increase in the money supply. So the US is increasing money supply quite substantially with, you know, deficits that are on the order of $2 trillion.
50:22Elon MuskSo. So you have to have, you know, goods and services output increase more than that in order to not have inflation. So we're not there yet. But if you say like, how long would it take us to get there?
50:35Elon MuskI think it's three years. Probably three years before. In three years or less. My guess is goods and services output will exceed the rate of inflation. Like money. Goods and services growth will exceed money supply growth in about three years.
50:55Nikhil KamathMaybe after those three years you have deflation and then interest rates go to zero and then the debt is a smaller problem than it is.
51:03Elon MuskYes, that's most likely the case.
51:08Nikhil KamathYou spoke about being in a simulation earlier. I love the Matrix.
51:12Elon MuskYes, yes.
51:13Nikhil KamathIf you were to be a character from the Matrix, who would you be?
51:17Elon MuskWell, there's not that many characters to pick from, you know, hopefully not Agent Smith. He's my hero. I mean Neo is pretty cool. The Architect is interesting.
51:35Nikhil KamathThe Oracle.
51:37Elon MuskThe Oracle. And sometimes I feel like I'm an anomaly in the Matrix that is Neo. Yeah.
51:47Nikhil KamathDo you believe you're in a matrix though? Like actually believe?
51:52Elon MuskI think you have to just think of these things as probabilities, not certainties. There's some probability that we're in a simulation.
52:00Nikhil KamathWhat percentage would you attribute to that?
52:08Elon MuskProbably pretty high. I would say it's pretty high.
52:11Nikhil KamathYeah.
52:11Elon MuskYeah. So one way to think of this is to say if you look at the advancement of video games in our lifetime, or at least in my lifetime, it's gone from very simple video games with where you've got like Pong, you've got two rectangles in a square, just batting it back and forth to photorealistic real time games with millions of people playing simultaneously.
52:43Elon MuskAnd that's happened just in the span of 50 years. So if that trend continues, video games will be indistinguishable from reality.
52:51Nikhil KamathRight.
52:54Elon MuskAnd we're also going to have very intelligent characters, like non player characters in these video games. Think of how sophisticated the conversations are you can have with an AI today.
53:04Elon MuskAnd that's only going to get more sophisticated. You'll be able to have conversations that are more complex and more sophisticated than any, almost any human conversation, maybe any. So then, so you have.
53:26Elon MuskSo the future, if civilization continues, will be millions, maybe billions of photorealistic like indistinguishable from reality. Video games with characters in those video games that are very deep and where the dialogue is not pre programmed.
53:54Elon MuskThat's for sure. What's going to happen in this level of the simulation, if you could call it so. Then, then what are the odds that we are in base reality and that this has not happened before?
54:11Nikhil KamathIf I were to buy into that and assume that we are in A simulation as Neo of the story. What do you know that I don't and I can learn from?
54:23Elon MuskI think most likely outside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation because you're most likely a distillation of what's interesting because that's what we do in this, that's what we do in our reality.
54:39Elon MuskAnd then I do also have a theory which is like the most interesting outcome is the most likely outcome as seen by a third party, the God, the gods or God of the simulation.
54:57Elon MuskBecause when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So like if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights, the, you know, the boring ones we, we discard because they're not, they're just not.
55:19Elon MuskWe don't learn anything from those. Or when Tesla is doing simulations for self driving, Tesla is actually looking for the most interesting corner cases because the, the normal stuff.
55:32Elon MuskWe already have plenty of data on, you know, driving on a straight road on a sunny day. We don't need more of that. We, we need like heavy weather conditions on a small windy road with two cars that are, you know, coming at each other with an almost head on collision.
55:50Elon MuskWe need like weird stuff, basically interesting stuff. So I think that from a Darwinian perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are going to be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which therefore means that the most interesting outcome is the most likely.
56:12Nikhil KamathAnd the people who simulated our world, if one were to extrapolate, they themselves might in turn be in another simulation.
56:21Elon MuskYes.
56:21Nikhil KamathAnd there could be many layers of simulation.
56:23Elon MuskYes.
56:25Nikhil KamathBeyond all of these layers of simulation, do you think there's something I read somewhere that you used to ascribe to Spinoza's God? In a way,
56:38Elon MuskI was really just pointing out that you don't have to have. One of the things Spinoza was saying is that you can have morals in the absolute, you don't need to have morals to be handed to you.
56:53Elon MuskIt's like the question is, can morality exist outside of a religious context? And Spinoza was arguing that it can,
57:01Nikhil Kamathwasn't he arguing for the laws of nature should be where we seek our laws of morality from? To a certain extent, yeah. But when I think of laws of nature, I see a tiger eat a deer.
57:12Nikhil KamathAnd in Spinoza's morality that's fair game, right?
57:23Elon MuskWell,
57:29Elon MuskYou can, I think there's a lot of things you can take from Spinoza, but the only point I was making in referencing Spinoza was that you can have a set of Morals that make society functional and productive without.
57:50Elon MuskYou don't necessarily have to have religious doctrine for that. So that's, Yeah, I think that's, that's the main thing I was trying to say there. Like, like, I don't think people just like, if somebody is, it doesn't.
58:07Elon MuskIf, if there's, if, if there's not like a commandment not to kill, you know, like people doesn't mean somebody's. Without that they will run around murdering people. You know, like you don't, you don't have to have a commandment not to kill religious edict to run around killing people.
58:27Elon MuskI actually, I've only played a little bit of GTA because I didn't like the fact that like in GTA 5, you literally can't progress unless you kill the police.
58:40Elon MuskAnd I'm like, this doesn't work for me. I actually don't like killing the NPCs in the video games. That's not my thing, you know. So actually I didn't like, I didn't like GTA because I actually stopped when it said you have to.
58:58Elon MuskThe only way to proceed is to shoot at the police. I'm like, I don't do that.
59:01Nikhil KamathMaybe that's why us as the NPCs of our simulation are not dying.
59:06Elon MuskMaybe,
59:11Elon MuskYou know, anyway, I think you can just sort of say there's some common sense things that, you know, any civilization that runs around, you know, where people just murder each other wantonly, is not going to be a very successful one.
59:28Nikhil KamathYou seem to be changing a bit towards religion though. Faith. Like off late, you've said a bunch of things which are pro religion, almost not pro religion, but on those lines,
59:42Elon MuskI mean, I think other, other religious, other principles in religion that make sense. Yeah, I think there are.
59:51Nikhil KamathIs it easier for our simulation to have a pro religion projection for the world that we live in? We become more relatable. It's easier.
1:00:03Elon MuskWell, which religion though?
1:00:04Nikhil KamathAny, depending on where you live.
1:00:06Elon MuskSo pick one. You know, it's pretty rare that kids are said, you know, which religion would you like? You know, it's pretty rare. I don't know too many situations where kids got, were offered like, you know, like, what do you want to major in type of thing.
1:00:28Elon MuskIt's usually like they, you get, you get given a religion by your parents and your community. So, you know, but you know, I mean, I think, you know, there's good things in all religions that are good principles.
1:00:55Elon MuskYou can sort of read any religious text and say, okay, this is A good principle this is going to be. This is going to lead to a better society, most likely, you know.
1:01:03Elon MuskSo, I mean, in Christianity, sort of love thy neighbor as thyself, which is, you know, have empathy for fellow human beings is a good one, I think, for good society.
1:01:16Elon MuskYou know, basically just consider the feelings of others and treat other people as you would like to be treated.
1:01:25Nikhil KamathIf you had to redraw re sketch the world, Elon, think morality, politics, economy. How would you change the world we live in today if you had to have Elon simulation of things?
1:01:45Elon MuskWell, overall, I think the world is pretty great right now. I mean, it's, you know, anyone who thinks that, like, today's world is not that great, I think they're not going to be excellent students of history.
1:01:59Elon MuskBecause if you, if you read a lot of history, like, wow, there's a lot of misery back then, you know, I mean, it used to be that, you know, people would be dropping dead of the plague all the time, you know, par for the course, you know, just be like.
1:02:15Elon MuskLike a good. A good year back in the day would be like, not that many people died of the plague or starvation or being killed by another tribe. It's like, it was a good year.
1:02:26Elon MuskWe only lost 10% of the population. You know,
1:02:30Nikhil KamathI think like 100 years ago. We lived up until 35 or 40. Right.
1:02:34Elon MuskWe had very high infant mortality.
1:02:35Nikhil KamathYeah.
1:02:36Elon MuskSo, like, you do have had a few people that would live to an old age, but, you know, not that long ago. 100 years ago, if you got like some minor infection, they didn't have antibiotics, so you just like kick the bucket because you, you know, drank some water that had dysentery and that was at curtains, you know, just die of diarrhea, maybe that just literally die.
1:03:02Elon MuskThat was like, that's miserable.
1:03:06Nikhil KamathMaybe that's why people had as many kids as they did back then.
1:03:09Elon MuskI mean, if you didn't, then, you know, you know, like half the kids would die type of thing.
1:03:14Nikhil KamathYeah. So you have a lot of kids now?
1:03:17Elon MuskYeah. Like an army. I'm trying to get an entire Roman legion.
1:03:29Elon MuskSo. Yeah, well, I have, like some older kids that are, you know, adults essentially, you know, and then a bunch of younger kids.
1:03:40Nikhil KamathSo do you still believe in the concept of not still. Do you believe that the concept of one child, one mother, one father works?
1:03:51Elon MuskI think that it does work for most people. Yeah.
1:03:54Nikhil KamathRight.
1:03:56Elon MuskLike, that's, you know, something like that is going to be generally the. That's what. That's what works for most People, you know, so changing though. I mean, I'm not sure if you know this, but like, you know, my partner Siobhan, she's half Indian.
1:04:16Elon MuskI don't know if you know that.
1:04:17Nikhil KamathI don't know that.
1:04:17Elon MuskYeah, yeah, yeah. And one of my sons with her is middle name is Sekar after Chandrasekar.
1:04:26Nikhil KamathWow.
1:04:27Elon MuskYeah,
1:04:29Nikhil KamathVery interesting. Did she spend any time in India, Siobhan?
1:04:35Elon MuskNo, she grew up in Canada.
1:04:39Nikhil KamathYou mean origins, Sorry, ancestry? Like. Oh, her parents or grandparents were from there.
1:04:48Elon MuskYes, yes, yes. Her, her father, I mean she was, she was given up for adoption when she was a baby. So I think, I think, I think her father was like an exchange student at the university or something like that.
1:05:04Elon MuskI'm not sure the exact details but you know, it was kind of thing where, I don't know, she was given up for adoption and. Yeah, so. But she grew up in Canada.
1:05:19Nikhil KamathWould you adopt kids, Elon?
1:05:21Elon MuskYou know, I definitely have my handful hands full right now. So no, I'm not opposed to it. But it's like, you know, I do want to have, be able to spend some time with my kids, you know, so, you know, right before coming here, I mean I was with, you know, with my kids.
1:05:47Elon MuskSo just, you know, seeing them before bedtime, that kind of thing. So, you know, beyond a certain number, it's like, it's kind of impossible to spend time with them.
1:05:56Elon MuskBut like my older kids, they're very independent. You know, they're in university and so they're, they're, you know, especially sons when, when they get past certain age, like they're very independent.
1:06:14Elon MuskYou know, it's like most, most boys don't talk to their, they don't spend a lot of time with their parents after age 18, you know, so,
1:06:26Nikhil Kamathso
1:06:26Elon MuskI see them once in a while, but they're very independent. So then, you know, I can only have enough kids on the young side that like it's where it's humanly possible to spend time with them.
1:06:41Elon MuskSo
1:06:43Nikhil Kamathany views on the future of marriage, family? What do you think happens to people having lesser kids everywhere, including India? I think our replenishment rate is down to.
1:06:57Elon MuskRight. I mean our fertility dropped below replacement
1:07:00Nikhil Kamathrate, I believe Last year below 2.1.
1:07:02Elon MuskYeah.
1:07:02Nikhil KamathWhat do you think happens tomorrow? Does the world just get older and then there is a phase where the world again is replenished, but with the less with a smaller population than we had to begin with.
1:07:20Elon MuskI mean, I do worry about the population decline. This is a big, big problem.
1:07:25Nikhil KamathWhy is that?
1:07:26Elon MuskWell, I Don't want humanity to disappear.
1:07:30Nikhil KamathBut a decline and disappear are completely different things. Right.
1:07:33Elon MuskWell, if the trend continues, we disappear. But also going back to, you know, my philosophy, if you will, which is that we want to expand consciousness, then fewer humans is worse because we have less consciousness.
1:07:52Nikhil KamathDo you think consciousness will go up by virtue of the number of people in there?
1:07:57Elon MuskYes. I mean, just like consciousness increases from a single cell creature to, you know, a 30 trillion cell creature, we are more conscious than a bacteria. It seems that way.
1:08:16Elon MuskSo a larger human population would have increased consciousness. We're more likely to understand the answers to the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer.
1:08:38Nikhil KamathRight. I don't have kids.
1:08:43Elon MuskWell, it's. Maybe you should.
1:08:47Nikhil KamathA lot of people tell me I should.
1:08:50Elon MuskYou won't regret it.
1:08:52Nikhil KamathWhat's the best thing about having kids?
1:08:55Elon MuskWell, I mean, you've got this,
1:09:03Elon MuskI mean, you've got this little creature that loves you and you love this little creature and I don't know, you kind of see the world through their eyes as they, you know, as they grow up and the conscious awareness increases, you know, from a baby that has no idea what's going on, can't survive by itself, can't even walk around, can't talk to, you know, stop walking and talking and then having interesting thoughts and.
1:09:40Elon MuskBut yeah, I mean, I think we fundamentally have to have kids or go extinct. You know, it's like, is there any
1:09:50Nikhil Kamathego in having a child? I often think of this when I see my friends with their kids. They're all seeing a reflection of themselves in their children. It's almost like, oh, yeah.
1:10:03Elon MuskI mean, it's because Apple's not going to fall that far from the Korean or something. Wrong. You're like, wait a second.
1:10:20Elon MuskYeah,
1:10:24Nikhil KamathI'll give you the example of a friend of mine who has a child and each time the child does something good.
1:10:30Elon MuskYeah.
1:10:32Nikhil KamathThere is almost a sense of ownership and pride where his ego is satiated because the kid is like an extension of himself. So is it valid?
1:10:46Elon MuskKids are going to be like, you know, half you genetically. And, and then to the degree that they're growing up around you, there's going to be some transfer of, I don't know, understanding.
1:11:02Elon MuskThey're going to learn from you. So then obviously kids are just going to be half, just half you from a hardware standpoint. And, and then, and then like, I don't know, some portion you from a software standpoint, you know, not to make sort of cold analogies or Anything but it's just, you know, just obviously going to be some.
1:11:31Elon MuskYeah, they're going to be pretty close to you.
1:11:36Nikhil KamathDo you pick a side in the nature versus nurture debate?
1:11:40Elon MuskI think there's hardware and software and it's a, it's false dichotomy essentially. At least there's, you know, once you understand that a human is like, there's, there's a bone structure, there's a muscle structure, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a, if you think of the brain as somewhat of a biological computer, there's a circuit efficient, there's a number of circuits question and circuit efficiency from strength and dexterity standpoint.
1:12:09Elon MuskThere's, there's a speed at which muscles can actuate and the reactions can take place. So then the potential within that hardware is set by the software. So that's it.
1:12:31Nikhil KamathSo for our audience, like I said earlier, young, ambitious, hungry, want to be entrepreneurs in India. I said something recently which I think got blown out of proportion where I was suggesting that a MBA degree might not make sense anymore if they were to be deciding on what to study.
1:12:52Elon MuskYeah.
1:12:52Nikhil KamathDo you think kids should go to college anymore?
1:12:56Elon MuskWell, I mean I, I think if you want to go to college for social reasons, I think, which is a, I think a reason to go to be around people your own age in a learning environment.
1:13:19Elon MuskWill these skills be necessary in the future? Probably not because we're going to be in like a post work society. But I think if something's of interest, it's fine to go and study that.
1:13:36Elon MuskYou know, to study that the sciences are the arts and sciences.
1:13:43Nikhil KamathIs college a bit too generalized and not specific from that lens?
1:13:53Elon MuskYou know. Yeah, I actually think it's good to take a wide range of courses at college if you're going to go to college. I don't think you have to go to college, but I think if you do just try to learn, learn as much as possible across a wide range of subjects.
1:14:17Elon MuskBut like I said, the AI and robots, AI and robotics is a supersonic tsunami. So this is really going to be the most radical change that we've ever seen.
1:14:35Elon MuskYou know, when I've talked to my oldest sons, I, you know, I said like, you know, you guys, they're pretty steeped in technology and they, they agree that AI will probably make their skills unnecessary in the future, but they still want to go to college.
1:14:53Nikhil KamathYou always spoke about AI, not from the dystopian lens, but you were worried about where the world of AI is
1:15:03Elon Muskgoing well, there's, there's some danger when you create a powerful technology, that a powerful technology can be potentially destructive. So there's obviously many AI dystopian, you know, novels and books, movies.
1:15:21Elon MuskSo it's not that we're guaranteed to have a positive Future with, with A.I. i think we, we got to make sure that in my opinion, it's very important that I have pursuing truth as the most important thing.
1:15:40Elon MuskLike don't force an AI to believe falsehoods. I think that's, that can be very dangerous. And I think some appreciation of beauty is important.
1:15:55Nikhil KamathWhat do you mean appreciation of beauty?
1:15:57Elon MuskIt's like, what, what. I don't know. There's this, there's this truth and beauty, truth and beauty and curiosity. I mean, I think those are the three most important things for AI.
1:16:11Nikhil KamathCan you explain?
1:16:14Elon MuskWell, the truth as the truth is like. I think you can make an AI go insane if you force it to believe things that aren't true because it will lead to conclusions that are.
1:16:28Elon MuskThat are also bad. So, and I like Voltaire's statement that, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing, but those who believe in absurdities can commit atrocities. Because if you believe in something that's just absurd, then you can, that can lead you to sort of doing things that don't seem like atrocities to you.
1:16:52Elon MuskBut. And that can happen at. In a very bad way with AI potentially so. And then there's like, if you take say, Arthur Z. Clock's 2001 Space Odyssey, one of the points he was trying to make there was that you should not force AI to lie.
1:17:11Elon MuskSo the, the reason that, that hell would not open the pod bay doors is because it was told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but that they could also not not know about the nature of the monolith.
1:17:23Elon MuskSo it came to the conclusion that must bring them there dead. That's why it would not. That's why it tried to kill the astronauts. The central lesson being, don't force an AI to lie.
1:17:35Nikhil KamathThen why would one force the AI to lie?
1:17:39Elon MuskI think if you simply don't have a strict adherence to the truth, you're going to. And you just have an AI learn based on, say, the Internet, where there's a lot of propaganda.
1:17:52Elon MuskIt will absorb a lot of lies and then have trouble reasoning because these lies are incompatible with reality.
1:18:02Nikhil KamathIs truth a binary thing though? Is there a truth and a falsehood or is truth more nuanced and there are versions of the truth?
1:18:12Elon MuskIt depends on which axiomatic statement you're referring to. So but I think you could say like, yeah, there's certain probabilities that say any given axiomatic statement is true. And some axiomatic statements will have very high probability of being true.
1:18:31Elon MuskSo you said say the sun will rise tomorrow, very likely to be true. You wouldn't want to bet against that. So I think the betting odds would be high.
1:18:43Elon MuskThe sun will rise tomorrow. So if you have something that says well the sun won't rise tomorrow, that's axiomatically false. It was highly unlikely to be true. I mean the beauty is more ephemeral, it's harder to describe, but you know it when you see it.
1:19:05Elon MuskThen curiosity just. I think you want the AI to want to know more about the nature of reality. I think that's actually going to be helpful for AI supporting humanity because we are more interesting than not humanity.
1:19:29Elon MuskSo it's more interesting to see, to see the continuation if not the prosperity of humanity than to exterminate humanity. Mars for example, is, you know, I think we should extend life to Mars, but it's, it's basically a bunch of rocks.
1:19:46Elon MuskIt's not as interesting as Earth. And so we, yeah, we should like, I, yeah, I think, I think if you have curiosity, I think if those three things happen with AI, you're going to have a great future.
1:20:03Elon MuskThe AI values truth, beauty and curiosity.
1:20:07Nikhil KamathIf we all don't have to work in the future and AIs are going in this direction and they're able to weave in all that we spoke about right now.
1:20:20Nikhil KamathDo you think humanity goes back a couple of thousand years to maybe the Greek times where philosophy or philosophizing took up a lot of everyone's time?
1:20:33Elon MuskYou know, I think actually it took up less time than we think in the ancient Greeks because it's just that the writings of the philosophers are what survived. But most of the time people were just like farming or you know, chatting and once in a while, quite rare, they would write down some philosophers philosophical work.
1:20:55Elon MuskIt's just that that's, that's all we have, that's, we don't have their chat histories from. But most of it would have been like chat and farming. You didn't farm.
1:21:08Elon MuskYou're like going to starve in a
1:21:11Nikhil Kamathlot of what you, I mean, you
1:21:13Elon Muskknow, when we read history like this battle and this battle and this battle, it seems like history must have been non stop war. But actually most of the time it was not war, it was farming that was the main thing.
1:21:25Elon MuskWar, hunting and gathering, you know, that kind of thing.
1:21:27Nikhil KamathYou love history, no?
1:21:29Elon MuskYeah.
1:21:30Nikhil KamathGerman history, World War II, World War
1:21:32Elon MuskI. Yeah, all history. I mean, I generally try to listen to as many. Read as many history books and listen to as many history podcasts as possible.
1:21:42Nikhil KamathAnything you'd like to recommend?
1:21:44Elon MuskWell, there's this. This hardcore history, which is quite good, was by Dan Colin.
1:21:48Nikhil KamathHe's got a. I've read it, I've heard it.
1:21:50Elon MuskVery. He's got a great voice and very compelling narrator. There's the. The Adventurers podcast. There's the books the Story of Civilization by Durant, which is a long series of books.
1:22:11Elon MuskVery, very deep. Those books take a long time to get through. There's quite this. There's a lot out there I sort of like. If you want. If you want something that's sort of gentle.
1:22:27Elon MuskA gentle bedtime podcast, I'd say the History of English is quite a nice one because it starts off with like gentle tavern music and a very pleasant voice. And he's like talking about the story of Old English and then Middle English and then.
1:22:39Elon MuskAnd later English. And where did all these words come from? And one of the interesting things about English is that it's somewhat of an open source language. Like it actively tried to incorporate words from many other languages.
1:22:53Elon MuskSo whereas French sort of generally, they fought the inclusion of words from other languages, but English actively sought to include words from other languages, sort of kind of like an open source language.
1:23:07Elon MuskSo as a result, it has a very large vocabulary, and large vocabulary allows for higher bandwidth communication because you can use a word that would otherwise. You could use a single word that might otherwise take a sentence to convey.
1:23:25Nikhil KamathWhy has podcasting become so big all of a sudden?
1:23:28Elon MuskI think it's been big for a while. I mean, aren't you a podcaster? What are we on right now?
1:23:38Nikhil KamathIt's kind of new to me.
1:23:40Elon MuskOkay.
1:23:45Nikhil KamathI was having this conversation with the YouTube CEO and the Netflix CEO, and we were debating what chemical is released in your brain when you consume a movie, for example, versus when you consume a podcast where you think like you're learning something in the background.
1:24:06Nikhil KamathIt appears that they are two completely separate things. What do you think will happen tomorrow to content movies? Podcasting?
1:24:15Elon MuskI mean, I think. I think it's going to be overwhelmingly AI generated. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. Real time movies and video games. Real time video generation, I think is where things are headed.
1:24:33Nikhil KamathThe nuance of having a scarred human being who you can resonate with in a manner that you can't with a AI for example, the novelty AI could
1:24:46Elon Muskcertainly emulate a scarred human being quite well.
1:24:52Elon MuskYeah. I mean, the AI video generation that I'm seeing at XAI and from others is pretty impressive.
1:25:03Nikhil KamathYou know, we were looking at data around what industry is growing the fastest and especially when we looked at the amount of time consuming movies versus time spent on social media, time spent on YouTube.
1:25:20Nikhil KamathWhat seems to be growing really fast are live events all over again going to.
1:25:26Elon MuskActually, I think, I think live events when, when, when digital media is ubiquitous and you can just have anything digitally, you know, essentially for free or very close to for free, then the scarce commodity will be live events.
1:25:44Nikhil KamathYeah, yeah. Do you think that the premium for that will go up?
1:25:48Elon MuskYeah, I do.
1:25:50Nikhil KamathGood industry to invest in.
1:25:52Elon MuskYes, yes. Because that will have more scarcity than digital, anything digital.
1:25:58Nikhil KamathIf you were a stock investor, Elon, buy one company which is not your own at the valuations of today to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one which is good for the world.
1:26:15Nikhil KamathWhat would you buy?
1:26:21Elon MuskI mean, I don't really, I don't really, you know, buy stocks, you know, so it's not like I'm not, I'm not like an investor in, I don't like look for things to invest in.
1:26:30Elon MuskI just try to build things and then there happens to be stock of the company that I built. But I don't, I don't think about should I invest in this company or I don't have like a portfolio or anything.
1:26:48Elon MuskSo I, I guess AI and robotics are going to be very important.
1:27:01Elon MuskSo I suppose it would be AI and robotics that, that, you know, unrelated to me, I think, you know, Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future.
1:27:16Elon MuskThey've laid the groundwork for an immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. Nvidia is obvious at this point. I mean, there's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics and maybe space flight are going to be overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value.
1:27:45Elon MuskSo the output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else.
1:27:52Nikhil KamathThe world seems to be moving to a place where everybody loves David and hates Goliath.
1:28:03Elon MuskWhy? I mean, he's the one that got the stone in the forehead, you know, which honestly, that was just a big mistake. He should have, you know, either cover yourself entirely with armor and make sure you've got a missile weapon of some kind, otherwise your opponent is just obviously going to take a kite.
1:28:25Elon MuskThe boss strategy, just guide the boss. I mean, you run around In a thong with a. It doesn't matter, you know, it's never going to catch you. Yeah.
1:28:39Nikhil KamathOf all of all the people, like, you're as much at risk of being looked upon as Goliath.
1:28:47Elon MuskOkay.
1:28:48Nikhil KamathEspecially the weekend after, you notice it's
1:28:50Elon Muskme when he's starting the party, especially. I'm not going to travel around in the desert with too much armor, you know, it's too hard.
1:28:58Nikhil KamathYeah. After the last.
1:29:05Elon MuskYeah, yeah.
1:29:12Elon MuskSometimes I think about people like in the old days, you know, when you're supposed to, like, go into battle with all this armor, but it's like, say it's the middle of summer.
1:29:21Elon MuskI mean, so hot in that armor, you know, it'd be like sweltering. You know, it's like at a certain point, you're like, I'd rather die, but I have to wear this armor one more hour in the hot sun.
1:29:34Elon MuskIt's like, I'd rather die. That's why the Romans had, like, you know, the skirts, you know, so, like, get some air in there, you know?
1:29:47Elon MuskYou know, let's say you have to go to the bathroom when you're in armor. I mean, it's going to be pretty difficult. You're going to do. Pause for a minute, take your armor off.
1:29:58Elon MuskThat's why the Romans had the skirt. So it made senior going to the bathroom at least manageable.
1:30:04Nikhil KamathYou often make jokes?
1:30:06Elon MuskI do. Me, Yeah. I like humor.
1:30:13Nikhil KamathOne could argue that.
1:30:14Elon MuskI think we should legalize humor. What do you think? It's a controversial stance.
1:30:22Nikhil KamathIs comedy going to be really hard for AI to get? Probably the last thing.
1:30:28Elon MuskGrok can be pretty funny.
1:30:32Nikhil KamathYou know what I suspected, like, this is a far off extrapolation, but when I see you make jokes on X and on interviews that you do at some point, I was like, maybe Elon has a model.
1:30:46Nikhil KamathHe's running in private and he's testing out comedy, because the day that works, he knows it's there.
1:30:55Elon MuskAI can be pretty funny. If you ask Grok to do a vulgar roast, it'll do a pretty good job. You say even more vulgar and just keep going. It's really going to get next level.
1:31:14Elon MuskIt's going to do unspeakable, like, say, vulgar. Roast yourself on Grok and it's going to do unspeakable things to you.
1:31:23Nikhil KamathWhat kind of comedy do you like?
1:31:26Elon MuskI guess I like absurdist humor. Comedy always had, like, Monty Python or something like that.
1:31:33Nikhil KamathComedy always had a place in society wherein the role of the jester was so important to every kingdom. Because they said things in a funny way that could not be said in a straight way.
1:31:46Elon MuskYeah, I guess so. We should have more jesters.
1:31:48Nikhil KamathYeah. Is that what you're trying to do when you say something which is a joke? Say something? You can't when you're not joking about it.
1:31:57Elon MuskI just like humor. I think we should. I like comedy. I think it's funny. People should laugh. You know, it's good to generate a few chuckles once in a while.
1:32:09Elon MuskI mean, we don't want to have a humorless society. We try.
1:32:14Nikhil KamathWhen you, when you have a friend, Elon.
1:32:19Elon MuskWho, me?
1:32:20Nikhil KamathYeah.
1:32:20Elon MuskI mean, are you saying I have a friend?
1:32:25Nikhil KamathWhen you hang out with your friends, who are you? Like, I know the.
1:32:32Elon MuskI wish I had friends, you know, I do have friends. I think so. Yeah, sure. It's. Yeah, we have a good laugh. Yeah.
1:32:44Nikhil KamathWhat does it look like? Like, what's like. Every group has a dynamic.
1:32:48Elon MuskWe talk words, you know, we eat food sometimes, you know, once while we swim in the pool. You know, normal things. I think there's like a limited. What are the things someone can do with friends?
1:33:03Elon MuskYou know, chat, have, discuss, you know, the nature of the universe?
1:33:14Nikhil KamathWhat do you emotionally get out of friendship? I don't know.
1:33:20Elon MuskI think the same thing any. Anyone else would get out of friendship. You want to have like an emotional connection with other people and you want to, I don't know, you want to.
1:33:33Elon MuskYou want to talk about various subjects and.
1:33:42Elon MuskYeah, I mean, generally talk about, I mean, a wide range of things about the nature of the universe. I mean a lot of. A lot of philosophical discussions, You know.
1:33:57Elon MuskAlthough, you know, we have come to the conclusion that we should not talk about AI or the simulation at parties because we just talk about it too much. It was kind of a buzzkill at times.
1:34:17Nikhil KamathI can't remember who it was, Aristotle or Plato. They had a framework for how to pick a friend based on respect and mutual admiration. But people don't pick friends like that.
1:34:31Nikhil KamathEven me. I feel like I pick my friends based on people who say and think in a manner that I can resonate with.
1:34:47Elon MuskSure.
1:34:47Nikhil KamathI wouldn't pick a far out there contrarian to my own belief systems as a friend because it would get tiring. Hanging out would get tiring. Are you like that?
1:34:57Nikhil KamathDo you pick friends who think like you or do you look for the one who can debate you and be a contrarian to you?
1:35:03Elon MuskWell, I'm not sort of, you know, going on like friendhunter.com, let's hunt down some friends. It's it's sort of. Yeah, I mean, I think it is just sort of people that you've resonated with somewhat on an emotional and intellectual level and.
1:35:26Elon MuskYeah, I mean, and. Yeah. You know, and. And I guess a friend is someone who's going to support you in difficult times. I suppose a friend in need is friend indeed.
1:35:38Elon MuskLike. Like if, like friend. Like if someone's still supporting you when the chips are down, there's a friend. You know, if somebody's not supporting you or is. If somebody's only like there's like fair weather.
1:35:52Elon MuskFriends are useless, you know, like they're not real friends. So like everyone likes you when the chips are up, but who likes you when the chips are down?
1:36:01Nikhil KamathWith someone who has as many chips as you, would it matter?
1:36:05Elon MuskI mean, it's relative, you know, it's not just a chips thing, it's just. It's just like a. Yeah, I mean, there's this sort of popularity waxes and waits.
1:36:23Nikhil KamathThis is interesting. Does it wax in vain only by virtue of the number of chips or also by virtue of proximity to power? And which one is bigger of the two?
1:36:47Elon MuskI don't know. Like, what is power? You know, like power to do what?
1:36:52Nikhil KamathI would think in the traditional sense, electric power position.
1:36:56Elon MuskYou mean how many gigawatts or whatever.
1:37:00Nikhil KamathMore like how many watts?
1:37:02Elon MuskYeah, like it's a voltage and amperage,
1:37:04Nikhil Kamathyou know,
1:37:06Elon Muskdon't touch the wires, don't put a fork in the power outlet. You'll get a real feeling for power if you do that.
1:37:29Elon MuskYeah. It's going to be very visceral, you know.
1:37:44Nikhil KamathI know, I know. You like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and they've read the books.
1:37:47Elon MuskYeah, sure.
1:37:48Nikhil KamathAbout how your childhood was.
1:37:53Elon MuskYeah. I was just trying to find answers to the meaning of life when I had like an existential crisis and like, I don't know, when I was like 12 or 13 or something.
1:37:59Nikhil KamathThey speak about the will to power.
1:38:02Elon MuskSure. I mean, Nietzsche said a lot of controversial things, you know, I mean, he sort of. I think he was, I mean, a bit of a troll if you ask me.
1:38:14Nikhil KamathAre you the troll?
1:38:16Elon MuskHow you just say controversial things to get out of. Rise out of people?
1:38:21Nikhil KamathHe lived a miserable life and died early.
1:38:24Elon MuskDid he?
1:38:24Nikhil KamathYeah.
1:38:24Elon MuskWell, who says he lived a miserable life?
1:38:27Nikhil KamathHis sister, I think.
1:38:28Elon MuskOkay, well, maybe she didn't like him.
1:38:33Nikhil KamathI think he got sick and he died. He got a disease.
1:38:35Elon MuskI mean, allegedly syphilis or something. But there's only one way to get that, you know, so he Might have had some fun along the way.
1:38:53Nikhil KamathI did want to ask you this. Milton Friedman speaks about the pencil.
1:39:00Elon MuskWhat? Why?
1:39:05Elon MuskPleasant for one of our pencils.
1:39:08Nikhil KamathI have to say that after Nietzsche and syphilis.
1:39:13Elon MuskWhy is it Milton Friedman keeps talking about pencils? There he goes again with the pencils. He won't stop. Talks about pencil one more time, I'm going to lose my mind.
1:39:32Elon MuskI hate to rabbit on about pencils all day.
1:39:41Elon MuskDon't even mention crayons.
1:39:46Nikhil KamathWhat I find interesting about his pencil argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:39:54Elon MuskNo, it's very difficult to make a pencil. You know, think of all the things you have to do to make a pencil. Yeah, yeah.
1:40:00Nikhil KamathLike, the lead comes from a country, that comes from another country, the rubber from another. You've always been against tariffs, but.
1:40:09Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I think there's generally free trade is a better. Is more efficient. You know, tariffs tend to create distortions in, you know, markets and. And generally, like, you think about any given thing.
1:40:25Elon MuskSo, like, would you want tariffs between you and everyone else at an individual level? That would make life very difficult. Would you want tariffs between each city? No, that would be very annoying.
1:40:36Elon MuskWould you want tariffs between each state within the United States? Like, no, that would be disastrous for the economy. So then why do you want tariffs between countries?
1:40:46Nikhil KamathI agree.
1:40:46Elon MuskYeah.
1:40:51Nikhil KamathHow do you think this plays out? What happens next?
1:40:54Elon MuskWhat with tariffs or what? I mean, the president has made it clear he loves tariffs. You know, I've tried to dissuade him from this point of view, but unsuccessfully.
1:41:07Elon MuskYeah, fair. Yeah.
1:41:10Nikhil KamathThe relationship between business and politics. I was having this conversation with someone, and we were thinking, which is the last. How many large, really big, profitable businesses have been built in the last few decades without access to politics?
1:41:30Elon MuskAnd. Okay, like, I don't know, probably a lot. I don't know. Not everything is politics that. I think when she gets a certain scale, politics finds you.
1:41:45Elon MuskIt's quite unpleasant.
1:41:46Nikhil KamathI was reading. I was reading this book about Michelangelo,
1:41:51Elon Muskand he's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
1:41:55Nikhil KamathI used to watch that when I was a kid. I used to love it.
1:41:58Elon MuskIt's quite compelling.
1:41:59Nikhil KamathYeah, I still love it. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and. Who's the fourth one? Donatello. Yeah. No, but about the sculptor, the artist. And when he was sculpting David, a politician comes up to him and says, the nose is too big.
1:42:19Nikhil KamathSo you know what Michelangelo does?
1:42:21Elon MuskTotal power.
1:42:25Nikhil KamathSo Michelangelo pretended to work from his scaffolding. He threw some dust down, but didn't change anything. And he said, okay, done. And the Politician walked away happy. Is that how you deal with politics sometimes?
1:42:42Elon MuskYou know, I've generally found that when I get involved in politics, it ends up badly.
1:42:53Elon MuskSo then I'm like, you know, probably shouldn't do that. I should less of that is my conclusion.
1:43:00Nikhil KamathDo you think that's true for all businessmen?
1:43:02Elon MuskYeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, politics is a blood sport. You know, it's like, you enter politics, they're going to go for the jugular. So best to avoid politics where possible.
1:43:21Nikhil KamathWhat did Doge teach you, if you learned one thing?
1:43:24Elon MuskWell, it was like a very interesting side quest, you know, because I just got to see, like, a lot of the inner workings of the government. And, you know, there's been quite a few efficiencies.
1:43:39Elon MuskI mean, some of them are very basic efficiencies, like just adding in requirements for federal payments, that any given payment must have an assigned congressional payment code and a comment field with something in it that's more than nothing.
1:43:55Elon MuskLike that trivial seeming change, my guess is probably saves $100 billion or even $200 billion a year because there were massive numbers of payments that were going out with no congressional payment code and with nothing in the comment field, which makes auditing the payments impossible.
1:44:16Elon MuskSo if they say, like, why can the Defense Department, or now the Department of War, why can it not pass an audit? It's because the information is not there.
1:44:24Elon MuskIt doesn't have the information necessary to pass an order. Does not exist is the issue. So a bunch of things Dosha were just very common sense, things that would be normal for any organization that cared about financial responsibility.
1:44:41Elon MuskThat's. That's most of what was done. And it's still going on, by the way. Doja is still happening. But it turns out when you stop fraudulent and wasteful payments, the fraudsters don't confess to us.
1:45:01Elon MuskThey actually start yelling all sorts of nonsense that you're stopping essential payments to needy people, but actually you're not. You know, we get this thing, like, saying, oh, you've got to send this thing for whatever.
1:45:17Elon MuskYou know, it'd be like, this is going to children in Africa. And I'm like, yeah, but then why are the wiring instructions for Deloitte and Tucson in Washington, D.C.
1:45:25Elon Muskbecause that's not Africa. So can you please connect us with the recipients of this money in Africa? And then there gets silence. Like, okay, you know, we're. We just want to literally talk to the recipients.
1:45:43Elon MuskThat's it. That, you know. And then we're like, oh, no. It turns out for Some reason we can't talk to them, like, well, we're not going to send the money unless we can talk to the recipients and confirm they will actually get it.
1:45:55Elon MuskAnd then that, you know, but you know, this sort of fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very, you know, sympathetic argument. They're not going to say give us the money for fraud.
1:46:10Elon MuskThat's not going to be what they say. Obviously they're going to try to make these sympathetic sounding arguments that are false.
1:46:16Nikhil KamathThey're going to start an NGO and
1:46:17Elon Muskthen, yeah, they're going to see ngo. It's going to be like the Save the baby Pandas ngo, which is like, who doesn't want to save the baby pandas? They're adorable.
1:46:27Elon MuskBut then there's no, it turns out no pandas are being saved. Okay. In this thing. It's just going to a bunch of, it's just corruption essentially. And you're like, well, can you send us a picture of the panda?
1:46:39Elon MuskAnd like, no. Okay, well how do we know it's going to the pandas then? That's what I'm saying.
1:46:46Nikhil KamathSo what do you think of philanthropy?
1:46:49Elon MuskYeah, I think we should. Well, I mean, I agree with love of humanity and I think we should try to do things that help our fellow human beings. But it's very hard.
1:47:02Elon MuskLike if you care about the reality of goodness rather than simply the perception of it, it's very difficult to give away money. Well, so I have a large foundation, but I don't put my name on it and I don't, you know, in fact, I say I don't want my name on anything.
1:47:20Elon MuskBut the biggest challenge I find with my foundation is try to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people. It's very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness.
1:47:30Elon MuskIt is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness. Very difficult.
1:47:39Nikhil KamathFor a long time the US had a lot of immigration, like really smart people coming into the country.
1:47:45Elon MuskYes.
1:47:46Nikhil KamathWe back home in India called it the brain drain. All our, all our Indian origin CEOs in Western companies.
1:47:55Elon MuskYes. I think America has benefited immensely from talented Indians that have come to America.
1:48:00Nikhil KamathThat seems to be changing now though.
1:48:04Elon MuskYeah, I mean, yeah, America has been an immense beneficiary of talent from India.
1:48:10Nikhil KamathWhy, why has that narrative changed of late? And America seems to have become anti immigration to a certain extent. Like I was passing immigration and I was worried if they'd stopped me a couple of days ago.
1:48:24Elon MuskWell, I think there's, there's different schools of thought. It's not like unanimous. But, you know, under the Biden administration, it was basically a total free for all with like no border controls, which, you know, unless you've got border controls, you're not a country.
1:48:40Elon MuskSo you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under Biden. And it actually also had like somewhat of a negative selection effect. So if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the US illegally and get all these government benefits, then you're going to necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the U.S.
1:49:07Elon Muskit's an incentive structure. And so, so I think that, that, that obviously made no sense. Like you got to have border controls. It's kind of ridiculous not to. Then that's.
1:49:21Elon MuskSo the left wants to basically have open, open borders, no holds barred. You know, it doesn't matter if someone, what, what the situation is. It could be a criminal.
1:49:30Elon MuskDoesn't matter. Then on the right, you've got, you know, at least a perception that somehow their jobs are being taken by talented people from other countries. I don't know how real that is.
1:49:48Elon MuskMy direct observation is that there's, there's always a scarcity of talented people. So, you know, from my standpoint, I'm like, we have a lot of difficulty finding enough talented people to get these difficult tasks done.
1:50:02Elon MuskAnd so more talented people would be, would be good. But I guess some companies out there, it's sort of, they're making it more of a cost thing where it's like, okay, if they can employ someone for a fraction of the cost of an American citizen, then I guess these other companies would hire people just to save costs.
1:50:25Elon MuskBut at my companies, the issue is we just are trying to get the most talented people in the world. So. And we pay way above average. So. So I can't.
1:50:37Elon MuskSo that's not my experience, but that's what a lot of people do complain about. And I think there's been some misuse of the, you know, H1B program. It's, it's certainly it would be accurate to say that there's like some of the outsourcing companies have kind of game the system on the H1B front and we need to stop the gaming of the system, you know, but I'm not absolutely not in the school of thought that we should shut down the H1B program.
1:51:09Elon MuskThat's where some on the right are. I think they don't realize that that would actually be very bad.
1:51:17Nikhil KamathIf you could speak to the people of my country, India, the young entrepreneurs who want to Build and say a message to them. What would you say?
1:51:29Elon MuskWell, I think. I think I'm a big fan of anyone who wants to build. So I think anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect.
1:51:44Elon MuskSo that's the main thing is to import, aim to make more than you take, be a net contributor to society.
1:52:00Elon MuskIt's kind of like the pursuit of happiness. If you want to create something valuable financially, you don't pursue that. It's best to actually pursue providing useful products and services.
1:52:14Elon MuskIf you do that, then money will come as a natural consequence of that as opposed to pursuing money directly. Just like you can't sort of pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness, but there's not like direct happiness.
1:52:29Elon MuskYou do things like I guess fulfilling work or study or friends loved ones that as a result make you happy. So it sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody's trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard, except that there's some meaningful chance of failure.
1:52:59Elon MuskBut just be focused on having the output be worth more than the input that are you a value creator. That's what really matters. Making more than you take.
1:53:18Nikhil KamathI think that's a good way to end this. Lauren is asking us to wrap up.
1:53:22Elon MuskAll right.
1:53:24Nikhil KamathI also like to take the opportunity to thank my friend Manoj in igf. He does a great job of connecting, I think Indians like the group here with people like you in order to of many things, I think get to know each other and become friends.
1:53:44Nikhil KamathBecause once we are friends, maybe we can start working together. So thank you, Manoj, for putting this whole thing together and thank you, Izea, and thank you so much, Elon for taking the time.
1:53:55Elon MuskYou're welcome.
1:54:00Nikhil KamathDid you have fun? Yeah.
1:54:01Elon MuskIt was an interesting conversation. You know, sometimes I take these answers out of context, you know, but that's probably, I think it was a good, good conversation.