Elon Musk at Stanford eCorner
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:07President HennessyGood morning, Stanford. I'll tell you, seeing so many students up this early in the morning is really a great experience for the president of the university. And I'm so delighted you're able to join us here.
0:19President HennessyAnd I can tell you're going to be in for a fascinating discussion this morning. If you think about our university and what makes it unique, it is that bold entrepreneurial spirit, that pioneering spirit that Jane and Leland brought to us when they marched across the country to come to the west coast and help found this university.
0:37President HennessyToday, we remain committed to pursuing opportunities that will change the world, to using our knowledge in important ways to work on the grand challenges we face. But that entrepreneurial spirit is about more than just launching the next startup.
0:51President HennessyIt's also about training and educating people who will go out and make our world better. And those innovations come in all walks, from the medical care we do and new ways of dealing with health problems, to energy efficiency, to robotics, to art, to everything we do.
1:08President HennessyBut every innovation begins with an idea. And every idea began with somebody who imagined it. And that's what today is about. The Stanford Technology Venture Program's Future Fest is an opportunity to examine and celebrate the impact of breakthroughs and pioneering technologies on our world.
1:28President HennessyAnd I'm delighted you could all join us this morning. This is organized by STVP in collaboration with Stanford Arts. The Future Fest will be the place where discussions about futuristic technologies occur.
1:42President HennessyAnd today we'll hear from two far thinking individuals, Elon Musk and Steve Jurvetson. Steve is a Stanford alum and a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He was recently hailed in the New York Times as a space investor and rocket maker.
1:59President HennessyHis firm has invested both in SpaceX and his satellite company, Planet Labs. Steve is a Stanford alumnus three times over. And he also has the important characteristic that he was once my advisee.
2:15President HennessyDespite that disadvantage, he completed his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in two and a half years, was the Henry Ford Scholar, went on to earn his Ms. And despite my attempts to convince him to pursue a PhD, went off and got his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an R.J.
2:35President Hennessymiller Scholar. He's recognized widely for being forward thinking. The San Francisco Chronicle and examiner named him as one of the 10 people expected to have the greatest impact on on the Bay Area in the early part of the 21st century.
2:50President HennessyNow, Elon Musk, I think, is a name known to everybody who thinks about the future. He is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, engineer and investor. He was born in South Africa attended Queen's University in Canada before moving to the US where he earned his undergraduate degrees in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania.
3:09President HennessyHe arrived at Stanford to pursue his PhD in physics, but left after two days. I said what was wrong along. Was it the food, the water, the weather? No.
3:24President HennessyHe left to launch his first startup, Zip2, a successful Internet based city guy. And then he went on to launch PayPal. He founded his third company, SpaceX, in 2002, and six years later, NASA awarded him a contract for cargo transportation to the International Space Station.
3:44President HennessyHe was an early investor in Tesla Moda and now leads the company as its CEO and product architect. But Elon dreamed big. As he told CNN a few years ago, we should not be afraid of doing something just because some amount of tragedy is likely to occur.
4:02President HennessyIf our forefathers had taken that approach, the United States wouldn't exist. Amen to that. I think when you see the kind of work that Elon's doing, and I still remember my first trip down to Los angeles to visit SpaceX and to see the first Tesla prototype.
4:19President HennessyBefore it came out, I realized he was going to change the world. This will be a wonderful exchange. After Steve and Alon's discussion, Matt Harvey, Executive Director of stvp, will close the program.
4:29President HennessyBut now please join me in giving a warm Stanford welcome to Elon Musk and Steve Jurbison.
4:56InterviewerThank you, President Hennessey. And this is daunting venue. I feel like we should sing or something.
5:01Elon MuskDance perhaps.
5:02President HennessyWow.
5:04InterviewerOkay, so Future Fest today is all about the future. And I can't imagine a better person to speak with about that than Elon Musk. He is forging the future, as you all know, across multiple industries, repeatedly, in the most spectacular way, in a way that others have failed before him, and perhaps unprecedented in history.
5:22InterviewerSo I'm a big fanboy. Future Festival originally, I think, bounced around. And why this month is, this is a special month for Future Fest is that for those of you old enough, and it looks like maybe five or six of you in the audience who have been around when Back to the Future, the movie came out, they had this vision of the future in the second edition of that series where they fast forwarded in a time warp to the future and it was October 2015, and they had flying cars and hoverboards and biometrics and video calls and what looked like Google Glass a lot of the times, and a lot of other stuff, stuff that was completely cockamamie.
5:58InterviewerBut some of those dreams were true, some were not. And As a framework for Future Fest, we can think to the past and our dreams that did or didn't come true.
6:08InterviewerI think that's what we'll start and then move to the future. We're sitting here today. What do we think the future may bode? So turn to Elon maybe as a starting point.
6:16InterviewerAs you think back to your high school days 30 years ago, when we were both there and dreaming of that future. What about today is or isn't in accordance what you thought back then?
6:28InterviewerI mean, where have your dreams of the future, the bold visions, met or not met reality today?
6:34Elon MuskWell, I think the most remarkable thing that we do have today is the Internet and access to all the world's information from anywhere. So that's having a supercomputer in your pocket is, I think, something people wouldn't have predicted, you know, in Back to the Future.
6:52Elon MuskSo that's the, that's the biggest thing. And, and probably the, what they would be most surprised at is that we haven't progressed more in space. So the people would have expected, I think, to have a space hotel, in fact.
7:08InterviewerArthur C. Clark, 2001.
7:10Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly. So 2010 was really crazy, you know, space advancement. So it would like be going to Jupiter and that kind of thing. So that, that's probably like the most surprising thing.
7:22Elon MuskLike, particularly if you go back even further, if you say in 69, when people first landed on the moon, if you'd ask people, if you'd asked the public, what, what would the situation be in 2015?
7:37Elon MuskI think they would imagine that we're, we would have a base on the moon, a base on Mars, and be, you know, all over the solar system by now?
7:44Elon MuskThat's probably the biggest what happened.
7:46InterviewerI mean, is there any pattern you can sense for where our dreams and science fiction realities drift from reality and where they are reality? Is there, is there some reason you think like as you.
7:57InterviewerBecause, because we have dreams today of where that, you know, that we're going to have these Mars colonies in the near future and. Yeah, well, unless something jumps to mind.
8:04InterviewerLet me, let me, I have a bunch of questions by the way, from
8:06Elon Muskthe audience as well here.
8:07InterviewerI want to, I want to move to something a little more current as we move forward in time. Twenty years ago, when we first met, you were starting your first Internet company of two, the one before PayPal, Zip2.
8:18InterviewerAnd I know that in your youth you envisioned a variety of industries that needed to change. When you were pursuing your first one, did you imagine you would get to the Next one and the next one.
8:31Elon MuskNo, no. I mean when I was in college I just thought well, what are the things that are most likely to affect the future of humanity just in, you know, at a macro level.
8:40Elon MuskAnd it just seemed like it would be like the Internet and sustainable energy making like multi planetary and then genetics and AI. And I thought the first three, if you worked on those, they were like almost certainly going to be good.
8:55Elon MuskAnd then the last two a little
8:58Interviewermore dodgy in terms of the net benefit.
9:01Elon MuskYeah, the double edged sword and you're not sure which edge is the worse.
9:07InterviewerInteresting. So it seems like begging the question, are genetics and AI the ones that are ripe for students today to be thinking about as they look?
9:15Elon MuskI mean they are, yeah. My cousin, younger cousin who's just finishing up sort of a physics and computer science degree actually at Berkeley.
9:31InterviewerWe need, we know.
9:34Elon MuskAnd he says everyone there in the computer science department is working on AI. So I mean I think we're going to see some crazy breakthroughs in the next few years on that front.
9:46InterviewerYeah, I want to come back to that later as we look more to your vision of the future as you think back though to your younger self. You know, many of the people in the audience are themselves college students and either undergrad or grad programs and are thinking about the world they're entering.
10:02InterviewerAnd I'm curious, this may be an odd question, but one that I find fascinating as you think here today, back to your younger self, is there any advice you wish you could have given your younger self with hindsight, given what you know now?
10:16Elon MuskWell, I mean I give like a lot of advice.
10:20InterviewerDating, a whole bunch of things like that. Yeah, I got you. But it's just in terms of how to, how to think about a life trajectory perhaps or how to pursue your passions.
10:33Elon MuskI mean I'm reasonably happy with how things turned out. So it's like touche, not terrible.
10:44InterviewerYeah, that's a good point.
10:50Elon MuskI think if there's anything,
10:54Interviewerif something jumps to mind, let me know. But let me.
10:57Elon MuskI mean apart from the obvious, like just telling, telling my younger self exactly how the future will unfold, which is.
11:02InterviewerRight.
11:02Elon MuskBut, but that, that, you know, wouldn't be that. That's not exactly advice.
11:06InterviewerMore has to be encapsulated into non warping wisdom.
11:09Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly like wisdom. I mean, I mean there's, there's a lot of things, I mean it's sort of, I mean certainly.
11:19Event HostYeah.
11:20Elon MuskI mean, you know, listen, listen more to critical feedback.
11:30Elon MuskI mean like a lot of things I Learned in college actually were pretty helpful. I mean, I think the physics approach to thinking is very good, like the first principles approach.
11:38InterviewerAnd you applied that broadly.
11:39Elon MuskYeah, applying the first principles approach to thinking is I think a good way to figure out a counterintuitive situations and yeah, so that was, that was really a helpful thing to learn.
11:59Elon MuskThat's good. Yeah. I mean. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
12:04InterviewerNo, no, feel free to jump in because I don't know how I'd answer that question. I mean.
12:08Elon MuskYeah, what would you do? What would you tell your younger self,
12:12Interviewerit'll be all right, you weren't as dorky as you think. Advice like that, nothing really too actionable. Don't worry about it. Well, just don't be so insecure about everything you're insecure about.
12:22InterviewerYeah, would probably be advice to myself, but let's move on. I'm not used to thinking about me, so I may be roughly over generalizing here, but it seems to me that there's often a trigger problem that generates in your mind a great solution for when you come up with new companies.
12:41InterviewerSo for example, when trying to negotiate with the Russians for launch capacity, the aha, that we should just build a better rocket to solve this problem comes forth. Or when you deal with the commute on the 405 or whatever in LA, it's like, my God, what is wrong with mass transit?
12:57InterviewerAnd perhaps hyperloop? And then, you know, with, with, with a variety of ideas, there seems to be some trigger something that's broken in the world that. And you have an idea of how to fix it.
13:06InterviewerAnd I guess what I'm curious about is not how you've picked the areas of interest and the solutions, but how have you decided what not to per fix. In other words, there's many things that need fixing in the world and students here probably could think of a long list, many of which you could probably imagine solutions to using the physics first principle approach.
13:25InterviewerBut has there been any framework or idea you've used to filter out what you don't do, what you don't pursue?
13:34Elon MuskYeah, I mean, well, if sort of follow. What I did initially was, you know, you go back to like college times. I was working on energy storage technologies for electric vehicles.
13:48Elon MuskAnd that's what I was going to pursue at Stanford actually was work on like advanced capacitors and batteries to improve the energy density for electric vehicles. And then the Internet was kind of happening.
14:02Elon MuskIt was clear like the Internet was happening like back in like 94, 95. And, and I wasn't sure if what I worked on in the PhD would actually be useful.
14:12Elon MuskSo I was like, I was really concerned that if I.
14:14InterviewerWhy timing? Or what was your intuition?
14:17Elon MuskMeaning, I think, like. Or it could be academically useful, but not practically useful. Like, I think it could result in a PhD and adding some leaf to the tree of knowledge, but then.
14:29Elon MuskThen discovering that, well, it's not really going to matter. Like, that's. Is it going to be a good enough thing to actually be used in an electric vehicle? I wasn't sure.
14:40Elon MuskI mean, so it was like, I was uncertain as to whether success was one of the possible outcomes. Like, I thought maybe it was, but I wasn't sure. And then I thought, well, if I watch the Internet get built while I'm doing this, that would be really frustrating.
14:57InterviewerThere's a sense of that eminent timing, that that was the time for the Internet and maybe the other stuff could wait or be on the back of your mind.
15:04InterviewerWas it always there as, like, one day I'll get back to that, or was it.
15:07Elon MuskYeah, I thought probably I'd get back to it and did end up doing that. But, yeah, I thought sort of the Internet was happening, like, really taking off, although most people weren't aware of it in 95.
15:22Elon MuskAnd so I figured like, electric vehicle technology, energy storage technology, there'll be some sort of natural progression in that. And I could come back to it later. But the Internet, you know, that was the moment to really do something.
15:40Elon MuskAlthough in 95, it wasn't obvious that you could actually make any money on the Internet. This was like nobody. Until Netscape went public. I think at the end of 95, nobody even thought there was, like, you could make a valuable company on the Internet.
15:55InterviewerIt wasn't as obvious as it seems now.
15:57Elon MuskYeah, like, now it seems really obvious, but back then it was not at all. So it was really, from the perspective of. It wasn't like, oh, I want to make a bunch of money.
16:06Elon MuskIt was actually from. It's like, I want to just be a part of building this thing that I thought was like a nervous system. It was like previously people had communicated effectively by osmosis and, you know, you'd have to, like, basically physically, you know, connect with somebody to really communicate.
16:23Elon MuskLike a letter. Like, you'd send letters like that on paper and with the Internet, anyone who had a connection anywhere in the world would have access to all the world's information, just like sort of a nervous system in a.
16:37Elon MuskSo, like. So humanity was effectively becoming a superorganism and qualitatively different than what it had been before. And so I wanted to be part of that. And yeah, so, but, but initially the goal was just to make enough money to pay the rent.
16:52Elon MuskIt wasn't, you know, to do anything beyond that.
16:56InterviewerAnd then as many know, that much of that capital then got plowed back into your next businesses.
17:00Elon MuskRight, right, exactly, exactly. So then they, and, and then the Internet is also helpful because it's, anything to do with software is a low capital endeavor. So I didn't have any money, I just had a bunch of student debt.
17:12Elon MuskAnd so that's, but, but software you can just write like by yourself and you don't need a lot of atoms, like you don't need a, a lot of tooling and equipment.
17:22Elon MuskAnd so it's not capital intensive. So the ability to start a company if it's software related and it's the first company is much, much easier. Right.
17:34InterviewerAnd it seems obvious now that of course the easier place to start and then as you gain more of a personal reputation and have more personal capital, as some may or may not know, SpaceX was almost, was entirely funded by Elon for its first period, partially from, you know, and in an era when others probably wouldn't have funded it.
17:52InterviewerRight in those are the days.
17:53Elon MuskAnd actually, I mean the Precursor to to SpaceX was not the, the idea wasn't really to create a company, it was, it was to, to try to figure out why we hadn't gone send people to Mars.
18:07Elon MuskSo, so, so we went from sub two to, to PayPal and then, and then going from PayPal to sort of the next thing I was sort of thinking well, is there some way to reignite the dream of Apollo?
18:23Elon MuskAnd I thought, well, it was maybe a question of like we'd lost the will to explore it. But I actually think that my original premise was wrong. We've not lost the will to explore, but people did not think there was a way and people don't think there's a way then they won't bash their head against the wall continuously.
18:39Elon MuskThey'll, you know, they'll sort of give up. So, but, but in the beginning I thought it was a question of will. So, so what if we can send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars and you could, and you have seeds and nutrient gel and you hydrate it upon landing and then you'd have this little greenhouse on the surface of Mars and people tend to respond to precedence and superlatives and this would be the first life on Mars as far as we where this life's ever traveled.
19:07Elon MuskYou have this great shot of green plants on a red background. And I thought, well, maybe that would get people excited about sending people to Mars.
19:14InterviewerSo the headlines were clear in your mind once you had success on what that would lead to, to catalyze action.
19:19Elon MuskAnd actually the goal was to get the public excited about that and get NASA's budget increased. So that was actually the original goal. And so I went to Russia to try to buy some ICBMs in 2001.
19:35Elon MuskIt's interesting experience.
19:38InterviewerA lot of vodka.
19:39Elon MuskYeah, a lot of vodka. Yeah. It's crazy. And I couldn't afford the regular rockets like the Boeing and Lockheed rockets are too expensive and still are. Yes, still very expensive.
19:51Elon MuskIt's true. I had to.
19:53InterviewerSorry, wait, may I jump in here for a sec? Because the anecdote you brought up of wanting to change government policy and inspire the world to have a Mars program, if you will, whether it's popular uprising or space programs at the government level.
20:08InterviewerI think it's a fascinating anecdote because in a sense what you were saying is I as an individual want to start an entity, business or otherwise, that will catalyze change even beyond the company level or the industry level.
20:21InterviewerAnd I see a parallel in, in other initiatives you've taken on in that if you look at the goal of Tesla under your leadership, it is to assure the transition to all vehicles being electric, not just the cars that currently are produced by Tesla.
20:36InterviewerAnd with Powerwall and SolarCity, arguably the description is one of ushering in a wholesale shift to renewable energy. Many of the solutions required wouldn't be provided by the companies you're starting.
20:49InterviewerAnd so as I deal in entrepreneurship as a venture capitalist, every day we see this incredible scope of ambition here that is breathtaking. Like change the world with Steve Jobs and others talk about in a company maybe shifting an industry, but we're talking about shifting the entire zeitgeist of the world, in a sense, and maybe eventually other worlds.
21:10InterviewerSo my question is, do you start always in your mind with that as a. Like I like where's the starting point? Is it. Okay, I see this arc of a story, like the Mars example or renewable energy, and then do you pull back to where's the best product to get it unstuck?
21:29InterviewerLike, why isn't this happening? And like, if I solve that problem, then it unlocks value. Like, how does that happen in your mind?
21:36Elon MuskSure. So I mean, I should say like when we started SpaceX and Tesla, I mean, I really thought the probability of success was very low. I mean, it wasn't like, I think, oh, we'll definitely be successful.
21:51Elon MuskI thought we'd be like maybe 10% likely. Well, yeah, and we came very close to both companies not succeeding in 2008. You know, we had the, we'd had three failures of the SpaceX rocket, so we were 0 for 3.
22:09Elon MuskWe had the crazy financial recession, like the Great Recession. The Tesla financing round had fallen apart because pretty hard to raise money for the startup car company if GM and Chrysler are going bankrupt.
22:25InterviewerIt's partly for the upside.
22:26Elon MuskYeah, that was a tricky one. And you know, unfortunately at the end of 2008, the fourth launch, which is, that was the last launch we had money for, worked for SpaceX.
22:39Elon MuskAnd then we closed the Tesla finance round, as you know, Christmas Eve 2008, last hour of the last day that it was possible.
22:47InterviewerYeah, thanks to you. For those who don't know, it's the most extraordinary act of entrepreneurial zeal and commitment I've ever seen. Where Elon personally saved Tesla in those hours, like when no one else would write a check, he spoke for it all and that flipped the mentality from fear to greed and everyone joined the bandwagon and everything changed from, you know, divoting into the ground to success.
23:09InterviewerBut you were willing to go like net negative personally of his entire net worth. And it's, it's a remarkable story.
23:16Elon MuskThanks for supporting by the way. That was much, yeah, much appreciated.
23:20InterviewerYeah, we were happy to fall right behind in line, but it was all him. So I guess on this idea though, of the big picture, I'm curious in the way I heard you just now describe the greenhouse and the headlines is interesting.
23:35InterviewerDo the marketing headlines flash through your mind as you introduce new products that are a step to a much grander vision? I'm curious because it seems like it has two purposes, like getting employees, customers, everyone really gung ho about the vision, but it also makes it larger than life in so many ways.
23:52Elon MuskWell, I mean, if you're trying to convince the public to do something, you have to say, okay, how's this going to read? And what message are we going to try to convey?
24:01Elon MuskWhat will people respond to? What would I respond to if I was, you know, sort of an objective member of the public? And so that's, that's really, you know, if you're trying to change people's minds or get people fired up about something, then you got to think, okay, what's that message?
24:15Elon MuskWhat's going to get them really excited?
24:18InterviewerI think that's really good advice by the way, for all the engineering students. That was one as well. I'm curious. There's an adjunct sometimes to these grand visions like making humanity a multi planetary species or shifting us to renewable energy or making all vehicles electric.
24:34InterviewerThat has a purpose driven element to it. There's a higher calling than the quarterly bottom line. In fact there was a Tesla quarterly report, I remember famously where the opening, the literally opening line was while profits are not a priority comma.
24:49InterviewerNevertheless. Exactly. And it occurred, I was struck by it at first and it did occur to me that it's not like some sort of misdirected fiduciary question. To me it seems like how could you lead an industry transition if your business model was worse than what's already there?
25:04InterviewerMeaning like if you weren't more profitable in the long term and a better business, why would anyone shift?
25:10Elon MuskRight.
25:10InterviewerSo it almost seems like with the right purpose, profits follow.
25:13Elon MuskYeah, well if you make a, if the, you know, if the output is more valuable than the inputs which is really, that's, that's, that's profit like the output's more valuable than the input that, that says you, you have a useful company.
25:30Elon MuskSo. But now in a high growth scenario you have a lot more inputs for, for future outputs so that you have negative cash flow and lack of profitability and which we currently have at Tesla.
25:42Elon MuskBut in the long term of course that has to be that, that has to be fixed. There can't be negative cash flow in the long term and that there needs to be a net positive output which is sort of profits in the long term.
25:57Elon MuskBut in the short term when there's high growth that, that, that doesn't, it isn't the most sensible thing.
26:01InterviewerAnd then there's also related things like open sourcing, patents and acts that to me relate to the purpose. Let's let the whole auto industry do this. And so I'm curious, what do you see from your vantage point as the benefits of a purpose driven company?
26:15InterviewerMeaning when you have this thing that every employee and customer knows is the purpose of the company, how do you see that flowing through to benefits for the company?
26:25Elon MuskWell, I think, I think having a purpose certainly is going to attract the, the very best talent in the world. Because if people can, if there's something that's intrinsically enjoyable and the financial rewards are good, but then also it's something that's going to genuinely change the world, then that's, I think that's a pretty powerful motivator.
26:47Elon MuskBut I don't think like, everything needs to change the world. You know, I mean, honestly, like, there's lots of like, useful things that people do. And I mean, I think really it should be like a usefulness optimization.
26:58Elon MuskLike, just say, like, is what I'm doing as useful as it could be?
27:03InterviewerYou're talking about the goal of an organization or a goal in general.
27:06Elon MuskYeah. And, you know, just even if something isn't changing the world, if it's making people's lives better, I think that's, that's great. And you know, if, even if something's like making people size only slightly better, but it's a large number of people, then kind of like the area under the curve is quite good.
27:26InterviewerSo that mathematical first principle is a point, utility and number. Yeah.
27:32Elon MuskI mean, so like one could say is like some app really making people's lives better, but if it's affecting a lot of people, even in a small way, then yeah, the sort of area is good.
27:46InterviewerSo let's shift gears a little bit since it is future fest. Looking to the future, right. We started 30 years in the past, but the future keeps accelerating. So let's maybe look 20 years in the future for an equivalent leap.
27:57InterviewerArguably, five years in the future might be equivalent to the past 30, but let's say 20. So the year 2035, what does the future look like? As far as you can tell, what would you.
28:08Interviewer20. 20, yeah, 2035. Yeah. 20 years.
28:13Elon MuskIt's always really tricky to predict the future.
28:20Elon MuskI mean, some of it's pretty obvious, like, computing power is going to be just crazy. The really, the big change is the cost of computing power. Not so much the sort of circuit density, sort of the Moore's law thing.
28:34Elon MuskBut if you, if you look at, say, what is the actual, you know, dollars per instruction? And that is, I mean, that cost is dropping exponentially. If you think about it like if you're making a computer, you're rearranging silicon and copper, you know, so on a little chip, and once the capital cost of the development and the chip plant is paid for, I mean, the marginal cost of a chip is very, very tiny.
29:09Elon MuskSo I think we'll see massively parallel computers and computing power and storage being, you know, as really as much as you want.
29:21InterviewerAnd it's interesting, I too start with that. Like, if I, I don't know what else to predict, but as a foundational, this seems like the safest starting, you know, premise.
29:29InterviewerBut then what does that ripple through to in fields like genetics and AI, which you mentioned, autonomous driving Space related
29:36Elon Musktopics, I mean just ubiquitous computing everywhere. I think like AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in 20 years.
29:48InterviewerWhen does that first take up?
29:49Elon MuskLike it seems to be accelerating and the tricky thing about predicting things when there's an exponential is that an exponential looks like, looks linear close up and, and, but it's actually, it's not linear.
30:02Elon MuskSo and AI appears to be accelerating from what I can see.
30:10InterviewerAnd do you for that do you look at autonomous driving and point AIs like the Siri like functionality as your guide post?
30:17Elon MuskWell, I had sort of debate about someone like is AI accelerating or not? And the, like he was saying well what's the Y axis? You know, if it's accelerating you got T on the X axis.
30:28Elon MuskBut what's, what's the Y AIs? And as well thought about that, I think you could have a recursive Y axis so that if, if, if at any point in time your, your predictions for AI are coming sooner or later that, that actually would help define whether it's accelerating or not, whatever that axis was.
30:47InterviewerSo you mentioned like cursive axis.
30:49Elon MuskLike so if, if in any given year, if you, if you find your predictions are going further out or coming further or coming closer in that, that actually you know, is one way to think of acceleration because like, like, because otherwise what's the, what's the qualitative or quantitative measure of, of AI?
31:08InterviewerI was saying like if a given technology is always 20 years in the future.
31:12Elon MuskYeah, if, if it's always 20 years in the future it's like more logarithmic.
31:17InterviewerSo does AI seem like it's one of the most fast we accelerating things that you're aware of?
31:22Elon MuskYes, and I can certainly see that with, with autonomous driving where you know, three years ago I thought it was 10 years away and then two years ago I thought it was five years away.
31:35Elon MuskNow I think it's three years away or less than three years away. Wow.
31:39InterviewerSo and when you say away like, like, like released to market, available for consumer adoption because as opposed to prototyping.
31:47Elon MuskNo, I mean like, like the technology works. There's a sort of second question as to when regulators would approve it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but like good luck with that.
31:56Elon MuskThe technology works in, in a, technology works as a general solution. So like China is driving like basically anywhere.
32:04InterviewerSo it could be sooner for point
32:05Elon Muskthings like highway only or I mean highway only. We're already in public beta with this at Tesla. So we'll be hopefully in the next several weeks releasing to all of the Cars that have the autopilot hardware which is all cars built in like roughly the last 12 months.
32:21Elon MuskWow. Wow.
32:23InterviewerAnd so this seems like one of those things that once you've experienced it, the inevitability of it becomes more apparent. Kind of like first time I sat in an electric vehicle, it's just so clear and same with autonomous vehicles.
32:35InterviewerDo you think that will help persuade public opinion and like, like that regulatory question is an interesting one because as technology continues to accelerate, human nature doesn't and acceptance of change.
32:47InterviewerI'm just not sure if there's like as we look out in the future, should we assume that no matter how fast something like Moore's Law accelerates, there's always the counterbalancing force of human nature and habit.
33:00Elon MuskYeah, I mean this, yeah, I think, yeah. There's always going to be the sort of, there's always going to be human nature and it's so difficult to predict I think what, what, what that will, how that will affect things.
33:15Elon MuskBut I'm not sure if I fully answer your question. So in terms of what, what I think 25 please. So for, for sure ubiquitous computing, AI that's beyond anything like the public appreciates today.
33:29Elon MuskI think we'll have most of the new vehicles being produced being electric and will be probably have a super majority of energy being produced being sustainable. So I think, I think we're on
33:46Interviewerhead of solar primarily in your mind.
33:48Elon MuskPrimarily solar, yeah. And so I think those, I think those are sort of some good things. I think we'll be hopefully on a good path for society. Sustainable energy sooner is always better.
34:00Elon MuskBut I think by 2035 I think we'll be substantially like most of transport. Most of new energy being produced will be sustainable.
34:11InterviewerBroadband everywhere.
34:13Elon MuskBroadband everywhere, yeah. Mars colony and hopefully, hopefully a small base on Mars or city on Mars in 20 years. Yeah, city. Did I hear well? Okay, fine. Town Vill Hamlet.
34:32InterviewerI mean that's exciting. I mean that could get people fired up about the future.
34:37Elon MuskYeah, I do, I agree, exactly. I think that the idea of being multi planet species and getting out there and exploring the stars is one of those really inspiring, exciting things.
34:50Elon MuskI mean just as Apollo was incredibly inspiring to everyone around the world and even those, I mean only a very tiny number of people went there, but I mean vicariously we all went there.
35:01Elon MuskAnd I think that's true of if we have a Mars base as well. And it's very important that we have things that are exciting and inspiring in the future because otherwise why get up in the morning if it's just about one sort of sad problem after another, it's like life's not worth living.
35:17InterviewerAre there any other things that excite you a lot about the future? Beyond the multi planetary species, perhaps AI hopefully may scare you as well as excite you. The autonomous vehicles.
35:29InterviewerAre there any other planks that you think looking forward 20 years would be like? This is what I really get excited about.
35:36Elon MuskWell, I mean for sure, for sure. Mars and sustainable transport, like those items I think are really any sustainable energy. Those are I think really cool things. And I mean in terms of getting excited about it, I mean it's like, I think we'll probably start seeing more truly cyborg activity, like human brain, like brain computer interfaces.
36:03Elon MuskOkay.
36:04InterviewerAlongside the AIs that are purely synthetic.
36:07Elon MuskYeah, I think so.
36:08InterviewerIt's the only way we can relate, I think, and have a conversation.
36:12Elon MuskThere are amazing things happening these days like this. They've been able to figure out how to do an artificial hippocampus in rats and monkeys. And now they're looking at doing that to solve severe epilepsy.
36:27Elon MuskAbout half of severe epilepsy cases originate in the hippocampus. And by having sort of an artificially augmented hippocampus, they can actually solve the severe epilepsy cases. Wow. So it's like, I'm like, wow.
36:43Elon MuskAnd you can, you can read and write information back to the chip from your brain at the individual neuron level like today.
36:52InterviewerPretty exciting. Yeah. The whole field of biology and things inspired by biology and the information systems biology fascinate me personally as a, as a computer science oriented person. Before I go to the student questions which I'm about to do, there was one last story I wanted to share that we experienced together and ask your thoughts about it.
37:10InterviewerWe were in Hawthorne, Texas when the grasshopper vehicle occur happened. I mean, yeah, the spectacular explosion right in front of us and.
37:19Elon MuskRight, exactly. I mean I brought, I brought the SpaceX board out to take a look at one of the protocol takeoff and landing tests and of course that's the one that blows up.
37:27InterviewerWe're all in a tent, you know, like with a glass of water, like, whoa, whoa. I mean, you feel the repercussions and walking through steam.
37:36Elon MuskThey call it a ride. It's a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
37:39InterviewerThat's right, a ride. Yes, Rapid unscheduled assembly. Anyone in rocketry, like a hobbyist or professionally knows what that one is. Every component part is just strewn across. And as we walked, one of the other Board members asked, maybe in a cheering up kind of method with some quoting Bill Gates or somebody that said, you know, if you haven't failed, then you're not learning.
37:57InterviewerOr that's a paraphrase of the, the quote. And I remember your reply and I have it written as a quote because I want to put it on a placard.
38:04InterviewerGiven the options, I prefer to learn from success, which I think is a great comeback. And so I guess I was curious in general, what do you think of the Silicon Valley mantra?
38:14InterviewerFail fast, fail often, or as Esther Dyson says, always make new mistakes as if failure is the crucible of learning. I'm curious if you had any further thoughts on that and that maybe off the cuff comment you made out there.
38:25Elon MuskI mean there, there are many sort of, I mean, I think there's sort of, there's like some entropic basis for this. Like there are many more ways to fail than to succeed.
38:34Elon MuskSo you, I mean, you have to explore, I mean particularly like for a rocket, there's like a thousand ways to think and fail and like one way it can work.
38:41Elon MuskSo you could, you could have a lot of rocket failures to explore all the ways in which it could fail. So, but I do think that one great thing about Silicon Valley is that failure is not a, not a big stigma.
38:54Elon MuskSo it's like if you, if you try hard and it doesn't work out, that's okay. Like you can learn from that and you know, do another company and it's not a big deal.
39:05Elon MuskAnd I think that's, that's really one of the great things about Silicon Valley.
39:08InterviewerInteresting. Do you also, I'm curious if either on the. Well, it seems to me that on the system design side you can accommodate a likely failure of subcomponents. And so much of the elegance of let's say a Falcon 9 or a Falcon 9 heavy as an ultimate incarnation of this vision of how the rocket should be built, to say, hey, parts will fail, but here's how the system can succeed.
39:28InterviewerAnd I'm curious if there's any other thoughts along that how to accommodate anticipated failure. And then also maybe managerially, is there ways that you motivate the team either in advance of failure to coach them on, hey, this is going to happen, or in the aftermath of failure to get them fired up to solve it and move forward when it might be dark times.
39:47InterviewerAnd like, for example, when you notice like failure to launch, you know, exploding on the pad, you know, there's all these, it's a very visual it's public spectacle when you have a setback in the rocket industry.
39:59InterviewerAnd I'm curious how you manage around failure.
40:03Elon MuskI mean, I think it's. It's like quite, quite painful and difficult, honestly, and it feels terrible. But, yeah, I mean, the, the company is sort of looking to, you know, me to, you know, rally them.
40:19Elon MuskAnd so I do. But I honestly feel super bad.
40:23InterviewerLike a punch in the gut. Yeah, yeah. I remember it's almost like a time like the stages of grief I remember in Texas is kind of like sort of denial and sort of hits us at dinner.
40:35InterviewerIt's like, oh, my God, what just happened?
40:37Elon MuskYeah, I mean, it's just. I mean, it's. Particularly with rockets. It's just a really. Space is hard and rockets tend to fail, unfortunately. And even when you've got a lot of really smart people working super hard to minimize the probability of failure, it's still there and it's quite significant.
41:01Elon MuskAnd people have asked me, why are rockets, you know, especially hard? And, you know, part of it is like everything has to work the first time. Like, there's. There's no.
41:12Elon MuskYou can't do a recall, you can't patch it. It's got. It's like nine minutes to orbit or it's over. And. And then the. You, you know, you can't. You can never test the rocket completely in the environment that it's actually going to experience.
41:27Elon MuskYou can't fully recreate something that's moving super fast in a vacuum on the surface of Earth. Like, you can only really recreate that on. In space.
41:37InterviewerSo the limit of the simulation tools. Is that a limit of the simulation tools today or is that a. Yeah, absolutely.
41:43Elon MuskIf there's any error between the simulation and reality, and there's always some amount of error, then that can result in a failure. So it's a really, really tricky one.
41:54Elon MuskIt's like in a software analogy, it would be like if you had to write a whole bunch of software modules and you can never run them together and you couldn't run them on the target computer.
42:08Elon MuskLike, when you're testing them, you don't have to test them individually and not in the actual computer that they're going to run on.
42:14InterviewerGotcha.
42:15Elon MuskThen you put them, put all the modules together, run it for the first time in a completely different or very different computer, and it has to run with no bugs.
42:25Elon MuskThat is difficult.
42:26InterviewerThe software analogies to rocket design are deep. The modular reuse, I mean, there's many of these. For those who aren't familiar, it's not like this is an aerospace engineer by traditional training coming, but.
42:38InterviewerBut is in fact radically changing the industry. I think applying a CS perspective to industry after industry. I'm like, how would, how would you know computer scientists or a physicist approach the problem, which oftentimes is a solution.
42:50InterviewerVery unlike the industry incumbents. There's a certain elegance to it, at least from the outside Astro observer like myself. Let me switch, if I may, to some student questions which will be completely in a different direction.
43:04InterviewerFirst one comes from Nick Xu in an architectural design coterie. So this will be switching more to the other side of our brain for a moment. What do you look for in design and related.
43:14InterviewerIf you'd like, what do you look for in art? Design might be more immediately relevant. But that's where he's coming from.
43:23Elon MuskSure. I mean, I think there's, I mean, you want to make something beautiful. I mean, you want to trigger whatever fundamental aesthetic algorithms are like in your brain. There's, you have, I think, some intrinsic elements that represent beauty and that trigger the emotion of appreciation of beauty in your mind.
44:02Elon MuskAnd I think that these are actually relatively consistent among people. I mean, not completely. Some people like, not everyone likes the same thing, but there are, there's a lot of commonality and.
44:20Elon MuskYeah, and, but I think it is important to combine aesthetic design with functionality. Like the thing that's like. If you say, like what was really hard about say the Model S or the Model X was to combine aesthetics and utility.
44:39Elon MuskSo to balance the two, you can make a car look very good by giving it sort of certain proportions, like making it sort of low and slim. But if you do that, the utility is significantly affected.
44:59Elon MuskSo the big challenge with the, say the Model S was trying to figure out how do we get five adults plus two kids, because we want to have sort of seven seater.
45:06InterviewerIt seems like the Dragon and every Tesla is room for seven, seven, five children. I can see that might be an important design parameter.
45:14Elon MuskI definitely don't think we should take the whole family on the spacecraft. But the big challenge with the S was having a car that had a high utility and looked good.
45:28Elon MuskAnd the same with the X. So to make a sports car look good is relatively easy. But to make a sedan look good or an SUV look good is quite difficult.
45:42Elon MuskAnd I think another principle is you want to have it feel bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside. And that's also a really hard thing to do.
45:52Elon MuskAnd then really pay attention to the little details, the, the nuances of design and Shape and form and function and just the way it looks in different
46:05Interviewerlights when something's off. The little thing. How do you experience that?
46:11Elon MuskNever drives me bananas. Yeah, I mean the problem is you can train yourself to pay attention to the tiny details. I think almost anyone can. Although this is a very much double edged sword because then you see all the little details and then little things drive you crazy.
46:32Elon MuskSo. But like most people don't, they don't see, they don't consciously see the small details, but they do subconsciously see them. Like your mind takes in a result of the overall, you know, an overall impression.
46:48Elon MuskAnd you know if something is appealing or not, even though you may not be able to point out exactly why. And it's the summation of these many small details.
46:59InterviewerSo most of us experience it as a. Oh, I think that's ugly. Or I think that's beautiful. Or like, wow, that's elegant, but can't break it down. You mentioned something in passing like, you can train yourself in this though.
47:09Elon MuskYeah, you can train yourself. I think you can make yourself pay attention to why you're essentially bring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness.
47:21InterviewerGod, I wish I could do that. How do you do that? Just.
47:25Elon MuskJust pay really close attention.
47:26InterviewerAlmost like a meditation on the object and trying to find the details. Like, why do I not. Like this? Is that what.
47:32Elon MuskYeah, just look, look closely and carefully and you know, for any given object it's. It's geometry. It's.
47:45InterviewerI heard someone was for Steve Jobs and that thought occurred to me as well. I worked briefly with him and I, I could only experience it as a visceral agitation with imperfection.
47:54InterviewerAnd like that's just wrong. Like that has to be fixed.
47:58Elon MuskI, I have to turn it off. Otherwise it can go through life. It just. Yeah, it's.
48:03InterviewerYeah, it's the world around you or even in.
48:08Elon MuskYeah. If you. Because there's always something wrong somewhere, all the time.
48:12InterviewerAnd so
48:15Elon Muskyou really have to turn it off. Otherwise, you know, you just get the, like the list of. The mental list of things that are wrong just drives you crazy.
48:23InterviewerI just wish there's a way you could just like record it for everyone else to go fix. Like this running tally. Right.
48:29Elon MuskOh my God.
48:30InterviewerSo let me go to one other question. I found that one interesting. I had no idea where that was going to go.
48:35Elon MuskSo.
48:36InterviewerI really appreciate that question, Nick. Thank you. Let's see. Which one of these do I want? There's some combination of questions. Let me mention both. And you can pick which one you like more because they both relate to colonizing Mars.
48:45InterviewerOne comes from Henning Rodel, a PhD candidate in civil and environmental engineering, which just asks Elon, given your plan to bring a million colonists to Mars, what are the pressing future technologies that need to be developed in order to support a robust and thriving surface colony?
48:58InterviewerSo it's technology for, I guess, survival. And then maybe related from the Stanford Space Initiative students, how do you envision humans governing a separate planet? I'm not sure if you had to
49:08Elon Muskthink about that yet a little bit about those things. I mean the obviously like the first challenge is just getting there at all. And like that's, you know, so SpaceX is working super hard on figuring out just how to get large numbers of people and cargo to Mars.
49:24Elon MuskAnd I think we've got something that I think works at a sort of fundamental physics and economics level. So it's a question of figuring out the detailed design which we're working on.
49:35Elon MuskWe're only spending like half an hour a week on it because we're like pressing near term priorities. But I'm kind of excited about how it's coming together. So just getting that transport thing solved I think will then open up a tremendous number of opportunities for people on Mars.
49:50Elon MuskYou know, just like, you know, having the Union Pacific Railroad to California and the, you know, and look at what, what you know, resulted after that.
50:01InterviewerThe system of other companies figured out. It's like, what are you going to do?
50:04Elon MuskGet there? Then you get the, then the opportunities for entrepreneurs are tremendous. That ranges everything from, you know, everything you can imagine, like starting the first, you know, like the first Italian restaurant or something on Mars.
50:19Elon MuskYou know, it's like somebody's got to do it and it'll be kind of cool, you know, like an iron refinery, you know, like resources foundry, you know, the, like the entire base of industry.
50:35Elon MuskAnd, and then there'd probably be things like that are just unique to Mars. But we gotta, we gotta get that, you know, effectively that Union Pacific railroad there in order to get, get the entrepreneurs there.
50:47Elon MuskThat, and then create a fertile environment for them to create companies. So that's, that's, so once you're there it's going to be, I think, a lot of exciting things that can be done.
51:03Elon MuskAnd in the beginning people would live in kind of glass domes, but over time it would terraform Mars and make it like Earth. And so, so I think it just be a lot of super exciting things that are hard to predict.
51:16Elon MuskJust like when they're building Union Pacific, they, it would hard. Nobody would have predicted Silicon Valley in Hollywood. Right. You know that that would have been
51:26Interviewerlike an urbanization in general.
51:28President HennessyYeah.
51:28Elon MuskYou know. Well, like California would be like the most populous state in the country.
51:33InterviewerLike they'd be like, that sounds crazy for them. Gold is discovered.
51:38Elon MuskRight? Yeah. So, and so the. Yeah. I think like it's really incumbent on SpaceX or you know, maybe other organizations to figure out how to get there. Otherwise nothing else matters.
51:50InterviewerRight.
51:50Elon MuskAnd then once you get there, there's a lot of sort of. Yeah. A lot that can be done from a governance standpoint. I mean, obviously ultimately the governance of ours will be up to the Martians.
52:01Elon MuskBut the cool that we have a name for them.
52:06InterviewerYou become a Martian when you go there.
52:08Elon MuskBut I think if you said like how would you do democracy 2.0 or like some, a new version? I think we'd probably have more of a direct democracy than a representative democracy.
52:23Elon MuskAnd you know, when the United States was formed, it was really, it was impossible to have a direct democracy.
52:29InterviewerLike
52:31Elon Muskeven sending a letter took weeks. So there was no way that people could like vote directly on issues. You had to have representatives.
52:39InterviewerInteresting.
52:40Elon MuskSo I think, I think probably there would be more direct democracy.
52:45InterviewerAnd is this thing about the latency of communication from.
52:49Elon MuskLatency same just communication errors and communication latency when you have letters that take weeks to get anywhere would have made governance almost impossible, I think, if it hadn't been a representative of democracy.
53:06Elon MuskYou had a lot of people who couldn't even read or write.
53:11InterviewerThat's fascinating. I was just wondering if you were to start over with a clean sheet of paper on governance, do you think a framework that could be envisioned that encompasses other sentient beings to come, meaning the AIs and others who might clamor for their rights alongside.
53:26Elon MuskRight. Yes. It's difficult to predict, but I can say like, like probably we would, would aim for a more direct democracy. And then, and I was talking to Larry Page about this and he had a, like a good suggestion like we should limit the number of words in a law because like we have these like thousand page laws that get mass and like nobody's read them.
53:46InterviewerTwitter equivalent Equ of parsimony.
53:48Elon MuskYeah, like I don't know, a thousand word letter count or something like that. Like if you can't, if you can't write the law in a thousand words, then probably it shouldn't be there.
53:59Elon MuskAnd you know, just we shouldn't have, you know, a single law passed. That's like the size of Lord of the Rings. That's right. And like, literally not a single person in Congress has read the whole thing.
54:12InterviewerThe tax code. It's unscrutable.
54:14Elon MuskYes, exactly. So, so there's that. And I think laws also have an infinite lifespan unless they're given some sort of, you know, sunset period. So probably it would be good to default laws to.
54:27Elon MuskTo have a sunset period. Like, and if it's not. If it's not good enough to be renewed, then it. Then it goes away. And, and maybe some hysteresis in that in making it easier to remove a law than to put one in place.
54:43Elon MuskYou can just imagine because, like, over time, like, the body of law just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's like you. Like, how do you avoid that? And you have inertia associated with laws.
54:54Elon MuskAnd so maybe, you know, it would take 60% to create a law, but only 40% to remove a law.
55:01InterviewerHow interesting. How fascinating.
55:04Elon MuskYeah, yeah, something like that.
55:05InterviewerThose are like, the rules of a constitutional democracy have such a profound impact. And to have a new playground would be fantastic. There's something embedded in what you said a moment ago that I want to highlight on a transition to perhaps a closing question I heard in passing.
55:22InterviewerYou know, I think about some of these things about a half hour a week, if I heard you right. And this is, I think, a profound thing to do, to dwell on, is that, you know, he's changing the world in so many areas.
55:34InterviewerAnd not many entrepreneurs I see, get, and myself included, enamored with all of the possibilities of a future Mars base of the terraforming, of the. Every aspect of it that might need to come into being.
55:45InterviewerAnd I find myself often distracted by those future questions that are a little less relevant today. What you just heard was we got to solve the railway first. Like, let me put 90%, 95% of my effort into that and not get distracted by all the other interesting questions that need to come later.
55:59InterviewerAnd I remember a few years ago, maybe three or four years ago, trying to get you to brainstorm with Craig Venter about, you know, doing a sample return from Mars and sending a genetic sequencer there to help understand life there that might exist, et cetera.
56:12InterviewerAnd I remember profoundly that the response was, that is a really interesting topic, but I got to get these rockets to work first before that's going to be relevant to me.
56:19InterviewerAnd let me hunker down on what's important here and that ability to prioritize it on the stepping stones to a huge vision. It's this interesting dichotomy, like, not just Pure visionary scattered across many things alone.
56:33InterviewerIt's clear sense of where we're heading. Chaining back to the present and making sure we're taking the right steps, not in a fumble to future, if you will. I think I wish we could all do that in the way we try to implement change.
56:45InterviewerSo let me move, if I may, to one last question, which could be broad or not, which is a lot of people here from all kinds of parts of the world.
56:52InterviewerAnd I think everyone who hears your story, you know, an immigrant from South Africa through Canada to the U.S. taking on four or five different industries with great aplomb and success is inspiring.
57:05InterviewerBut it's not just that you've had business success or technology success, it's that you really are changing the world for the better in these areas. And so I guess maybe for as a closing question again, looking from the present to the future, what do you see as the sort of the biggest pressing problems that need to be addressed?
57:21InterviewerThis may in fact required to pull that filter off for a moment on the things of the world that are broken. And if, if everyone here in the audience could be a change agent themselves in their area of passion, what would you hope to catalyze today?
57:33InterviewerYou can say, guys, go solve this big hairy problem and figure out why it's broken.
57:41Elon MuskYou know, honestly, I don't think everyone needs to go, you know, try to solve like some big, big world changing problem. I, I mean I think that like, if I really think like we should just think like are we doing something that's useful to the world?
57:57Elon MuskLike if you're doing something useful, that's great.
58:00InterviewerImagine it's like Animal Farm. Some things are more useful.
58:03Elon MuskSure, sure.
58:05InterviewerBut like maybe you want to get a personal take.
58:07Elon MuskI just think that sort of a usefulness optimization is like, that's like a really good thing. You know, if you've done something that's useful to your fellow human beings, that's you've done a really good thing and people should feel proud of doing that.
58:25Elon MuskYou know, it doesn't, doesn't always have to be something that's going to change the world. I mean sometimes the world should just keep going in a particular direction. Yeah, it might be going in the right direction.
58:36Elon MuskAnd I mean in a lot of ways the world is, and we are in, in great shape in that if you look at say violent crimes per capita in the world, it's at an all time low.
58:53Elon MuskWe're actually quite prosperous and compared to history and I think there's a lot of things to feel good about in terms of how the world is today. Access to information is incredible.
59:09Elon MuskI mean, anyone with like a hundred dollar device has access to basically all the world's information, which is an incredible thing. And yeah, so I honestly, I just think like the best thing for people to try to do is say, like, hey, what is something I can do that would really be useful to the world?
59:31Elon MuskAnd just do that, you know, it's great.
59:34InterviewerWell, fantastic. Thank you so much for being with us today on Future Fest and fortunate Future.
59:53President HennessySo just very quickly, on behalf of
59:55Event Hostall the faculty and staff affiliated with stvp, we'd like to thank President Hennessy, the School of Engineering and our home Department of Management Science and Engineering, Matthew Toos, Stanford Arts, and the amazing staff here at Bing.
1:00:08Event HostThat was so helpful to us this morning. Dfj, obviously for your incredible sponsorship of Future Fest and also for your continued long term support of STVP in our hope to create entrepreneurship education opportunities for Stanford students.
1:00:23Event HostAnd of course, we offer our most sincere thanks. Please help me in thanking again Elon Musk and Steve