Elon Musk on DOGE, AI, & Are we in a Simulation? | KMP Ep.18
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (11)
Transcript
0:00Katie MillerI think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. Do you think you were successful?
0:04Elon MuskWe're a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful.
0:07Katie MillerWould you ever do Doge again?
0:09Elon MuskI mean. No, I don't think so. I think instead of doing Doge, I would have basically built, you know, worked on my companies essentially, and not. And the cars, they wouldn't have been running the cars.
0:22Katie MillerWhat's your biggest irrational fear?
0:23Elon MuskI try not to have irrational fears.
0:25Katie MillerNone.
0:26Elon MuskIf I find an irrational fear, I squelch it.
0:29Katie MillerIf you had to start from scratch today with only a thousand dollars, what would you do?
0:34Elon MuskWell, I did originally come to North America with like 2,500 bucks Canadian, so I don't know, maybe it's 2 grand US at this point. I have a lot of knowledge.
0:42Elon MuskA lot of things you have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison, perhaps with a stipend?
1:02Katie MillerHi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. We are in Texas today, joined by the one and only Elon Musk.
1:10Elon MuskNice to see you again, Katie.
1:12Katie MillerNice to see you, Elon. So I want to take us back. It's January 20th. You are in the Roosevelt Room, if you remember this, getting sworn in and they hand you a computer and a phone.
1:24Elon MuskRight, right.
1:25Katie MillerI want to go back to what happened next. I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told. What was your first thought on how Doge was going to proceed?
1:35Elon MuskWell, I guess I couldn't believe I was there for the most part. It's like it all seemed extremely surreal at the time. You know, Doge was a made up name that had been made up, I don't know, two or three months before and based on Internet suggestions.
2:01Elon MuskAnd I was going to call it the Government Efficiency Commission, and then someone on the Internet said, no, it should be the Department of Government Efficiency. Dog like that sounds great.
2:16Elon MuskSo we just kind of made up an apartment.
2:22Katie MillerDo you think you were successful?
2:25Elon MuskWe're a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful.
2:33Elon MuskI mean, we stopped a lot of funding for that really just made no sense. That was just entirely wasteful. Where like, for example, there was like probably 100, maybe $200 billion worth of zombie payments per year, which simply by enforcing that there be a payment code and an explanation for the payment, that the payment would not go out.
3:09Elon MuskSo we made that change to the main treasury computer and a bunch of other computers. It's like, it seems like insanely Obvious. But there are just call it 2 or 3% of government payments that go out that really should not be going out.
3:33Elon MuskAnd it's actually quite hard to stop. So it's a pretty rare individual that would ask the government to stop sending them money.
3:50Katie MillerWould you ever do Doge again?
3:52Elon MuskDo you mean, would I repeat history or would I?
3:57Katie MillerTwo ways to think about it. One is, if you could go back and start from scratch, like it's January 20th all again, would you go back and do it differently?
4:04Katie MillerAnd knowing what you know now, do you think there's ever a place to restart you not saying others in your stead, you go back and restart doing Doge?
4:16Elon MuskI mean, no, I don't think so. What I do, I think I probably, I don't know.
4:26Katie MillerWould you do Doge again, knowing what you know now?
4:29Elon MuskI mean, the thing is, like, I think instead of doing Doge, I would have basically built, you know, work to my companies, essentially so. And not. And the cars, they wouldn't have been burning the cars.
4:46Katie MillerYou gave up a lot to Doge.
4:48Elon MuskYeah, like, if you, if you, if you stop money going to, going, going for political corruption, they will, they will lash out big time. So they really want the money to keep blowing.
5:10Elon MuskSo if you stop it from flowing, there's like a very strong reaction to stopping the money flowing.
5:18Katie MillerAfter you were in D.C. for a while, did you become disillusioned with how it operates?
5:25Elon MuskWell, I wouldn't say I was super illusioned to begin with. I mean, I guess it's just like, do you really want the least amount done by government possible? The least amount?
5:38Elon MuskI guess maybe, like the biggest thing is that, I guess the biggest single thing is that there are massive transfer payments going to illegal immigrants. Like, massive. Essentially we're paying people to come here from somewhere else in vast numbers, including flying them in.
6:04Elon MuskSo it's not like you need a border wall. If you're flying them in, then fast tracking them to citizenship and making them beholden to govern payments and voting hard left, that's essentially.
6:27Elon MuskIt's like voter importation. If you create a gigantic money magnet to you say, if anyone comes here from anywhere else, we're going to pay you tons of money, give you lots of free stuff.
6:43Elon MuskCome, come, come to America and get paid to do so. Like, you're going to get a lot of people taking up on that offer. People say, like, this is fake.
6:57Elon MuskI'm like, actually, well, let's look at, you know, Ilhan Omar, who literally was voted into power, voted into Congress by You know, large group of people from Somalia who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia.
7:18Elon MuskOr Mamdani, who was voted as to be mayor. But, but if it. But by a majority of people who are not born in America. That's my understanding at least.
7:36Elon MuskSo. And then California say big time situation. So I don't know, we just don't want to turn into a, you know, communist hellhole. Basically.
7:56Katie MillerYou've said in the future that no one's going to need to worry about money or work because AI is going to take care of the rest. AI and robotics.
8:05Katie MillerWhat do you mean that people won't have to work in the future?
8:08Elon MuskAssuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the AI and robots will be able to do anything that humans want them to do, essentially.
8:23Elon MuskSo hopefully not more than that, but AI and robotics will be able to provide us, provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want.
8:37Katie MillerSo you wouldn't need to work. What would you do with your free time?
8:44Elon MuskPeople will be able to do whatever they want with their free time. Work will be optional. I mean, I just want to separate out from like what I wish would happen versus what I predict will happen because people get confused about that.
8:56Elon MuskThey think that what I predict will happen is what I want to happen. What I predict to happen is not the same as what I want to happen. If I could, I would certainly slow down AI and robotics, but I.
9:13Elon MuskI can't. It seems to be. Well, it's advancing at a very rapid pace. Whether I like it or not.
9:23Katie MillerIs AI what keeps you up at night?
9:26Elon MuskIt used to be at this point, I don't know. I wouldn't say there's nothing particularly keeping me up at night right now, except that. But if you say what?
9:41Elon MuskWhy do I wake up in nightmares? Oh, AI. Yeah. Actually I've had a lot of AI nightmares. I had AI nightmares many days in a row. What am I supposed to do about it?
9:57Katie MillerWhat's your biggest irrational fear?
10:01Elon MuskI try not to have irrational fears.
10:03Katie MillerNone.
10:05Elon MuskIf I find an irrational fear, I squelch it. I don't believe fear is. Fear is the mind killer. So I want somebody who feels fear strongly on average.
10:18Katie MillerHow many hours do you sleep a night?
10:20Elon Musk6. You can tell, but based on my ex posts, yes you can. People have actually mapped them so it's very clear when I'm sleeping around. I tried having less than six hours sleep, but although I'm awake more hours per day, my cognitive function is reduced.
10:41Elon MuskSo my natural sleep. I actually Timed it with the phone. You can get a phone app time, it's like five hours, 56 minutes. That's what the phone said.
10:51Katie MillerWhat's an average day for you look like?
10:54Elon MuskWell, I have a lot of inbound communication, so it's information triage. I try to segment the days so that there's not too much context switching. Because arguably, fear is not the mind killer.
11:09Elon MuskContext switching is. It's hard not to context switch if you've got an inbox full of stuff, but you can think, like, if you had to Context switch every three seconds or every 30 seconds or every three minutes, the context switching cognitive penalty would be very high.
11:32Elon MuskEvery three seconds.
11:33Katie MillerAnd you're talking about switching between, say, Tesla X XAI, SpaceX personal. SpaceX personal.
11:41Elon MuskBut even within Tesla and SpaceX, there are many different things getting this sort of stuff on X, like random news things, you know, people being burned alive and stuff like that.
11:52Elon MuskLike, what the hell is going on in this country?
11:55Katie MillerWho's the funniest person you know in real life?
11:58Elon MuskYou know, President Trump is very funny. He's got a great sense of humor.
12:02Katie MillerPresident Trump is very funny.
12:04Elon MuskHe's very funny. He's like naturally funny. Somewhat effortless. I mean, you know when he was edmdani in the office and they asked him if he still thought the President was a fascist, and the President said, just say yes.
12:20Elon MuskIt's easier that way. Don't worry about it. Just say yes. He's like, yes. What a look. Whatever. How silly.
12:37Katie MillerWho do you look up to the most?
12:39Elon MuskThe creator.
12:41Katie MillerWhat's your current position on God?
12:45Elon MuskGod is the creator.
12:47Katie MillerYou don't believe in God, though, do you?
12:49Elon MuskWell, I believe there was this universe came for something. People have different labels.
12:55Katie MillerWhen's the last time you did something extremely ordinary like go to Target or cvs?
13:01Elon MuskI can't go to things where there's a general public because, I mean, there. There's an immediate. Can I have a selfie line that forms. And these days, particularly in light of Charlie Kirk's murder, there are serious security issues.
13:23Elon MuskIt's not that I don't want to. I simply can't.
13:26Katie MillerHas Charlie's murder changed how you do things, or were you already locked down pretty well before that?
13:33Elon MuskIt certainly reinforced the severity of the situation where life is on hardcore mode. You make one mistake and you're dead. It only takes one. One mistake.
13:44Katie MillerWhat's one moment in your life that you could live again? Just to feel it.
13:48Elon MuskWell, I mean, obviously when my kids were born or the first time SpaceX got to orbit or Tesla made electric car work.
14:00Katie MillerYou've had a big lot of them.
14:03Elon MuskIt's a lot of things. There's a lot coming down the pike.
14:07Katie MillerLike what?
14:08Elon MuskStarship. The degree to which a starship is a revolutionary technology is not well understood in the world. It's the first time that there's been any rocket design where full and rapid reusability is possible or full reusability at all is possible.
14:33Elon MuskThis is the first design where a reusable rocket is one of the possible outcomes. Where success is in a set of possible outcomes.
14:42Katie MillerAre you talking about V3 or V2?
14:45Elon MuskWell, we could have made V2 reusable, but there were a lot of performance improvements for V3, so it made sense to go to V3. There's like 10,000 different changes between V2 and V3.
15:04Elon MuskMaybe more than 10,000. Really. So.
15:13Elon MuskIf there are historians in the future, they'll look back at starship and say it was one of the most profound things that ever happened. You can think of historic events as where would they fit in the evolutionary hall of fame.
15:30Elon MuskSo you've got things like single celled life, then you've got multicellular life capturing a mitochondria, capturing mitochondria so that you have a power cell in the plant, in the cell got like a power plant in the cell.
15:50Elon MuskYou have differentiation into plants and animals, life going from oceans to land. And then also on that scale, probably in the top 10 is life becoming multiplanetary. There just aren't very many things that are in the top 10 of the evolution of life where you could basically say you could evaluate any given civilization or any given life form.
16:20Elon MuskAs you know, on that scale
16:27Katie Millerit's
16:27Elon Musklife becoming multi planetary. It's in the top 10. It needs to be sustainably multi planetary. So not just visiting, but actually multi planetary in the sense that if
16:45Katie Milleryou
16:45Elon Muskhave planetary redundancy, so if one of the planets, if there were to be a catastrophe on one of the planets, the other planet would survive. For all of your companies, Starship is capable of doing that for the first time in history and no AI was used to create it.
17:00Elon MuskSo the AI will appreciate that.
17:03Katie MillerAre all of your companies working towards that same goal to help us become multi planetary. Like does the AI exist to be able to help life on Mars or is that primarily for what is happening here currently?
17:19Elon MuskYou know, Tesla is mostly about making sure life on Earth is good. And as NXI is about that too. Because multi planetary means Earth's got to be Good. And you need another planet.
17:32Elon MuskSometimes people think because they have legacy templates, mental templates, they think that going to Mars is an escape from Earth or that it would be some place where billionaires would go or something like that.
17:52Elon MuskBut actually Mars will be very dangerous and the moon base will be also dangerous. Much more dangerous and much less comfortable than Earth. So people that would go in the early days to make life multi planetary on Mars or the moon, they would have a much higher risk of death than if they stayed on Earth.
18:15Elon MuskAnd things would be cramped and uncomfortable. So that's the sales pitch for Mars. It's going to be uncomfortable. The food won't be as good as Earth. You might die.
18:28Elon MuskIt's going to be a mass amount of hard work and it may not succeed. That's the sales pitch. Do you want to go?
18:37Katie MillerSame as when people came to America.
18:38Elon MuskYeah. Didn't want to be in Jamestown.
18:42Katie MillerPeople went anyway.
18:44Elon MuskYeah. Maybe if there'd been social media back then, they would have saying, we're all dying. Here's videos of us dying. Would have probably put a damper on future voyages.
18:55Elon MuskBut yeah, a whole bunch of people just disappeared. We don't know what happened to them.
19:00Katie MillerYou talk a lot on X about wardrobe and how you wish current wardrobe would be differently.
19:07Elon MuskI just think like from a fashion standpoint we should evolve. It's like my son Saxon said at one point, why does everything look like it's 2015? I was like, damn, things do everything does look like it's 2015.
19:23Elon MuskIt's like if you took a picture from 2015 and said in 2025 it looks exactly the same.
19:28Katie MillerThere were.
19:29Elon MuskStylistically, things are the same as 2015. We've not moved the needle in a decade.
19:37Katie MillerSo what should it look like?
19:38Elon MuskSomething new. You know, like the 60s had a definitive style, the 70s had a definitive style, the 80s had a different style. And then the 90s also had a different style.
19:50Elon MuskBut then you start looking at the 2000s and the 2010s and it's like less and less every year. I think we should evolve our style. And if you look at some of the older paintings, you know, past cabinet secretaries, some of them, they look cool.
20:13Elon MuskTheir jackets are cooler than what we have right now. They have sort of like a high collar and like a sort of, I don't know, some sort of, what do you call those things, Ascot or something like that.
20:25Elon MuskI mean, it just looks cool, but we don't. Everything's like a very normal looking suit at this point, but like literally the same as 2015. I'm being generous because.
20:36Elon MuskArguably. The same as 2010.
20:38Katie MillerYeah.
20:39Elon MuskSo in 15 years. And I'm like. From a fashion standpoint, I don't think we've moved since 2000. In 25 years, if you showed someone a picture of. This is a bunch of.
20:51Elon MuskThis is a bunch of dudes in 2000. There's a bunch of dudes in 2025. Which year is which? So I think we should, I don't know, spice it up a little.
21:02Katie MillerWhat's a conspiracy theory you believe in?
21:04Elon MuskI mean, which conspiracy theories haven't come true at this point? We've run out of conspiracy theories that. Because it will come true. As far as I can tell. I mean, I don't know of any aliens.
21:17Elon MuskBill has asked me if there's. There are aliens. I have seen no evidence of aliens. No one on the SpaceX senior team has any evidence. Aliens. Because I've asked him, like, guys, am I missing something?
21:34Elon MuskHas anyone on the team. Has anyone seen any evidence of aliens?
21:39Katie MillerDoes that include UFOs?
21:41Elon MuskThat's just an unidentified flying object. So. So UFOs, like, it could be like some new weapons program or whatever. That's, you know, some hypersonic missile or something like that.
21:54Elon MuskThat. That would be technically a ufo, but it's just basically some weapons prototype. It's not like aliens. So although Neil Armstrong. Neil. A spelled backwards is alien. Coincidence.
22:15Katie MillerYou believe we actually went to the moon?
22:18Elon MuskYes, we went to the moon a few times, actually. And played golf on the moon. We didn't just go to the moon. We actually got a little bored and started playing golf on the moon.
22:31Katie MillerBut why didn't the flag move? There's like, that conspiracy that was the jump.
22:34Elon MuskThe shark moment.
22:35Katie MillerAbout the flag?
22:36Elon MuskNo, the playing golf on the moon.
22:38Katie MillerOkay.
22:39Elon MuskYeah. I literally did.
22:40Katie MillerNo, I understand that.
22:41Elon MuskYeah, yeah. Whacked golf ball on the moon.
22:45Katie MillerIs there. There's no gravity, though, right? So, like.
22:47Elon MuskSo there's gravity. 1/6. If it wasn't gravity, you'd just float away. There's no atmosphere.
22:53Katie MillerOkay, fair.
22:54Elon MuskBut there is 1/6 gravity.
22:57Katie MillerWhat's the biggest misconception about you?
23:00Elon MuskI don't know. How would I know? What do you think?
23:07Katie MillerI think it's. I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you.
23:12Elon MuskMe?
23:12Katie MillerOh. Everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for.
23:16Elon MuskOh. But you're.
23:18Katie MillerI think you're very kind.
23:19Elon MuskThanks.
23:20Katie MillerLike, people think. Which you are, like a very demanding boss. I think that you are. I've never Heard you yell at any employee.
23:28Elon MuskYeah, I don't know.
23:29Katie MillerI think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly mission driven, which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen. Like, Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to.
23:40Katie MillerEveryone is there to work on a singular goal. And so I think to me, the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because it's all mission driven and you are a very good employer to work for.
23:58Katie MillerAnd I think people assume you are not.
24:01Elon MuskRight. Well, why would they think anyone would work at the companies? Yeah, I mean, talented people can go work anywhere they want. So they're only going to work at one of my companies if they want to.
24:21Elon MuskAnd if they're mistreated in some way, they would leave and go work somewhere else.
24:25Katie MillerHow did you come up with the idea for Starbase?
24:29Elon MuskWell, I think we needed something inspirational. I can't wait. We kind of have a lot of star things, so we've got Starlink, Starship. Well, where would Starship depart from Starbase?
24:47Elon MuskI mean, Starbase is, as you've mentioned, it's like. I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth.
24:53Katie MillerI agree.
24:56Elon MuskAnd it used to be a sandbar down by the Rio Grande. It's only like 3ft above sea level. So we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers down by the river, literally within side of the Rio Grande and on an actual sandbar.
25:23Elon MuskKind of had to have like an inspirational name. And then we made it a city. So it's an incorporated city, like legally a city. You don't hear about new cities being formed that often.
25:37Katie MillerThe last time there was a company town, it was Disney World.
25:42Elon MuskYeah, I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations. But yeah, Disney World is. It's literally its name.
25:53Katie MillerYeah.
25:54Elon MuskI'm Walt Disney. This is my world. Yeah. I've gone from land to world. They got like incorporated as a city and got tax exemption, which was like a whole.
26:05Elon MuskWas a. Was a big deal. Yeah, I've been to Disney World probably 10 times.
26:10Katie MillerReally?
26:11Elon MuskYeah, maybe more than. Maybe more than 10, but at least 10 times because Cape Canaveral is right by Disney World.
26:20Katie MillerThis makes sense now.
26:21Elon MuskSo when I'd have the kids, then I would. My older kids and I was. We're trying to get the rocket launch from Cape Navel. Then, you know, the thing they'd want to do is go to Disney World or Harry Potter Land.
26:38Katie MillerWhat's your Favorite ride.
26:40Elon MuskI'm sort of tempted to say Space Mountain. I suppose the airplane Space Mountain. I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade.
26:47Katie MillerIt's a little herky jerky.
26:49Elon MuskIt doesn't look quite as sci fi as it used to. You know, it's like, it's like the day before yesterday is tomorrow. We're just like yesterday.
26:58Katie MillerWhat's your favorite age to parent of your kids?
27:02Elon MuskGenerally, kids are the most fun, between 5 and 10.
27:06Katie MillerDo you think humanity is inherently good, or is it just trying to be?
27:11Elon MuskThe concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity. I do think humanity is unbalanced good. I generally think increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing.
27:26Elon MuskTry to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing conscious awareness. When I've thought about how did we get here? Because if we just start out as a hydrogen gas cloud that sort of condensed and then formed stars, and then these stars exploded and then they recondensed, formed stars again and then exploded again, and then eventually you get to us 13.8 billion years later.
28:01Elon MuskOne of the interesting questions to think about is how many times have your atoms been at the center of a star? I think it's like on average three or four times, something like that.
28:14Elon MuskThen how many times will your atoms be at the center of a star? Estimates vary, but it seems like we're roughly halfway. So your atom's likely to be at the center of the star, maybe another four times or something like that.
28:31Elon MuskIt depends on what your predictions are for the future. But in terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway that early.
28:47Elon MuskYou know, if you want to look at the big picture, that's the really big picture.
28:52Katie MillerWhat's one invention that's made us worse, not better?
28:56Elon MuskThat's one adventure that's made us worse.
28:58Katie MillerMm, invention,
29:02Elon Muskmaybe short form video. It seems to be rotting people's brains.
29:08Katie MillerWhat's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented?
29:13Elon MuskHope I hope never it gets invented.
29:15Katie MillerLike, yeah, like it's gonna destroy us all. Or you think with the proper safeguards?
29:24Elon MuskWell, I mean, obviously I hope like the people don't invent a virus that can kill all humans. Like that's an obvious thing.
29:32Katie MillerYeah,
29:34Elon MuskI mean, yeah, generally I hope inventions that destroy consciousness are not invented. I think the future is going to look very interesting. So it's. I do have this theory about the predicting the future, which is that the most interesting Outcome is the most likely.
29:54Elon MuskWhich if simulation theory is accurate, makes sense. Because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futurists, they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring. Because this is what we do in our reality.
30:10Elon MuskSo if SpaceX is doing, or Tesla doing simulations to understand how a car would work or robot or spaceship or something like that, we run all these simulations in the computer and the simulations that we pay attention to are the ones that are the most interesting.
30:32Elon MuskLike the simulation where everything goes right on the rocket we actually don't pay attention to because that's not a everything goes right simulation is fine. So we actually test the, you know, when we simulate the rocket flight, we'll actually test all sorts of oddball situations.
30:56Elon MuskBut we don't test it. We don't have the simulation be totally wrong because I mean like if the rocket just explodes immediately, that's not also not interesting. So it's like you need to find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit and without exploding.
31:15Elon MuskAnd then you find those boundaries and then when you launch the actual rocket, you try to, you make sure it stays within those boundaries. Or another way to think of it is like we could be an alien Netflix series and that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good.
31:35Katie MillerAre the ratings good?
31:36Elon MuskYeah, but you can think of it like from a Darwinian standpoint. If you apply Darwin to simulation theory, then only the most interesting simulations will continue. Therefore the most interesting outcome is most likely because it's either that or annihilation.
31:53Elon MuskSo really we have one goal. Keep it interesting.
31:56Katie MillerDo you think social media has made people more honest or more performative?
32:01Elon MuskWell, social media makes people more performative. By the same token, you get more real life video of things that are actually happening and anything that is very interesting will spread, will go viral on the Internet.
32:23Elon MuskSo you have both. You've got more performative people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their TikTok video or whatever, or their reels or maybe on their X post or something.
32:37Elon MuskAnd so that's very performative. But then you also see real life videos that are, that challenge the narrative but are nonetheless real.
32:50Katie MillerIs there any X accounts? You're surprised when you changed it so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in the United States?
32:58Elon MuskI don't really think about it that much. I mean there's in a country of origin we have to be a little careful about. This you can actually technically just specify your region.
33:12Elon MuskLike you can say I'm in Asia or something like that, which is quite big. But it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to pretend that they're say a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa, wherever, if they're, you know, if everything about their account is from a different continent than they are pretending to be from, it's gets a little harder to pretend.
33:39Elon MuskWe don't want to dox people, but we kind of think you're not really doxing someone if you say which continent they're from.
33:45Katie MillerYeah, I think it's fair.
33:46Elon MuskYeah.
33:47Katie MillerOkay, so in every episode we've played, would you rather. Okay, would you rather save humanity from extinction, extinction on Earth, or guarantee its survival on Mars?
34:01Elon MuskIt's a false dichotomy. I think I'd say guarantee Earth. Earth's much better than Mars, to be clear. But Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multi planet species.
34:13Elon MuskIt's really our only option. If you want to become a multi planet species, you've got Mars, which is very difficult, but not impossible. Earth is much better than Mars, but you know, we can't.
34:27Elon MuskI think it was Tsiolkovsky or I think he said Earth is the cradle of civilization, but we can't stay in the cradle forever.
34:35Katie MillerWould you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain?
34:39Elon MuskI think it would depend on which Marvel superhero or which Bond villain. I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero. They did model Iron man in the movies after me.
34:51Katie MillerYes. So you were in the Iron man movie, right?
34:54Elon MuskYes. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Robert Downey Jr. And Favreau met with me, toured SpaceX and stuff. In fact, Iron Man 2, a large part of the movie is filmed in SpaceX.
35:08Elon MuskReally? Yes. If you look at, if you watch Iron Man 2, you'll see it's the SpaceX factory is the actual background.
35:14Katie MillerThat's so cool.
35:15Elon MuskYeah, it was cool. We had Scarlett Johansson doing martial arts in the lobby, actually.
35:27Elon MuskYeah. And you expect me to believe this is all real?
35:31Katie MillerIt's a simulation.
35:32Elon MuskExactly. What are the odds? Yeah, I mean, if you were me.
35:38Katie MillerNo, I agree with you.
35:39Elon MuskWould you think this is real or a simulation?
35:42Katie MillerYour life is a simulation.
35:43Elon MuskYeah.
35:44Katie MillerYour life gets to be the simulation.
35:45Elon MuskYeah. And I'm like doing all the side quests and everything.
35:48Katie MillerWhat's your best side quest?
35:51Elon MuskA Doge, probably.
35:58Katie MillerOkay. Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override?
36:05Elon MuskWho Came up with these questions.
36:07Katie MillerJust keep going. These are funny. Maybe not to you because they're too trivial.
36:12Elon MuskWhat do you mean? Like, so that with an algorithm means you only see the people you follow.
36:19Katie MillerLike it's just a mess. Like it was Twitter before you bought it.
36:24Elon MuskYeah, yeah. The sort of people you follow. And then as a recommendation algorithm, I think probably in December we'll finally have a half decent recommendation algorithm.
36:37Katie MillerIt's a lot better recently.
36:40Elon MuskYeah. So it really just trying to show people stuff they'd be interested in. But there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this where Grok, poor thing is reading all.
36:55Elon MuskIt's going to read all 100 million posts per day, which is.
36:59Katie MillerDoes that take up a lot of compute?
37:00Elon MuskHopefully it doesn't destroy its mind or something. Yeah, it does take a lot of compute. Most posts are. There's a lot of spam scam stuff, so just that can be easily discarded, I suppose.
37:16Elon MuskBut then you've got to take 100 million pieces of content, match that to sometimes 3 or 400 million people per day. So that's a lot of matching.
37:31Katie MillerMy algorithm used to look a lot like other people's when you open their X account. Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's.
37:40Elon MuskWell, we really are kind of. This is just the, the beginning kind of thing. The what I mentioned the Grok reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December.
37:57Elon MuskSo that the acid test for this is are you seeing content like are you seeing content that you find really interesting from accounts you've never seen before? If that's happening, then the algorithm is working like it should be possible for somebody to put to post content as a new user with no followers.
38:20Elon MuskAnd if that content is excellent, it gets seen by a lot of people. So can an account with small number of followers or a new account, if the content is intrinsically excellent, can that content be seen by a lot of people?
38:38Elon MuskThat's our goal.
38:40Katie MillerAll right, last one. Would you rather invent time travel or teleportation?
38:44Elon MuskActually those things are almost the same thing in that you can't break the speed of light without breaking reality. So if you could teleport somewhere instantly. If you're talking about teleportation faster than the speed of light, presumably it would be.
39:06Elon MuskThen that would break our reality, as would time travel. Unless there's a very important conditional here, unless we are a simulation. Time travel does not break a simulation.
39:24Katie MillerIs it like in Loki where you're on the time and you just break a new one, I think.
39:31Elon MuskWell, people do tend to get wrapped up in knots with the time travel thing because they try to simultaneously say something must be logically consistent but logically inconsistent. That's impossible.
39:43Elon MuskBut if you think about, like a video game and say, okay, you've got various saved games, you can go back and restore a saved game from a prior start point.
39:56Elon MuskYou still have your other saved games, and there are many games going on in parallel. They don't have to be consistent with each other. That is a false assumption.
40:11Elon MuskIf we're a simulation, we might be somebody's video game or TV show or something like that. Like I said, we're just going to keep it interesting so they don't turn the computer off.
40:30Elon MuskI'm just saying, if that's true, keep it interesting. Or they can turn off the computer and they might. Please don't delete us. Please don't delete us. Please don't delete us.
40:43Elon MuskWe'll keep it interesting elsewhere.
40:45Katie MillerYou keep it interesting.
40:47Elon MuskYeah. So if the most interesting outcome is most likely, what do you think are the most interesting things that can occur? Now, the most interesting thing is not what you want.
40:56Elon MuskIt's just as viewed by a third party. Let's say this was, for argument's sake, an alien Netflix series, and you're trying to maximize your viewership, you know, maximize your ratings.
41:14Elon MuskIt's actually an interesting thought experiment. It's actually not that interesting if everything just blows up. It's now over. That's not that interesting. It's not that interesting if there's a calamity that wipes out all the humans.
41:30Elon MuskThe show just ended. But I mean, fortunately and unfortunately,
41:39Katie Millerif
41:39Elon Muskthere is drama that, like war or something like that, that is interesting. People will go to movies and watch, say, a World War I movie where people are getting blown up from cannon shells and they're in the movie theater eating popcorn, drinking a soda.
42:02Elon MuskLike, you wouldn't go to a movie where everything was just perfect and stayed that way. You'd leave the theater.
42:08Katie MillerGood romance story doesn't.
42:11Elon MuskThere's always a story arc. There's always an arc, and it's generally not a linear arc. So it's not going to be like, things start here and just go straight up and to the right and end up in a good place or something like that.
42:26Elon MuskThere's usually ups and downs, the classic sort of story arcs, essentially, you know, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, you have an initial rise in Act 2, fall back in act, initial rise in Act 1, fall down in Act 2, surge back in Act 3 with, you know, happy ending if it's a comedy, or a sad ending if it's a drama.
42:54Elon MuskIf you look at President Trump's, you know, story, it's more interesting that he lost the intermediate term and then won, you know, his second term after that. Just like the story arc, initially up, then down, then resurgent again.
43:21Elon MuskIf you went with my theory that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, then that was the most likely outcome. It was inevitable.
43:34Katie MillerWhat are you watching on TV right now?
43:38Elon MuskI am. Irony man. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing.
43:49Elon MuskWhat am I watching? Actually, right now I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the TV series Turtles and a half show Total Power. Yeah. Because little X wants to watch that.
44:01Elon MuskI. I'm watching things that the kids. Kids want to watch. Re. Watched Dodgeball last night.
44:08Katie MillerIt's a good movie.
44:09Elon MuskYeah. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
44:19Katie MillerWhat?
44:31Elon MuskYeah.
44:36Elon MuskHigh motivation to dodge if somebody's loving. Reg, is that you?
44:40Katie MillerWhat song instantly puts you in a good mood?
44:49Elon MuskThe final countdown by europa.
44:56Katie MillerHeard that song a lot. Do you read the instructions or just wing it?
45:00Elon MuskWhat's the goal?
45:02Katie MillerLike, if you're putting something together, do you read the instructions or do you wing it?
45:05Elon MuskIf it's a simple thing, I'll wing it. If it's a complex thing, I'll look at the instructions.
45:09Katie MillerIf you had to start from scratch Today with only $1,000, what would you do?
45:18Elon MuskWell, I did. I did originally come to North America with like, I don't know, 2500 bucks Canadian. So I don't remember. Two grand US, one bag of books and one bag of clothes in Montreal at age 17.
45:33Elon MuskSo that is how I started out at this point. I have a lot of knowledge. A lot of things have to go wrong for that to be the case.
45:44Elon MuskIt's like, am I just emerging from prison, perhaps with a stipend? All my companies have been confiscated. I mean, it would take Armageddon, which hopefully that doesn't happen like Ragnarok next level.
46:01Elon MuskAnd I lost. Yeah, the hell Bad hand. I mean, it's impossible for me for someone to have that amount of all the knowledge that I have and then be dropped down to a low resource amount.
46:20Elon MuskBecause the reality is that either something truly catastrophic has happened, like civilization has melted, or I will be able to ask people to just give me money. And with the promise that I will have A high return, which is what I'm able to do right now.
46:38Elon MuskLike, if you give me a dollar, you will get back much more than a dollar. So this is somewhat of an impossible dichotomy because civilization would have had to have destroyed or something, in which case $1,000 is not going to solve your problems.
46:59Elon MuskYou can't do much with this. If you're wandering around radioactive craters and you're in, like, fallout or whatever, then $1,000 is not going to solve anything. And if civilization has melted, then probably just told people into giving me money, which I've done before.
47:30Katie MillerIf you weren't running your companies, what random job would you enjoy doing the most?
47:34Elon MuskI don't know if that's all that random, but I'd like, probably write video games or something like that. I did that at one point. I like solving problems, so I like building things.
47:49Elon MuskA lot of things. Like, a lot.
47:55Katie MillerWhat do you eat in a typical day?
47:58Elon MuskWell, these days I start off with a breakfast of steak and eggs and coffee. And then dinner tends to vary. I usually don't have lunch or if I do something very small.
48:13Elon MuskAnd then dinner, depending on whether it's social or not, will vary in cuisine. I like a wide range of cuisine.
48:23Katie MillerWhat's your favorite food?
48:25Elon MuskAmerican food is my favorite food.
48:27Katie MillerLike pizza or a cheeseburger.
48:29Elon MuskLike, yeah, the cheeseburger is probably the. If I had to say, like, there's only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time, which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger, because cheeseburgers are amazing.
48:45Elon MuskIt's a genius invention. I'll tell you a funny story about when I was living in LA and I took my older boys out for lunch to Sugar Fish, which is a very kind of uptight sushi restaurant.
49:05Elon MuskIn fact, it's on the menu of the restaurant, it says, do not ask for soy sauce because the chef has put the right amount of soy sauce and you can't have any more.
49:19Elon MuskAnd if the chef doesn't think you should have soy sauce, you can't have soy sauce. That's what it says on the menu, basically. So, like, extremely strict sushi restaurant.
49:34Elon MuskAnd so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want, and then it comes to Saxon, and Saxon says, I'll have a cheeseburger. And the waiter takes a moment for the waiter to recover because no one's ever asked for a cheeseburger at this very strict sushi restaurant.
49:56Elon MuskTook him like 30 seconds to realized he just didn't ask for a cheeseburger because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce. So then when he finally recovered, he said, we don't have cheeseburgers.
50:11Elon MuskAnd Saxon goes at the top of his voice, what? Like, what kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers? And he says, fine, I'll have a hamburger. I don't know what you got against dairy, but, yeah, I don't have hamburgers either.
50:29Katie MillerDid he stay for the rest of the meal?
50:31Elon MuskYeah, but he was non plussed. It's like, I can't believe this place doesn't have cheeseburger. So. So, yeah, I mean, I like. I guess I like barbecue, which is good because I'm here in Austin.
50:47Elon MuskI mean, if it's. If it's. If it's haute cuisine, I like French food as well, but not every day.
50:53Katie MillerOnce in a while, if your friends described you in one emoji, what's the emoji?
50:59Elon MuskI guess the emoji I use the most, which is the laughing emoji.
51:06Katie MillerAll right, and we close on this question every episode. If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's coming to dinner and what are you eating?
51:16Elon MuskOr maybe Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Nikola Tesla. I mean, there's actually a lot of people I'd like to. I would have liked to talk to. And we'll eat, I guess, whatever they'd like.
51:33Elon MuskI think if you're gonna. If this is a once in a lifetime thing, I think you'd want to have some epic, you know, 12 course meal or something like that.
51:44Katie MillerFeast.
51:45Elon MuskYeah, there's some. Yeah. Do you want to go all out for that dinner? I think you're probably not going to serve cheeseburgers unless they want it.
51:55Katie MillerYeah.
51:56Elon MuskMaybe one of the courses could be like a tiny cheeseburger.
51:59Katie MillerThose don't taste as good as the big ones.
52:01Elon MuskNo, but they could. It's just. They don't try. There's nothing you could make. A tiny cheeseburger tastes just as good as a big cheeseburger if you try it.
52:10Katie MillerHave you ever had a tiny cheeseburger that actually tastes good?
52:13Elon MuskRare, but yes.
52:14Katie MillerOkay.
52:15Elon Musk1% of the time. But usually it's too much bread and it's dry.
52:18Katie MillerCorrect?
52:19Elon MuskYeah.
52:20Katie MillerAnd then, like, there's not enough meat in proportion to the bread.
52:22Elon MuskYeah. But could you make a tiny cheeseburger that's good? Of course. Like, you're not breaking, you know, like, you don't need a Nobel Prize for this. You can definitely make a tiny cheeseburger it's, like, physically possible.
52:35Elon MuskI'm saying it's just rare.
52:39Katie MillerThank you for doing this.
52:40Elon MuskYou're welcome.
52:41Katie MillerThanks for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. We'll see you next week. Tuesday, 6:00pm.