Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and the future | TED
Transcript
0:02Chris AndersonHello. So in just a few minutes, Elon Musk will be joining us here live on stage for a conversation. Rumor has it there are a few things to talk about with him.
0:21Chris AndersonWe will see. But before that, I just want to show you something special. I want you to come with me to Tesla's huge gigafactory in Austin, Texas. So the day before it opened last week, the evening before, I was allowed to walk around it.
0:41Chris AndersonNo one else there. And what I saw there was honestly pretty mind blowing. This is Elon Musk's famous machine that builds the machine and his view, the secret to a sustainable future.
0:53Chris AndersonIt's not just making an electric car, it's making a system that churns out huge numbers of electric cars with a margin so that they can fund further growth. When I was there, none of us knew whether Elon would actually be able to make it here today.
1:09Chris AndersonSo I took the chance to sit down with him and record an epic interview. And I just want to show you an 8 minute excerpt of that interview. So here from Austin, Texas, Elon Musk.
1:24Chris AndersonWant us to switch now to think a bit about artificial intelligence. I'm curious about your timelines and how you predict and how come some things are so amazingly on the money and some art.
1:34Chris AndersonSo when it comes to predicting sales of Tesla vehicles, for example, I mean you've kind of been amazing. I think in 2014, when Tesla had sold that year 60,000 cars, you said 20, 20, I think we will do half a million a year.
1:49Elon MuskYeah, we did almost exactly half a
1:51Chris Andersonmillion five years ago. Last time you came to ted, we I asked you about full self driving and you said yep, this very year I am confident that we will have a car going from L A to New York without any intervention.
2:07Elon MuskYeah, I don't want to blow your mind, but I'm not always right.
2:12Chris AndersonSo what's the difference between those two? Why, why, why has full self driving in particular been so hard to predict?
2:19Elon MuskI mean the thing that really got me, and I think it's going to get a lot of other people, is that there are just so many false dawns with self driving where you think you got the problem, have a handle on the problem and then nope, turns out you just hit a ceiling because if you were to plot the progress, the progress looks like a log curve.
2:45Elon MuskSo it's like a series of log curves. So most people don't want like curve is I suppose. But it goes, it goes up sort of, you know, sort of a fairly straight way and then it starts tailing off and you start and there's a kind of ocean diminishing returns.
3:01Elon MuskYou know, in retrospect they seem obvious, but in order to solve for self driving properly, you actually just, you have to solve real world AI
3:12Chris Andersonbecause you
3:12Elon Musksay, what are the road networks designed to work with? They're designed to work with a biological neural net, our brains and with vision, our eyes. And so in order to make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real world AI and vision because we need, we need cameras and silicon neural nets in order to have, to have self driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets.
3:51Elon MuskYou know, when you, I guess when you put it that way, it's sort of like quite obvious that the only way to solve full self driving is to solve real world AI and sophisticated vision.
4:01Chris AndersonWhat do you feel about the current architecture? Do you think you have an architecture now where, where there is a chance for the logarithmic curve not to tail off any anytime soon?
4:11Elon MuskWell, I mean these, these may be infamous last words, but I actually am confident that we will solve it this year. That we will exceed the probability of an accident.
4:26Elon MuskAt what point do you exceed that of the average person? Right. I think we will exceed that this year. We could be here talking again in a year. It's like, well, yeah, another year went by and it didn't happen.
4:36Elon MuskBut I think this, I think this is the year.
4:38Chris AndersonIs there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to drive people to be ambitious. Without that, nothing gets done. So it feels like at some point in the last year, seeing the progress on understanding that you're that the AI, the Tesla, understanding the world around it led to a kind of an aha moment because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product development going on at Tesla this year is this robot Optimus?
5:12Elon MuskYes.
5:13Chris AndersonIs it something that happened in the development of full self driving that gave you the confidence to say, you know what, we could do something special here?
5:21Elon MuskYeah, exactly. So, you know, it took me a while to sort of realizes that in order to solve self driving, you really needed to solve real world AI. And the point at which you solve real world AI for a car, which is really a robot on four wheels, you can then generalize that to a robot on legs as well.
5:41Elon MuskThe thing that the things that are currently missing are enough intelligence, enough intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed.
5:53Elon MuskSo the missing things are basically real world intelligence. And scaling up manufacturing Those are two things that Tesla is very good at. And so then we basically just need to design the specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for a humanoid robot.
6:11Elon MuskPeople have no idea this is going to be bigger than the car.
6:17Chris AndersonTalk about. I mean, I think the first applications you've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing, but eventually the vision is to have these available for people at home.
6:26Chris AndersonIf you had a robot that really understood the 3D architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house was or was supposed to be and could recognize all those objects, I mean, that.
6:42Chris AndersonThat's kind of amazing, isn't it? Like, like that the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what, like tidy up.
6:49Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. Or make. Make dinner, I guess. Mow the lawn, take.
6:55Chris AndersonTake a cup of tea to grandma and show her family pictures.
6:59Elon MuskExactly. Take care of my grandmother and make sure. Yeah, exactly.
7:04Chris AndersonWhen it could recognize, obviously recognize everyone in the home. Yeah. Could play catch with your kids.
7:09Elon MuskYes. I mean, obviously we need to be careful this doesn't become a dystopian situation. Like, I think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized ROM chip on the robot that cannot be updated over the air.
7:25Elon MuskWhere if you, for example, were to say, stop, stop, stop, that would. If anyone said that, then the robot would stop, you know, type of thing. And that's not updatable remotely.
7:34Elon MuskI think it's going to be important to have safety features like that.
7:37Chris AndersonYeah, that sounds wise.
7:39Elon MuskAnd I do think there should be a regulatory agency for a. I've said this for many years. I don't love being regulated, but I, you know, I think this is an important thing for public safety.
7:47Chris AndersonDo you think there will be basically like, say you say 2050 or whatever. Like a robot in most homes is what they will be and people will love them and count on them.
7:57Chris AndersonYou have your own butler, basically. Yeah.
8:00Elon MuskYou'll have your sort of buddy robot, probably. Yeah.
8:04Chris AndersonI mean, how much of a buddy do you like, do you do. How many applications do you thought is there, you know, can you have a romantic partner? Sex partner?
8:10Elon MuskI mean, a lot of money. Inevitable. I mean, I did promise the Internet that I'd make cat girls. We could make a robot cat girl.
8:24Elon MuskSo, yeah, I guess it'll be whatever people want, really.
8:28Chris AndersonYou know, what sort of timeline should we be thinking about of the first models that are actually made and sold?
8:38Elon MuskWell, you know, the first units that we tend to make are for jobs that are dangerous, boring, Repetitive and things that people don't want to do. And you know, I think we'll have like an interesting prototype sometime this year.
8:53Elon MuskWe might have something useful next year, but I think quite likely within at least two years. And then we'll see rapid growth year over year of the usefulness of the humanoid robots and decrease in cost and scaling up production.
9:07Chris AndersonHelp me on the economics of this. So what do you picture the cost of one of these being?
9:11Elon MuskWell, I think the cost is actually not going to be crazy high, like less than a car.
9:18Chris AndersonBut think about the economics of this. If you can replace a $30,000, $40,000 a year worker, which you have to pay every year with a one time payment of $25,000 for a robot that can work longer hours, doesn't go on vacation and that could, it could be a pretty rapid replacement of certain types of jobs.
9:42Chris AndersonHow worried should the world be about that?
9:45Elon MuskI wouldn't worry about the sort of putting people out of a job thing. I think we're actually going to have and already do have a massive shortage of labor.
9:53Elon MuskSo I think we will have.
9:59Elon MuskNot people out of work, but actually still a shortage of labor even in the future. But this really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them.
10:14Elon MuskIt'll be so cheap to have goods and services, it'll be ridiculous.
10:23Chris AndersonSo that is part of an epic 80 minute interview which we are releasing to People Members of TED 2022 right after this conference. You should be able to look at it on the TED Live website.
10:42Chris AndersonThere's public interest in it. We're putting that out to the world on Sunday afternoon, I think Sunday even. But if you're into this kind of stuff, definitely a good thing to do over the weekend.
10:54Chris AndersonNow then, hearing from Elon live. There's huge public interest in that. We have opened up this segment to livestream. And so we're joined right now by I think quite a few people around the world.
11:09Chris AndersonWelcome to Vancouver. Welcome to TED 22. You're joining us on the last day of our conference here in a PACT theater. And we've been hearing all week from people with dreams about what the next era of humanity is going to be.
11:26Chris AndersonAnd now arguably the biggest visionary of them all, Elon Musk.
11:41Chris AndersonElon, welcome.
11:47Chris AndersonSo Elon, a few hours ago you made an offer to buy Twitter. Why?
12:03Chris AndersonHow do you know? Little bird tweeted in my ear or something, I don't know.
12:09Elon MuskBy the way, have you seen the movie Ted about the bear?
12:12Chris AndersonI Have. I have.
12:13Elon MuskIt's good movie.
12:16Chris AndersonYeah. So. Yeah, yeah. So
12:23Elon Muskwas there a question?
12:25Chris AndersonWhy make that offer?
12:26Elon MuskOh, so. Well, I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech where all. So, yeah, Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square.
12:47Chris AndersonSo
12:50Elon Muskit's just really important that people have the, both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. And, you know, so one of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people's tweets, you know, if they're emphasized or de emphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that action has been taken.
13:21Elon MuskSo there's no sort of behind the scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.
13:30Chris AndersonBut last week when we spoke, Elon, I asked you whether you were thinking of taking up. You said, no way. Said, I do not want to own Twitter. It is a recipe for misery.
13:41Chris AndersonEveryone will blame me for everything. What on earth changed?
13:45Elon MuskNo, I think, I think everyone will still blame me for everything. Yeah. If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it's my fault 100%. I think there will be quite a few errors.
13:56Chris AndersonYes, it will be miserable. But you still want to do it.
14:00Elon MuskI mean, I hope it's not too miserable, but I just think it's important to the fun. Like it's important to the function of democracy. It's important to the function of the United States as a free country and many other countries and to help, actually to help freedom in the world more broadly than the US and so I think it's, it's a, you know, I think this, there's the risk, civilizational risk is decreased if Twitter.
14:39Elon MuskThe more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. And so I do think this will be somewhat painful and I'm not sure that I will actually be able to, to acquire it.
14:50Elon MuskAnd I should also say the intent is to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law in a private company, which I think is around 2,000 or so.
15:02Elon MuskSo. Well, it's not like, it's definitely not from the standpoint of let me figure out how to monopolize or maximize my ownership of Twitter, but we'll try to bring along as many shoulders as we, as we're allowed to.
15:13Chris AndersonYou don't necessarily want to pay out 40 or whatever it is, billion dollars in cash. You'd like them to come come with you.
15:20Elon MuskIt'. I mean, I could technically afford it. I heard that.
15:25Chris AndersonI had that
15:27Elon Muskbut what I'm saying
15:28Chris Andersonis
15:31Elon Muskthis is not a way to sort of make money. You know, I think this is. It's just that. I think this is. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
15:57Chris AndersonBut you've described yourself.
15:58Elon MuskI don't care about the economics at all.
16:01Chris AndersonOkay, that's core to hear. This is not about the economics. It's for the moral good that you think it will achieve. You've described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist.
16:11Chris AndersonBut does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay?
16:17Elon MuskWell, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the U.S.
16:34Elon Muskand of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules.
16:40Chris AndersonSo you can't incite people to violence, like. Like a direct incitement to violence. You know, you can't do the equivalent of crying fire in a movie theater, for example.
16:51Elon MuskNo, that would be a crime. It should be a crime.
16:54Chris AndersonBut here's the challenge is that it's such a nuanced difference between different things. So there's incitement to violence. That's a no. If it's illegal, there's hate speech, which some forms of hate speech are fine.
17:10Chris AndersonYou know, I hate spinach
17:14Elon Muskif it's a sauteed in a, you know, cream sauce, it's me. Quite nice.
17:19Chris AndersonBut so so. But the problem is so so, so let's say someone says, okay, here's one tweet. I hate politician X. Yeah. Next tweet is, I wish politician, Politician X wasn't alive, as we, some of us have said about Putin right now, for example.
17:33Chris AndersonSo that's legitimate speech. Another tweet is, I wish politician X wasn't alive with a picture of their head with a gun sight over it. Or that plus their address.
17:46Chris AndersonI mean, at some point, someone has to make a decision as to which of those is not okay. Can an algorithm do that? Or surely you need human judgment at some point.
17:57Elon MuskNo, I think, like I said, in my view, Twitter should match the laws of the country. And really, you know, there's an obligation to do that. But going beyond that and having it be unclear who's making what changes to where, having tweets sort of mysteriously be promoted and demoted with no insight into what's going on.
18:30Elon MuskHaving a black box algorithm promote some things and other, not other things. I think this can be quite dangerous.
18:37Chris AndersonSo the idea of opening the algorithm is a huge deal and I think many people would welcome that of understanding exactly how it's making the decision and critique it.
18:46Chris AndersonAnd critique it.
18:48Elon MuskWhat I mean is I think the code should be on GitHub so people can look through it and say, like, I see a problem here, I don't agree with this.
18:59Elon MuskThey can highlight issues, suggest changes, in the same way that you sort of update Linux or Signal or something like that, you know.
19:07Chris AndersonBut as I understand it, like at some point right now, what the algorithm would do is it would look at, for example, how many people have flagged a tweet as obnoxious.
19:19Chris AndersonAnd then at some point a human has to look at it and make a decision as to does this cross the line or not? That the algorithm itself can't, I don't think yet tell the difference between legal and okay and definitely obnoxious.
19:35Chris AndersonThe question is, which humans make that core? I mean, do you have a picture of that right now? Twitter and Facebook and others, they've hired thousands of people to try to help make war wise decisions.
19:49Chris AndersonAnd the trouble is that no one can agree on what is wise. How do you solve that?
19:55Elon MuskWell, I think we would want to err on this. If in doubt, let the speech, let it exist. It would have, you know, if it's a, you know, a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist.
20:13Elon MuskBut obviously, you know, in a case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy that you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet.
20:24Chris AndersonSo
20:26Elon MuskI'm not saying that I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and have just be very cautious with permanent bans.
20:43Elon MuskTimeouts I think are better than sort of permanent bands.
20:47Chris AndersonAnd,
20:49Elon Muskbut just in general, like I
20:52Chris Andersonsaid,
20:54Elon Muskit won't be perfect, but I think we wanted to really have like, so the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible and a good sign as to whether there's free speech is.
21:09Elon MuskIs someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech. And it's damn annoying when someone you don't like says something you don't like.
21:22Elon MuskThat is a sign of a healthy, functioning free speech situation.
21:31Chris AndersonSo I think many people would agree with that. And look at the reaction online. Many people are excited by you coming in and the changes you're proposing. Some of us are absolutely horrified here's how they would see it.
21:41Chris AndersonThey would say, wait a sec. We agree that Twitter is an incredibly important town square. It is, you know, where the world exchanges opinion about life and death matters.
21:51Chris AndersonHow on earth could it be owned by the world's richest person? That can't be right. So how do you, I mean, what's the response there? Is there any way that you can distance yourself from the actual decision making that matters on content in some very clear way that is convincing to people?
22:10Elon MuskWell, like I said, I think it's very important that the algorithm be open sourced and that any manual adjustments be identified. So if this tweet, if somebody did something to a tweet, there's information attached to it, that action was taken.
22:29Elon MuskAnd I would personally be in there editing tweets. But you'll know if something was done to promote, demote or otherwise affect a tweet. As for media sort of ownership, I mean, you've got Mark Zuckerberg owning Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and with a share ownership structure that will have mark Zuckerberg the 14th, still controlling those entities.
23:04Elon MuskSo, like, literally. Well, certainly we won't have that at Twitter.
23:13Chris AndersonIf you commit to opening up the algorithm, that definitely gives some level of confidence. Talk about, talk about some of the other changes that you proposed. So the edit button, that's definitely coming if you have your way.
23:29Chris AndersonAnd how do you.
23:34Elon MuskFrankly, a top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter. You know, I think these influence, they make the product much worse.
24:02Elon MuskIf I had a dogecoin, for every crypto scam I saw,
24:09Elon MuskWe have more, you know, 100 billion dogecoin.
24:14Chris AndersonDo you regret sparking a sort of storm of excitement over Doge and you know, where it's gone, or.
24:21Elon MuskI mean, I think Doge is fun. And you know, I've always said, don't bet the farm on Dogecoin Fy, but I think it's. I like dogs and I like memes, and it's got both of those,
24:37Chris Andersonbut just on the edit button. How do you get around the problem of. So someone tweets Elon rocks and it's tweeted by 2 million people. And. And then, then after that they edit it.
24:48Chris AndersonI'm. Elon sucks. And. And then all those retweets, they're all embarrassed. And how do you, how do you avoid that type of changing of meaning so that retweeters are exploited?
25:02Elon MuskWell, I think, you know, you don't have the edit capability for a short period of time. And probably the thing to do upon the edit would be to zero out all retweets and favorites.
25:15Chris AndersonOkay.
25:16Elon MuskI'm open to ideas though, you know,
25:19Chris Andersonso in one way, the algorithm works kind of well for you right now. I just wanted to show you this. So this is a typical tweet of mine, kind of lame and worthy and whatever.
25:30Chris AndersonAnd look at. And the amazing response it gets is this. Oh my God, 97 likes. And then I tried another one and 29,000 likes. So the algorithm at least seems to be at the moment, you know, if Elon Musk expand to the world immediately.
25:56Chris AndersonNot bad, right?
25:58Elon MuskYeah, I guess so. I mean, that is good. Cool.
26:01Chris AndersonI mean, you so help us understand how it is you've built this incredible following on Twitter yourself. When I mean, some of the people who love you the most look at some of what you tweet and they think it's somewhere between embarrassing and crazy.
26:19Chris AndersonSome of it's amazing.
26:20Elon MuskI mean, they love it.
26:23Chris AndersonBut is that actually why it's worked or why has it worked?
26:29Elon MuskI mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm, you know, tweeting more or less stream of consciousness, you know, it's not like, let me think about some grand plan about my Twitter or whatever, you know, I'm like literally on the toilet or something like, oh, this is funny.
26:42Elon MuskAnd then tweet that out. You know, that's like most of them, you know, oversharing.
26:51Chris AndersonBut you are obsessed with getting the most out of every minute of your day. And so why not, you know,
26:59Elon Muskso I don't know, like, try to tweet out like things that are interesting or funny or, you know, and then people seem to like it.
27:08Chris AndersonSo if, if you are unsuccessful. Actually, before I ask that, let me ask this. In fact, I don't. Yeah. So how can I say, is funding secured?
27:24Elon MuskI have sufficient assets to complete the. It's not a forward looking statement, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I can do it if possible.
27:35Chris AndersonRight.
27:36Elon MuskSo. And I mean, I should say actually even in the originally with Tesla, back in the day, funding was actually secured. I want to be clear about that. In fact, this may be a good opportunity to clarify that.
27:56Elon MuskIf funding was indeed secured, and I should say, like, why do I not have respect for the SEC in that situation? And I don't mean to blame everyone at the sec, but certainly the San Francisco office, because the SEC knew that funding was secured, but they pursued an active public investigation nonetheless.
28:19Elon MuskAt the time, Tesla was in A precarious financial situation. And I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to settle with the SEC that the banks would cease providing working capital and Tesla would go bankrupt immediately.
28:32Elon MuskSo that's like having a gun to your child's head. So I was forced to concede to the SEC unlawfully. Those bastards. And now it makes it look like I lied when I did not in fact lie.
28:51Elon MuskI was forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla's life. And that's the only reason, given what's actually happened.
28:59Chris AndersonGiven what's actually happened to Tesla since then, though, aren't you glad that you didn't take it private?
29:07Elon MuskYeah, I mean, it's difficult to put yourself in the position at the time. Tesla was under the most relentless short seller attack in the history of the stock market.
29:19Elon MuskThere's something called short and distort where the barrage of negativity that Tesla was experiencing from short sellers in Wall street was beyond all belief. Tesla was the most shorted stock in the history of stock markets.
29:33Elon MuskThis is saying something. So, you know, this was affecting our ability to hire people. It was affecting our ability to sell cars. It was, they were, yeah, it was terrible.
29:47Elon MuskYeah. They wanted to test it at die so bad they could taste it.
29:51Chris AndersonWell, most of them have paid the price.
29:54Elon MuskYes. Where are they now?
30:02Chris AndersonSo that was a really strong statement. I mean, obviously a lot of people who support you, I would have thought, would say you have so much to offer the world.
30:11Chris AndersonOn the upside, on the vision side, don't waste your time getting distracted by these battles that bring out negativity and make people feel that you're being defensive. People don't like fights, especially with powerful government authorities.
30:26Chris AndersonThey'd rather buy into a dream. Do you like, aren't you encouraged by people just, just to edit that in that, you know, temptation out and go with the bigger story?
30:41Elon MuskWell, I mean, I would say, like, you know, I'm sort of a mixed bag, you know, I mean, well, you're
30:50Chris Andersona fighter and you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't like to lose. And you are determined that you don't, basically. I mean, you are.
30:59Elon MuskSure, I don't like to lose. I'm not sure many people do, but the truth matters to me a lot, really. Like sort of pathologically it matters to me.
31:09Chris AndersonOkay, so you don't have to lose if in this case you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer. You've said you Won't go higher.
31:19Chris AndersonIs there a plan B?
31:24Elon MuskThere is.
31:30Chris AndersonI think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B.
31:37Elon MuskFor another time, I think.
31:39Chris AndersonAnother time.
31:40Elon MuskYeah.
31:40Chris AndersonAll right.
31:46Chris AndersonThat's a nice. Jeez. All right, so I would love to try to understand this brain of yours more. Ilan, with your permission, I'd like to just play this. This is the.
32:00Chris AndersonActually before we do that, here was one of the thousands of questions that people asked. I thought this was actually quite a good one. If you could go back in time and change one decision you made along the way, do your own edit button, which one would it be?
32:14Chris AndersonAnd why?
32:16Elon MuskDo you mean like a career decision or something?
32:18Chris AndersonJust any decision over the last few years. Like your decision to invest in Twitter in the first place or your anything.
32:28Elon MuskI mean the, the worst business decision I ever made was not starting Tesla with just JB Straubel. By far the worst decision I've ever made is not just starting Tesla with jb.
32:43Elon MuskThat, that, that's number one by far.
32:46Chris AndersonAll right, so JP Straubel was, was the visionary co founder who was obsessed with and knew so much about batteries. And your, your decision to go with Tesla, the company as it was meant that you got locked into what you concluded was a weird architecture.
33:00Elon MuskNow of this, this, this there's a lot of confusion. Tesla Tesla did not exist in any. Tesla was a shell company with no employees, no intellectual property when I invested.
33:12Elon MuskBut the, a false narrative has been created by one of the other co founders, Martin Everhart. And I don't want to get into the nastiness here, but I didn't invest in an existing company.
33:24Elon MuskWe created a company and ultimately the creation of that company was done by JV and me. And unfortunately there's someone else, another co founder who has made it his life's mission to make it sound like he created the company, which is false.
33:44Chris AndersonWasn't there another issue right at the heart of the development of the Tesla Model 3 where Tesla almost went bankrupt? And I think you have said that part of the reason for that was that you overestimated the extent to which it was possible at that time to, to automate a factory.
34:01Chris AndersonHuge amount was spent kind of over automating and it didn't work and it nearly took the company down. Is that fair?
34:12Elon MuskI mean, first of all it's important to understand like what is Tesla actually accomplished that is, that is most noteworthy. It is not the creation of an electric vehicle or creating electric vehicle prototype or low volume production of a, of a car.
34:33Elon MuskThere have been hundreds of car startups over the years. Hundreds. And in fact, at one point, Bloomberg counted up the number of electric vehicle startups and they. I think they got to almost 500.
34:46Chris AndersonYeah.
34:47Elon MuskSo the hard part is not creating a prototype or going into limited production. The absolutely difficult thing which has not been accomplished by an American car company in 100 years is reaching volume production without going bankrupt.
35:02Elon MuskThat is the actual hard thing. The last American company to reach volume production without going bankrupt was Chrysler in the 20s.
35:12Chris AndersonRight. And it nearly happened to Tesla.
35:16Elon MuskYes, but it's not like, oh, geez, I guess if we'd just done more manual stuff, things would have been fine. Of course not. That is definitely not the case.
35:26Elon MuskSo we basically messed up almost every aspect of the Model 3 production line, from cells to packs to drive inverters, motors, body line, the paint shop, final assembly, everything, everything was messed up.
35:52Elon MuskAnd I lived in that. I lived in the Fremont and Nevada factories for three years fixing that production line, running around like a maniac through every part of that factory.
36:06Elon MuskLiving with the team, I slept on the floor so that the, the team who was going through a hard time could see me on the floor. That they knew that I was not in some ivory tower.
36:25Elon MuskWhatever pain they experienced, I had it more.
36:29Chris AndersonAnd some people who knew you well actually thought you were making a terrible mistake, that you were driving your, driving yourself to the edge of sanity almost, and that you were in danger of making bad choices.
36:44Chris AndersonAnd in fact, I heard you say last week, Elon, that you, because of Tesla's huge value now, and you know the significance of every minute that you spend, that you are in danger of sort of obsessing over it, spending all this time to the point of, to the edge of sanity.
37:03Chris AndersonThat doesn't, that doesn't sound super wise. Isn't there like you're. Your time, your completely sane, centered, rested time and decision making is more powerful and compelling than that, sort of.
37:18Chris AndersonI can barely hold my eyes open. So surely it should be an absolute strategic priority to look after yourself.
37:28Elon MuskI mean, there wasn't any other way to make it work. The three years of hell, 17, 8, 20, 17, 18 and 19 were three years. The longest period of excruciating pain in my life.
37:45Elon MuskThere wasn't any other way. And we barely made it and we're on the ragged edge of bankruptcy the entire time. So when you look pain, I don't like it.
37:58Elon MuskThose were three. Three show so much pain. But it had to be done or Tesla would be dead.
38:04Chris AndersonWhen you looked around the gigafactory that we saw images of earlier last week and just see where the company has come. I mean, do you feel that. That this, this challenge of figuring out the new way of manufacturing that you.
38:21Chris AndersonThat you actually have an edge now, that it's different, that you figured out how to do this and from those three years won't be repeated, you've actually figured out a new way of manufacturing?
38:36Elon MuskAt this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth.
38:45Chris AndersonSqueeze up.
38:50Elon MuskI can tell you how every damn part, part in that car is made. Basically just live on the factory. Live in the factory for three years. And that was nice.
39:00Elon MuskThat was poignant note or something.
39:03Chris AndersonSomeone wants to compose a symphony to that expression of confidence, something like that. I have no idea what that is.
39:10Elon MuskAnyway. Yeah. Every aspect of a car six ways to Sunday. I know.
39:15Chris AndersonI mean, you talk about scale right now you're in the middle of writing your new master plan and you've said that scale is at the heart of it. Why does scale matter?
39:26Chris AndersonWhy are you obsessed with it? What are you thinking?
39:28Elon MuskYeah, well, see, in order to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy, there must be scale because we've got to transition a vast economy that is currently overly dependent on fossil fuels to a sustainable energy economy.
39:45Elon MuskOne where the energy is. Yeah, I mean we got to do it.
39:54Elon MuskSo the energy's got to be sustainably generated with wind, solar, hydro, geothermal. I'm a believer in nuclear as well. I think they ever talk about. And then since solar and wind is intermittent, you have to have stationary storage batteries.
40:11Elon MuskAnd then we're going to transition all transportation to electric. If we do those things, we have a sustainable energy future. The faster we do those things, the less risk we.
40:24Elon MuskThe less risk we put to the environment. So sooner is better. And so scale is very important. You know, it's not about press releases, it's about tonnage. What was the tonnage of batteries produced and obviously done in a sustainable way?
40:44Elon MuskAnd our estimate is that approximately 300 terawatt hours of battery storage is needed to transition transport electricity and heating and cooling to a fully electric situation. There may be some different estimates out there, but our estimate is 300 terawatt hours.
41:09Chris AndersonYeah, so we dug into this a lot in the interview that we recorded last week. And so people can go in and hear that more. But I mean the context is that is I think about a thousand times the current install battery capacity.
41:19Chris AndersonI mean the scale up needed is breathtaking, basically. Yeah, and yeah, so. So. So your vision is to commit Tesla to try to deliver on a meaningful percentage of what is needed.
41:32Elon MuskYeah.
41:32Chris AndersonAnd what. And call on others to do the rest. That this is what, this is a task for humanity to massively scale up our response to change. Change the energy grid.
41:41Elon MuskYes. It's, it's like basically how fast can we, can we scale and encourage others to scale to get to that 300 terawatt hour installed base of batteries?
41:56Chris AndersonRight.
41:57Elon MuskAnd then of course, there'll be tremendous need to recycle those batteries, which is, and it makes sense to recycle them because the raw materials are like high grade ore.
42:06Elon MuskSo people shouldn't think, well, there'd be this big pile of batteries now they're going to get recycled because even a dead battery pack is worth about $1,000. So. But this is what's needed for a sustainable energy future.
42:18Elon MuskSo we're going to try to take a set of actions that accelerate the day and bring the day of a sustainable energy future sooner.
42:27Chris AndersonOkay. There's going to be huge interest in your master plan when you, when you publish that. Meanwhile, I just, I would love to understand more what goes on in this brain of yours because it is, it is a pretty unique one I want to play.
42:43Chris AndersonWith your permission, this very funny opening from snl, Saturday Night Live. Can we have the volume though, actually, please? Sorry.
42:50Elon MuskIt's an honor to be hosting Saturday Night Live. I mean that sometimes after I say
42:56Chris Andersonsomething, I have to say I mean that.
42:59Elon MuskSo people really know that I mean it. That's because I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I'm told makes for great comedy.
43:13Elon MuskI'm actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger's to host snl.
43:21Chris AndersonAnd I think you followed that up
43:22Elon Muskwith at least the first person to admit it.
43:24Chris AndersonThe first person to admit it.
43:32Chris AndersonSo this was a brave thing to say. But I would love to understand whether, you know, how you think of Asperger's, like, whether you can give us any sense of, even you as a boy, what the experience was or as you now understand with the benefit of hindsight.
43:51Chris AndersonCan you talk about that a bit?
43:53Elon MuskWell, I think, I think everyone's experience is going to be somewhat different. But I guess for me, the social cues were not intuitive. So I was just very bookish and I didn't understand this.
44:10Elon MuskI guess others could sort of intuitively understand what was meant by something. I would just tend to take things very literally as. Just like the words as spoken were exactly what they meant, but then that turned out to be wrong.
44:32Elon MuskThey're not simply saying exactly what they mean. There's all sorts of other things that are meant. It took me a while to figure that out. So I was bullied quite a lot.
44:44Chris AndersonSo
44:47Elon MuskI did not have a sort of happy childhood, to be frank. It was quite rough. But I read a lot of books. I read lots and lots of books.
44:57Elon MuskAnd so that sort of gradually sort of understood more from the books that I was reading and watched a lot of movies and, you know, just. But it took.
45:13Elon MuskIt took me. It took me a while to understand things that most people intuitively understand.
45:21Chris AndersonSo I've wondered whether it's possible that that was, in a strange way, an incredible gift to you and indirectly to many other people. In as much as brains are plastic and they go where the action is, and if for some reason, the external world and social cues which so many people spend so much time and energy and mental energy obsessing over, if that is partly cut off, isn't it possible that that is partly what gave you the ability to understand inwardly the world at a much deeper level than most people do?
46:01Elon MuskI suppose that's certainly possible. I think there's maybe some value also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers just by myself.
46:17Elon MuskAnd I think most people. Most people don't enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night. They think that's not fun, but I thought it was. I really liked it.
46:30Elon MuskSo I would just program all night by myself. And I found that to be quite enjoyable. But I think that is not normal.
46:43Chris AndersonI mean, it does. You know, I've thought a lot about. It's a riddle to a lot of people of how you've done this, how you've repeatedly innovated in these different industries.
46:54Chris AndersonAnd it. It does. You know, every entrepreneur sees possibility in the future and then acts to make that real. It feels to me like you see possibility just more broadly than almost anyone and can connect the dots.
47:08Chris AndersonSo you see scientific possibility based on a deep understanding of physics and knowing what the fundamental equations are, what the technologies are that are based on that science and where they could go.
47:19Chris AndersonYou see technological possibility, and then really unusually, you combine that with economic possibility of, like, what it actually would cost. Is there a system you can imagine where you could affordably make that thing and that sometimes you then get conviction that there is an opportunity here?
47:39Chris AndersonPut those pieces together and you could do something amazing? Yeah.
47:45Elon MuskI think one aspect of whatever condition I had was. I was just absolutely obsessed with truth. Just obsessed with truth. And so the obsession with truth is why I studied physics, because physics attempts to understand the truth of the universe.
48:06Elon MuskPhysics just is just what are the provable truths of the universe and truths that have predictive power. So for me, physics was sort of a very natural thing to study.
48:21Elon MuskNobody made me study it. It was intrinsically interesting to understand the nature of the universe and then computer science or information theory also to just understand logic.
48:35Chris AndersonAnd,
48:37Elon Muskyou know, there's an argument that, you know, the. That information theory is actually operating at a more fundamental level, more fundamental level than even physics. So just, yeah, physics and information theory, really interesting to me.
48:58Chris AndersonSo when you say truth, I mean, it's not like some people. What you're talking about is the truth of the universe, like the fundamental truths that drive the universe.
49:07Chris AndersonIt's like a deep curiosity about what this universe is, why we're here, simulation, why not? You know, we don't have time to go into that. But I mean, you're just deeply curious about what this is for what this is, this whole thing.
49:22Elon MuskYes, I mean, I think the why of things is very important. I actually, when I was. I don't remember so young teens, I got quite depressed about the meaning of life.
49:37Elon MuskAnd I was trying to sort of understand the meaning of life, looking at reading religious texts and reading books on philosophy. I got into the German philosophers, which is definitely not wise if you're a young teenager, I have to say, be a bit dark.
49:54Chris AndersonSo
49:57Elon Muskmuch better read as an adult. And then actually I ended up reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is actually a book on philosophy, just sort of disguised as a silly humor book.
50:12Elon MuskBut actually it's actually a philosophy book. And Adams makes the point that it's actually the question that is harder than the answer. These sort of makes a joke that the answer was 42.
50:28Elon MuskThat number does pop up a lot. 420 is just 10 times, 10 times
50:34Chris Andersonmore significant than 42. Okay.
50:38Elon MuskYou know, there's a. You can make a triangle with 42 or 42 degrees and two 69s. So there's no such thing as a perfect triangle or is there?
50:52Chris AndersonBut even more important than the answer is the question. That was the whole theme of that book. I mean, is that basically how you see meaning, then? It's the pursuit of questions.
51:03Elon MuskYeah. So I have a sort of, you know, a proposal for a worldview or a motivating philosophy, which is to understand what questions to ask about the Answer that is the universe.
51:16Elon MuskAnd to the degree that we expand the scope and scale of consciousness, biological and digital, we will be better able to ask these questions, to frame these questions, and to understand why we're here, how we got here, what the heck is going on.
51:34Elon MuskAnd so that is my driving philosophy, is to expand the scope and scale of consciousness that we may better understand the nature of the universe.
51:42Chris AndersonElon, one of the things that was most touching last week was seeing you hang out with your kids. Here's if I may, it looks vaguely
51:54Elon Musklike a ventriloquist dummy there. I mean, how do you know that's real?
52:01Chris AndersonSo that's X. And it was just a delight seeing you hang out with him. Sure. What's his future going to be? I mean, I don't mean him personally, but the world he's going to grow up in.
52:17Chris AndersonWhat future do you believe he will grow up in?
52:22Elon MuskWell, I mean, a very digital future,
52:32Elon MuskA different world than I grew up in, that's for sure. But I think we want to obviously do our absolute best to ensure that the future is good for everyone's children and that, you know, that the future is something that you can look forward to and not feel sad about.
52:52Elon MuskYou know, you want to get up in the morning and be excited about the future. And we should fight for the things that make us excited about the future.
52:59Elon MuskYou know, the future cannot, it cannot just be about one miserable thing after another, solving one sad problem after another. There got to be things that get you excited, like you're, like you want to live.
53:12Elon MuskThese things are very important. You should have more of it.
53:17Chris AndersonAnd it's not as if it's a done deal. Like, it's all, it's all to play for. Like, the future may be horrible still. There are scenarios where it is horrible.
53:26Chris AndersonBut you see a pathway to an exciting future both on Earth and on Mars and in our minds through artificial intelligence and so forth. I mean, in your, in your heart of hearts, do you really believe that you are helping deliver that exciting future for X and for others?
53:48Elon MuskI mean, I'm trying my hardest to do so. I, you know, I love humanity and I think that we should fight for a good future for humanity. And I think we should be optimistic about the future and fight to make that optimistic future happen.
54:13Chris AndersonKhilan, I think that's a perfect place to close this. Thank you so much for spending time coming here and for the work that you're doing and good luck with finding a Wise Course through on Twitter and everything else.
54:26Chris AndersonThank you.
54:37Chris AndersonThank you.