World Government Summit
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (11)
Transcript
0:01Elon MuskHello.
0:02InterviewerGood morning.
0:05Elon MuskGood morning.
0:05InterviewerGood to see you along. It's been almost six years where I sat with you here in this platform with a great audience. It was your first trip to Dubai with your family.
0:19InterviewerI hope you enjoyed it.
0:21Elon MuskYeah, it was wonderful. Very much enjoyed. And I see my head is gigantic on the stage. My head has grown larger since we last met.
0:35InterviewerIs it because of Twitter?
0:38Elon MuskYeah, I don't know, perhaps. Twitter is certainly quite the roller coaster, Elon.
0:48InterviewerJust, you know, it's been six years. Within six years, we've seen tremendous things since our last conversation. We've seen the pandemic, Russian, Ukrainian war, development of chat GPT. You launched Starship.
1:08InterviewerYou recently also acquired Twitter. Can I ask you this question? Why you bought Twitter? Why didn't you create your own platform? Maybe it was cheaper for you.
1:23Elon MuskI mean, I thought about creating something scratch, but I thought Twitter would perhaps accelerate progress versus creating something from scratch by three to five years. And I think we are seeing just a tremendous technology acceleration that, you know, three to five years is actually worth a lot.
1:48Elon MuskSo, I mean, to be frank, I was a little worried about the direction that and the effect of social media on the world and especially Twitter. And I thought it was very important for that it be a maximally trusted sort of digital public square where people, you know, within countries and internationally could communicate with, you know, the least amount of censorship allowed by law.
2:22Elon MuskObviously that varies a lot by jurisdiction. But I think in general, you know, social media companies should adhere to the laws of countries and not try to put a thumb on the scale beyond the laws of countries.
2:39Elon MuskSo I think this is something that is probably agreeable to the, you know, the legislators and the people of most countries. So I think that's the general idea is just to reflect the values of the people as opposed to imposing the values of essentially San Francisco and Berkeley, which are somewhat of a niche ideology as compared to the rest of the world.
3:14Elon MuskBut, you know, Twitter was, I think, doing a little too much to impose a niche San Francisco, Berkeley ideology on the world. So, you know, I thought the. It was important kind of for the future of civilization to try to correct that thumb on the scale, if you will, and just have to put it more accurately, reflect, like I said, the values of the people of Earth.
3:50Elon MuskThat's the intention, and hopefully we succeed in doing that.
3:59InterviewerBut how do you see Twitter if we, say, five years down the road, what's your vision for this platform? What should it do?
4:11Elon MuskWell, I think it'd be. I'd like to, you know, have this sort of long term vision for something called x.com from way back in the day, which is kind of like a sort of like an everything app where it's just maximally useful.
4:26Elon MuskIt does, you know, payments does. So it provides financial services, provides information flow, really anything digital and also provides secure communications. So really to, you know, I think be as useful as possible, as entertaining as possible.
4:55Elon MuskAnd.
5:00Elon MuskIf you want to find out what's going on and what's really going on, then you should be able to go on, you know, X, the X app and find out.
5:13Elon MuskSo it's a sort of source, sort of a source of truth and a maximally useful, I guess app is wrong word, but system and Twitter is essentially an accelerant to that sort of maximally useful everything app.
5:33InterviewerHow you are going to, I mean, if you look at Twitter today, I mean it's a platform sometimes there is a lot of misinformation in Twitter. Sometime I don't feel comfortable even because there is some way, there is this negative between nation, between people, between different ethnic group.
5:55InterviewerThere is the same thing. How you are going to fix this issue where you are on a mission for humanity to get them together.
6:06Elon MuskYeah, I think there's something that we're putting a lot of effort into called Community Notes. It's currently just in English, but we will be expanding it to all languages.
6:21Elon MuskThat is, I think, quite a good way to assess the truth of things where it's the community itself, basically the people of Earth who are basically not exactly voting, but competing to provide the most accurate information.
6:41Elon MuskSo it's sort of a competition for truth. And I think it's a very powerful concept to have a competition for truth. And because you can also say like what is true, because what may be true to some may not be viewed as true to others, but you want to have the closest approximation of that.
6:58Elon MuskSo I think the Community Notes thing is very powerful. I think we try to have as many organizations and people and institutions verified as being legitimately those people in organizations is important and to have the organizational affiliation clearly identified.
7:19Elon MuskSo if you want to find out if somebody is actually, if an account is actually say from a member of parliament or a journalist or if, let's say if a Twitter handle actually belongs to say Disney Corporation or something like that, you can, you can go on Twitter and it's sort of an identity layer of the Internet and you can confirm that that is in fact the case.
7:42Elon MuskAnd I think once you've got these sort of interlocking sort of identities it's actually very hard to be deceptive in that case because. And it's also you have a reputation to protect at that point.
7:56Elon MuskSo I think then people are far more likely to be measured in their response and be more reasonable since they have reputational value at that point. So these are some of the ideas that I have.
8:14Elon MuskAnd you know, I'm not saying that for sure it will succeed or that it's going to be perfect, but I am confident that over time go head into a good direction.
8:30Elon MuskAnd I think the evidence for that will be do people find it useful as we're measuring sort of the total user minutes, but not just user minutes, unregretted user minutes, which I think the key figure of merit because well, for example, TikTok has very high usage.
8:51Elon MuskI often hear people say, Well I spent two hours on TikTok, but I regret those two hours. I'm not trying to knock TikTok, but it's just we don't want that to be the case with Twitter.
9:01Elon MuskWe want to say like, okay, you spent half an hour on Twitter, but you found it to be useful and entertaining and a good thing in your life and ultimately be a force for good, for civilization.
9:12Elon MuskThat's the aspiration.
9:14InterviewerThank you, Elon. We have over 150 government within the world government summit, global leaders. They have 8 billion customer their citizen. How government can use Twitter better to service citizens?
9:39Elon MuskYeah, well, I think generally I would recommend really communicating a lot on Twitter and I think it's good for people to speak in their voice as opposed to how they think they should speak.
10:00Elon MuskYou know, like, you know, sometimes like people think well I should speak, But it ends up sounding, I think somewhat, at times somewhat stiff and not real. You know, like if you read a press release from corporation, it just sounds like propaganda.
10:22Elon MuskSo I would encourage CEOs and companies and legislators and you know, ministers and so forth to speak authentically and to, you know, if there's a, say, a particular policy to explain it.
10:42Elon MuskAnd, and I think there's, you know, sometimes a concern about criticism, but I think at the end of the day, you know, having some criticism is fine. You know, it's not that, it's really not that bad.
10:56Elon MuskI mean I'm constantly attacked on Twitter, frankly and I don't mind. It's, you know, you have to be somewhat thick skinned, I suppose at times, you know, just because you're going to, they really will try to twist a knife.
11:14Elon MuskBut I think just like I said, just as a form for communication, it's Great. And I would just encourage more communication and like I said, to sort of speak in an authentic voice.
11:31Elon MuskLike, sometimes people will have someone else be their sort of Twitter manager or something like that. And I think people should just do their own tweets, you know, and, like, sometimes you make a mistake or something, it's fine.
11:48Elon MuskBut I think just doing your own tweets, just like you would do your own, you know, you give a talk here or you would, you know, have a meeting at a summit or something, I think that's the way to do it, is to actually do the tweets herself and convey the message that you want directly.
12:13Elon MuskYeah, so. But I mean, one thing I should say, I know this is called the World Government Summit, but I think we should be maybe a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government, if I may say, that we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having, frankly, this may sound a little odd, too much cooperation between governments.
12:42Elon MuskYou know, if, you know, if you look at, say, the history and the rise and fall of civilizations, really, all throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen, but it hasn't meant the doom of humanity as a whole, because there have been.
12:56Elon MuskThere have been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances. And so, you know, say like, while Rome was falling, you know, Islam was rising, and so you had, like, you know, the sort of caliphate doing incredibly well while Rome was doing terribly.
13:20Elon MuskAnd that actually ended up being a source of preservation of knowledge and. And many scientific advancements. And so I think we want to be a little bit cautious about being too much of a single civilization, because if we are too much of a single civilization, then the whole thing may collapse.
13:45Elon MuskObviously not suggesting war or anything like that, but I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually cooperating too much. It sounds a little odd, but we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if something does go wrong with some part of civilization, that the whole thing doesn't collapse and humanity keeps moving forward.
14:08InterviewerThank you. I hear you. I agree and disagree with you at certain point. And I think, you know, today, people, they don't fight with SWORD anymore. I mean, they have nuclear weapons.
14:23InterviewerSo there is this conflict. The whole civilization will be gone. The whole human civilization will be gone. And what we are trying to do here at the Emirates actually is to do exactly what you are saying.
14:35InterviewerWe have 180 nationality, you have every single race, every single religion. And we're trying to create a model that show the world that it doesn't matter who you are, what's your color, what's your religion, where you're from, humanity can live in peace and harmony.
15:00InterviewerMy last question, I'll go to Twitter again. Then we'll move out of Twitter if you allowed us. I mean, you've been running Twitter as the chairman, as the owner, as the CEO, and that takes a lot of time.
15:14InterviewerDid you identify a CEO and when you are going to hire him?
15:20Elon MuskWell, I think I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it's in a financially healthy place and that the product roadmap is clearly laid out. So I don't know, I'm guessing probably towards the end of this year would be good timing to find someone else to run the company because I think it should be in a stable position around, you know, the end of this year.
15:52InterviewerElon, if we move to other subject. I mean at the summit here we have speaker who speak about state of the world, state of geopolitical of the world for the next decade, state of the economy of the world, you know, now and the next 10 years.
16:12InterviewerIf I ask you about the state of technology, if you can elaborate a bit and brief us, how do you see technology in the next 10 years from now?
16:27Elon Musk10 years? It's always difficult to predict technology with precision, especially over a 10 year timeframe when it is changing so much. I mean there's obviously the transition to sustainable energy with solar, wind, batteries and electric vehicles.
16:47Elon MuskAnd if you look at the percentage growth of that, that is a very high percentage growth. Although because of the massive industrial base of the current sort of fossil fuel economy, even if all, for example, if electric cars were 100% of production immediately, it would take 20 years to replace the fleet.
17:12Elon MuskSo this is still something that is quite gradual. It's measured in at least a few 30, 40 years type of timeframe on a more sort of near term timeframe.
17:25Elon MuskI think artificial intelligence is something we need to be quite concerned about and really be attentive to the safety of, of AI. You mentioned ChatGPT earlier. You know, I, I played a significant role in the creation of OpenAI.
17:48Elon MuskEssentially at the time I was concerned that Google was not paying enough attention to AI safety. And so I, with a number of other people created OpenAI. Although initially it was created as an open source nonprofit and now it is closed source and for profit.
18:13Elon MuskI don't have any stake in OpenAI anymore, nor am I on the board, nor do I control it in any way. But the ChatGPT I think has illustrated to people just how advanced AI has become, because the AI has been advanced for a while.
18:32Elon MuskIt just didn't have a user interface that was accessible to most people. So what really Chat GPT has done is just put an accessible user interface on AI technology that is.
18:47Elon MuskThat has been present for a few years, and there are much more advanced versions for that that are coming out. So I think we, you know, I think we need to really be.
18:59Elon MuskI think we need to regulate AI safety, frankly, because think of any technology which is potentially a risk to civil, to people. Like, if it's aircraft or cars or medicine, we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and medicine.
19:28Elon MuskAnd I think we should have a similar sort of regulatory oversight for artificial intelligence, because it is, I think, actually a bigger risk to society than cars or planes or medicine.
19:51Elon MuskAnd this may slow down AI a little bit, but I think that might also be a good thing. The challenge here is that government regulatory authorities tend to be set up in reaction to something bad that happened.
20:07Elon MuskSo if you look at, say, aircraft or cars, the cars were unregulated in the beginning, aircraft were unregulated, but they had lots of airplane crashes and in some cases, manufacturers that were cutting corners and a lot of people were dying.
20:27Elon MuskSo the public was not happy about that. And so they established a regulatory authority to improve safety. And now commercial airliners are extremely safe. In fact, they're safer than if you were to drive somewhere.
20:44Elon MuskThe safety per mile of a commercial airliner is better than a car. And cars are also extremely safe compared to where they used to be. But if you look at, say, the introduction of seat belts, the auto industry fought the introduction of seat belts as a safety measure for, I think, 10 or 15 years before.
21:07Elon MuskFinally, the regulators made them put seatbelts in cars, and that greatly improved the safety of cars, and that airbags were another big improvement in safety. So my concern is that with AI, if there's something bad, that something goes wrong, the reaction might be too slow from a regulatory standpoint.
21:35Elon MuskSo I. I'd say like it. It, you know, if I say, like, what are the biggest risks to the future of civilization? AI. But AI is a double. You know, it's both positive and negative.
21:48Elon MuskIt has great, great promise, great capability. But also with that comes great danger. I mean, you look at, say, nuclear, you know, discovery of sort of nuclear physics. You had nuclear power generation, but also nuclear bombs.
22:04Elon MuskSo anyway, I think we should be quite concerned about it, and we should have some regulation of what is fundamentally a risk to the public. Very clear.
22:17InterviewerLet me move to another subject, Elon. Education. I mean, you have your own philosophy about education. With AI, education might change dramatically. Can you tell us briefly about your philosophy of education?
22:34InterviewerAnd number two, do we need 12 years of schooling and four years of university?
22:44Elon MuskWell, with respect to education, I think in general, some things that we could do to make it more compelling would be to explain to children why we are teaching a particular subject.
23:00Elon MuskSo the human mind has evolved to really forget anything that it deems unimportant. So in fact, human memory is really quite, quite bad relative to say, the memory of your phone.
23:17Elon MuskYour phone is. Can remember the entire contents of an encyclopedia down to last letter and pixel. But human memory is terrible by comparison. So the mind is constantly trying to forget things actually.
23:32Elon MuskBut if you explain the why, why a subject is being taught, that will then establish relevance and it's much more likely to result in motivation for kids. And then also if you teach knowledge, especially in the sciences, as solutions to a problem, it's much more effective.
23:55Elon MuskSo like, let's say you're trying to understand an internal combustion engine. Well, it's actually better to sort of take that apart and then say, okay, well what tools do we need to use to take it apart?
24:07Elon MuskWe need a wrench and screwdriver and various other things to take it apart. Then you understand that the reason for the tools, and so like for mathematics are like tools in physics and engineering.
24:25Elon MuskBut if you teach to the problem and then you understand, then you establish the relevance of the tools, then it's actually much easier to remember mathematics and physical physics because they help explain how the world works as opposed to teaching them without explaining why and simply teaching them.
24:45Elon MuskIt's like instead of having teaching to the problem, teaching, currently people teach the tool. It would be like having a course on screwdrivers or a course on wrenches, but not understanding why you have a course you're learning about screwdrivers and wrenches.
25:03Elon MuskI think this is really quite a fundamental principle that should be applied in education. And I think sometimes we do teach classes that children do not find useful and where the answer to the why is actually not going to be a very good answer.
25:22Elon MuskMost people, I think, do not find advanced mathematics useful and are unlikely to find it useful in their life. Or the elements that they do find useful could be taught very quickly as general principles.
25:37Elon MuskI also think that critical thinking is something that should be taught to children at a relatively young age, effectively, like a mental firewall. To really think about when somebody tells you something is it cogent?
25:55Elon MuskIs it true? Or what is the probability that it is true and so that you can be taught to reject things that are untrue or more likely to be untrue and favor things that are more likely to be true.
26:10Elon MuskCritical thinking, I think, is very helpful for people to learn.
26:16InterviewerSo is it 12 years of schooling you are with or without 12 fears?
26:28Elon Musk12 years is a long time, I suppose. I mean, humans just do take a long time to mature. So there's emotional maturity, physical maturity, and mental maturity that is happening simultaneously with the education.
26:49Elon MuskI mean, I suppose it could be done in 10 years. Perhaps it does not need 12. But then is someone mature at age 16? They're more likely to be mature at age 18.
27:01Elon MuskSo I guess 12 years is probably not bad. We probably don't need an additional four or five or six years in. In college or university. That seems probably excessive.
27:19Elon MuskI think we'll probably shave a few years off and be fine.
27:22InterviewerOkay. Kids will love it, by the way, but you know, social media, we spend so many hours on social media. I mean, the average, sometime in certain country, three, four hours in social media.
27:41InterviewerAnd sometimes when we go to our kids, we see them spending also long hours. Part of its knowledge. Do you have any rule for your kids, I mean, how much they can spend in social media?
27:57Elon MuskYou know, I generally not try to restrict social media for my kids, although that might have been a mistake, depending on which kid it is. I mean, they've really been programmed by Reddit and YouTube, I'd say, more than anything else.
28:17Elon MuskReddit and YouTube. I think probably I would limit social media a bit more than I have in the past and just take note of what they're watching, because I think at this point they're being programmed by some social media algorithm, which you may or may not agree with.
28:41Elon MuskSo I think probably one needs to supervise children's use of social media and be wary of them getting programmed by some algorithm written in the Silicon Valley, you know, which may or may not be what you want.
29:02InterviewerElon, you've been working very hard, I mean, since six years ago we met you. You look much younger, by the way, than six years ago.
29:11Elon MuskThanks.
29:14InterviewerBut I know that you've been working for almost 20 hours a day. You sleep in the stove and the office, maybe Twitter office, Tesla office. You told me once.
29:23InterviewerWe are. I was with you at Tesla's office. How do you balance your life, I mean, with this stress, with so many different, you know, you're on so many different company parallel.
29:33InterviewerHow do you balance It.
29:36Elon MuskWell, I mean, I should point out that I. A 20 hour workday is relatively unusual and rather painful, but I do sleep six hours a night, so. And if I sleep less than six hours a night, I find that I am.
29:51Elon MuskI might be awake longer, but I get less done. But I do work a ridiculous amount I think relative to most people in that it's pretty much seven days a week and mostly from when I wake up to when I go to sleep.
30:10Elon MuskI'm not suggesting this is good for everyone and I think frankly I would like to work a bit less than that. So if I look at say, Tesla. Tesla went through some very difficult times where it was on the ragged edge of survival.
30:30Elon MuskAnd really if I didn't give it everything I got, I think the company could have easily gone bankrupt. It was really on the verge of bankruptcy for quite a while.
30:39Elon MuskI don't mean to suggest complacency at this point, but it does require much less work to operate Tesla now versus say in the 2017-2019 time frame. It's not at mortal risk of survival.
30:57Elon MuskIt's achieved economies of scale that make it, you know, not on the ragged edge of survival. And then SpaceX also has a strong team and is able to make a lot of progress even if I spend less time there.
31:15Elon MuskIt does help if I spend time there, but it keeps making progress even if I don't. Twitter is still somewhat of a startup in reverse and so there's a lot of work required here to get Twitter to a sort of a stable position and like I said, to really build the engine of engineering, of software engineering at Twitter and have it, you know, really have like a great product roadmap and the people in place to implement that product roadmap.
31:52Elon MuskAnd so it is not my intention to work like crazy, you know, I mean, I think I still, I got comfortable with a mere 80 hour work week would be fine.
32:08Elon MuskThat is what I would aspire to.
32:11InterviewerThank you. We are running out of time. I have one last question I have to ask you.
32:17Elon MuskSure.
32:18InterviewerThree UFO been shot, one over Alaska, Lake Huron and Canada. Alien? No, alien.
32:27Elon MuskI don't think it's aliens. No, I mean I do find the whole question of aliens a very interesting one. You know what is typically called the Fermi paradox, which is that if universe is really as old as science seems to think it is and as where are the aliens?
32:52Elon MuskHave we really been around for 13.8 billion years? If so, where shouldn't there be aliens all over the place? Why do the crazy thing is I've seen no evidence of alien technology or any alien life whatsoever.
33:08Elon MuskAnd I think I know, you know, SpaceX, we do a lot. I mean, I think I know. I don't think anyone knows more about space, you know, than me, or at least the space technology.
33:24Elon MuskSo. But I think it's actually a troubling thing if there are no aliens as well, which is that what that actually could mean then is that sort of civilization and consciousness is like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and a very vulnerable tiny candle that could easily get blown out.
33:47Elon MuskAnd I think we should therefore take great care with what may very well be this tiny candle in a vast darkness and make sure that it does not go out and that we extend the light of consciousness beyond Earth and do everything we can to ensure that the light of consciousness does not go out.
34:06InterviewerElon, we run out of time. Thank you very much. And hopefully to see you next year with us here in the Emirates with your family.
34:17Elon MuskSounds good. And thanks. Thanks again for having me.
34:20InterviewerThank you. Thank you.
34:21Elon MuskWe'll see you.
34:22InterviewerBye bye.