Real Time with Bill Maher
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:00Bill MaherMy first guest is the man who made electric cars a thing and is currently working on perfecting reusable rockets, space travel, connecting the human brain directly to computers, connecting cities with electromagnetic bullet trains, the Starlink satellite system that's so important to the war in Ukraine.
0:15Bill MaherAnd then on Tuesday, he's going to work on that tunnel thing on traffic. He also tweets a lot. Elon Musk, ladies and gentlemen.
0:31Bill MaherLook at.
0:35Elon MuskWow.
0:39Bill MaherWhat did I get? The full order of things that you do in a day there, when I was reading there, I left out the tunnel thing at the end.
0:46Bill MaherDo you work on all these.
0:47Elon MuskA lot of jobs?
0:48Bill MaherDo you do all these things every day? Do you work on all of them in a single day?
0:52Elon MuskNo, no. But I do have. I do have a long work day. Yeah. So I work a lot.
1:02Bill MaherWell, I'm so thrilled you're here because, you know, we do a show where we talk about what changes happen in the world, and. But we just talk. There's a very few people who actually make change happen.
1:14Bill MaherYou are one of those people, probably.
1:20Bill MaherYou know, I just want to say.
1:23Elon MuskI just want to say I love this audience.
1:28Bill MaherWell. Well, you're a likable guy. I mean. I mean, they. They attack you a lot.
1:33Elon MuskThey do, yeah.
1:37Bill MaherAnd you seem to laugh it off, which I think is fantastic. I love it that you have a sense of humor, because a guy as important as you who makes changes could use your powers for evil and not good.
1:49Elon MuskThe fact that absolutely you could. I would. Of course I would. Yeah. Never use them for evil.
1:56Bill MaherNo.
1:57Elon MuskBut.
1:57Bill MaherBut the way I know that is because you have a sense of humor.
2:02Elon MuskYeah.
2:02Bill MaherYou really do. Yeah. You like laughing, you like to be funny.
2:06Elon MuskI kill me.
2:07Bill MaherRight? No. As opposed to somebody like Zuckerberg, who I'm not even sure is a real boy.
2:19Elon MuskYeah.
2:24Elon MuskI actually love comedy, and I feel, you know, like, many years ago, I actually was in the audience here and watched your show. Oh, really? Been a long time admirer of your show.
2:32Bill MaherOh, well, thank you.
2:36Elon MuskI.
2:39Bill MaherLet me get back to you being a genius.
2:41Elon MuskOkay.
2:42Bill MaherBut that has always been my view, is that as I was a history major, and when you study history, what you realize is that, you know, there's the great man theory, and they talk about kings and princes and queens and presidents.
2:54Bill MaherIt's really the people in tech who change the world. They're the people who deal the cards. Whether it's fire or electricity for good or bad, or the cotton gin or the iPhone, or the atom bomb.
3:09Bill MaherThose are the cards. And the rest of us just play it. Would you agree with that assessment?
3:15Elon MuskI think technology is the thing that causes these big step changes in, in civilization. So obviously you've got things like say the Gutenberg press before which was very difficult to get books.
3:27Elon MuskThey were pretty rare. Even if you had a thirst for knowledge, you really couldn't do anything about it because there were very few books to read. So. And the Internet is something beyond, beyond the good book press, I think.
3:40Elon MuskBut you know, it's, it's. When I first saw the Internet coming into being in a way that the general public could use it, it felt like the humanity as a whole was developing a nervous system.
3:56Elon MuskSo previously the way that information would travel would be by osmosis, one person to another or one person calling another, but the access to information is very limited. Now with the Internet it's like having a nervous system.
4:10Elon MuskIt's like any part of, of humanity has access to almost all the information of humanity. Like you could be in the middle of the Amazon jungle with say a Starling terminal and have access to more information than the president did in 1980.
4:27Bill MaherRight. Well, anything on your phone?
4:29Elon MuskEverything is. Yeah.
4:31Bill MaherOkay, so. So you are one of these dealers, these people who deal the cards.
4:36Elon MuskAnd I deal some memes too. Yes, you do, some.
4:50Bill MaherSo I think a lot of people thought when you bought Twitter that this is kind of an outlier. Like how does this, what doesn't fit with these other things you're doing?
4:58Bill MaherI never thought that because I think you're dealing with big civilizational issues and problems. And I was right on your page. I think Twitter is one of them. I mean, you have talked about this woke mind virus.
5:10Elon MuskYes.
5:11Bill MaherIn really apocalyptic terms.
5:13Elon MuskI don't.
5:14Bill MaherYou should explain why you don't think it's hyperbole to say things like it's pushing civilization towards suicide. First of all, what is the woke mind virus? And if we don't deal with this, nothing else can get done.
5:25Bill MaherTell me why you think that.
5:27Elon MuskYeah, so I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti meritocratic and anything that is, that results in the suppression of free speech. So you know, those are two of the aspects of the work mindbias that I think are very dangerous is that it's often anti merocratic.
5:50Elon MuskYou can't question things, even the questioning is bad. So you know, another way to almost anonymous would be cancel culture. And obviously people have tried to cancel you many times.
6:04Bill MaherMany times, yeah. I mean every week.
6:06Elon MuskYeah.
6:08Bill MaherFrom left and right. I've had it from both sides.
6:11Elon MuskYeah.
6:11Bill MaherAnd it's interesting people, you and I are both like in that little group of people. Maybe it's a bigger group.
6:16Elon MuskYeah.
6:16Bill MaherWho. Who are called conservative. Who haven't really changed. I don't see a think of you as a conservative.
6:22Elon MuskDefinitely. Yeah. Like I at least think of myself as moderate, you know, so I mean at least like I've spent a massive amount of my life energy building sustainable energy, you know, electric vehicles and batteries and solar and stuff to help save the environment.
6:41Bill MaherThat's not a.
6:48Elon MuskNot exactly far right. No.
6:50Bill MaherYou drew that diagram. You drew that diagram once where you're here. I related to that and like the world has changed.
6:57Elon MuskRight.
6:57Bill MaherI feel the same way. I feel like very often wokeness is not building on liberalism. It's the opposite of liberalism.
7:03Elon MuskI can mention. Yes, exactly.
7:05Bill MaherMany examples where it's the. Including free speech.
7:08Elon MuskFree speech is actually is extremely important. And it's bizarre that we've come to this point where like free speech used to be a left or liberal value and yet we see from, you know, the.
7:21Elon MuskIn courts left a desire to actually censor. And that seems crazy. I mean, I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment. There's a reason for the First Amendment.
7:38Elon MuskThe First Amendment is because people came from countries where they could not speak freely and where saying certain things would get you thrown into prison. And they were like, well, we don't want that here.
7:50Elon MuskAnd by the way, in many parts of the world, including parts of the world that people might think are relatively similar to the United States, the speech laws are draconian.
8:01Bill MaherEngland is quite different.
8:02Elon MuskI won't name any countries but England.
8:07Bill MaherWhy are we protecting them? They have no First Amendment. It's very easy to prove libel in England, whereas here it's all of England. But I wouldn't want to say the wrong thing or yes, you could be sued easier.
8:21Bill MaherI mean there are law in France. I think if you deny the Holocaust, which I think is abhorrent, but I also think it should be part of free speech.
8:28Bill MaherYou can be thrown into jail. Okay.
8:31Elon MuskSo this, I really can't emphasize this enough. We must protect free speech and free speech only matters. It's only relevant when it's someone you don't like saying something you don't like.
8:44Elon MuskBecause obviously speech that you like is. That's easy. So it's. And it's. The thing about censorship is that for those who would advocate it, just remember at some point that will be turned on you so
9:04Bill Maherthis woke mind virus, how did it start? Was it bats? Was it escape from a lab? I mean, what is your assessment of what. Because it's fairly recent. How did it start and why?
9:21Elon MuskI was trying to figure out where it's coming from. I think it's actually been a long time brewing in that. It's, I think it's been going on for a while.
9:32Elon MuskAnd the amount of indoctrination that's happening in schools and universities is, I think, far beyond what parents realize. And I only sort of came to realize this somewhat late.
9:49Elon MuskThe experience that we had in high school and college is not the experience that kids today are having and hasn't been for, I don't know, 10 years, maybe 20 years.
10:00Bill MaherSo aren't parents themselves also a big
10:04Elon Muskpart of the problem? Well, I suppose in some cases parents, but, but I think, like, the parents are just generally not aware of what their, their kids are being taught or, or what they're not being taught.
10:17Bill MaherThey're letting the kids think that they're equal.
10:20Elon MuskI mean. Yeah, let me, let me, let me, let me give you an example that, that a friend of mine told me, which, you know, his daughters go to college and, and sorry, go to high school in the Bay Area.
10:30Elon MuskAnd, and he, he was asking them like, well, so who are the, you know, who are the first few presidents of the United States? They could name Washington. But.
10:40Elon MuskAnd I said, what do you know about him? Well, he was a slave owner. What else?
10:43Bill MaherRight, exactly.
10:44Elon MuskNothing. Right, like, okay, that's. Maybe you should know more than that, you know. Yeah, yeah.
10:52Bill MaherAnd that, that is the wolf mind virus. Exactly. Yeah,
10:57Elon Muskexactly. It's like, you know, the, you know, slavery is obviously a horrific institution, but we should still know more about George Washington than that.
11:08Bill MaherAnd by the way, one that was practiced all over the world forever, since the beginning of time, by every race, including people of color. I'm sorry to tell you that it's huge in the Bible.
11:18Elon MuskAbsolutely.
11:18Bill MaherSo Bible loves it. Really?
11:22Elon MuskYes, they're quite strict about like, you know, don't take someone else's slave and that kind of thing.
11:26Bill MaherRight. But no one ever says just don't do it.
11:29Elon MuskThey don't. They don't. At no point does it say slavery is bad in five months. No, they did not condemn it at all. They just. So, so it's.
11:38Bill MaherBut Twitter is not doing bad. Right? I mean, I saw today that Tucker Carlson recently fired. You were just on his show and he lost his job. So I hope this isn't an.
11:47Bill MaherYeah, yeah, but hopefully the angel of Death.
11:52Elon MuskYeah, no, exactly. I'm not the Typhoid Mary of talk shows. For some reason, people just get fired
11:59Bill Maherafter his rant yesterday or today on Twitter.
12:04Elon MuskYesterday or something more than every cable
12:08Bill Mahernews monologue or something like that. Is that right?
12:11Elon MuskWell, Twitter has a tremendous audience, so there's 250 million people that spend an average of half an hour a day on Twitter. So it's about 120 to 130 million user hours per day, and it's been increasing.
12:21Elon MuskSo the. We didn't do anything. To be clear, we did nothing special whatsoever. I learned about it afterwards that he had posted something on Twitter. So it's just the.
12:33Elon MuskTwitter has a lot of people's attention, so. And it tends to be the people that are that read. Read a lot or are interested in current events and generally are pretty influential, so.
12:47Bill MaherBut most of the people who tweet are the same people, right? I mean, the people who actually tweet as opposed to just reading it. Yeah, I feel like that's.
12:54Bill MaherI've read this many times, that very percentage of the people on Twitter. And it seems like. See, here's why I don't tweet anymore. Because you may be the mayor of Tweet Town now.
13:04Elon MuskYeah. And Mayor Tree Town. I'm getting a cap with that.
13:07Bill MaherAnd I'm glad. And I like it that the mayor likes my jokes. But the reason I don't do it anymore is because the mob of mean girls is still there, and that has not changed.
13:18Bill MaherI know it's too easy to get canceled, and I don't even know what pisses them off. They're so nuts, these kids. I feel like I'm walking on a roof with a blindfold.
13:30Bill MaherI could fall off any time. That was the most innocuous thing. But it's like, you know, I said George Washington was a great president. Oh, how dare you.
13:38Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly. Had some flaws, but. But.
13:41Bill MaherSo how do you fix that?
13:42Elon MuskInstrumental in the Mr. Mayor creation of the United States. So. Yeah, well, you have to say, like, what does canceled mean? You know, I mean, yes, people attack on Twitter.
13:52Elon MuskThat's one thing, but frankly, that's just going to increase engagement, So I would just ignore it.
13:57Bill MaherWell, that's easy for you because they can't take your job away or any of your main 10 jobs, but they could take mine. And they did once, by the way.
14:06Elon MuskYeah.
14:07Bill MaherYou know, I was, like, literally canceled. I mean, the show is canceled, so. But okay, so you were in Congress. At Congress the other day. Talking with Chuck Schumer about.
14:18Bill MaherI. I'm very interested in this because you've been on this for years. I always thought you were right about this. I think you're right about almost everything. I mean, let's have more babies and raise them on Mars.
14:28Bill MaherI don't get that.
14:29Elon MuskBut. Okay, well, I think we should be cautious about civil civilizational decline with. With. And we have plummeting birth rates most places.
14:38Bill MaherYeah, right. And also plummeting resources. No, no, we.
14:42Elon MuskResources will be fine, but they're not.
14:44Bill MaherI know a lot about. They're not fine.
14:45Elon MuskNow, now, look, I'm not suggesting complacency. We do want to move to a sustainable energy economy as quickly as possible. But. But we're not in any danger of resource collapse.
14:56Bill MaherBut lots of people don't have enough food or water. Water. We will run out of water. They're running. They're running out of sand.
15:04Elon MuskNow, this earth is 70% water by surface area, but you can't drink that. Desalination is absurdly cheap.
15:12Bill MaherWhy don't we do it then?
15:14Elon MuskWe do. It is done.
15:15Bill MaherYou have a lot of free time.
15:16Elon MuskIt is done. There is a lot of desalination done. Okay, but there's plenty of water. This is not an issue. I want to be clear.
15:22Bill MaherAll right, so. But let's talk about AI because, like, you were. You were on this tip 10 years ago when nobody else was that. And I always thought, he's right.
15:29Bill MaherWhy? Because I've seen too many movies. Everything that happens in movies, that happens in real life. And, you know, if you make things that are way smarter than you, why wouldn't they become your overlords?
15:40Bill MaherSo what did you say to Chuck Schumer and what are we doing about this? I know you want to pause in AI because in the legislation the last six months with Chat GPT, which came from a company you started.
15:51Elon MuskYes. Well, I mean, a friend of mine has a sort of modification of Occam's razor, you know, so instead of the simplest thing being the most likely, that, like the most ironic outcome is most likely.
16:04Elon MuskRight, Right.
16:06Bill MaherYes.
16:07Elon MuskSo with respect to AI, I just think we should be. We should have some sort of regulatory oversight. So, you know, for anything that is a danger to the public, if it's sort of aircraft, cars, food and drug and whatnot, we've got some regulatory oversight, like a referee, essentially, and making sure that companies don't cut corners.
16:28Elon MuskSo I think that since if one agrees that AI is a potential risk to the public, then there should be some regulatory body that oversees what companies are doing so they don't cut corners and potentially do something very dangerous.
16:45Bill MaherAnd if we don't do something, lay out a scenario for me in the next two, five, ten years, if nothing is done, because we're very good at doing nothing, especially when it comes in the way of profit.
16:57Bill MaherAnd this is a big profit engine now for companies. They're going to want to just compete with each other. I mean, there are people like Ray Kurzweil who doesn't think it's a problem at all.
17:06Elon MuskActually, Ray Kurzweil's prediction for artificial superintelligence is 2029. He's not far off.
17:13Bill MaherRight. But he doesn't think it's a problem. Whereas people like you and Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking thought. Think it's a problem.
17:22Elon MuskYeah, it depends. If some people want to live forever or for a much longer period of time, and they see AI as the only way, digital superintelligence as the only thing that can figure out how to get them to live forever.
17:33Elon MuskI think Kurzweil is in that category. So he would prefer to have AI, artificial general intelligence, than not, because it can figure out longevity.
17:43Bill MaherSo are you. Are you optimistic? I read in your Rolling Stone article back in the day that you said you can never be happy unless you're in love.
17:52Elon MuskWell, you can be half happy, I suppose. I mean, there's two things I think, to be most happy. If you're happy in love and you love your work, then you'll be, I think, fully happy.
18:05Elon MuskIf you lack either of those two, if you have one of those two things, you'll be half happy, you know, roughly.
18:12Bill MaherBut I feel like the theme in a lot of your works that connect all these different things is connecting. Like, you want to connect things. You know, you want to connect on the hyperloop, and you want to connect this to Mars and even Connect four, you want.
18:29Elon MuskI love that game.
18:31Bill MaherWhat?
18:31Elon MuskConnect four, you know, make it the.
18:38Elon MuskSorry. This is a comedy, right? You know, throw some comedy in there.
18:42Bill MaherBut it's hard for you, because I know when you bought Twitter, you're kind of doing what you did when you took over when you started Tesla. You lived at the factory, right?
18:54Bill MaherI feel like that's your. That's your. Your pattern. You get into this thing, and then you got to live at the factory to make it work. You've been back and you moved to Texas, then you went back up to San Francisco.
19:07Elon MuskBecause of Twitter, I was living in the. In the library of Twitter for a while. Yes. But it's. I think things are reasonably stabilized right now. It was just on the fast track to bankruptcy after the acquisition.
19:20Elon MuskSo I had to take drastic action. There wasn't any choice.
19:23Bill MaherI'm just saying it's hard for a woman.
19:24Elon MuskYeah.
19:25Bill MaherTo like, when the guy lives at the factory.
19:28Elon MuskYes.
19:32Bill MaherThat could be. That could be a stumbling block.
19:35Elon MuskYes. But overall, my concern with Twitter was that it is somewhat of the digital town square, and it's important that there be both the reality and perception of trust for a wide range of viewpoints.
19:53Elon MuskAnd there was a lot of censorship going on, and we sort of uncovered a lot of that with the Twitter files, including a lot of. Of government driven censorship, which.
20:09Elon MuskIt seems that that's got to be a constitutional violation, what was going on there. But so. And I could. Since I'm like, an avid Twitter user, I could detect that, like, something's not right here.
20:18Elon MuskAnd so that's really why I did the acquisition. It wasn't because I thought this was an easy way to make money or something like that. Man. This is. Being mayor of Twitter town, Tweet town or whatever is definitely like, there's a lot of arrows pointed at you, flying
20:34Bill Maherat you, of course. But you. But you seem to handle that okay. I hope you do, because, look, I mean, geniuses are going to be a little quirky sometimes, but your heart is always in the right place.
20:47Bill MaherYou were trying to fix this world. And look, I could talk to you forever. We can't today. I'd love to get high with you. I know a great place to.
20:55Bill MaherBut I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. I know you have a lot of choices in places you can go. Thank you. Elon Musk, ladies and gentlemen.
21:02Bill MaherAll right, I'll see you soon.