Elon Musk's answers in 2021
Q1 How dangerous is AI and how do we make it go well?
If trends continue, AI will exceed human intelligence in every way. The list of things the human mind can do better than AI is shrinking every year. link
He treats advanced AI as an existential risk and said there should be a regulatory agency that oversees it. link
Q5 Why go to Mars / what is SpaceX's mission?
He says the test is whether Mars dies out if the supply ships from Earth stop, since missing even one small ingredient would be fatal. link
He says making propellant from Martian CO2 and water ice is the last piece needed for a self-sustaining city on Mars. link
He says we should assume the window to become multiplanetary may be open only briefly and take advantage of it. link
He notes ancient Egyptians forgot how to build pyramids and read hieroglyphics. link
He says we almost have an obligation to ensure the creatures of Earth continue. link
He calls making life multiplanetary one of the most important things for the long-term existence of consciousness. link
We are trying to make life multi-planetary, extend life beyond Earth, which takes high tonnage to Mars and a big rocket flown a lot. link
He said humanity must become a multiplanetary spacefaring civilization. link
At heart it is an optimization of cost per ton to orbit, then cost per ton to the surface of Mars, to afford becoming a multiplanetary species (captions: multiplanar). link
The overarching optimization is the fastest time to a city on Mars, then a fully reusable rocket, then orbit. link
Starship is for going to Mars and a civilization on Mars. The Moon is close so they might as well do a moon base first. link
Starship is meant to be the first fully and rapidly reusable rocket, the holy grail of rocketry. If you have that, the cost of a ton to orbit drops by about two orders of magnitude. link
Says Starship is designed to extend life to Mars, requiring ~1000x more payload to orbit than all current rockets. link
To pass a great filter we need to be a multiplanet species. This is the first time in 4.5 billion years it has been possible to extend life beyond Earth. A self-sustaining city is the key threshold; he guessed at least a million tons. link
He said the point of SpaceX is to help make humanity a spacefaring civilization and ultimately multiplanetary. link
Q7 Will people still need to work?
He said in the future physical work will be a choice. link
He said long term there will need to be universal basic income. link
He said that in a benign AI scenario, AI will be able to make goods and services very inexpensively. link
Q11 What drives you / what is the meaning of life?
He said he is primarily trying to advance sustainable energy and extending life/consciousness beyond Earth, plus mitigating AI risk. link
He recalls a childhood existential crisis about the meaning of life. link
He says a lot of what he deals with is not fun or interesting but chores. link
He recalls being convinced in the 1990s that the Internet would be the future. link
He calls Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a book of philosophy disguised as a silly humor book. link
He describes consciousness as a delicate little candle in the dark, as far as we know only on Earth. link
He says he saw the internet as humanity acquiring a nervous system. link
He is in the Douglas Adams school: the universe is the answer, and we need to figure out what questions to ask, expanding the scope and scale of consciousness. link
What Douglas Adams was saying in Hitchhiker's Guide is that the universe is the answer; we need to figure out what questions to ask. link
He said this is the most prosperous time in human history. link
Q12 What's the biggest remaining Starship problem?
In July 2021 he said the tower and chopstick arms to catch the rocket were as complex as either stage, if not more. link
They took the legs off the booster and would have the tower catch it, which he admitted sounded insane. link
The ship has to be safe enough for people without an escape system, because you cannot use one on the Moon or Mars. link
The ship would be caught by Mechazilla too, with no landing legs; legs are only needed for Moon and Mars until there is local infrastructure. link
With Starship they are trying to have a fully reusable orbital rocket; getting back from orbit needs a heavy-duty heat shield. link
The first orbital flight they were hoping to do in January. There is a lot of risk; he would not say the first launch is likely to be successful, but they would make a lot of progress. link
Q15 How competitive is China?
China appears not to love cryptocurrency and is having significant electricity-generation issues, which may be part of the reason. link
He said future wars between advanced countries will be very much drone wars. link
Q16 How good is Tesla self-driving?
Predicts FSD will be well above average-driver safety this year. link
He says autonomy means fewer cars and parking garages are needed, which is good for the environment. link
He said the car will keep minimizing the input you need until it just reads your mind. link
He said FSD looked highly likely to be in Europe the next year. link
He said Tesla is open to licensing autonomy because it will be such a significant lifesaver. link
It is looking quite likely that it will be next year. link
He said autonomy could potentially save on the order of a million lives per year. link
Q17 When will Optimus be produced at scale?
He said Tesla would probably have a prototype sometime next year. link
Tesla is building a humanoid robot, like the car but with legs. He held off because he did not want to hasten the AI apocalypse. link
Making a useful humanoid robot that can interact with the world is an extremely useful thing Tesla can do. link
Q18 Are we in a simulation?
He tells the host he is an adherent of the simulation hypothesis. link
Asked if we are in a simulation, he said his heart says no and his brain says yes. link
Q19 Is population decline a problem?
Calls population collapse potentially the greatest risk to the future of civilization. link
Calls birth rate collapse the biggest threat to human civilization. link
Birth-rate trends are very negative; many countries are seeing population decline with no end in sight. He thinks the very low birth rate is a significant but underappreciated risk. link
Most people can look at birth-rate statistics and see the future: how many children were born last year and whether the trend is down. link
Q20 How hard should founders work?
He says people who want to be him or do what he has done are probably mistaken. link
He says he could not expect people to go all out if he was not doing the same. link
He says his days are generally back-to-back meetings. link
He says context switching is a real bear, so he tries to focus on one thing at a time. link
He recalls that his first company had only one computer and the website only worked during the day. link
He says there have been long, very painful and difficult stretches in his life. link
He says when the team is asked to work super hard, he has to be right there with them where they can see it. link
He says his schedule is pretty intense and he has thought about taking a week off to clear his mind. link
He says he slept on the floor outside the conference room so people could see he was there. link
Q22 When will Starship go to Mars?
In January 2021 he said there was a decent shot at sending people to Mars in about five years. link
He says the six-month trip to Mars could over time be cut to as little as one month. link
Said people could possibly go to Mars as soon as five years from then (early 2026), before building a base and then a city. link
Explains Mars is harder because Earth and Mars align only every 26 months. link
He said they are not launching to Mars really soon; Mars is a ways off. link
Best case about five years, worst case ten years. The bottleneck is engineering the vehicle. link
Q23 Will humans stay in control of AI?
He says coupling collective human will to AI's outcome is the better scenario. link
Q25 What happens to money?
He jokes that the most ironic outcome would be for Dogecoin to become Earth's currency. link
He says he supports bitcoin and thinks it is on the verge of broad acceptance by conventional finance. link
He says Dogecoin was made as a joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies. link
He said it is best to think of money as an information system, primarily for labor allocation. link
He said he is a supporter of Bitcoin. link
He said anything not deliberately designed to be scarce will be plentiful for everyone. link
Q30 How do you hire and manage people?
He agrees that context switching is the mind killer and tries to do less of it. link
Q33 Is free speech under threat globally?
Warns many will be unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech. link
Q36 Are you racist or anti-Muslim?
He said he sometimes says or posts strange things because that is just how his brain works. link
Q37 How should AI labs manage safety?
Government has an important role regulating industry; he wants a regulatory agency overseeing advanced AI. link
Q44 What is Neuralink's near-term goal?
Gives Neuralink goals: short-term solving brain/spine injuries, long-term human/AI symbiosis. link
He says Neuralink came from asking how humans can go along for the ride even in a benign AI scenario. link
He describes the Neuralink device as like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires that go to your brain. link
He says Neuralink is paying close attention to being able to remove the implant. link
He says Neuralink's first goal is a wireless implanted chip letting someone who is quadriplegic or tetraplegic control a computer. link
He says thumbing on a phone is very low bandwidth, generously 100 bits per second. link
He says Neuralink's short-term aim is to address brain and spinal injuries. link
The long-term goal of Neuralink is better symbiosis with AI. Short term it should help with brain injuries, disease and spinal injuries. Bandwidth from human to computer is the bottleneck. link
Q45 Is there hidden alien or advanced propulsion technology?
He says he has seen nothing to indicate any alien civilization. link
He says he has seen not a single piece of conclusive evidence of aliens, though that does not mean there are none. link
He says he has seen nothing that could not more probably be explained by other means than alien technology. link
The Fermi paradox is where are the aliens; either there are a lot or none, and either is terrifying. link
He has seen no evidence of aliens. At least one of the great filters is whether a civilization becomes multi-planetary; if not, the Sun eventually boils the oceans. link
If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, aliens should be everywhere by now. He is not aware of any evidence; we are the aliens. link
Q52 How much solar would it take to power the United States?
You would not need a very large area to power the entire United States with solar — a little corner of Utah, a square roughly 150 to 200 km on a side if you wanted it in one place. link
Q53 What's your vision for energy abundance?
He said we need to scale electric vehicles dramatically. link
He said solar will be the main source of sustainable energy and energy in general. link
He said demand for stationary storage will be at least as high as for vehicles. link
The combination of solar plus battery can completely solve Earth's energy needs. Earth is a large satellite; satellites already run on solar and a battery. Fusion is unnecessary because the Sun is a low-maintenance fusion reactor that shows up every day. link
Q56 Why make Optimus a humanoid with human-like hands?
He said the Tesla Bot is intended to be friendly and eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks. link
Q59 Will Tesla own the robotaxi fleet?
He says autonomy could raise car usage from about 12 to 60 hours a week, a 5x increase in asset utilization. link
Q60 Will Starlink go public?
Says Starlink will IPO once cash flow is reasonably predictable. link
Q70 When will Starship fly hourly? (asked on X)
He said that is probably two years from now. Rate of progress is rapid; first orbital attempt expected January or perhaps February after FAA license around end of year. link
Q78 When will we be able to upload a human mind into a robot? (asked on X)
He speculates that a neural interface could one day save state in the brain. link
Q99 When will Starship go to the Moon? (asked on X)
NASA has selected Starship to transport astronauts to the lunar surface. The mass capability could support a permanently occupied moon base, like Antarctica. link
Q101 Will Neuralink enable telepathy between humans? (asked on X)
He says much of our brain power goes into compressing and decompressing thoughts, which Neuralink could avoid. link
He says a direct neural interface could raise the bandwidth between cortex and digital layer by many orders of magnitude. link
Says words are very lossy compression of thoughts. link
Q104 Why is Tesla putting Starlink in its vehicles?
In 2021 he said Tesla cars would not be connected to Starlink because the terminal was too big; it was for aircraft, ships, large trucks and RVs. link
Q106 When will Starship demonstrate orbital refilling?
In 2021 he said they did not need orbital refueling until going to the Moon or Mars, so they would get to orbit and back first and punt refueling later. link
Starship with orbital refilling and dedicated deep-space variants would take payload capability up orders of magnitude versus Falcon Heavy. link
Q107 When will a city on Mars be self-sustaining?
He frames the key question as whether the Mars city becomes self-sustaining before a calamity or decline on Earth stops the ships. link
He says the important thing is getting people and equipment there to establish at least one self-sustaining city. link
He says Mars would start as a tiny outpost and be very dangerous. link
He says Mars needs all the fundamentals of industry to become self-sustaining, which would take a while. link
A single Starship is designed to do in a day what all rockets then did in a year; even so, ~1000 Starships would take ~20 years to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. link
He said he would be long dead before Mars is self-sustaining, but hoped the momentum was strong by the time he died. link
About 800 to 1000 Raptors a year over ten years to build the Mars fleet; the city itself probably takes roughly 20 years, hopefully built by ~2050. link
To become multi-planetary they will need maybe a thousand ships. SpaceX's overarching goal is for humanity to become a multi-planet species and a space-faring civilization. link
Guessed it is at least 20 years from the first visit to a self-sustaining Mars, possibly 40 or 50. link
Q109 How important is physical-world AI compared with language models?
Says unsupervised self-driving needs real-world AI because roads are designed for biological neural nets and eyes. link
Says generalized self-driving requires solving a large part of real-world AI, which was harder than expected. link
Q116 Should people work remotely?
He says in-person meetings and even Zoom are better than email. link
Q122 When will Starship catch both stages and fly weekly?
Suggests the ship might be caught with the launch tower, like the booster. link
Says the ideal is catching Starship in a horizontal glide with no landing burn; next best is a tower catch with an emergency pad-landing mode. link
Q125 What is Tesla's mission?
He says Tesla's goal from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. link
He said no production car had ever done 0 to 60 in under 2 seconds. link
Q128 Why did Tesla build the Cybertruck?
Says Cybertruck will be almost exactly what was shown, adding rear-wheel steering. link
Says Cybertruck is intentionally an insane technology bandwagon. link
Says Cybertruck will reach into a post-apocalyptic future and bring that tech to now. link
Q129 Can the Boring Company solve traffic?
Says Boring Company road tunnels under Miami would solve traffic. link
He says the world needs tunnels because all major cities have traffic. link
He says there are still tremendous opportunities in tunneling. link
He says drawing a vacuum in a tunnel would allow travel faster than a plane or high-speed rail. link
He says the Boring Company started half as a joke and has now done its first operational tunnel in Vegas. link
Says it’s either traffic forever or tunnels. link
Q131 Why does rocket reusability matter?
He calls a fully and rapidly reusable rocket the holy grail of rocketry. link
He says reaching Mars requires reusable rockets, because you cannot keep throwing rockets away. link
Q134 Why does Tesla use cameras instead of lidar?
He says SpaceX built its own lidar for Dragon docking, so he does not hate lidar, but roads require solving vision. link
He says there is no question you can be superhuman with just cameras. link
He says that for driving on real-world roads you have to solve vision. link
He says eight-camera surround video will be superhuman because people do not have eyes in the back of their heads. link
Explains that vision plus radar trapped Tesla in a local maximum and pure vision matches how roads work. link
Q136 When will the Tesla Semi reach volume production?
Says demand is not the problem; near-term battery cell supply limits Semi scale, easing the following year. link