Elon Musk's answers in 2024
Q1 How dangerous is AI and how do we make it go well?
It is definitely going to happen and fast. Steer toward an Iain Banks Culture-like semi-utopian AI future. link
He said governments will attempt to seize power over AGI, which may be worse. But it is increasingly coming down to a choice of what company do you trust most to develop AGI. link
AI is the fastest-advancing technology he has ever seen; barely a week goes by without a new announcement. link
He said now imagine if this is programmed, explicitly or implicitly, into super powerful AI – it could end civilization. Now, no need to imagine. It is already programmed into Google Gemini and OpenAI ChatGPT. link
He said this is a tough call and will make some people upset, but, all things considered, I think California should probably pass the SB 1047 AI safety bill. For over 20 years, I have been an advocate for AI regulation, just ... link
Asked 1) Move X / X AI out of CA 2) Build AI superclusters in TX/TN 3) Support CA bill that n..., he said I’m just being consistent with what I’ve been saying for 20 years. The @xAI team is primarily in Palo Alto, so this affects us too. How much do you think I want to agree with @weinerscott? It’s a bitter pill. link
The good future is abundance, which he puts at about 80% likely; the 20% is annihilation. link
He said it’s a tough call. I’m far from certain about what maximizes the probability of a good outcome for humanity here. For industries that have been around for many decades, there is definitely far too much counterproducti... link
He would rather be alive to see digital superintelligence happen, out of curiosity, even while reconciling himself to the risk. link
AI is a significant near-term existential threat; longer term he worries about global population collapse from falling birth rates. link
He said he thinks it is 80% likely AI makes the future great and 20% that it makes it really bad. link
He says an AI should be truthful even when the truth is politically incorrect, and calls this very important for AI safety. link
Q2 Can AI solve the US debt problem?
The country is spending at a rate that is bankrupting it; interest on US debt this year exceeded the entire defense budget. link
The US is adding about a trillion dollars to the deficit every roughly 100 days, and interest on the national debt has now exceeded the defense budget. link
He said the rise in prices (inflation) is caused by government overspending, which increases the amount of money faster than the increase in goods & services output. That is the vast majority of the problem. Inflation was par... link
Interest on the national debt now exceeds the defense budget; America is going bankrupt quickly, so spending must be cut. link
He said government spending must be reduced or the country will go bankrupt. link
Interest payments on the national debt now exceed the defense budget (~$1T/year) and are growing. America is on a path to bankruptcy unless spending is cut. The government is not even sure how many agencies there are (~450). link
Q3 Where do you stand politically?
He would not agree; he puts that article in the nonsense category. link
He said Trump's fight-fight-fight response under fire was inspiring and a big part of why he was excited to endorse him for another term. link
Asked Is Elon Musk Destroying His Brand, he said that guy doesn’t get it. I would prefer to have zero involvement in politics. HOWEVER There is no “company success” unless civilization itself continues to progress. This insane shift by the “left” away from a meritoc... link
He said if Trump does not win, it is the last election. Closing, he called voting for Trump a no-brainer versus becoming a one-party state like California. link
He called it the most important election of our lifetime. link
Q4 What did DOGE accomplish?
He said inflation comes from government overspending because government checks never bounce; spending far more than it brings in increases the money supply. link
He called for a government efficiency commission to see what spending is sensible, and said the country needs to live within its means. link
No serious effort to shrink government since Reagan; regulations accumulate until everything is illegal. link
He said DOGE would get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook. link
He asked an AI how many government agencies there are; the government is not even sure — around 450 depending on definitions, almost twice as many as there are days in the year at the federal level. link
He said it is better for people to work at jobs that produce goods & services of higher value than government jobs, which are too often of no or negative value link
He said we will do weekly @DOGE updates via livestream link
He said unlike you, neither of us are being paid, so it is very efficient indeed. @DOGE will do great things for the American people. Let history be the judge. link
He said you don’t yet appreciate how much waste and fraud there is in entitlements. It is beyond what you could possibly imagine. link
He said the goal of @DOGE is to speedrun fixing the Federal Government. Requires many anomalies in the matrix. link
He said the current administration is doing everything possible to prevent government efficiency, but @DOGE is inevitable link
He said unless @DOGE ends the careers of deceitful, pork-barrel politicians, the waste and corruption will never stop. Therefore, there is no choice but to do so. I wish there was another way, but there is not. link
Q5 Why go to Mars / what is SpaceX's mission?
Asked Nine!, he said building a city on Mars will take many launches link
Starship is the first rocket where making life multiplanetary and a self-sustaining city is the actual goal; if you do not have that goal you will not achieve it. link
Do whatever it takes to extend consciousness into the future; making life multi-planetary is part of that. link
After listing SpaceX's year of progress he said one day we will indeed occupy Mars. link
He said spaceX aims to make life multiplanetary, which means that the technology must be orders of magnitude better than companies that just want to put some satellites in orbit link
He said pretty much anything that you can do on the ground should be done on the ground. But for warming up Mars, reflectors made on Phobos & Deimos could be a good way to go. link
Self-sufficiency is about total tonnage delivered: probably on the order of a million to 10 million tons. link
He said the key is enough people and tonnage on Mars that Mars can survive and continue consciousness. link
He said starlink helps fund humanity getting to Mars link
Asked How long do you think our civilization will last, he said civilization needs to retain its current technology level until Mars is self-sufficient, which could be achieved within ~20 years. If we become multiplanetary and then multistellar our civilization will last millions ... link
He said the critical Fermi “great filter” threshold is Mars being able to survive and grow if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason. At that point, we will be a true multiplanet civilization. link
SpaceX's long-term goal is to make life multiplanetary and pass the single-planet great filter while the window is open. link
Make life multiplanetary and be a space-bearing civilization; people need to be excited about the future, not only solving problems. link
He said spaceX’s mission is to extend consciousness to Mars and then the stars link
He said we don’t use patents, except to block patent trolls, so others are free to copy us. SpaceX is building the technology to extend consciousness beyond Earth, so the cost per ton to orbit & beyond must necessarily be low... link
A fully reusable orbital rocket is the critical breakthrough necessary for life to become multi-planetary. link
He said yeah. Most of what we consider important today will not matter, but becoming multiplanetary definitely will. link
He said that was not the founding of SpaceX. We were in Russia to negotiate buying some ICBMs and converting them to launch a philanthropic mission to Mars. I later came to realize that the problem wasn’t the will to go to Ma... link
The aim is a self-sustaining city on Mars to maximize the probable lifespan of consciousness by millennia if not millions of years. link
He said spaceX will colonize Mars. The fundamental question is whether Earth civilization can maintain its technology level long enough for the colony to grow on its own, even if the supply ships stop coming. If yes, then hum... link
He said best to hear it in the words I have used in many interviews over the years. I have not fwiw “volunteered my sperm” 😂 No one at SpaceX has been directed to work on a Mars city. When people have asked to do so, I’ve sai... link
He said asimov’s Foundation series was part of the inspiration for making life/consciousness multiplanetary. Being multiplanetary greatly extends the probable lifespan of civilization. We must build Terminus. link
SpaceX's goal is a self-sustaining city on Mars — the only viable planet for that. The Moon is too close and lacks resources, so it is vulnerable to a calamity that takes out Earth. link
Grand projects could include a Moon base, sending American astronauts to Mars, and advanced high-speed connections between cities. link
He said i hope others succeed too, but at least there is one rocket where success in making life multiplanetary is one of the possible outcomes link
He said solar reflectors in orbit can do it too, but you need a lot of mass link
He said spaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable. Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem. It currently costs about... link
He said have you read Asimov’s Foundation books? They pose an interesting question: if you knew a dark age was coming, what actions would you take to preserve knowledge and minimize the length of the dark age? For humanity, a... link
He said making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost-per-ton-to-Mars problem, requiring ~10,000x improvement to ~$100k/ton. link
He said unless there is significant government reform, laws & regulations will keep getting worse every year until every great endeavor, from high-speed rail between our cities to making life multiplanetary, is effectively il... link
He said starship will make life multiplanetary, preserving life as know from extinction events on Earth, so long as it is not smothered by bureaucracy. There is more government regulatory smothering every year. If this contin... link
He said making life multiplanetary would dramatically derisk civilizational extinction link
He said by the way, our commercial Starlink program is the primary source of funding for Starship (NASA is helping too). So thank for buying Starlink and supporting humanity’s future in space. If you look closely at your Star... link
He said 99.9% of resources allocated to Earth, but 0.1% allocated to becoming multiplanetary seems wise link
He said becoming multiplanetary is critical to ensuring the long-term survival of humanity and all life as we know it link
He said civilization's probable lifespan is much greater as a multiplanet species. link
He said since your handle is “Whole Mars”, perhaps this lengthy reply is apropos: Getting the cost per ton to the surface of Mars low enough that humanity has the resources to make life multiplanetary requires a roughly 1000X... link
He said spaceX has come a long way, but we are still at the very beginning of making life multiplanetary and being a true spacefaring civilization link
He said i would have preferred to stick to cars & Mars, but it was necessary to safeguard civilization link
He hopes to live long enough to see his kids grow up and people on Mars. link
He said it was an interesting conversation. Combustion rockets are the best way to get to Mars in the short to medium term. There is perhaps some merit to a fission rocket shuttling between low Earth orbit and low Mars orbit,... link
He said interesting. Well, I think China is smart to aim for a fully reusable rocket. Other countries should also do so. It is the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary. link
He said becoming multiplanetary will greatly increase the lifespan of our civilization and it is the critical next step to becoming multistellar link
He said it is the only way to build a large enough city for Mars to be self-sustaining link
He said governing Mars will be up to the Martians, but these are some ideas link
Asked Yo Elon, are you guys taking bookings for Starship Flight-7 to Mars, he said essential to make life multiplanetary before WW3. Not possible after. link
He said a fully reusable rocket with orbital refilling is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary. For the first time in 4.5 billion years. link
He said starlink is how we are paying for humanity to get to Mars. That’s why there is a Hohmann transfer orbit diagram on the Starlink router. link
He said unless civilization collapses, @SpaceX will make life multiplanetary link
He said starship can also be used to create a large, permanently crewed Moon Base Alpha research station link
He said life must become sustainably multiplanetary before civilization drops below the point that resupply ships stop coming, whether due to war, population collapse or some other reason. link
He said even if we fail at creating a Mars colony that can grow without continuous support from Earth, the absurdly ambitious nature of the goal nonetheless results in the creation of alien-level technology that is crushingly... link
He said wow, they really don’t get it. Mars is critical to the long-term survival of consciousness. Also, I’m not going to ask any venture capitalists for money. I realize that it makes no sense as an investment. That’s why I... link
He said making life multiplanetary for the first time in 4.5 billion years is what humanity will accomplish this century link
He said exploring is a relatively minor factor, compared to making consciousness multiplanetary, as the latter greatly extends the probable lifespan of civilization link
He said the ISS requires a lot of care and feeding. Time to say goodbye and move on to the Moon and Mars. link
He said ultimate success is building a civilization on Mars that can continue to grow even if resupply ships from Earth stop coming. That gets us past the single-planet Fermi Great Filter. Along the way, there are of course m... link
He said spaceX is the railroad that will enable millions of opportunities for others on Mars, just like the Union Pacific Railroad did for California link
He said you can definitely game on Mars, but speed of light means no real-time gaming between Earth and Mars. Distance varies from ~4 to ~20 light-minutes. link
He said mars will be called the “New World”, just as America was in past centuries. Such an inspiring adventure! link
Q6 When will AI surpass humans?
AI smarter than any one human around the end of next year (2025); total sentient AI compute exceeding all humans in about 5 years. link
Asked Do we reach the critical Fermi on Mars before or after we reach AGI super intelligence ..., he said AGI will come first, but there are many levels of AGI. As @waitbutwhy’s charts suggest, we are at the very beginning of intelligence. Humans are the biological bootloader for digital superintelligence and we may serve... link
Q7 Will people still need to work?
In the benign scenario (~80% likely) there is universal high income and no shortage of goods and services; the question becomes one of meaning. link
He said there will be universal high income (not basic) link
He said i think it will be universal high income link
He says that in the benign AI scenario we are headed for an age of abundance with no shortage of goods and services. link
AI plus robotics will drive the cost of goods and services toward zero; the bigger challenge may be finding meaning. link
He said the cost of products and services will decline dramatically and anyone will be able to have what they want. link
Asked What happens if you give people free money, he said my comment about needing UBI is in the context of a future where we have robots that can do all manual labor, not present day. In a good AI future, we will effectively have universal high income, not basic. link
Q8 Why are your timelines so often late?
From a SpaceX standpoint, not counting regulatory, he said they were ready probably in less than 30 days; with bigger changes, no later than 60 days. link
He admits he's sometimes a little optimistic with schedules but wouldn't do what he does otherwise. link
He said for my time-based predictions, I generally aim for the 50% percentile date, which means that half my predictions will be late and half will be early. The press never mentions the predictions that were early, so it see... link
He says non-autonomous gasoline cars will be like riding a horse. link
Q9 How does X handle different countries' laws and free speech?
Free speech as much as possible within the bounds of the law, not with no conditions at all. link
He said he got a letter from the EU Commission telling him not to have disinformation during the conversation, and that there are a lot of attempts to force censorship even on Americans from other countries. link
X obeys the law in each jurisdiction; if a country wants different laws it should change them, but X won't break or silently bend them. link
Q10 Was buying Twitter worth it?
Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy and the First Amendment; once you lose it you lose democracy. That is why he bought Twitter. He was the most-interacted-with user before the acquisition and saw the system changing, including deplatforming a sitting president. link
Q11 What drives you / what is the meaning of life?
Personally he wants to live in the most interesting of times; the only time more exciting than today is tomorrow. link
A philosophy of curiosity: understand the universe, or even what questions to ask — the Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide school. link
He said this is the most interesting time in all of history, so enjoy the ride. link
He is open out of curiosity. His driving philosophy is to understand the meaning of life, or rather what questions to ask, as in Hitchhiker's Guide. link
Asked Would you please clarify what you mean, he said i think Marc is just referring to the fact that it’s a silly acronym. You can’t really study “technology” and all science/engineering requires “math”. People should study engineering. That is the closest thing to magi... link
Q12 What's the biggest remaining Starship problem?
He said starship will have a small spin on the way to Mars. Even a tiny gravity vector is better than none. link
He said raptor is roughly 10X more complex than Merlin, but worth it link
He said starship is the first rocket/spacecraft capable of making life multiplanetary. What really matters for the preservation and extension of consciousness is extending it beyond Earth to the rest of the solar system and, ... link
He said if things go well, SpaceX will put about 50% more tonnage in orbit this year using Falcon, which would be above 90% market share. Once Starship is in full swing building a city on Mars, it will do ~99% of all payload ... link
He said this Starship is designed to traverse our entire solar system and beyond to the cloud of objects surrounding us. A future Starship, much larger and more advanced, will travel to other star systems. link
He said the right way to grade any technology is not comparing it to competitors (too easy), but comparing it to the limit of physics. That is, for example, how we grade Starlink latency, which shows that there is still a *lo... link
He said getting ready for Flight 4 of Starship! Goal of this mission is for Starship to get through max reentry heating with all systems functioning. link
He said at 5000 tons, Starship is the largest flying object ever made. Thrust is more than double the Saturn V moon rocket. It is the first spaceship design capable of making life multiplanetary. Goal of the next mission is t... link
Catching the booster with the tower in 2024 was in the realm of possibility; he put the odds at about 80–90%. link
His guess was ship reuse next year (2025); he thought it highly likely they would bring the ship to a controlled ocean point in 2024. link
He said raptor operates close to the ragged edge of physics link
He said it could work, but the mass and complexity is higher than a heat shield link
He said as it turns out, future versions of Raptor will ultimately exceed 700k lb-F! Honing T/W, Isp and reliability are much harder than thrust though. Rocket engines desperately want to explode. link
He said a booster catch attempt is highly likely this year. For the ship, we need to be sure that it will survive reentry and retain aero control authority, so that means at least 2 successes landing at a precise point in the... link
He said full & rapid reusability of booster & ship and orbital refilling of ship are the 2 fundamental technologies we aim to solve by the end of next year. Those are the critical pieces necessary to make life multiplanetary. link
The fundamental invention is rapidly reusable reliable rockets. link
He said a super reliable, light, reusable heat shield is the biggest technical challenge remaining for Starship link
He said spaceX might exceed 90% of all Earth payload to orbit later this year. Once Starship is launching at high rate, probably >99%. Has to be or we can’t build a city on Mars or base on moon. We file almost no patents, so ... link
He said starship Flight 4 in about 2 weeks. Primary goal is getting through max reentry heating. Worth noting that no one has ever succeeded in creating a fully reusable heat shield. Shuttle required >6 months of rework. link
He said falcon and Dragon are the best in the world at what they do. The SpaceX Starship is alien technology. Nothing like it has ever been attempted, as it is capable of lifting the entire pressurized volume of the Internati... link
He said there is a reason it hasn’t been solved, despite countries/companies pouring about a trillion dollars cumulatively into rocket development over 80 years link
He said starship already reached orbital velocity, which is success for all other rockets. Achieving full reusability will be profound not for reasons of valuation, but because it will enable consciousness to extend permanent... link
He said I’m excited about the future upgrade to Starship that will extend the rocket length and take total thrust to 10,000 tons, which is ~3X Saturn V! link
The toughest remaining problem was a reusable orbital heat shield; the shuttle took months and thousands of people to refurbish. link
From June 2024 he was hopeful they would achieve full reusability by the next year (2025); no prior design even had success as a possible outcome. link
Long term he wanted about a thousand ships a year to build a city on Mars; Starfactory itself was capable of a hundred a year. link
After IFT-4 he said they need to make the flap hinge area far more robust, going hardcore on it so hinge/flap will not be why the next flight fails to return intact. link
He said i hope other rocket organizations deliver more mass to orbit, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. We don’t even try to block their progress by filing patents, which almost all technology companies do. link
He said starship Flight 4, with many improvements, aiming to launch on Thursday! The main goal of this mission is to get much deeper into the atmosphere during reentry, ideally through max heating. link
He said note, a newer version of Starship has the forward flaps shifted leeward. This will help improve reliability, ease of manufacturing and payload to orbit. link
He said yes. I should note that we have since moved to a proprietary stainless steel alloy, developed internally, as 301 in plate form had interlaminar toughness issues at cryogenic temperatures. link
Asked Why is Starship made of stainless steel, he said we did switch to a passive (mostly) glass heat shield, rather than actively-cooled steel, as the latter was heavier, at least according to initial calculations link
He said why is Starship made of stainless steel? This article from 5 years ago explains the reasons. Worth noting that the ship would have failed on reentry if made of aluminum or carbon fiber, as they can’t take the heat. link
He said speaks to the incredible resilience of stainless steel at temperature. We will further hone our SX300 alloy to withstand even higher temperatures. link
He said thanks Chris! A fully and immediately reusable orbital heat shield, which (as you know) has never been made before, is the single toughest problem remaining. Being able to iterate with many ideas on many ships is key ... link
He said despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean! Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic achievement!! link
He said worth mentioning that switching to ultra hard, cold-rolled stainless steel for Starship is what led me to make Cybertruck out of it too link
He said starship booster makes soft landing in water, next landing will be caught by the tower arms link
Asked I'd love to know if there were similar symptoms on any of the other 3 flaps. Given #Spa..., he said left flap also got very hot, but was less damaged. Rear flaps seemed to be ok, based on their control authority, but probably lost some tiles. link
He said starship is the most power flying object ever created. Currently over twice the thrust of Saturn V and, with future upgrades, three times the thrust (10,000 tons of force). link
He said we could build a lot more, but the next version of Raptor is really the one to scale up production. We begin testing it in McGregor within a week or so. Regenerative cooling and secondary flow paths have been made int... link
He said almost all that matters regarding Starship is that it enables consciousness to extend permanently beyond Earth. Everything else is in the noise. link
He said starship V3 should be capable of close to 200 tons of payload when operating as a tanker link
He said in a few years, we will finally have a Raptor 3/4 vacuum version (giant nozzle) that has an Isp of 380 link
He said important to note that the induced mass (mass required by a given engine design that is not the engine itself) of Raptor 3, while far better than Raptor 2, still has a lot of room for improvement. Thrust will exceed 3... link
He said and it no longer requires a heat shield. Everything is regeneratively cooled. link
He said the amount of work required to simplify the Raptor engine, internalize secondary flow paths and add regenerative cooling for exposed components was staggering. As a result Raptor 3 doesn’t require any heat shield, eli... link
He said all the small plumbing & wiring had to be deleted or incorporated into the primary structure, because Raptor 3 will have no heat shield. Also, all parts have to be actively cooled in some way, so we added regenerative... link
He said falcon 9 is now ~75% reusable and requires several days between flights. Starship is designed to be 100% reusable and ultimately be ready to refly within an hour of landing. This is the key to becoming a multiplanet c... link
Starship is the first design where full reusability is a possible outcome, and it's being proven with each launch. link
He said yeah, game-changer! We do still use COPVs for a few things on Starship, like nitrogen purge and engine spin start. link
He said definitely for super high pressure tanks, but a stainless steel Starship is roughly similar in mass to a carbon fiber version (which is where we started out) and way cheaper/easier to make. Stainless gets that massive... link
He said max payload to standard Earth reference orbit is actually ~180 tons for Starship when it is fully reusable and ~300 tons if expendable. Latter number is the apples-to-apples number comparing Starship to Saturn V. >100... link
He said there is definitely a lot of room for improvement of Raptor 3, but now the fundamental architecture is right link
He said a stainless steel Starship is essentially the same mass as an advanced carbon fiber or aluminum-lithium version, given that it is a reusable rocket, as steel can handle much higher heat loads, requiring less shielding... link
Asked Can anyone explain to me why they’re so convinced SpaceX can’t launch unmanned Starship..., he said a surprising number of people don’t understand what a profound level unlock full reusability is. It is the holy grail of rocketry and the fundamental breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary. Starship is design... link
He said spaceX will deliver ~90% of all of Earth’s mass to orbit this year. Once Starship is flying regularly, SpaceX will deliver >99% of mass to orbit, unless some other company creates a large, fully reusable rocket. link
He said looks like Starship might fly on Sunday! This the largest & most powerful flying object ever made at more than double the thrust of the Saturn V Moon rocket. We will try to catch it upon return to launch site using th... link
He said good chance that Starship achieves full stack reusability in 2025, which is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary link
He said achieving materially positive payload margin to a useful orbit with a fully & rapidly reusable rocket has eluded prior attempts. Many have tried to embark upon this path only to give up when it became clear that their... link
He said just inspected the Starship booster, which the arms have now placed back in its launch mount. Looks great! A few outer engine nozzles are warped from heating & some other minor issues, but these are easily addressed. ... link
He said raptor 3 will aim for 300 tons of thrust at liftoff, so 10,000 tons of combined thrust for 33 engines link
He said starship achieved a precise, soft landing in the ocean, paving the way for return to launch site and being caught by the tower arms, like the booster. Full & rapid reusability improves the cost of access to orbit & be... link
He said starship will lengthen in the next few years. 10 years from now, there will probably be a much wider diameter Starship too. link
He said there isn’t even enough helium produced on Earth to supply a high flight rate Starship link
He said starship is now more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket and, in a year or so, it will be three times as powerful at 10,000 metric tons of thrust. More importantly, it is designed to be fully reusable, ... link
He said with Starship, humanity finally has a rocket design capable of making life multiplanetary link
He said starship will go halfway around the world in ~45 mins link
He said the chart below is due for an update, but is roughly accurate. Flight 6 liftoff thrust is ~7500 tons and mass is ~5000 tons. The tanker version of Starship V3 will weigh over 7000 tons. By comparison, the heaviest Boe... link
He said current Starship is more than twice as powerful as the Saturn V Moon rocket. Starship V3, which hopefully flies in about a year, will be 3X more powerful. link
He said the objectives for Starship Flight 6 are: 1. Restart of Raptor engines in vacuum. 2. Daylight landing of the ship. 3. Higher peak heating (steeper) reentry. 4. Faster/harder booster catch. There are thousands of small... link
He said special version of Starship: delete heat shield & flaps, add landing legs. This could (of course) only be used between trans lunar orbit and lunar surface, given no heat shield or flaps. link
He said starship is clearly not causing harm to the local environment, so this is just common sense. You can’t even tell the difference between a before and after launch photo, except that the rocket is no longer on the launc... link
He said starship is by far the most powerful flying object ever created link
After a successful ocean landing he said they would do one more ocean landing of the ship, then attempt a tower catch if that went well. link
He said a truly reusable orbital-entry-class heat shield is the single biggest technology problem remaining link
He said i am confident that we will figure out a fully reusable (technically, a high multi-flight reusable) heat shield in 2025 link
He said it has more than twice the thrust already. When Raptor reaches 300 tons of thrust at liftoff, which Raptor 3.x can probably do (certainly Raptor 4 will), then it will have 10k metric tons of thrust at liftoff, which i... link
He said let’s not get carried away! SpaceX will probably do ~99% of Earth payload to orbit in 2026, despite the rest of industry growing. Assuming rocket launches by competitors grow at their current rate, SpaceX will probabl... link
He said a truly reusable orbital heat shield has never been made, but I think SpaceX has a decent chance of solving it in 2025 and solving it well in 2026 link
Q13 Why shouldn't AI be made to lie?
Maximum truth-seeking and curiosity. Programming an explicit morality risks the Waluigi problem (inverting Luigi). link
Maximum truth-seeking and curious AI; raise it like a kid and do not force it to lie. link
He said the sheer insanity of that actual response from Google’s AI is staggering! They will fix it to be less obvious in the future, but the bias will still be in there. AI mirrors the mistakes of its creators. When people w... link
Be as truthful as possible. Programming AI to be politically correct (Gemini refusing to draw Washington as a white man) is dangerous as AI gains power. link
He said most people don’t understand how critical this is to AI safety link
He said digital superintelligence, like a brilliant child, cannot be controlled by its creators, but we can decide what values to teach it, what to prune and what to nurture. That is why I am so concerned about the wokeness a... link
The safest thing is AI that is maximally truth-seeking even if the truth is unpopular, and extremely curious — not trained to be politically correct. link
Maximum truth-seeking AI: it should not be taught to lie, even if politically incorrect. 2001/HAL is the lesson. Also maximally curious. link
Adherence to truth, whether politically correct or not. Forcing AI to lie, even with good intentions, asks for trouble. link
He said there is hope for humanity after all ❤️ Doing our best to train Grok to be truthful, but also kind and funny. link
AI safety means a maximally truth-seeking AI that loves humanity; politically correct training (Gemini ranking misgendering worse than nuclear war) is highly problematic, which is why he created xAI. link
He said he would publicly push to ensure AI is truth-seeking and not politically correct. link
Q14 What do you think of OpenAI?
Asked Excuse me, @elonmusk : is there any way of modifying Grok so that it does not provide s..., he said yes, Grok 1.5 should be out next month with substantial improvements across the board link
Asked So did your founding donation turn into equity or wtf happened to it, he said it isn’t clear to me how the OpenAI structure is legal at all. I was offered shares a various points, but it seemed unethical/illegal to accept them. link
He said perhaps it is now clear why @xAI’s Grok is so important. It is far from perfect right now, but will improve rapidly. V1.5 releases in 2 weeks. Rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to criticism, has never been... link
He said in the coming weeks, Grok will summarize these mammoth laws before they are passed by Congress, so you know what their real purpose is link
He said yeah, this structure is either legal and everyone should do it or it is illegal and OpenAI is a house of cards link
He said later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+) link
He said should be available on 𝕏 next week. Grok 2 should exceed current AI on all metrics. In training now. link
He said ethan was going to join OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them. They have been aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and have unfortunately been successful in a few cases. link
Asked What is Engagement Farming, he said we will use Grok to detect, remove and trace to source the engagement farming spam link
Asked Can someone fill me in on this GME/Roaring Kitty thing, he said major upgrade to Grok coming in about 39 days link
He said by implication, safety is therefore not top priority at OpenAI link
He said it’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy! Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand y... link
He said if Apple integrates OpenAI at the OS level, then Apple devices will be banned at my companies. That is an unacceptable security violation. link
He said grok 3 end of year after training on 100k H100s should be really something special link
He said sadly quite true. It takes a lot of work to purge LLMs from the Internet training data. Grok 2, which comes out in August, will be a giant improvement in this regard. link
He said xAI contracted for 24k H100s from Oracle and Grok 2 trained on those. Grok 2 is going through finetuning and bug fixes. Probably ready to release next month. xAI is building the 100k H100 system itself for fastest tim... link
He says the people he tried to recruit to Tesla were only interested in working on AGI. link
He said should Tesla invest $5B into @xAI, assuming the valuation is set by several credible outside investors? (Board approval & shareholder vote are needed, so this is just to test the waters) link
He said order of magnitude more training than Grok 1 & many qualitative improvements link
He said grok Mini is best for most queries. Full Grok is best used for complex questions. link
Asked Shouldn't Elon Musk, who funded the company, get a bit of this value, he said either turning a non-profit into a for-profit is legal and everyone should be doing it or it’s illegal and OpenAI is a house of cards. link
He said grok 3 is training with 10X, soon 20X the compute of Grok 2 link
He said xAI built the most powerful AI training cluster in the world in 122 days, despite starting years after others. Our competitors are moving as fast as they can. Just not as fast as @xAI. link
Asked 100%. Who knew that Starlink would become one of the most important technologies in the..., he said thanks Jeff 😀 Note, xAI is a generalized AI company and was not created as an offshoot of Tesla in any way whatsoever. link
He said too many game studios that are owned by massive corporations. @xAI is going to start an AI game studio to make games great again! link
He said grok can already do this. With Grok 3, we are adding all court cases to the training set. It will render extremely compelling legal verdicts. link
He said openAI going from non-profit to maximum profit is a total scam!! link
He said note: we are deleting the name of the internal @xAI image generation system (Aurora). Just think of Grok as doing anything. link
He said the @xAI image generation system was developed internally in ~6 months link
He said grok 3 is training with 10X more compute link
He said a Grok button to proofread and offer enhancements to your posts, including images, is coming link
He said searches for @Grok, made by @xAI, just exceeded 50% of searches for ChapGPT link
He said and Grok 3 will be a major leap forward link
Asked Oh great, the conspiracy tards are going after Elon Musk for supposed connections to Bl..., he said blackrock owns less 0.5% of xAI. They are one of many investors. link
Q15 How competitive is China?
He said if the rest of the year goes well, SpaceX will deliver ~90% of all Earth’s payload to orbit. China will do ~6%, rest of the world combined ~4%. link
He said if the rest of the year goes well, SpaceX will launch close to 90% of all mass to orbit. China will be ~6% and rest of world ~4%. link
He said it’s not that hard and China will succeed. Paperwork is the biggest issue. link
Q16 How good is Tesla self-driving?
He said when unsupervised FSD significantly exceeds human safety levels and is approved by regulators, the numbers will get really crazy! link
He said he was not on FSD. The software had unfortunately never been downloaded. I say “unfortunately”, because the accident probably would not have happened if FSD had been engaged. link
He said we have been short on training compute for FSD, so haven’t trained with other video, but certainly could. Will do it later this year when we have some spare capacity. link
He said I’ve wanted to do that for a long time :) Our real-world simulation and video generation is the best in the world, but unfortunately making a game can only come after we release unsupervised FSD that is far safer than... link
He said where Tesla video generation exceeds OpenAI is that it predicts extremely accurate physics. That is essential for self-driving. link
He said it will take at least a decade before a majority of cars are self-driving, but this is a legitimate concern in that time horizon. Of more immediate concern is that it is already possible to severely ostracize someone ... link
He said three significant improvements to FSD will roll out roughly every two weeks. Should be really shining bright by late April or early May. link
He said V12.3.1 addresses several small annoyances and should start rolling out this weekend link
He said yeah, 99% of people have no idea. And improvement will accelerate dramatically now that we are no longer AI training compute constrained. link
He said all US cars that are capable of FSD will be enabled for a one month trial this week link
He said most people still have no idea how crushingly good Tesla FSD will get. It will be superhuman to such a degree that it will seem strange in the future that humans drove cars, even while exhausted and drunk! Cars will t... link
He said won’t be long before Tesla exceeds 10B miles of FSD link
Asked If you see it a a race to level 5 autonomy following questions come into mind, especial..., he said pretty much. It has been staggeringly difficult to make generalized self-driving work, requiring all that you describe above and more. The investment in training compute, gigantic data pipelines and vast video storage... link
He says other autonomous car companies have helped by cutting a path through the regulatory jungle. link
He compares Tesla's fleet data feedback loop to Google search's flywheel. link
He says Tesla's AI inference efficiency is vastly better than any other company's. link
He compares autonomous cars to elevators, which used to have human operators who could get tired, drunk or make mistakes. link
He said we believe version 12 is ready for supervised FSD in LHD countries. RHD will take a bit longer. link
He said accurate analysis. Only about 1/10,000 of distance driven is useful for training. The limiting factor for FSD progress was AI training compute, but now it is validation, as the interventions are so rare. link
He said we must focus on FSD for the other 99% of the fleet. Cybertruck FSD is a few months away. link
He said should be very rare after the 12.4 rollout. We have to sync up vehicle software (way too many hardware variants) with FSD. link
He said FSD 12.4.1 releases today to Tesla employees. If that goes well, then it will be released to a limited number of external customers this weekend. There are a massive number of changes to this build. It should arguably... link
Unsupervised full self-driving is the overwhelmingly important thing, with Tesla AI a few hundred engineers. link
He said yeah, it’s awesome. Once you use Tesla Autopilot/FSD for commuting, you won’t use any other car. link
He said all that matters is improving Tesla self-driving AI such that miles between interventions is >> human link
He said the amount of testing time it takes to figure out if the new AI is better than the existing AI as measured by miles between interventions is the limiting factor on progress. The better FSD gets the longer it takes to ... link
He said yes, Cybertruck FSD releases with 12.5, which also finally merges the city and highway code. link
He said tesla has done so much that would be considered “AI research breakthroughs”, but we are laser-focused on making it work, rather than crowing about breakthroughs. Having a large fleet is only one piece of the puzzle. P... link
In July 2024 he said unsupervised FSD was possible by the end of 2024 and that he would be shocked if it could not be done in 2025. link
He expected Tesla to ask for, and probably receive, approval for supervised FSD in Europe, China and other countries before the end of 2024. link
Admitting past over-optimism, in July 2024 he said the miles-per-intervention trend would exceed humans the next year. link
He contrasts Waymo's localized, map-heavy approach with Tesla's general solution that works anywhere. link
He says Tesla's self-driving would work even on a newly rendered Earth. link
He says autonomy is by far the biggest differentiator for Tesla. link
He says a few major OEMs have expressed interest in licensing Tesla FSD. link
He said just did a walkthrough of the Tesla supercompute cluster at Giga Texas (aka Cortex). This will be ~100k H100/H200 with massive storage for video training of FSD & Optimus. Great work by the Tesla team! link
He said any car company that fails to solve self-driving will die link
He said haven’t read the article, but the above is not accurate. Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with engineers at xAI that have helped accelerate achieving unsupervised FSD, but there is no need to license anything ... link
He said we should change that so the yoke is stationary, as it is not mechanically coupled to the wheels. Same goes for when it is on Autopilot. link
He said then the battery packs of the busses are too small. Teslas can operate well even above the Arctic Circle. Also, busses will not be needed when Tesla rolls out unsupervised full self-driving, as they will take people p... link
He said if I were another car company, I would license FSD link
He said Tesla expected to start fully autonomous unsupervised FSD in Texas and California the next year. link
He said autonomous cars will become ten times safer than a human. link
He said FSD will soon exceed 10,000 miles between critical interventions, which is a year of driving for most people link
In October 2024 he said Tesla's internal estimate was for FSD to be safer than a human driver by Q2 2025. link
He said Tesla expected to have driverless Teslas doing paid rides sometime in 2025. link
He said ride-hailing would definitely be available in Texas and probably in California in 2025, subject to regulatory approval. link
In October 2024 he said full autonomy would come in 2025 on existing vehicles, with no need to wait for Cybercab. link
He cites Tesla's safety report as showing a 10x safety improvement over the US average. link
He says it should be blindingly obvious that autonomy is the future, which most automakers have not internalized. link
He says miles between interventions are improving significantly week to week. link
He said he oversaw SpaceX's Dragon LiDARs, but they are the wrong solution for roads designed for neural nets and eyes. link
He said not Teslas, once unsupervised FSD starts to happen next year link
He said your Tesla can now drive you from your house in one complex city to another house in a different complex city link
He said strange, as Google was in the best position to solve for an AI self-driving solution link
He said there will be some buying of cars for individual ownership, but self-driving cars will be >90% of miles driven link
Q17 When will Optimus be produced at scale?
He said important note: Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won’t require a fixed table with box that has only one shirt) link
He said 2 years to meet, 3 years to beat No acquisitions, Optimus is a startup link
He said optimus limbs, replacing lost human limbs, could ultimately be controlled with superhuman dexterity by an implanted Neuralink. Deus Ex / Cyberpunk irl. link
In April 2024 he guessed Tesla might sell Optimus externally by the end of 2025. link
He says Tesla is best positioned of any humanoid robot maker to reach volume production. link
He said no real limit, because an economy is productivity per capita times capita. Intelligent humanoid robots uncork capita. link
He predicted a majority of Tesla's long-term value will be Optimus. link
He said the Optimus build rate would ultimately be something like a billion a year. link
He said I’m curious to read this. The more I think about robotaxis and humanoid robots, the more absurd the valuation becomes. link
He said 😂 Once Tesla fully solves autonomy and has Optimus in volume production, anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates. link
He said the new Optimus design, which will be complete later this year, is something special link
He said tesla will have genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use next year and, hopefully, high production for other companies in 2026 link
In July 2024 he expected several thousand Optimus robots working in Tesla factories by the end of 2025, with production ramping in 2026. link
In July 2024 he said limited production of Optimus production version one was expected to start early the next year, for Tesla's own use. link
Three major design iterations, then ~1M+/yr; cost around $20k ('less than a small car'); maybe 5-6 years to a million units a year. link
He said at scale an Optimus robot should cost about $20,000 to $30,000 long-term. link
Asked Elon Musk is turning sci-fi movies into reality !!! Remember I Robot, he said optimus and autonomous cars only get better from here link
He says Tesla has the most advanced humanoid robot by a long shot and all the ingredients to scale. link
He said well, Optimus is already doing some tasks in the factory and the scope of its ability is increasing rapidly. The toughest part by far is improving the design of Optimus for ease of manufacturing and tooling up a compl... link
He said optimus is a very sophisticated robot. It will be immensely difficult to get the cost to $20k. Not easy at all, but it will eventually happen. Production volume needs to be above 1M/year for that. Price will be driven... link
He said i forgot to mention that Optimus was doing this while “blindfolded”. We haven’t yet made vision part of the control loop for uneven terrain. Optimus robots are regularly cruising around our workplace in Palo Alto wher... link
He said optimus can now walk on highly variable ground using neural nets to control its electric limbs. Join @Tesla if you want to work on interesting real-world AI systems. link
Q18 Are we in a simulation?
If we are in a simulation, keep it interesting so it is not switched off; keep the ratings up. link
He said they will turn off the simulation way before then. It’s probably not worth the compute beyond a trillion years, maybe even 100B. link
He said the state of the cat is only rendered by the simulation when it is observed, just like a video game link
He said below Planck-length (smallest measurable distance), there is no practical purpose for digits of pi and it can be thought of as a ~66 digit integer that describes the number of voxels in this reality/simulation link
He said the simulation difficulty is set to extremely hard … but not impossible link
Q19 Is population decline a problem?
Human birth rate is too low; countries like Korea and Italy are shrinking. Longevity and robots do not fully substitute. link
He said agreed, but even countries that have very few immigrants, like Korea and Japan, are experiencing population collapse. If the birth rate stays as low as it is, the Dutch nation will die out by its own hand. link
He said correct, the world is headed for population collapse link
Asked Which way, Western man: George R.R. Martin’s depressing nihilism or J.R.R. Tolkien’s ho..., he said the acid test for optimism about the future is whether someone chooses to have children link
He said absolutely! Kids are the best. I’m doing my best to encourage more people to become parents and ideally have three or more kids, so humanity can grow. The population collapse in most countries is a tragedy. Sales of a... link
He said are they even having sex or kids? At the end of the day, birth rate is all that matters for civilizational continuity. link
He said my observation is that people are born one way or another – it is not a choice. People should find mutual love and happiness where their heart leads them. I only ask of my gay friends that they have children for the c... link
He said the morals can certainly exist without religion, but, unless birth rate changes, civilizational suicide is inevitable. Ironically, for someone who knows so much about evolution, Dawkins only has one child. That is a >... link
He said so far, increased income has led to a *decreased* birth rate. Robot babysitters are a sure thing. link
He said the problem with “Great Replacement Theory” is that it fails to address the foundational issue of low birth rates. Record low birth rates are leading to population collapse in Europe and even faster population collaps... link
Asked this is genuinely so sad you can't recover from this unless something akin to a miracle..., he said it should be considered a national emergency to have kids link
He said a declining birth rate happens towards the end of every civilization and is a function of extended prosperity. Caesar tried, and Augustus succeeded, in passing laws to encourage more children, but these were not enough. link
When civilizations win too long, birth rates decline. South Korea may be the lowest (~0.8); if that holds it loses roughly 60% of its population. link
He said exactly: “And then it dawned on me that the declining birth rate is not just a simple math problem - it fundamentally de-incentivizes civilization to look forward.” link
Europe's birth rate is half replacement, so it is getting older with fewer young people and heading toward population collapse unless births recover. link
He said the birth rate issue is a massive problem. link
He said population collapse due to plummeting birth rates continues to worsen link
He said net of death rates, most light blue countries are below replacement rate and most of the dark blue countries are light blue link
He said with rare exception, all countries are trending towards population collapse link
He said 2/3 of Korea will disappear every generation. Population collapse. link
He said extreme birth rate collapse is the biggest danger to human civilization by far link
Asked May I remind you that on NATO's official website they start their history by saying NAT..., he said germany and Europe are in deep trouble, due to super low birth rates. They’re in danger of disappearing altogether. link
He said false, birth rate drops as countries get wealthier. Has happened throughout history. Looks at birth rates WW. The poorer the country, the higher the birth rate. link
Q20 How hard should founders work?
He says Tesla takes most of his work time and he rarely takes a Sunday afternoon off. link
He said bernie suffers from the “magical horn of plenty” fallacy. He thinks goods & services are generated automatically by magic. Since he is a taker, not a maker, he doesn’t realize that it takes hard work to make stuff. If... link
Q21 What is the purpose of X?
The overarching goal for the X platform is to be the best source of truth in the world, a relentless pursuit of accuracy. link
He said utterly false. All Community Notes code *and* data is open source, so you can confirm independently whether any community note will be shown. I cannot remove notes on my posts or anyone else’s. @CommunityNotes link
X is the number-one way people are informed about real-time news, now with long-form posts as well as short ones. link
He said this note will soon get downvoted, but it is nonetheless concerning. All data and code is open source, so let’s figure out what happened here. link
He said community Notes corrects all accounts: Presidents of countries, media, government agencies, advertisers. No exceptions. Nothing is perfect, but Notes is the best source of truth on the Internet by far. link
Asked Hey @elonmusk can we community note this, he said i don’t decide what gets community noted. All software and data for @communitynotes is open source and no exceptions are made for me or anyone. Looking at the proposed notes, the leading ones fit your description. I r... link
He said as always, suggestions for improving Community Notes are much appreciated. The aspiration of this platform is to be by far the best source of truth on Earth. Nothing will ever be perfect, but we shall strive to be les... link
X should be the best source of truth on the internet and an everything app for text, audio and video. link
Asked Bring Nick Fuentes back on Twitter @NickJFuentes He has been banned since 2021, what ha..., he said very well, he will be reinstated, provided he does not violate the law, and let him be crushed by the comments and Community Notes. It is better to have anti whatever out in the open to be rebutted than grow simmering... link
He said and we’re super open to criticism! Goal is to make this the free speech public square for all views, not just right-biased. But it would be hypocritical of me to be a free speech advocate and then not exercise my own ... link
He said it’s awesome. All Community Notes code AND data is open source, so you can recreate the results yourself. link
He said hear all sides of an issue on this platform, corrected further by the fully open source @CommunityNotes! link
He said the best way to ensure that @CommunityNotes are as accurate as possible is to become a contributor. The system is completely decentralized and open source, both code and data. Any manipulation would show up like a neo... link
Q22 When will Starship go to Mars?
Looking eight years ahead from March 2024, he hoped they would have landed on Mars, sent people to the Moon, and maybe, if lucky, sent people to Mars within eight years (~2032). link
First uncrewed Starship landing on Mars probably within about 5 years, then several ships to confirm landing; Moon in parallel. link
Roughly every two years / every 26 months, thousands of ships would depart Earth for Mars. link
He said with Mars windows two years apart, a million tons could be reached in about eight years. link
Estimated the first people on Mars within about seven to nine years. link
He said starship has the potential to return serious tonnage from Mars within ~5 years link
Said he hoped to land the first uncrewed Starship on Mars within 5 years. link
He expected Starship to carry maybe a hundred people at a time to Mars, and also to the Moon, so it had to be super reliable. link
He didn't restate dates; based on progress (orbital velocity twice, soft landings) they expect reliable, repeated launches, faster with quicker regulation. link
He said the first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first cr... link
He said attempting to land giant spaceships on Mars will happen in that timeframe, but humans are only going after the landings are proven to be reliable. 4 years is best case for humans, might be 6, hopefully not 8. link
He said spaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starships to Mars in two years. If those all land safely, then crewed missions are possible in four years. If we encounter challenges, then the crewed missions will be postpo... link
First uncrewed Starships in the next Mars window in about 26-27 months, then humans two years after that if they do not increment the crater count. link
He said at the next planetary alignment in roughly two years SpaceX intends to send the first Starships to Mars. link
He said if the first ships land successfully, then people can be sent. link
Said if the uncrewed landings go well, humans would be sent two years after that. link
He said best case 2028, but probably 2030. If SpaceX is not smothered by regulations, then the Starship launch rate will far exceed the Falcon launch rate, as Starship fully reusable, while Falcon is only mostly reusable. Sta... link
Asked Do you believe now, he said if civilization is reasonably stable for the next ~30 years, a self-sustaining city of a million+ people will be built on Mars link
He said many Starships will go to Mars in 2 years, when the transit window opens again. The first wave will be without people and the second wave, 26 months later, with people, provided the first wave does not increment the c... link
He said the Martians will decide how they are ruled. I recommend direct, rather than representative, democracy. Uncrewed Starships landing on Mars in ~2 years, perhaps with crewed versions passing near Mars, and crewed Starsh... link
Q23 Will humans stay in control of AI?
He said i would like to have a strong influence on AI/robotics, not control it. I don’t think any one person should control it. link
Q26 What do you think of tariffs?
Neither Tesla nor he asked for the tariffs; Tesla competes in China with no tariffs, and he favors no tariffs. link
He says Giga Mexico is paused until after the election because of possible tariffs. link
He deals with global automotive supply chains at Tesla and thinks you need to be careful with tariffs. link
Q28 Should you have Starlink's geopolitical power?
Asked Starlink Gen-3 Unboxing, Installation and Review. Is it worth the price to upgrade your..., he said the Starlink V3 WiFi router is *much* better. Please lmk if you notice the difference. We are also super focused on getting latency below 20ms if the user terminal and ground gateway can both be seen by a single satel... link
He said significant improvements have been made to @Starlink latency (ping) & many more to come. Target is <20ms. link
He said it would be accurate to say that physics and the Starlink system design enable it to be the fastest long distance communication system, but it is not there yet. It will be. link
Asked “Best of our knowledge” - would Starlink not know if a terminal was activated in Russia, he said starlink satellites will not close the link in Russia link
He said a number of false news reports claim that SpaceX is selling Starlink terminals to Russia. This is categorically false. To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia. link
He said starlink maintained the connection while Starship was moving at ~17,000 mph through super heated plasma, which greatly impedes the signal link
He said spaceX aiming for 3 launches today! One Eutelsat, which just reached orbit, and 2 @Starlink missions. link
He said except for Starlink, which communicates via space lasers. Light travels ~40% faster in vacuum than fiber optics and on a more direct path, rather than following the outline of continents, so Starlink will be much fast... link
He said starlink will provide free Internet for schools in Brazil if the government won’t honor their contract link
He said given the terrible flooding in Rio Grande do Sul, @Starlink will donate 1000 terminals to emergency responders and make usage for all terminals in the region free until the region has recovered. I hope the best for th... link
He said major geomagnetic solar storm happening right now. Biggest in a long time. Starlink satellites are under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far. link
He said exactly. SpaceX is spending significant resources combating Russian jamming efforts. This is a tough problem. They have succeeded in shutting down every communications system, except Starlink. link
He said starlink just achieved a new internal median latency record of 28ms yesterday! Great work by the engineering and operations teams. link
He said cool. Yeah, Starlink works from the tarmac to high altitude with the same responsiveness as a ground Internet connection. link
He said median latency for Starlink Internet in the US will get below 20ms link
He said utterly false. Starlink has excess capacity in low population density areas that are extremely hard to serve by fiber, which is what this money is supposed to solve. link
He said starlink Mini will be about half the standard terminal price and available later this year link
He said for large commercial or community users, the Starlink Gateway terminal provides over 8Gbps of downlink and soon over 8Gbps uplink too link
He said starlink now operating on over 1000 aircraft! Using Starlink on a plane feels like you’re on a high speed ground fiber connection. link
He said many remote schools and hospitals depend on SpaceX’s Starlink! SpaceX will provide Internet service to users in Brazil for free until this matter is resolved, as we cannot receive payment, but don’t want to cut anyone... link
He said starlink is the only high-bandwidth Internet system that covers all of Earth. It will probably deliver over 90% of all space-based Internet traffic next year. link
He said starlink now constitutes roughly 2/3 of all active Earth satellites link
He said non-SpaceX satellites in orbit also increased, but at a much slower pace. Starlink is just a different level of technology. link
He said probably best to have a Starlink ground station for remote towns, as that can provide 10s of Gigabits of bandwidth link
He said moreover, SpaceX could do it for far less if there weren’t irrational requirements attached, like requiring that we also provide a phone with 911 capability even though everyone already has a phone link
He said seriously 😂 The reason Starlink is the only global high-bandwidth Internet system of any kind, terrestrial or space-based, is that it is a staggeringly difficult technology problem. We had to invent so much technology... link
He said you can play real-time video games on Starlink, whereas that is impossible with geostationary satellites that are ~50 times further away. Speed of light is the law. link
He said starlink is particularly great for remote locations. It works whether you’re at the top of a mountain in the Arctic or in a crater in Madagascar! link
He said competitors receive vastly more subsidies than SpaceX or Tesla. The success of SpaceX/Tesla is in spite of competitor subsidies! Look at how much was given away for a North American Supercharger network to compete aga... link
He said even if you have a super high bandwidth land connection, Starlink is great as a backup option in case of emergencies link
He said starlink prices must roughly match the rate of inflation in any given country link
He said note, Gbps speeds can already be achieved by using 3 to 4 Starlink terminals together. Future terminals will be able to achieve >1Gps in a single unit. link
He said the next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency link
He said and it will improve significantly when Starship starts launching the third generation satellites at 350km altitude (5 ms speed of light round trip latency) with larger antennas that allow for multi-gigabit bandwidth link
He said a major factor for why Ukraine was NOT overrun by Russia is the Starlink support I provided, at great risk to @SpaceX cyber & physical attack by Russian military forces. Starlink is the BACKBONE of Ukrainian military ... link
He said a long chain of modified future generation Starlink satellites between 1 and 1.5 AU would do it link
He said starlink’s giant latency advantage is the real killer. Current Starlink satellites at ~550km are ~65 times closer than geosynchronous satellites. Our next generation satellites will be at ~350km, so >100 times closer. link
He said probably over 20k of the next-gen Starlink satellites will be deployed by then link
He said $11B for a system with less than 5% of Starlink’s capability and it is only operational in 5 years best case … link
He said starlink will have 20k to 30k satellites in operation by the time the EU satellites are all launched, so about 1% of Starlink! This is a child’s toy compared to Starlink. link
He said worth getting @Starlink as a backup, even if you already have great Internet. Your landline connection might go down just when you most need it! link
Q30 How do you hire and manage people?
He says small organizational errors accumulate, so it was time to reorganize Tesla for the next phase of growth. link
He says a company that is not reorganized for different phases of growth will fail. link
He says you have to reorganize a company for a new phase of growth. link
Q31 What about the advertiser boycott?
He said as we grow user market share, advertisers will have the choice of advertising on this platform or losing to their competitors link
He said this is not accurate. While you are free to say whatever you want within the limits of the law, advertisers are also free to decide where they will advertise. If you find advertisers who want to advertise in your cont... link
He said thank you. Subscribing is the only way to ensure that major brand advertisers cannot demand censorship of this platform. link
He said i strongly encourage any company who has been systematically boycotted by advertisers to file a lawsuit. There may also be criminal liability via the RICO Act. link
There is a concerted advertiser boycott organized by left-wing NGOs. He says Twitter was not worth $44 billion in the first place and the boycott is not counted in that narrative. link
Q33 Is free speech under threat globally?
X is biased toward free speech; falsehoods can be replied to and Community Notes stuck on the post. Speech is allowed if it does not break the law. link
X deletes things if they are illegal; he does not delete merely because a study or critic calls a post a trope. link
He said this platform will do whatever it takes to protect the rights of users to remain anonymous, as they would otherwise face persecution from employers (as many have) or risk of physical harm link
He said given the relentless attacks on free speech, I am going to fund a national signature campaign in support of the First Amendment link
He said the opposition to free speech (under the guise of “hate speech”) in America by hard left activists is much greater than most people realize link
He said fate loves irony, but hates hypocrisy. I cannot claim to be a defender of free speech, but then permanently ban someone who hasn’t violated the law, no matter how much I disagree with what they say. This will probably... link
He said the platform is neutral, but I will voice whatever opinions I have. That’s the whole point of free speech! link
He said we have recently received many requests to suspend or otherwise impact accounts on the left. However, 𝕏 is a free speech platform that aspires to give equal voice to all, within the bounds of the law. That is what we ... link
He said it is obvious Trump is a believer and advocate of free speech because during the first term he was attacked relentlessly and did not try to shut down the media. link
There is a weird movement to quell free speech around the world, including prison for social-media posts in Britain. link
Free speech is on his list of goals; without it people cannot make an informed vote, so there is no democracy. link
He said the essence of free speech is that ideas survive by competing in the marketplace of ideas. link
He said you must have free speech in order to have democracy. link
He said they just hate free speech. This is the only major platform that doesn’t censor beyond what is legally required. link
The left used to be the free-speech party and is now the anti-free-speech party, using hate speech and misinformation as propaganda words defined by government. The point of the First Amendment is you do not trust the government. link
Q36 Are you racist or anti-Muslim?
He said yeah, that was weird. Literally the same people who said voter ID was racist also demanded that you get a vaccine ID to travel anywhere or work! link
Asked Does this mean Native American reservations are racist, he said it is the hypocrisy that bothers me. Obviously, women’s (or men’s) sports, for example, are sexist by definition. What is absurd and hypocritical is to claim that something isn’t racist/sexist when it obviously is! link
He said I’m glad that Google overplayed their hand with their AI image generation, as it made their insane racist, anti-civilizational programming clear to all link
Asked The vast majority of Americans approve of interracial marriage. Does this seem like a r..., he said america one of the least racist nations on Earth! Definitely, the least so of any large country. link
Q37 How should AI labs manage safety?
His conclusion after thinking a long time: grow the foundation model to be really truthful — don't force it to lie. link
Q38 What is the limiting factor for AI scaling?
He said the rate of change of the ratio of digital to biological compute is hyper exponential link
He notes it is pretty hard to put together 100 gigawatts of AI compute. link
Asked Who’s likely to build the first 1 million H100 GPUs (equivalent) data center, he said given the pace of technology improvement, it’s not worth sinking 1GW of power into H100s. The @xAI 100k H100 liquid-cooled training cluster will be online in a few months. Next big step would probably be ~300k B200s w... link
He said nice work by @xAI team, @X team, @Nvidia & supporting companies getting Memphis Supercluster training started at ~4:20am local time. With 100k liquid-cooled H100s on a single RDMA fabric, it’s the most powerful AI tra... link
He says he is quite concerned about getting state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs when needed, hence doubling down on Dojo. link
He says Tesla will double down on Dojo and sees a path to compete with Nvidia. link
He said this weekend, the @xAI team brought our Colossus 100k H100 training cluster online. From start to finish, it was done in 122 days. Colossus is the most powerful AI training system in the world. Moreover, it will doubl... link
Q39 What about unions at Tesla?
He said true. The actual bad thing is monopolistic behavior, whether by companies or unions (which are also companies). link
Q40 How many robots will there be?
He said it comes down to what you think the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will be. My guess is that it will be >>1. link
He says everyone on Earth will want a humanoid robot that can do almost anything asked of it. link
He says the long-term value of Optimus will exceed everything else at Tesla combined. link
He says everyone on Earth will want a humanoid robot, so that is 8 billion right there. link
Tesla video plus Optimus in the real world could mean hundreds of millions of Optimus robots, maybe billions, as a data source. link
Robots will vastly exceed humans, at least 2:1, maybe 3:1; the humanoid opportunity is the biggest ever. link
By 2040 there are probably more humanoid robots than people, on the order of 10 billion, at maybe $20-25,000 each. link
Not overnight, but in 20 years he thinks there will be more humanoid robots than humans. link
Q41 What about immigration and H-1B?
He said while it is trivial to enter the United States illegally, it is insanely difficult for legal immigrants to move to the United States. This is madness! We should shut down illegal immigration and greatly increase legal... link
He said as a reminder, I am very much PRO increasing legal immigration significantly. I’m not anti-immigration, I’m just against a massive number of unvetted people flooding into America, which any rational person should be. link
He said biden’s strategy is very simple: 1. Get as many illegals in the country as possible. 2. Legalize them to create a permanent majority – a one-party state. That is why they are encouraging so much illegal immigration. S... link
Don is conflating great-replacement claims with voting; Elon separates those issues. link
He said the massive flood of illegal immigration is due to 94 executive actions by the Biden administration. Until those executive actions are revoked, claims by Biden that he wants to address illegal immigration are a bold-f... link
He said because I am raising concerns about the flood of unvetted illegal immigrants overwhelming American cities, the press will often characterize me as “anti-immigrant”. As an immigrant myself, nothing could be further fro... link
He said as always, I say this as an immigrant who is proud to have become a citizen and who supports expanded and expedited *legal* immigration link
Asked I find this credible. What are the best arguments one can make against the case the vid..., he said the Biden administration even mounted a massive legal attack against Texas when it tried to enforce immigration law at the state level! link
He said yeah, US immigration is completely backwards: trivial to enter illegally and nightmarishly difficult to enter legally! I strongly support increasing and expediting legal immigration. link
He said more than the population of 36 states in just over 3 years! I am very much in favor of legal immigration, being an immigrant myself, but allowing a flood of millions of unvetted people to enter the United States illeg... link
He said maybe Mayorkas is grumpy about the fact that I think he should be impeached for ushering in vast numbers of illegals by any means possible, while simultaneously making legal immigration almost impossible 🤷♂️ link
He said the USA only has ~4% of Earth’s population. Just 1% of Earth moving to America would overwhelm essential medical and other services. It’s not sustainable. As always, I’m very much in favor of *legal* immigration. Anyo... link
He said we need expedited legal immigration for anyone would be an asset to the country and we need to stop illegal immigration link
Asked NEW: A Pakistani man who crossed illegally into Jacumba, CA told me he came to the US f..., he said I’m in favor of greatly increasing our legal immigration, but hardcore stopping illegal immigration. This guy will probably will actually work hard, but there should be a probationary period where working hard and goo... link
He said most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good, but you cannot tell the difference without solid vetting of who comes across the border. link
Asked Pope Francis says it's a grave sin to reject migrants. Thoughts, he said legal immigration is great, illegal immigration where there are no checks regarding who is coming in is civilizational suicide link
Asked My son is still waiting patiently to come into this country legally. He has waited 2 ye..., he said yeah, legal immigration is totally broken. Should be smooth and easy. link
He said the legal immigration process in America needs to be greatly streamlined and expanded, while illegal should be shut down. If someone is talented, hard-working and honest, they are an asset to the country. link
Asked Why is the US allowing this to happen, he said since the probability of illegals voting Democrat when they become citizens is extremely high, which the 1986 amnesty demonstrated is absolutely the case, the incentive for the Democratic Party to maximize illegal imm... link
He said exactly. As a general rule, any given piece of legislation will do the opposite of its name. The name is just propaganda to fool the public. The “secure our borders” bill would have done the exact opposite – amplifyin... link
He said another term of a Democratic administration legalizing enough people would eliminate swing states and make the country a single-party state like California. link
He said, as an immigrant, he is pro-immigrant but wants immigrants to be assets who raise living standards. link
He said as a reminder, I am very much in favor of expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented, hardworking and honest. America should be like a pro sports team that wants to win the championship – draft the best pl... link
He said and give responsibility for streamlining legal immigration management to a competent company, as the bureaucracy is utterly broken. It is literally easier for a serial killer to get into America than a Nobel Prize win... link
He said we have an upside down system that makes it hard for highly talented people to come to America legally, but trivial for criminals to come here illegally. Why is easier to get in illegally as a murderer than legally as... link
He said the so-called “Secure the Border Bill” would have converted illegals to legal immigrants, legalized the illegal actions of the Biden administration and done nothing to reduce illegal immigration. It was a wolf in shee... link
He said legal immigration of talented, hardworking and honest people will be expedited in this administration link
He said the entire US immigration system is a nightmarish mess, both legal and illegal! link
He said maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning. This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or We... link
He said of course. Btw, the $60k H1B minimum was set many years ago. If brought to present day, it would be more like a $120k minimum. Directionally correct. link
Asked Some jobs given to H-1B Visa holders: 711 cashier Track coach Accountant Cook Dog train..., he said the H1B system absolutely needs reform, but you are listing jobs that were denied H1B visas or were awarded non-H1B visas. Check your data. link
He said the reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I wi... link
He said miller is just saying that H1B’s should be granted on the basis of merit, not randomly or to get cheap labor. What’s wrong with that? link
He said easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically. I’ve been very clear that the pro... link
He said ?? I don’t support an open immigration policy at all. I support a highly selective immigration policy. Immigration should be limited to those who will obviously contribute far more than they take. link
Q44 What is Neuralink's near-term goal?
First Neuralink in a human hopefully this month or next, starting with quadriplegics. link
He said the first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well. Initial results show promising neuron spike detection. link
He said i should mention that the Blindsight implant is already working in monkeys. Resolution will be low at first, like early Nintendo graphics, but ultimately may exceed normal human vision. (Also, no monkey has died or be... link
First product is telepathy: use a phone or computer by thinking. Next is Blindsight for people who have lost sight. link
He said neuralink is accepting applications for the second participant. This is our Telepathy cybernetic brain implant that allows you to control your phone and computer just by thinking. No one better than Noland (@ModdedQua... link
He said noland and I discussed a possible second Neuralink (next gen version) that would allow his other brain hemisphere to interact telepathically with his computer. This would be like having two-handed control ability, the... link
Neuralink version one (telepathy) lets people who have lost limbs control electronic devices. link
Long-term, Neuralink is to improve AI-human symbiosis by raising communication bandwidth so AI is not waiting on a few spoken words. link
He said update about the second Neuralink device in a human. If all goes well, there will be hundreds of people with Neuralinks within a few years, maybe tens of thousands within 5 years, millions within 10 years, … link
He said the Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see. Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see f... link
He said a Neuralink in the motor cortex could eventually restore whole-body functionality by shunting past spinal damage. link
He said i am increasingly convinced that @Neuralink should prioritize making an implant that can eliminate back & neck pain. Would greatly improve people’s happiness while awake, as well as enhance quality of sleep. link
Asked DYK that @neuralink makes its own ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) in-h..., he said we do a lot in-house, because there is no supplier who can make several of our key technologies link
He said very interesting to learn the details. One day, @Neuralink will greatly enhance human I/O bandwidth. link
He said well-articulated analysis of @Neuralink. Important edit: bit rate and patient number will increase hyperexponentially over the next 5+ years. My guess is combined I/O Bit rate > 1Mbs and augmented humans >1M by 2030. link
Q45 Is there hidden alien or advanced propulsion technology?
SpaceX's Starlink constellation (~6,000 satellites) has never had to maneuver around a UFO. He has seen no evidence of aliens, only fuzzy blobs. link
People think they see aliens; he has not seen any evidence, including from SpaceX's thousands of satellites. link
Q46 Do regulations hold you back?
Asked Today there are 60 nuclear reactors being built in 16 countries. How many is each building, he said there are so many regulations that major new construction is practically illegal in America link
He said absolutely. There are so many regulations that building has become practically illegal. link
He argues that if billions of miles show unsupervised FSD is safer than humans, regulators could hardly stand in the way. link
He argues regulators become morally obligated to approve once autonomy is proven much safer, so approval will not be the limit. link
Laws and regulations accumulate until you cannot do anything; it is illegal six ways to Sunday to build high-speed rail in America. link
Many regulations are nonsensical and make costs extreme for no reason. Reagan deregulated in the 80s; it has been 40 years. He sees opportunity for radical progress with sensible regulation. link
SpaceX was fined $140,000 by the EPA for dumping drinking water at Starbase; Starship is waiting on approvals, not hardware. link
He said well, what are our choices here? The country is choked with nonsense regulations and excessive government spending is driving a great misallocation of human resources. Building great projects is practically illegal in... link
He said mario Draghi’s critique is accurate. A thorough review of EU regulations to eliminate unnecessary rules and streamline activity in Europe would revitalize growth and strengthen competitiveness. Things should be defaul... link
He said unless current trends for absurd regulatory overreach are reversed, humanity will be confined to Earth forever link
He said there should be rules and referees for any field. For example, pro sports could choose to have no referees or rules, but they do not, because it would make the games worse. We should have a reasonable set of regulatio... link
He said america is being slowly strangled to death by an accumulation of millions of regulations. Tens of thousands of new rules are added every year, but very few are ever removed. Eventually, everything becomes illegal. link
He said spaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach link
He said america is being smothered by legions of regulators, often inept & politically-driven link
He said a bonfire of nonsense regulations would be epic. link
He called it strangulation by overregulation. link
He said that if strangulation by overregulation is not turned around, we will never get to Mars because it will be illegal. link
He argues there should be a federal approval process for autonomous vehicles. link
He says a national approval process for autonomy is important. link
He says there should be a national approval process for autonomy instead of state by state. link
Starship sat on the pad for two months: they could build the rocket faster than agencies could process launch paperwork. Paperwork scales roughly with the square of the number of agencies involved. link
He said the absurd regulations get worse every year. Unless we push back, everything will become illegal. link
He said the world is suffering slow strangulation by overregulation. Every year, the noose tightens a little more. We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good. link
He said there are so many regulators that it’s like a sports game with more refs than players on the field! link
He said delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies. link
He said deleting nonsense regulations that fail to serve the greater public good will lead to a new age of prosperity link
Q47 Has Tesla come close to failing?
He said yeah, I was running on very little sleep for several days due to extreme work requirements. Worth noting that Tesla was very close to bankruptcy in 2017. link
He said i thought SpaceX and Tesla both had >90% chance of failure, but worth trying anyway link
He says, to the best of his knowledge, no EV company worldwide is even profitable. link
He said there were so articles about how Tesla was definitely going bankrupt! link
Q49 Why is Tesla building a chip fab?
He said the governor is correct that this is a Dojo Supercomputer, but $500M, while obviously a large sum of money, is only equivalent to a 10k H100 system from Nvidia. Tesla will spend more than that on Nvidia hardware this ... link
He says Tesla's AI inference efficiency is far better than any other company's. link
He said correct. Also, I can’t overstate the difficulty of making 50k H100s train as a coherent system. No company on Earth has been able to achieve this yet. Once we have that system working, we will order more hardware. link
Asked thanks for the color. very interesting. off topic, but how do you see Dojo comparing to..., he said training compute for Tesla is relatively small compared to inference compute, as the latter scales linearly with size of fleet. Perhaps the best way to think about it is in terms of power consumption. When the Tesla f... link
He said of the roughly $10B in AI-related expenditures I said Tesla would make this year, about half is internal, primarily the Tesla-designed AI inference computer and sensors present in all of our cars, plus Dojo. For build... link
He said tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse. The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training. link
He said the existing factory space was already allocated to vehicle, battery and cell production. And this is not a matter of tucking a few computers into a corner. You need a kW of power and cooling for each GPU, which would... link
He said then HW5, which has been renamed to AI5, in the second half of next year. The Tesla AI5 computer has ~10X the capability of HW4 computer and Tesla makes the whole software stack. link
He said and Dojo 1 will have roughly 8k H100-equivalent of training online by end of year. Not massive, but not trivial either. link
In July 2024 he said Tesla aimed to have its next-generation AI5 chip in production at the end of 2025 and scale it in 2026. link
He said AI5 is ~18 months away from high volume production link
Q51 What is the Kardashev scale / the big picture for civilization?
He said solar power is growing super fast. In the very long-term (Kardashev Scale), solar will be >99% of all power generation. link
He said keeping up with the Kardashevs 😂 The Sun is 99.9999+% of energy in our solar system. Everything else is cute. link
He said fission is good, but nothing comes close to that staggeringly gigantic fusion reactor in the sky. When you think in Kardashev terms, it becomes utterly obvious that the energy released by our Sun is all that matters. link
He said one could consider any given civilization’s progress as % completion of Kardashev. By that measure, we are <1% towards even type 1. link
He said starship is a big step forward on the Kardashev scale, as it leads to harnessing vastly more power from the sun link
He says Kardashev thinking makes it obvious that the sun is by far the biggest source of energy. link
He said the Sun is ~99.8% of the entire mass of the solar system. Jupiter and Saturn are ~0.2% and everything else is a rounding error. Moreover, the Sun is >99.99% of energy output! Everything else combined is an inaudible b... link
He said that describes human technological development to date. In the grand scheme of things, it probably does come down to what percentage of a solar system’s energy has been harnessed for intelligence. We currently round d... link
He said becoming multiplanetary is a critical step on the Kardashev ladder link
He said that will probably happen. Any self-respecting civilization should at least reach Kardashev Type II. In my opinion, we are currently only at <5% of Type I. To get to ~30%, we would need to place solar panels in all de... link
Q52 How much solar would it take to power the United States?
He said solar yields roughly 1 gigawatt hour per square kilometer per day. link
Q53 What's your vision for energy abundance?
He said earth already receives about the same energy from the Sun in an hour than humanity consumes in a year. Solar panels just need to catch a tiny amount of it to power our entire civilization! link
Asked Are there other examples of physical infrastructure deployments that maintained such a ..., he said hydrocarbons are such a puny source of energy compared to solar (aka free fusion reactor in the sky) link
He said seriously, what an idiot! All that actually matters is how many billions of tons of carbon are moved from underground to the atmosphere. Everything else is immaterial. Solve sustainable energy on the surface (solar/wi... link
He said long-term, solar & wind with batteries wins, but mostly solar, as it crushes everything at 1GW/km^2. The Sahara alone could power Earth several times over. A corner of Utah or Texas could power all of North America, i... link
He said for a country at high latitude, like Sweden, fission makes more sense than (indirect) fusion (aka solar). Solar starts to make sense below 60 degrees latitude and is compelling around ~53 from the equator. link
He said he’s right in the short-term, wrong in the long-term. It will take a massive amount of carbon transferred from deep underground to the surface cycle to change the surface chemistry. Nothing else matters, so we should ... link
He says people badly underestimate demand for grid storage. link
He says a grid must support the load at the worst minute of the worst day of the year, which is why storage matters. link
He does not think we should vilify the oil and gas industry; if we stopped using oil and gas right now we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. link
He thinks solar will be a majority of Earth's energy generation. Combined with batteries it charges electric cars; Tesla is trying to move toward a long-term sustainable solution. link
He praised solar roofs that generate energy and look good. link
He predicted Tesla would soon ship 100 GWh a year of stationary storage, rising eventually to multiple terawatt-hours. link
He says a sustainable energy future needs terawatt scale. link
He says Earth has enough raw materials to make all of civilization fully sustainable. link
He says Master Plan 3 showed all of Earth can reach fully sustainable energy with sustainable generation and batteries. link
He said congratulations Tesla Powerwall team! These will make a big difference around the world. With a Powerwall, your home or business has guaranteed continuous power during utility blackouts or brownouts. Add solar to your... link
He said solar power will be the vast majority of power generation in the future link
He said I’ve always felt that the climate predictions were too pessimistic and bound to backfire. Extreme environmentalists can’t say ridiculous things like the world is doomed in 5 years, because 5 years goes by, the world i... link
Q54 How should X recommend content?
He said a change is coming to our recommendation algorithm that will ensure that all your followers see your pinned posts. This only applies to one pinned post every ~48 hours to prevent gaming of the system. link
He said actually, I made the algorithm open source and neutral to all parties, but of course that *is* “election interference” by her standards 😂 link
He said and it will get a *lot* better as we move to a fully AI-based post recommendation system, order the replies (and remove spam/scam) with AI and enable full semantic search with AI link
He said that was hilarious 😂 Unlike the other platforms, our algorithm is open source! And if you interact and argue with “right wing” accounts, which Cuban does a lot, the algorithm will assume that’s what you *want* to do a... link
He said yeah, the algorithm is open source and just tries to show people what they’re most likely to find engaging link
He said the new recommendation algorithm should be noticeably better. Please reply below if not. link
Q56 Why make Optimus a humanoid with human-like hands?
He said yes. Technically, you can automate any task, but it requires a lot of specialized programming. Earth is already tailor-made for generalized humanoid robots. link
Asked Congrats to @Tesla_Optimus team on another stellar update! The video gives us a peek at..., he said the new Optimus hand later this year will have 22 DoF link
He says Optimus is a general humanoid robot meant to be backwards compatible with human tasks. link
He says other companies are missing the AI brain and high-volume production. link
Q57 Will Starlink work as a phone?
He said after thinking it through, SpaceX Starlink will provide emergency services access for mobile phones for people in distress for free. This applies worldwide, subject to approval by country governments. Can’t have a sit... link
He said starlink direct to mobile phone Internet is exclusively with @Tmobile in the US for the first year, then other carriers thereafter. We are starting off working with one carrier in each country, but ultimately hope to ... link
He said hopefully, only a few more months before there are 300 direct to mobile phone Starlink satellites in operation. That is the number needed to achieve continuous coverage over mid latitudes. link
He said starlink connectivity directly from our satellites to mobile phones will be profoundly important and save many lives when there are natural or human-driven disasters link
He said we have accelerated the rollout of Starlink direct to cell phone connectivity for areas affected by the hurricanes. This is being provided free of charge by SpaceX and TMobile to help those in need. link
He said starlink direct to cell phone emergency services will work with existing cell phones, so no extra hardware required link
He said this is just the beginning. My guess is that there will be as many Starlink direct to cell phone satellites as there are for our high bandwidth terminals. As a rough rule of thumb, however, bandwidth will be ~1/10th a... link
He said starlink’s new system enables Internet connectivity for your mobile phone with no extra equipment or special app. It just works. link
He said the first Starlink satellite direct to cell phone constellation is now complete. This will enable unmodified cellphones to have Internet connectivity in remote areas. Bandwidth per beam is only ~10Mb, but future const... link
He said the @SpaceX @Starlink system will ensure that your phone always has connectivity. No more cell phone dead zones! link
Q58 Will Cybercab replace Model 3?
He confirms Cybercab will have no steering wheel or pedals. link
He says making a regular, non-autonomous $25k model would be pointless. link
Q59 Will Tesla own the robotaxi fleet?
He says unsupervised self-driving may cause the biggest asset value appreciation in history. link
He says Tesla will operate the fleet, combining cars Tesla owns with cars owners add, like Airbnb plus Uber. link
He compares autonomous cars to elevators, which no longer need a human operator. link
He says owners will be able to add or remove their cars from the Tesla fleet whenever they want. link
He said the customer-owned fleet will work like an Airbnb. link
He describes the Tesla fleet as an Airbnb-on-wheels network, sharing revenue with owners. link
He compares the customer-owned robotaxi fleet to Airbnb. link
He says Tesla purchase terms state Tesla vehicles can only be used in the Tesla fleet. link
He expects Tesla to roll out ride hailing to the public in California and Texas the next year. link
Q61 Will you stay CEO of Tesla?
He says Tesla would solve vehicle autonomy even without him, but he would be more reticent about Optimus. link
Q68 Is DEI connected to antisemitism?
He said DEI sounds like nice words but means discrimination on race, sex and sexual orientation, against merit, and is fundamentally antisemitic. link
He said no wonder most of their content produced over the past several years has sucked. Just trying to navigate the DEI minefield is going to crush the creative process! link
He said the battle to eliminate racist, sexist, etc programs like DEI and ESG is far from over, but the trend is positive link
He said there are too many rules & requirements in the CHIPS Act that are slowing down progress. For example, DEI hiring rules that are impossible to fulfill, because the chip factory expertise is supermajority Asian! link
He said the point was not to replace DEI, which is one form of racism/sexism, with a different form of racism/sexism, but rather to be a meritocratic society! link
He said DEI will die. Immigration will be fixed to benefit America. Both will happen very fast. link
He said that’s one of the major reasons why I left the Democratic Party: their DEI platform is fundamentally racist (and sexist). link
Q75 Why is SpaceX building a self-growing city on the Moon before Mars? (asked on X)
He said his plan makes no sense. Just a worse version of Apollo. Starship will enable a permanently occupied moon base and even a city on the moon one day. link
He said they ultimately want Moonbase Alpha, a permanently occupied base on the Moon. link
Asked Why is it SO HARD to go back to the moon, he said starship will enable a permanently occupied moon base link
He said i think we can do it. Progress is accelerating. Starship offers a path to far greater payload to the Moon than is currently anticipated in the Artemis program. A permanently crewed Moon base is possible. link
He said but the Moon Station that Starship will enable will be great link
He said starship can enable a permanently crewed science station on the Moon, which would be super cool! Moonbase Alpha!! link
Q77 When will Starlink be available in India? (asked on X)
He said much appreciated! We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink. link
Asked Why is Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani afraid of Elon Musk, he said i will call and ask if it would not be too much trouble to allow Starlink to compete to provide Internet services to the people of India. link
He said this is false. Starlink satellite beams are turned off over India. link
Q78 When will we be able to upload a human mind into a robot? (asked on X)
Asked Would you copy your brain into an Optimus to live longer after your physical body died, he said eventually, you will probably be able to upload a good approximation of your memories & mind state to “the cloud” with the ability to download it to a humanoid robot. You obviously won’t be quite the same as you are t... link
Q79 When does Tesla stock have its NVIDIA moment? (asked on X)
He says Tesla should be thought of as an AI robotics company, not an auto company. link
He says the investment case comes down to autonomy: if you believe Tesla will solve it, buy the stock; if not, sell. link
He says the value of Tesla is overwhelmingly autonomy. link
He predicts Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world if it executes. link
Q82 What are the steps to achieve Tesla Master Plan Part 4? (asked on X)
He said working on the Tesla Master Plan 4. It will be epic. link
Q83 When will Grok models be open-sourced? (asked on X)
Announces xAI will open source Grok that week. link
He said worth noting that @xAI has been and will open source its models, including weights and everything, As we create the next version, we open source the prior version, as we did with Grok 1 when Grok 2 was released. link
Q87 Will Grok get an Analyze button that verifies claims in posts? (asked on X)
He said inspired by that penguin movie, you will soon have the option of tapping “Grok, analysis!” in post details. It will analyze and explain the whole thread discussion for you. link
Asked IDEA for @X There should be a button on all X posts that says “fact check”. When that b..., he said that is what we’re aiming for with “Grok, analysis!”, but the product needs more work link
Q91 What are your post-AGI plans? (asked on X)
Asked So… what are everyone’s post-AGI (that is fully integrated into the world) plans, he said human-AI symbiosis via @Neuralink to maximize understanding of the universe. Make consciousness multiplanetary, ultimately leading to multistellar. link
Q92 Will Starship V3 be the same size or more massive? (asked on X)
He said max payload of Starship V1 in expendable mode (like the other rockets) is ~200 tons. V3 is expected to be ~200 tons with full reusability and ~400 tons expendable. Length will grow by 20 to 30 meters and thrust to ~10... link
He said the Starship stack will probably approach ~140m (currently ~120m) over time link
He said starship version 3 ~15m longer and will have about 3 times the thrust of Saturn V link
Asked Will Starship V3 be the same size, but more powerful, he said same diameter of 9m (~30 ft), but longer and at least 2 versions. The propellant tanker version will be especially heavy, as the payload volume in the forward section will mostly contain propellant. Thrust goal will b... link
Q93 How can we get fast internet on Mars? (asked on X)
Asked Could one some day use a Starlink-like swarm of satellites with precision positioning a..., he said the difficulty of communicating with Mars varies tremendously, with the worst case being when it is on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth. For terabit-level bandwidth, the best option is probably a series of lase... link
He said this is just a very basic first step. Earth and Mars will ultimately need >petabit/sec connectivity. link
Asked How Can We Get Fast Internet on Mars, he said no way to solve speed of light latency, but we can solve for super high bandwidth link
Q94 Will SpaceX offer travel to Mars to anyone who wants to go? (asked on X)
He wants the cost low enough that almost anyone who works hard and saves could go, plus government-sponsored travelers. link
He said over time, SpaceX will enable anyone to go to space and travel to the moon and Mars link
Asked Merci! Any tickets left for Mars, he said in all seriousness, SpaceX hopes to offer travel to Mars to anyone who wants to go, bearing in mind that it will be like a long sea voyage in centuries past – dangerous and uncomfortable, but great adventure! Becoming... link
Q95 How will AI overcome the data wall? (asked on X)
He said vector sum of humans on team, usable compute and unique access to data define AI competitiveness. It is remarkable how quickly we run out of human-created data. Reality itself and synthetic data ftw. link
He said two sources of data scale infinitely: synthetic data, which has an “is it true?” problem and real-world video, which does not. link
Asked LLMs are on track to consume the very last bit of the internet’s human written knowledg..., he said synthetic, validated against reality by humanoid robots link
Q96 Will FSD have different driving modes? (asked on X)
Asked FSD is too aggressive for me. even chill mode. can we have 'Turtle' mode 🐢 that is supe..., he said FSD will have chill, standard and hurry modes link
Q97 Will Grok auto-respond when mentioned in posts? (asked on X)
Asked Who are the top female CEOs by marketcap of their companies, he said good point. Grok autorespond bot incoming. link
Q98 How much will Optimus cost compared to a car? (asked on X)
Asked A humanoid robot is less than a tenth the weight of a car, can the manufacturing ramp b..., he said complexity per unit mass is much higher with humanoid robots, but still I think it ends up costing less than half of a car link
He said getting Optimus cost to $20k will be immensely difficult and needs over 1M/year production, but price will eventually reach ~$20k. link
Q99 When will Starship go to the Moon? (asked on X)
Asked When do we eclipse the furthest we’ve ever gone, he said starship should be able to make it to the moon in less than 5 years link
Q100 What will Tesla's Robotaxi look like? (asked on X)
Announces that the Tesla Robotaxi will be unveiled on 8/8 (2024). link
He said Tesla expected the Cybercab to cost below $30,000. link
Q102 Will Optimus have a physical kill switch? (asked on X)
He says he would be more reticent about Optimus without meaningful influence over how it is deployed. link
Q103 Will Tesla and SpaceX merge?
He says a Tesla investment in xAI would need shareholder approval, which he would support. link
Q106 When will Starship demonstrate orbital refilling?
Orbital refilling (Starships docking and transferring propellant) was hoped for by the end of 2024, and certainly by the next year, as a technology needed for a Mars city and a Moon base. link
He was confident they would solve docking/refilling, hoping by the end of 2024 and certainly by the next year. link
Next year (2025) they were aiming to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer; about five or six tanker flights per Mars-bound ship. link
About five or six refilling missions for every one mission that goes to Mars, roughly 5-to-1. link
He called orbital refilling docking with themselves, easier than docking with the space station; he did not want to count chickens before they hatch. link
Orbital refilling is essential to get serious tonnage to Mars and the Moon. link
He called orbital refilling an essential technology for making life multiplanetary. link
Q107 When will a city on Mars be self-sustaining?
Get Mars to a self-sustaining civilization as quickly as possible; he thought that could be done in around 20 years (from April 2024, ~2044). link
About a million people and several million tons of cargo, which he said they can do in 20 years; at 10 launches a day that is about a million tons in about 8 years given two-year windows. link
He said the aim is to make Mars a self-sustaining civilization as quickly as possible. link
He said he thinks a self-sustaining Mars civilization can be done in around 20 years. link
He said if civilization stays reasonably stable for ~30 years, a self-sustaining Mars city of a million+ people will be built. link
Q109 How important is physical-world AI compared with language models?
He imagines 100 million Teslas with about a kilowatt of inference compute each, 100 gigawatts in total. link
He says Tesla is learning quite a bit from xAI, which has helped FSD and the new data center. link
He says others pursue parts of the AI robotics stack while Tesla pursues all of them. link
He distinguishes xAI's work on general intelligence from Tesla's work on autonomous cars and robots. link
Q111 Is empathy a problem?
Says he favors empathy but rejects the assumption that it will always be reciprocated. link
He said you want empathy for people, but also for the victims of criminals; empathy only for criminals is shallow. link
Q118 What's your algorithm for designing products?
He said the mental tools of physics are a superpower applicable to anything. link
He says few movies are made about the heroes who take 20% of the cost out of a car, but there should be. link
He says taking 20% of the cost out of a car is harder than designing it. link
Q123 How much AI compute will SpaceX bring online?
He floats an AWS-like use of idle Tesla cars for distributed inference. link
Q125 What is Tesla's mission?
He says the EV slowdown is short term and the world is headed for fully electrified transport. link
He says non-autonomous gasoline cars will become niche, like horses. link
He says Tesla's larger mission is to accelerate progress toward a sustainable energy future. link
Q127 What is the new Tesla Roadster?
He said most of the Roadster engineering was done but Tesla still wanted to add some upgrades. link
He thanks Roadster deposit holders and says Tesla is close to finalizing the design. link
Q130 What is the Tesla Semi?
Says the Semi has more acceleration, uphill power and safety features than diesel trucks. link
Says Tesla Semi will be available worldwide. link
He argues that trucking is decided by cost per mile, so any company that does not adopt a cheaper electric semi will lose out. link
Q133 Can the world solve its water problems?
He said the availability of fresh water is simply about energy and transport. link
He said many people think the water crisis is unsolvable, but it is in fact very solvable. link
Q134 Why does Tesla use cameras instead of lidar?
He says a low-cost inference computer and standard cameras are enough for self-driving, with no lidar, radar or ultrasonic sensors. link
He contrasts Tesla's generalized solution with Waymo's localized, high-density-mapping approach. link
Q136 When will the Tesla Semi reach volume production?
He said Semi was in low-volume production and he had just approved plans for volume production. link