TED Talk 2022

0:02 hello so in just a few minutes um elon musk will 0:08 be joining us here live on stage for a conversation uh 0:14 rumor has it there are a few things to talk about with him um 0:20 we we we will see but um before that i just want to show you something 0:26 special i want you to come with me to tesla's huge gigafactory in austin texas 0:35 so the day before it opened last week the evening before i was allowed to walk around it 0:40 no one else there and what i saw there was honestly pretty mind-blowing 0:46 this is elon musk's famous machine that builds the machine and his view the 0:51 secret to a sustainable future is not just making an electric car it's making a system that churns out 0:58 huge numbers of electric cars with a margin so that they can fund further 1:03 growth when i was there um none of us knew whether elon would actually be able to make it here today so i took the chance 1:10 to sit down with him and record an epic interview and i just want to show you 1:16 a nine an eight minute excerpt of that interview so here from austin texas elon 1:23 musk i want us to switch now to think a bit about artificial intelligence i i'm curious about your timelines and how you 1:30 predict and how come some things are so amazingly on the money and some aren't so when it comes to predicting 1:36 sales of tesla vehicles for example i mean you've kind of been amazing i think in 2014 1:41 when tesla had sold that year 60 000 cars you said 2020 i think we will do 1:48 half a million a year yeah we did almost exactly half a million five years ago last time you came today we um i asked 1:55 you about for self-driving and um you said yep this very year where i am 2:00 confident that we will have a car going from la to new york uh without any 2:06 intervention yeah i i don't want to blow your mind but i'm not always right um 2:12 so talk what's the difference between those two why why why has full self-driving in particular 2:17 been so hard to predict i mean the thing that really got me and i think it's going to get a lot of other people is 2:23 that there are just so many false stones with with self-driving um where you think you 2:30 think you've got the problem have a handle on the problem and then it nope uh it turns out uh you just hit a 2:37 ceiling um and and uh uh because what happened if you if you were 2:42 to plot the progress the progress looks like a log curve so it's like yeah a series of log curves so 2:49 uh most people don't like cookies i suppose but it shows the show it goes it goes up sort of a you know 2:55 sort of a fairly straight way and then it starts tailing off right and and and you start there's a kind of ocean getting diminishing returns you know in 3:02 retrospect they seem obvious but uh in in order to solve uh full self-driving uh properly you actually just you have 3:08 to solve real-world ai um you you you know because you said what are the road networks designed to 3:15 to work with they're designed to work with a biological neural net our brains and with uh vision our eyes 3:24 and so in order to make it work with computers you basically need 3:31 to solve real world ai and vision because because we we need 3:38 we need cameras and silicon neural nets uh in order to have to have 3:45 self-driving work for a system that was designed for eyes and biological neural nets 3:50 it you know when you i guess when you put it that way it's like quite obvious that the only way to solve full 3:56 self-driving is to solve real-world ai and sophisticated vision what do you 4:01 feel about the current architecture do you think you have an architecture now where where there is 4:06 a chance for the logarithmic curve not to tail off any anytime soon 4:11 well i mean admittedly these these uh may be an infamous uh last words but i i actually 4:18 am confident that we will solve it this year uh that we will exceed uh you're like what the probability 4:25 of an accident at what point should you exceed that of the average person right um i think we will exceed that this year 4:31 we could be here talking again in a year it's like well yeah another year went by and it didn't happen but i think this i think this is 4:37 the year is there an element that you actually deliberately make aggressive prediction timelines to 4:44 drive people to be ambitious and without that nothing gets done so it's it feels like at some point in 4:50 the last year seeing the progress on understanding you that you're that the 4:57 ai the tesla ai understanding the world around it led to a kind of an aha moment 5:02 in tesla because you really surprised people recently when you said probably the most important product 5:08 development going on at tesla this year is this robot optimus yes 5:13 is it something that happened in the development of fourself driving that gave you the confidence to say you know what we could do something special here 5:21 yeah exactly so you know it took me a while to sort of realize that that in order to solve self-driving you really 5:28 needed to solve real-world ai um at the point of which you solve real-world ai for a car which is really 5:34 a robot on four wheels uh you can then generalize that to a robot on legs as 5:40 well the thing that the things that are currently missing are uh enough intelligence enough to tell 5:47 intelligence for the robot to navigate the real world and do useful things without being explicitly instructed it 5:53 is so so the missing things are basically real world uh intelligence and uh scaling up manufacturing um those are 6:00 two things that tesla is very good at and uh so then we basically just need to 6:05 design the the uh specialized actuators and sensors that are needed for a humanoid robot 6:11 people have no idea this is going to be bigger than the car um but so talk about i mean i think the 6:18 first applications you you've mentioned are probably going to be manufacturing but eventually the vision is to to have 6:23 these available for people at home correct if you had a robot that really 6:28 understood the 3d architecture of your house and knew where every object in that house 6:36 was or was supposed to be and could recognize all those objects i mean that 6:42 that's kind of amazing isn't that like like that the kind of thing that you could ask a robot to do would be what like tidy up yeah um 6:50 absolutely or make make dinner i guess mow the lawn take take a cup of tea to grandma and 6:57 show her family pictures and exactly take care of my grandmother and 7:02 make sure yeah exactly and it could recognize obviously recognize everyone in the home yeah could play catch with 7:08 your kids yes i mean obviously we need to be careful this doesn't uh become a dystopian situation 7:14 um like i think one of the things that's going to be important is to have a localized rom chip on the 7:21 robot that cannot be updated over the air uh where if you for example were to 7:26 say stop stop stop that would if anyone said that then the robot would stop you know type of thing 7:31 and that's not updatable remotely um i think it's going to be important to have safety features like that 7:37 yeah that that sounds wise and i do think there should be a regular free agency for ai i've said this for many 7:42 years i don't love being regulated but i you know i think this is an important thing for public safety do you think 7:47 there will be basically like in say 2050 or whatever that like a a robot in most homes is what they will 7:54 be and people will probably count you'll have your own butler basically 7:59 yeah you'll have your sort of buddy robot probably yeah i mean how much of a buddy 8:05 do like do you do how many applications you thought is there you know can you have a romantic partner 8:10 lot of a sex inevitable i mean i did promise the internet that i would make cat girls we'll have we could 8:16 make a robot cackle how are you because yeah you know 8:24 so yeah i i guess uh it'll be what whatever people want really you know so what sort 8:30 of timeline should we be thinking about of the first the first models that are actually made and 8:37 sold you know the the first units that that we tend to make are 8:43 um for jobs that are dangerous boring repetitive and things that people don't want to do and you know i think we'll 8:49 have like an interesting prototype uh sometime this year we might have something useful next year but i think 8:56 quite likely within at least two years and then we'll see rapid growth year over year of the usefulness of the 9:02 humanoid robots um and decrease in cost and scaling out production help me on the economics of this so what 9:09 what do you picture the cost of one of these being well i think the cost is actually not going to be uh crazy high 9:15 um like less than a car yeah but but think about the economics of this if you can 9:21 replace a thirty thousand dollar forty thousand dollar a year worker 9:26 which you have to pay every year with a one-time payment of twenty five thousand dollars for a robot that can 9:32 work longer hours doesn't go on vacation i mean that could it could be a pretty rapid replacement 9:40 of certain types of jobs how worried should the world be about that i wouldn't worry about the the sort of 9:46 putting people out of a job thing um i think we're actually going to have and already do have a massive shortage of labor so i 9:53 i i think we'll we will have um uh 9:59 not not people out of work but actually still a shortage labor even in the future uh but 10:06 this really will be a world of abundance any goods and services uh will be available to anyone who wants 10:13 them that it'll be so cheap to have goods and services it'll be ridiculous 10:22 so that is part of an epic 80 minute interview 10:29 which we are releasing to people members of ted 2022 right after this 10:35 conference um you should be able to look at it on the ted live 10:41 website um there's public interest in it we're putting that out to the world on sunday 10:47 afternoon i think sunday evening but uh but if you're into this kind of stuff um definitely a good thing to do over the 10:52 weekend um now then hearing from elon live there's there's huge public interest in that we have 11:00 opened up this segment to live stream and so we're joined right now by i think quite 11:07 a few people around the world um welcome to vancouver welcome to ted 22 you're joining us on the last day of our 11:12 conference here in a packed theater and 11:17 we've been hearing all week from people with dreams about what the next era 11:23 of humanity is going to be and now arguably the biggest visionary of them all elon 11:30 musk [Music] 11:40 hey elon welcome 11:46 so elon um a few hours ago you made an offer to buy twitter 11:56 why [Laughter] 12:03 how'd you know little bird tweeted in my ear or something i don't 12:08 know by the way have you seen the movie ted about the bear i i i have i have a movie 12:19 so um yeah yeah so was there a question 12:25 why why make that offer oh so um well i think it's very important for 12:31 uh there to be an inclusive arena for free speech 12:37 where all yeah so uh yeah um 12:43 twitter has become kind of the de facto town square um so 12:48 uh it's just really important that people have the both the uh the reality and the 12:54 perception uh that they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law um 13:01 and you know so one of the things that i believe twitter should do is open source 13:07 the algorithm um and make any changes uh to people's tweets you know if 13:12 they're emphasized or de-emphasized uh that action should be made apparent so you anyone can see that 13:19 action has been taken so there's there's no sort of behind the scenes manipulation either algorithmically or 13:27 manually um but last week when we spoke elon um i asked 13:34 you whether you were thinking of taking over you said no way said i i do not want to own twitter it is a recipe for 13:40 misery everyone will blame me for everything what on earth changed no i think i think everyone will still blame 13:46 me for everything yeah if something if if i acquire twitter and something goes wrong it's my 13:52 fault 100 i i think there will be quite a few arrows uh yes um it will it will be 13:58 miserable but you still want to do it why i mean i hope it's not too miserable uh but 14:03 um i i just think it's important to the fun like 14:09 uh it's important to the function of democracy 14:14 it's important to the function of uh the united states uh as a free 14:19 country and many other countries and to help actually to help freedom in the world more broadly than the u.s 14:26 and so i think it's uh it's a 14:32 you know i think this there's the risk civilizational risk uh is decreased if twitter 14:39 the more we can increase the trust of twitter as a public platform and so 14:45 i do think this will be somewhat painful and i'm not sure that i will actually be able to to acquire it 14:50 and i should also say the intent is is to retain as many shareholders as is 14:57 allowed by the law in a private company which i think is around 2000 or so so we'll it's not like it 15:03 it's definitely not not from the standpoint of letting me figure out how to monopolize or maximize my ownership of twitter 15:09 but we'll try to bring along as many shoulders as we right as we're allowed to you don't necessarily want to pay out 15:15 40 or whatever it is billion dollars in cash you you'd like them to come come with you in in 15:20 i mean i mean i could technically afford it um 15:28 what i'm saying is this this is this is uh this is not a way to sort of make money 15:34 you know i think this is it's just that i think this is um this could 15:40 my strong intuitive sense is that uh having a public platform that is maximally 15:46 trusted um and and and and broadly inclusive 15:52 um is extremely important to the future of civilization but you've described 15:58 yourself i don't care about the economics at all okay that's that's core to hear you this is not about the economics it's for the 16:05 the moral good that you think will achieve you you've described yourself elon as a free speech absolutist 16:11 but does that mean that there's literally nothing that people can't say and it's okay 16:17 well i i i think uh obviously uh twitter or any forum is 16:23 bound by the laws of the country that it operates in um so 16:28 obviously there are some limitations on free speech uh in in the us and and of 16:34 course uh twitter would have to abide by those uh right rules so so so you can't incite 16:40 people to violence like that that the like a direct incitement to violence you 16:46 know you can't do the equivalent of crying fire in a in a movie theater for example no that would be a crime yeah 16:52 right it should be a crime but here's here's the challenge is is that it's it's such 16:57 a nuanced difference between different things so there's there's excitement to violence yeah 17:04 that's a no if it's illegal um there's hate speech which some forms of hate speech are fine you know i hate spinach 17:12 um i mean if it's a sauteed in a you know cream sauce that would be quite 17:18 nice but so so but the problem is so so so let's say someone says okay here's one tweet i 17:24 hate politician x yeah next tweet is i wish polite politician x wasn't alive 17:30 as we some of us have said about putin right now for example so that's legitimate speech 17:36 another tweet is i wish politician x wasn't alive with a picture of their head with a gun sight over it 17:43 or that plus their address i mean at some point 17:48 someone has to make a decision as to which of those is not okay can an algorithm 17:54 do that well surely you need human judgment at some point no i think the like i said 18:01 in my view uh twitter should um match the laws of the of the country of 18:07 and and and really you know that there's an obligation to to do that um 18:14 but going beyond going beyond that um and having it be unclear who's making what changes to who 18:21 to where uh having tweets sort of mysteriously be promoted and demoted 18:27 with no insight into what's going on uh having a black box algorithm uh promote some things and other not not other 18:33 things i think this can be quite dangerous so so so the idea of opening the 18:38 algorithm is a huge deal and i think many people would would welcome that of understanding exactly how it's making 18:44 the decision and critique it and critique like i want to improve what wondering is like like i think like the 18:50 code should be on github you know so then uh and so people can look through it and say like i see a problem here i 18:57 don't i don't agree with this um they can highlight issues right um suggest changes in the same way that you 19:04 sort of update linux or or signal or something like that you know but as i understand it like at some point right 19:11 now what the algorithm would do is it would look at for example how many people have flagged a tweet as obnoxious 19:19 and then at some point a human has to look at it and make make a decision as to does this 19:25 cross the line or not that the algorithm itself can't i don't think yet um tell 19:30 the difference between legal and okay and and definitely obnoxious and so the question is which 19:36 humans you know make make that core i mean do you have do you have a picture of that right now twitter 19:43 and facebook and others you know they've hired thousands of people to try to help make wise decisions and the trouble is 19:50 that no one can agree on on what is wise how do you solve that 19:55 well i i i think we would want to er on this if if in doubt uh 20:01 let let the speech that let it exist uh it would have you know if it's a 20:07 you know a a gray area i would say let let the tweet exist 20:12 um but obviously you know in a case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy uh 20:19 that you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet if uh you know so the 20:25 i'm not i'm not saying this is that i have all the answers here um but i i do think that we want to be just 20:33 very reluctant to delete things and and have um just just be very cautious with with 20:39 with permanent bands uh you know timeouts i think are better or uh than 20:45 sort of permanent bands and um but just just in general like i said 20:53 uh how how it won't be perfect but i think we wanted to really uh have 20:59 like so the possession and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible 21:04 and a good sign as to whether there's free speech is is 21:10 is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like 21:15 and if that is the case then we have free speech and it's it's damn annoying when someone you don't like says 21:21 something you don't like that is a sign of a healthy functioning uh 21:26 free speech situation so 21:31 i think many people would agree with that and look at the reaction online many people are excited by you coming in and the changes you're 21:37 proposing some others are absolutely horrified here's how they would see it they would say wait a sec we agree that 21:43 that twitter is an incredibly important town square it is a it is you know where the world exchanges opinion about life 21:49 and death matters how on earth could it be owned by the world's richest person that can't be 21:54 right so how how do you i mean what's the response there is there any way that you 21:59 can distance yourself from the actual decision-making that matters on content 22:05 at in some very clear way that is convincing to people 22:10 well like i said i think the it's it's very important that like the 22:15 the algorithm be open sourced and that any manual uh adjustments be uh identified like so if this tweet if 22:23 somebody did something to a tweet it's there's information attached to it that this that action was taken and i i i i 22:30 won't personally be uh you know in their editing tweets um 22:36 but you'll know if something was done to promote demote or otherwise affect uh a 22:42 tweet um you know as for media sort of ownership i mean you've 22:48 got you know um mark zuckerberg owning facebook and instagram and whatsapp um 22:54 and with a share ownership structure that will have mark zuckerberg the 14th still 23:01 controlling those uh entities so 23:08 literally um what's that need we won't have that on twitter 23:13 if if you commit to opening up the algorithm that that definitely gives some level of confidence um talk about 23:20 talk about some of the other changes that you've proposed so you at the edit button that's that's 23:26 definitely coming if you if you have your way yeah yeah and how do you i mean i i think 23:32 i mean one frankly um 23:37 the top priority i have i would have is is eliminating the the spammings and scam 23:44 bots and the bot armies that are on twitter um 23:51 you know i think i think these these fun influence that they're not they're they're they they 23:57 make the product much worse um if i see if you know if i had a dogecoin for every crypto 24:04 scam i saw [Laughter] 24:10 more you know 100 billion dollars do you regret sparking the sort of storm 24:16 of excitement overdose and you know where it's gone or i mean i think deutsche is fun and you 24:23 know i've always said don't bet the form of dogecoin uh fyi yeah 24:29 but i i think i think it's it's i like dogs and i like memes and uh it's got 24:34 both of those and but just on the on the edit button how how do you get around the problem of so 24:40 someone tweets elon rocks and it's tweeted by two million people um and um 24:46 and then then after that they edit it so i'm elon sucks and um and then all those 24:51 retweets they're all embarrassed and how how do you avoid that type of 24:56 changing of meaning so that retweeters are exploited 25:02 well i think uh you know you'd only have the edit capability for a short period 25:07 of time and probably the thing to do at upon the edit would be to zero out 25:12 all retweets and favorites okay i'm open to ideas though you know 25:19 so in one way the um algorithm works kind of well for you right now i just i wanted to show you this this is so 25:25 this is a typical tweet of of mine kind of lame and wordy and whatever and look 25:30 at and the amazing response it gets is this oh my god 97 likes 25:36 um and then i tried another one um and uh 25:45 29 000 likes so the algorithm at least seems to be at the moment you know if 25:50 elon musk expanded the world immediately um not bad right 25:58 yeah i guess so i mean that was cool i mean you but but you've 26:03 so help us understand how it is you've built this incredible um following on twitter yourself when 26:10 i mean some of the people who love you the most look at some of what you tweet and they they they think it's somewhere between um 26:18 embarrassing and crazy some of it's amazing i mean [Laughter] 26:24 is that actually why it's worked or why why has it worked i mean i don't know i mean i i'm 26:31 you know tweeting more or less stream of consciousness you know it's not like let me think about some grand plan about my 26:36 twitter or whatever you know i'm like literally on the toilet or something i'm like oh this is funny and then tweet 26:42 that out you know that's that's like most of them [Laughter] 26:48 you know over sharing but um but you are obsessed with getting the most out of every minute of your day 26:55 and so why not you know um so i don't know i just like try to tweet 27:02 out like things that are interesting or funny or you know and then people seem to 27:07 like it so if if you are unsuccessful actually before i ask that let me ask this if i 27:13 don't yeah so how can i say is uh funding secured 27:19 [Music] i i have sufficient uh assets to 27:26 complete the uh it's not a forward-looking statement blah blah but 27:33 i have to i mean i can do it if possible right um so um 27:38 and um i mean i should say actually even in the in originally 27:44 the uh with with tesla back in the day funding was actually secured 27:50 i want to be clear about that um in fact this may be a good opportunity to to to clarify that um 27:56 if funding was indeed secured um and uh i should say like why why do i do not 28:02 have respect for the sec in that situation and i don't mean to blame everyone at the sec but certainly 28:08 the san francisco office um it's because the sec knew that funding was secured 28:15 but they pursued the an active public investigation nonetheless at the time tesla was in a 28:21 precarious financial situation and i was told by the banks that if i did not agree to settle with the sec 28:27 that they would the banks would cease providing working capital and tesla would go bankrupt immediately so that's like having 28:34 a gun to your child's head so i was forced to concede to the sec 28:39 unlawfully those bastards and and and now that they they say 28:47 it makes it look like i lied when i did not in fact lie i was i was forced to admit that i lied for to save tesla's 28:53 life and that's the only reason given what's actually happened 28:59 given what's actually happened to tesla since then though aren't you glad that you didn't take it private 29:07 yeah i mean it's difficult to put yourself in the position at the time tesla was under the 29:13 most relentless short seller attack in the history of the stock market uh there's something called short and 29:20 distort um where the barrage of negativity that tesla was experiencing from short sales 29:26 wall street was beyond or belief tesla was the most shorted stock in the history of stock markets 29:33 this is saying something so you know this was affecting our ability to hire people it was affecting our 29:39 ability to sell cars it was uh they were yeah it was terrible um 29:47 yeah they wanted tesla to die so bad they could taste it well most of them have paid the price 29:54 yes where are they now um 30:01 so so that was a really strong statement i mean obviously a lot of people who who support you i thought would say 30:08 you have so much to offer the world on the upside on the vision side don't don't waste your time 30:14 getting getting distracted by these these battles that bring out negativity and and and make people feel that you're 30:20 being defensive or like people don't like fights especially with with powerful government authorities they'd rather they'd rather buy into your to a 30:27 dream do do you like aren't you encouraged by people just just to edit that 30:33 in that you know temptation out and uh go with the bigger story 30:41 um well i mean i i would say like you know i'm sort of a mixed bag you know i 30:48 mean well you're a fighter and you you don't you don't you don't you don't 30:54 you don't like to lose and and you you you are determined that you don't basically i i mean you are sure i don't 31:00 like to lose i'm not sure many people do um but the truth matters to me a lot really 31:05 like sort of pathologically it matters to me okay so so you don't like to lose if in 31:12 this case you are not successful in you know the board does not accept your offer you've said 31:18 you won't go higher is there a plan b 31:24 there is i i think we i think we would like to 31:31 hear a little bit about plan b 31:37 for it for another time i think another time yeah all right [Applause] 31:44 i that that's a nice tease all right so um 31:50 i i would love to try to understand this brain of yours 31:55 more ilan i i if with your permission i'd like to just play this this is the oh actually before we do that 32:02 um here was one of the of the thousands of questions that people asked i thought this was actually quite a good one um if 32:08 you could go back in time and change one decision you made along the way do your own edit button 32:13 which one would it be and why do you mean like a career decision or something 32:18 just any decision over the last few years like your decision to invest in twitter in the first place or your 32:26 anything um i mean the the worst business decision i ever made 32:32 was um not starting tesla with just jb straval 32:38 by far the worst decision i've ever made is not just starting tesla with jb 32:43 that that that's the number one by far all right so jb strabo was was the visionary co-founder who who who was 32:49 obsessed with and knew so much about batteries and your your decision to go with tesla the company as it was meant 32:56 that you got locked into what you concluded it was a weird architecture now this this 33:01 there's a lot of confusion tesla tesla did not exist in any 33:07 tesla was a shell company with no employees uh no intellectual property when i invested but the 33:13 a false narrative has been created by um one of the other co-founders uh martin everhard and i don't want to get into 33:19 the nastiness here but uh i didn't invest in an existing company 33:24 we created a company yeah and ultimately the creation that company uh 33:30 was was done by uh jv and me um and unfortunately there's a someone else and 33:37 another co-founder who has made it his life's mission uh to make it sound like he he created 33:42 the company which is false wasn't there another issue right at the heart of the development of 33:48 the tesla model 3 where tesla almost went bankrupt and i i think you have said that part of the reason for that 33:54 was that you overestimated the extent to which it was possible at that time to 33:59 automate a a factory a huge amount was spent kind of over automating and it didn't 34:05 work and it nearly took the company down is that fair 34:11 uh i mean first of all it's important to understand like what what has tesla 34:18 actually accomplished that is that is most noteworthy um it is not the 34:23 creation of an electric vehicle or creating electrical vehicle prototype or 34:29 low volume production of a of a car that they've been 34:35 uh hundreds of cars startups over the years hundreds and uh in fact at one 34:40 point um bloomberg counted up the number of electric vehicle startups and they i think they got to almost 500. yeah so 34:47 the hard part is not creating a prototype or going into limited production the the the absolutely difficult thing 34:54 which has not been accomplished by an american car company in 100 years is reaching volume production without going 35:00 bankrupt is the actual hard thing um the last company american company to 35:07 reach volume production without going bankrupt was chrysler in the 20s right 35:12 and and and it nearly happened to tesla yes it but it's not like oh geez i guess 35:18 if we just done more manual stuff things would have been fine of course not uh that is definitely not 35:24 the case uh so we basically messed up 35:29 almost every aspect of the model 3 production line from 35:36 from cells to packs to driving voters motors 35:42 body line the paint shop uh final assembly 35:47 um everything everything was messed up um and i lived in that fa i lived in the 35:54 fremont and and nevada factories for three years 35:59 fixing the that production line running around like a maniac through every part of that factory 36:06 living with the team i slept on the floor 36:12 so that the the team who was going through a hard time could see me on the floor 36:19 uh that they knew that i was not in some ivory tower 36:25 whatever pain they experienced i was i had it more and some people who knew you 36:30 well actually thought you were making a terrible mistake that you were driving yourself you were you were driving yourself to the edge of 36:37 sanity almost and yeah and and that you were in danger of making 36:42 bad choices and in fact i heard you say last week elon that that you because of tesla's huge value now and and you know 36:50 the the significance of every minute that you spend that you are in danger of sort of 36:56 obsessing over spending all this time to the point of to the edge of sanity 37:01 um that doesn't that doesn't sound super wise isn't that like your your your time 37:09 your your completely sane centered rested time and decision making 37:14 is more powerful and compelling than that sort of i can barely 37:19 hold my eyes open so surely it should be an absolute strategic priority to look after yourself 37:28 i mean there wasn't any other way to make it work there were three years of hell 37:35 17 8 2017 18 and 19 with three years this longest period of excruciating pain 37:42 in my life uh there wasn't any other way and we barely 37:47 made it and we're on the ragged edge of bankruptcy the entire time so 37:52 so when you felt like i want pain i don't like it um 37:58 those were three or three so so much pain but it had to be done or tesla would be 38:03 dead when you looked around the gigafactory that we saw images of earlier 38:08 um last week and just see where the companies come i mean do you feel that that this this challenge of 38:16 figuring out the the new way of manufacturing um that you that 38:21 you actually have an edge now that it's different that you've figured out how to do this and and um from 38:27 those three years what won't be repeated you've actually figured out a new way of manufacturing 38:36 at this point i think i know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth 38:45 between that yeah i'll tell you i can tell you how every 38:51 damn part part in that car is made which basically if you just live on the factory live in the factory for three 38:56 years and that was nice that was a poignant note or something 39:03 someone wants to compose a symphony to that uh expression of confidence uh something like that i have no idea what 39:09 that is anyway yeah every aspect of a car six weeks to sunday i know 39:15 i mean you you you talk about scale right now you're in the middle of writing your new master plan 39:21 and you've said that scale is at the heart of it why does scale matter why are you 39:26 obsessed with that what are you thinking yeah well see in order in order to accelerate the 39:32 advent of sustainable energy uh there must be scale because we've got a transition um a vast 39:39 economy that is currently uh overly dependent on fossil fuels to a sustainable energy economy one where the 39:46 energy is uh yeah i mean we got to do it 39:54 so so the energy's got to be sustainably generated with wind solar uh hydro 40:00 geothermal i i'm a believer in nuclear as uh as well i think ever talk about 40:05 and uh and then you you since solar and wind is intermittent you have to have stationary storage batteries and and then we're going to 40:12 transition all transport um to to electric uh if we do those things we have a 40:18 sustainable energy future the faster we do those things the less risk we 40:24 the less risk we put to the environment uh so sooner is better uh and and so 40:31 scale is very important um you know it's not about it's not about press releases it's about tonnage what 40:38 was the tonnage of of batteries produced and obviously done in a sustainable way 40:44 and and our estimate is that approximately 300 terawatt hours of 40:50 battery storage is needed to transition uh transport uh electricity and and heating and cooling 40:58 uh to a fully electric situation others may there's there may be some 41:03 different estimates out out there but uh our estimate is 300 terawatt hours yeah 41:09 so we dug into this a lot in the interview that we recorded last week and so people can go in and hear that more but i mean the context is that is i 41:15 think about a thousand times the current install battery capacity i mean the scale up needed is 41:21 breathtaking basically yeah and and and um yeah so so your vision is to commit 41:27 tesla to try to deliver on a meaningful percentage of what is needed yeah and what and call on others to do the rest 41:34 that this is what this is a task for humanity to massively scale up our response to change change the energy 41:40 grade yes it it's it's like basically how fast can we can we scale um and encourage others to 41:49 scale to get to that 300 terawatt hour installed uh base of batteries right 41:57 and then of course uh there'll be a tremendous need to recycle those batteries which is i and it makes sense 42:02 to recycle them because the raw materials are like high grade ore um so people shouldn't think well they'd be 42:08 this big pile of batteries now they're going to get recycled because the even a dead battery pack is worth about a thousand dollars so 42:15 um but but this is what's needed for a sustainable energy future so we're going to try to take the set of actions that 42:21 accelerate the day of and bring the day of a sustainable energy future sooner 42:27 okay there's going to be a huge interest in your master plan when you when you 42:34 publish that um meanwhile i just i would love to understand more 42:39 what goes on in this brain of yours because it is it is a pretty unique one i want to play with your permission this 42:44 very funny opening from snl saturday night live can we have the volume there actually please sorry 42:50 it's an honor to be hosting saturday night live i mean that sometimes after i say something i have 42:57 to say i mean that [Music] so people really know that i mean 43:02 that's because i don't always have a lot of international variation in how i speak 43:09 which i'm told makes for great comedy i'm actually making history tonight as 43:14 the first person with asperger's to host snl [Applause] 43:21 and i think you followed that up with at least the first person to admit it the first person to admit it 43:27 but i mean 43:32 so this was a great thing to say but i i would love to understand 43:38 whether you know how you think of of asperger's like whether you can give us any sense of even you as a boy how what 43:44 what the experience was or as you now understand with the benefit of hindsight 43:51 can you talk about that a bit well i think i think everyone's experience is going to be somewhat 43:56 different but i guess for me the social cues were not uh intuitive so 44:05 i was just very bookish and i didn't understand this i guess 44:11 others could sort of intuitively understand uh 44:17 what watches meant by something i would just tend to take things very literally as just like the words 44:24 as spoken word exactly what they meant but but then that didn't turn out to be wrong 44:31 you can't they do not they're not simply saying exactly what they mean there's all sorts of other things that are meant it took me a while to figure 44:37 that out um so i was you know bullied quite a lot 44:42 um so i didn't i did not have a sort of happy 44:49 childhood to be frank was quite quite rough um and um but i read a lot of books i read lots 44:56 and lots of books and so that you know sort of gradually i sort of understood more from 45:03 the books that i was reading and watched a lot of movies and 45:09 you know just but it took it took me it took me a while to understand things that most 45:17 people intuitively understand so i've wondered whether it's possible 45:23 that that was in a strange way an incredible gift to you and and indirectly to many other people 45:30 in as much as brains you know are plastic and they 45:36 they they go where the action is and if in for some reason the external world 45:41 and social cues which so many people spend so much time and energy and mental energy obsessing over if that is partly 45:47 cut off isn't it possible that that is partly what gave you the ability to 45:54 understand inwardly the world at a much deeper level than than most people do 46:01 i suppose that's certainly possible um i think this may be some value also from 46:08 a technology standpoint because i found it uh rewarding to spend all 46:13 night programming computers um just by myself and i think most people 46:20 most people don't enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night they think that's 46:26 not fun but i thought it was i really liked it um so so i just programmed all 46:32 night by myself and um i found that to be quite enjoyable 46:37 um but but i think that is not uh normal [Music] 46:43 so i mean it does you know i've thought a lot about 46:48 it's a riddle to a lot of people of of how you've done this how you've repeatedly innovated in these different 46:53 industries and it it does you know every entrepreneur sees possibility in the future and then acts to make that real 47:01 it it feels to me like you see possibility just more broadly than 47:06 almost anyone and can connect with so you see scientific possibility based on 47:11 a deep understanding of physics and knowing what the fundamental equations are what the technologies are that are based 47:18 on that science and where they could go you see technological possibility and then really unusually you combine that 47:24 with economic possibility of like what it actually would cost is there a system 47:29 you can imagine where you could affordably make that thing and that that 47:35 sometimes you then get conviction that there is an opportunity here put those pieces together and you could do 47:41 something amazing yeah i think one aspect of whatever 47:46 condition i had um was i was just absolutely obsessed with truth 47:51 just obsessed with truth and and so the obsession with truth is 47:58 why i studied physics because physics attempts to understand the 48:04 the truth the truth of the universe physics just it's just what are the provable truths of the universe 48:11 um and and true and truths that have predictive power um 48:16 so for me physics was sort of a very natural thing to study nobody made me study it it was 48:23 intrinsically interesting to understand the nature of the universe and then computer science 48:29 or information theory also to just i understand uh logic and 48:35 and uh you know there's an also there's an argument that you know that you the that information 48:42 theory is actually operating at a more fundamental level more fundamental level than than even physics 48:48 um so uh just yeah um 48:53 the physics and information theory uh were really interesting to me so when 48:58 you say truth i mean it's it's not like some people so it's what you're talking about is the 49:04 truth of the universe like the fundamental truths that drive the universe it's like a deep curiosity about what this universe is why we're 49:11 here simulation why not you know we don't have time to go into that but i mean it's you're just deeply curious 49:17 about what this is for what this is this whole thing yes i mean i think the why the why 49:24 of things is very important um i i actually uh when i was a i don't know 49:31 so young teens uh i i got quite depressed about the meaning of life 49:36 um and i was trying to sort of understand the meaning of life looking at reading religious texts and and 49:44 reading books on philosophy and i got into the german philosophers which is definitely not wise if you're a 49:49 young teenager i have to say can be ripped out but dark 49:54 so [Music] much better at as an adult i um and and 50:00 then actually i ended up reading um the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy 50:05 which is actually a book on philosophy just sort of disguised as a silly humor 50:11 book but but actually the book it's actually a philosophy book 50:16 and uh adams uh makes the point that it's actually the 50:21 the question that is harder than the answer um you know this sort of makes a joke that the answer was 42. um that number 50:28 does pop up a lot um and 420 is just 10 14 10 10 times 10 50:34 times more significant than 42. okay you know there's um you can make a 50:40 triangle with 42 or 42 degrees and two 69s um 50:46 so there's no such thing as a perfect triangle or is there 50:52 but even more important than the answer is the questions that was the whole 50:58 theme of that book i mean is that yeah basically how you see meaning then it's the pursuit of questions yeah so i have 51:04 a sort of you know a proposal for a world view or a motivate a motivating philosophy which 51:10 is to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and the to agree 51:17 that we expand the scope and scale of consciousness uh biological and digital 51:22 uh we will be better able to to uh ask these these questions to frame these questions 51:28 and to understand why we're here how we got here what what the heck is going on 51:34 and so that that is my driving philosophy is to expand the scope and scale of consciousness that we may 51:39 better understand the nature of the universe elon one of the things that was most 51:44 touching last week was uh was seeing you hang out with your kids um here's if i may 51:52 um it looks vaguely like a ventriloquist dummy there [Laughter] 51:57 i mean how do you know that's real um so that's x and and you know you're it 52:04 was just a delight seeing seeing you hang out with him and what 52:09 what what what's his future going to be i mean i don't mean him personally but the world he's going to 52:16 grow up in what future do you believe he will grow up in 52:22 well i mean a very digital future um 52:32 a very a different world than i grew up in that's for sure um but i think we want to obviously do our 52:38 absolute best to ensure that the future is good uh for everyone's children um and 52:44 and that you know that the future is something that that you can look forward to and not feel sad about 52:51 um you know you want to get up in the morning and be be excited about the future and we should fight for the 52:56 things that make us excited about the future you know the future cannot it 53:01 cannot just be that one miserable thing after another solving one sad problem after another there got 53:07 to be things that get you excited like you're like you want to live 53:12 these things are very important you should have more of it and it's not as if it's a done deal like 53:19 it's all it's all to play for like the future may be horrible still there are scenarios where 53:24 it is horrible but you you see a pathway to an exciting future both on earth and 53:32 on mars and in our minds through artificial intelligence and so forth i mean in your in your heart of hearts do you really 53:39 believe that you are helping deliver that exciting future 53:44 for ex and for others i'm trying my hardest to do so 53:53 i you know i love humanity and i think 53:58 that we should fight for a good future for humanity and i think we should be optimistic about the future and fight to 54:04 make that optimistic optimistic future happen 54:09 [Music] i think that's that's the perfect place 54:15 to close this thank you so much for spending time coming here and for the work that you're doing and good luck 54:21 with finding a wise course through on twitter and everything else all right 54:26 thank you hey guys 54:34 [Music]