[00:00:00.

290] - Speaker 2
Today, we have Elon Musk. Elon, thank you for joining us.

[00:00:02.770] - Speaker 1
Thanks for having me.

[00:00:03.900] - Speaker 2
We want to spend the time today talking about your view of the future and what
people should work on. To start off, could you tell us... You famously said when
you were younger, there were five problems that you thought were most important for
you to work on. If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would
think about working on be?

[00:00:22.730] - Speaker 1
Well, first of all, I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the
rest of society, I think that's a good thing. It doesn't have to change the world.
If you're doing something that has high value to people, and frankly, even if it's
something, if it's just a little game or some improvement in photo sharing or
something. If it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, I think
that's fine. Stuff doesn't need to be changed the world just to be good. But in
terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the future of humanity, I
think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to
affect humanity. It's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way.
But that is something that if you could look at the crystal ball and see the
future, you would like that outcome because it is something that could go wrong as
we've talked about many times. We really need to make sure it goes right. Working
on AI and making sure it's great future, that's the most important thing I think
right now, the most pressing item.

[00:01:51.190] - Speaker 1
Then obviously, I think it's to do with genetics. If you can actually solve genetic
diseases, if you can prevent dementia, or Alzheimer's, or something like that, with
genetic programming, that would be wonderful. So I think this genetics might be the
second most important item. I think having a high bandwidth interface to the brain,
like we're currently bandwidth limited. We have a digital tertary self in the form
of our email capabilities, our computers, phones, applications. We're effectively
superhuman, but we are extremely bandwidth constrained in that interface between
the cortex and that torsury digital form of yourself. And helping solve that
bandwidth constraint would be, I think, very important for the future as well.

[00:02:47.460] - Speaker 2
So one of the, I think, most common questions I hear ambitious young people ask is,
I want to be the next Elon Musk. How do I do that? Obviously, the next Elon Musk
will work on very different things than you did. But what have you done or what did
you do when you were younger that you think set you up to have a big impact?

[00:03:08.900] - Speaker 1
Well, I think, first of all, I should say that I did not expect to be involved in
all these things. So the five things that I thought about at the time in college,
quite a long time ago, 25 years ago, making life multiplanetary, accelerating the
transition to sustainable energy, the internet, broadly speaking, and then genetics
and AI. I didn't expect to be involved in all of those things. Actually, at the
time in college, I thought helping with electrification of cars was how it would
start out. T hat's actually what I worked on as an intern was advanced
ultracapacitors to see if there would be a breakthrough relative to batteries for
energy storage in cars. T hen when I came out to go to Stanford, that's what I was
going to be doing my grad studies on is I was working on advanced energy storage
technologies for electric cars. T hen I put that on hold to start an internet
company in '95 because there does seem to be a time for particular technologies
when they're at a steep point in the inflection curve. I didn't want to do a PhD at
Stanford and watch it all happen.

[00:04:34.330] - Speaker 1
I wasn't entirely certain that the technology I'd be working on would actually
succeed. You can get a doctrine on many things that ultimately do not have a
practical bearing on the world. I really was just trying to be useful. That's the
optimization. I was like, What can I do that would actually be useful?

[00:04:57.020] - Speaker 2
Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?

[00:05:01.470] - Speaker 1
Mostly not.

[00:05:03.150] - Speaker 2
What is the.

[00:05:05.000] - Speaker 1
Best way to be useful? Some, yes, but mostly not.

[00:05:08.130] - Speaker 2
How should someone figure out how they can be most useful?

[00:05:11.070] - Speaker 1
Whatever this thing is that you're trying to create, what would be the utility
delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would
affect? That's why I think having something that makes a big difference but affects
a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes even a
small difference but it affects a vast number of people. The area under the curve
would actually be roughly similar for those two things. It's actually really about
just trying to be useful and matter.

[00:05:49.290] - Speaker 2
When you're trying to estimate probability of success, you say this thing will be
really useful, good area under the curve, I guess to use the example of SpaceX.
When you made the Go decision that you were actually going to do that, this was a
was a very crazy thing at the time.

[00:06:02.000] - Speaker 1
Very crazy.

[00:06:02.770] - Speaker 2
For sure.

[00:06:03.780] - Speaker 1
I'm not sure I would say that. But I agreed with them that it was quite crazy.
Crazy if the objective was to achieve the best risk adjusted return, starting a
rocket company is insane. But that was not my objective. I took the company to the
conclusion that if something didn't happen to improve rocket technology, you would
be stuck on Earth forever. The big aerospace companies had just had no interest in
radical innovation. All they wanted to do was try to make their old technology
slightly better every year. In fact, sometimes it would actually get worse.
Particularly in rockets, it's pretty bad. In '69, we were able to go to the moon
with the Saturn V, and then the space shuttle could only take people to low Earth
orbit, and then the space shuttle retired. That trend is basically trends to zero.
People sometimes think technology just automatically gets better every year, but it
actually doesn't. It only gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it
better. That's how any technology actually gets better. By itself, technology, if
people don't work in it, actually will decline. You can look at the history of
civilizations, many civilizations, and look at, say, ancient Egypt, where they were
able to build these incredible pyramids, and then they basically forgot how to
build pyramids.

[00:07:30.850] - Speaker 1
And then even in the Hiroclifices, they forgot how to read Hiroclifices. Or you
look at Rome and how they were able to build these incredible roadways and
aqueducts and indoor plumbing, and they forgot how to do all of those things. There
are many such examples in history. I think you should always bear in mind that
entropy is not on your side.

[00:07:59.740] - Speaker 2
One thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go
in the face of other people telling you something is crazy. And I know a lot of
pretty crazy people, you still stand out. Where does that come from? Or how do you
think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Or
where do you get the internal strength to do that?

[00:08:17.130] - Speaker 1
Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's
not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there
are just times when something is important enough that you believe in it enough
that you do it in spite of fear.

[00:08:37.200] - Speaker 2
So speaking of important things.

[00:08:38.330] - Speaker 1
People shouldn't think, Well, I feel fear about this, and therefore I shouldn't do
it. It's normal to feel fear. You'd have to be something mentally wrong if you
didn't feel fear.

[00:08:53.870] - Speaker 2
So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?

[00:08:57.480] - Speaker 1
Yeah. Actually, something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree. If you
just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. When starting SpaceX, I
thought the odds of success were less than 10 %, and I just accepted that actually
probably I would just lose everything. But that maybe would make some progress if
we could just move the ball forward. Even if we died, maybe some other company
could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward. So that would still do
some good. Yeah, same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding
were extremely low.

[00:09:40.730] - Speaker 2
What do you think the odds of the Mars colony are at this point today?

[00:09:45.700] - Speaker 1
Well, oddly enough, I actually think they're pretty good.

[00:09:51.840] - Speaker 2
So when can I go?

[00:09:52.920] - Speaker 1
Okay. At this point, I am certain there is a way. I'm certain that success is one
of the possible outcomes.