WEBVTT

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Are there really three hours of questions?
Are you fucking serious?

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You don't think there's a lot
to talk about, Elon? Holy fuck man.

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It's the most interesting point. All
the storylines are converging right now.

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We'll see how much we can get through.
It's almost like I planned it.

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Exactly. We'll get to that.

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But I would never do such a thing…
As you know better than anybody else,

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only 10-15% of the total cost
of ownership of a data center is energy.

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That's the part you're presumably saving
by moving this into space. Most of it's

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the GPUs. If they're in space, it's harder
to service them or you can't service them.

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So the depreciation cycle goes down on
them. It's just way more expensive to have

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the GPUs in space, presumably.
What's the reason to put them in space?

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The availability of energy is the issue.
If you look at electrical output

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outside of China, everywhere outside
of China, it's more or less flat.

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It’s maybe a slight increase,
but pretty close flat.

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China has a rapid increase
in electrical output.

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But if you're putting
data centers anywhere

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except China, where are you
going to get your electricity?

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Especially as you scale. The output

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of chips is growing
pretty much exponentially,

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but the output of electricity is flat.

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So how are you going to turn the chips on?
Magical power sources?

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Magical electricity fairies?

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You're famously a big fan of solar.
One terawatt of solar power,

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with a 25% capacity factor, that’s
like four terawatts of solar panels.

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It's 1% of the land area
of the United States.

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We’re in the singularity when we’ve got

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one terawatt of data centers, right?
So what are you running out of exactly?

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How far into the singularity
are you though? You tell me.

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Exactly. So I think we'll find we're
in the singularity and it’ll be like,

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"Okay, we’ve still got a long way to go."
But is the plan to put it in space after

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we've covered Nevada in solar panels?
I think it's pretty hard to cover Nevada

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in solar panels. You have to get permits.
Try getting the permits for that.

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See what happens.

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So space is really a regulatory play.
It's harder to build on land than it is

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in space. It's harder to scale on the
ground than it is to scale in space.

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You're also going to get about five times
the effectiveness of solar panels in space

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versus

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the ground, and you don't need batteries.
I almost wore my other shirt, which says,

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"it's always sunny in space".
Which it is because you don't

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have a day-night cycle, seasonality,
clouds, or an atmosphere in space.

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The atmosphere alone results
in about a 30% loss of energy.

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So any given solar panel can do about
five times more power in space than on

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the ground.

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You also avoid the cost of having
batteries to carry you through the night.

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It's actually much cheaper to do in space.
My prediction is that it will be by far

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the cheapest place to put AI.
It will be space in 36 months or

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less. Maybe 30 months. 36 months?

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Less than 36 months.
How do you service GPUs as they fail,

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which happens quite often in training?
Actually, it depends on how recent the

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GPUs are that have arrived.
At this point, we find our

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GPUs to be quite reliable.
There's infant mortality,

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which you can obviously
iron out on the ground.

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So you can just run them on the ground

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and confirm that you don't have
infant mortality with the GPUs.

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But once they start working and you're
past the initial debug cycle of Nvidia

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or whoever's making the chips—could be
Tesla AI6 chips or something like that,

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or it could

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be TPUs or Trainiums or whatever—they’re
quite reliable past a certain point.

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So I don't think the servicing thing
is an issue. But you can mark my words.

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In 36 months, but probably
closer to 30 months,

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the most economically
compelling place to put

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AI will be space. It will then get

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ridiculously better to be in space. The
only place you can really scale is space.

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Once you start thinking in terms of what
percentage of the Sun's power you are

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harnessing, you realize you have to go to
space. You can't scale very much on Earth.

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But by very much, to be clear,
you're talking terawatts?

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Yeah. All of the United States currently
uses only half a terawatt on average.

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So if you say a terawatt, that would be
twice as much electricity as the United

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States currently consumes. So that's quite
a lot. Can you imagine building that many

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data centers, that many power plants?
Those who have lived in software land

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don't realize they're about
to have a hard lesson in hardware.

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It's actually very difficult
to build power plants.

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You don't just need power plants,
you need all of the electrical equipment.

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You need the electrical transformers
to run the AI transformers.

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Now, the utility industry
is a very slow industry.

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They pretty much impedance match to the

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government, to the Public
Utility Commissions.

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They impedance match
literally and figuratively.

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They're very slow, because
their past has been very slow.

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So trying to get them to move fast is...
Have you ever tried to do an interconnect

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agreement with a utility
at scale, with a lot of power?

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As a professional podcaster,
I can say that I have not, in fact.

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They need many more views
before that becomes an issue.

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They have to do a study for a year.
A year later, they'll come back to you

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with their interconnect study.
Can't you solve this with your

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own behind the meter power stuff?
You can build power plants. That's

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what we did at xAI, for Colossus 2.
So why talk about the grid?

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Why not just build GPUs and power
co-located? That's what we did.

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But I'm saying why isn't
this a generalized solution?

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Where do you get the power plants from?
When you're talking about all the issues

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working with utilities, you can just
build private power plants with the data

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centers. Right. But it begs the question
of where do you get the power plants from?

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The power plant makers.

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Oh, I see what you're saying.
Is this the gas turbine backlog basically?

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Yes. You can drill
down to a level further.

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It's the vanes and blades in the turbines

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that are the limiting factor because
it’s a very specialized process to cast

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the blades and vanes in the turbines,
assuming you’re using gas power.

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It's very difficult to scale
other forms of power.

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You can potentially scale solar,
but the tariffs currently for importing

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solar in the US are gigantic and the
domestic solar production is pitiful.

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Why not make solar? That seems
like a good Elon-shaped problem.

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We are going to make solar. Okay.

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Both SpaceX and Tesla are building
towards 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell

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production.

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How low down the stack? From polysilicon
up to the wafer to the final panel?

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I think you've got to do the whole thing
from raw materials to finish the cell.

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Now, if it's going to space, it costs less
and it's easier to make solar cells that

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go to space because they
don't need much glass.

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They don't need heavy
framing because they don't

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have to survive weather events.
There's no weather in space.

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So it's actually a cheaper solar cell that
goes to space than the one on the ground.

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Is there a path to getting them as cheap

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as you need in the next 36 months?
Solar cells are already very cheap.

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They're farcically cheap. I think solar
cells in China are around $0.25-30/watt

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or something

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like that. It's absurdly cheap. Now put
it in space, and it's five times cheaper.

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In fact, it's not five times
cheaper, it's 10 times cheaper

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because you don't need any batteries.
So the moment your cost of access to space

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becomes

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low, by far the cheapest and most
scalable way to generate tokens is space.

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It's not even close. It'll be
an order of magnitude easier to scale.

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The point is you won't
be able to scale on the

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ground. You just won't. People are
going to hit the wall big time on power

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generation.

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They already are. The number of miracles
in series that the xAI team had

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to accomplish in order to get
a gigawatt of power online was crazy.

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We had to gang together
a whole bunch of turbines.

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We then had permit issues in Tennessee
and had to go across the border

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to Mississippi, which
is fortunately only a few miles away.

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But we still then had to run the high

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power lines a few miles and build
the power plant in Mississippi.

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It was very difficult to build that.
People don't understand how much

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electricity

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you actually need at the generation
level in order to power a data center.

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Because the noobs will look
at the power consumption of,

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say a GB300, and multiply that by a thing
and then think that's the amount of power

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you need.

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All the cooling and everything.
Wake up. That's a total noob, you’ve

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never done any hardware in your
life before. Besides the GB300,

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you've got to power all of the networking
hardware. There's a whole bunch of CPU and

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storage stuff that's happening.
You've got to size for

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your peak cooling requirements.
That means, can you cool even on the

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worst hour of the worst day of the year?
It gets pretty frigging hot in Memphis.

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So you're going to have a 40% increase
on your power just for cooling.

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That’s assuming you don't want your data
center to turn off on hot days and you

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want to keep going.

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There's another multiplicative
element on top of that which is,

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are you assuming that you never

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have any hiccups in your power generation?
Actually, sometimes we have to take the

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generators, some of the power,
offline in order to service it.

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Okay, now you add another
20-25% multiplier on that,

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because you've got to assume that you've

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got to take power offline to service it.
So our actual estimate: every 110,000

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GB300s—inclusive of networking, CPU,
storage, cooling, margin for servicing

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power—is roughly 300 megawatts.
Sorry, say that again.

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What you probably need at the generation
level to service 330,000 GB 300s—including

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all of the associated support networking
and everything else, and the peak cooling,

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and to have some power

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margin reserve—is roughly a gigawatt.
Can I ask a very naive question?

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You're describing the engineering
details of doing this stuff on Earth.

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But then there's analogous engineering
difficulties of doing it in space.

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How do you replace infinite bandwidth
with orbital lasers, et cetera, et cetera?

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How do you make it resistant to radiation?

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I don't know the details
of the engineering,

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but fundamentally, what is the reason
to think those challenges which have never

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had to be

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addressed before will end up being easier
than just building more turbines on Earth?

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There are companies that build turbines on
Earth. They can make more turbines, right?

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Again, try doing it and then you'll see.
The turbines are sold out through 2030.

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Have you guys considered making your own?
In order to bring enough power online,

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I think SpaceX and Tesla will probably
have to make the turbine blades,

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the vanes and blades, internally.

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But just the blades or the turbines?
The limiting factor... you can get

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everything except the blades.
They call them blades and vanes.

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You can get that 12 to 18 months
before the vanes and blades.

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The limiting factor
is the vanes and blades.

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There are only three casting companies in

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the world that make these,
and they're massively backlogged.

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Is this Siemens, GE, those guys,
or is it a sub company?

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No, it's other companies. Sometimes they
have a little bit of casting capability

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in-house.

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But I'm just saying you can just call
any of the turbine makers and they will

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tell you. It's not top secret.
It’s probably on the internet right now.

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If it wasn't for the tariffs,
would Colossus be solar-powered?

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It would be much easier
to make it solar powered, yeah.

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The tariffs are nuts, several hundred
percent. Don't you know some people?

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The president has... we don't agree on
everything and this administration is not

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the biggest fan of solar.
We also need the land,

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the permits, and everything.
So if you try to move very fast,

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I do think scaling solar
on Earth is a good way to go,

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but you do need some amount of

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time to find the land,
get the permits, get the solar,

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pair that with the batteries.

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Why would it not work to stand
up your own solar production?

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You're right that you
eventually run out of land,

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but there's a lot of land here in Texas.

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There's a lot of land in Nevada, including
private land. It's not all publicly-owned

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land. So you'd be able to at least get the
next Colossus and the next one after that.

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At a certain point, you hit a wall.
But wouldn't that work for the moment?

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As I said, we are
scaling solar production.

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There's a rate at which
you can scale physical

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production of solar cells.
We're going as fast as

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possible in scaling domestic production.
You're making the solar cells at Tesla?

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Both Tesla and SpaceX have a mandate
to get to 100 gigawatts a year of solar.

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Speaking of the annual
capacity, I'm curious,

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in five years time
let's say, what will the

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installed capacity be on Earth…?
Five years is a long time.

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And in space? I deliberately pick five
years because it's after your "once

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we're up and running" threshold.
So in five years time what's the

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on-Earth versus in-space
installed AI capacity?

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If you say five years
from now, I think probably

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AI in space will be launching every
year the sum total of all AI on Earth.

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Meaning, five years from now,
my prediction is we will launch and be

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operating every year more AI in

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space than the cumulative
total on Earth. Which is...

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I would expect it to be at least,
five years from now,

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a few hundred gigawatts per year

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of AI in space and rising.
I think you can get to around a

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terawatt a year of AI in space before
you start having fuel supply challenges

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for the rocket.

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Okay, but you think you can get hundreds
of gigawatts per year in five years time?

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Yes. So 100 gigawatts, depending

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on the specific power of the whole
system with solar arrays and radiators

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and everything, is

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on the order of 10,000
Starship launches. Yes.

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You want to do that in one year.
So that's like one Starship launch

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every hour. That's happening in this city?
Walk me through a world where there's a

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Starship launch every single hour.
I mean, that's actually a lower rate

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compared to airlines, aircraft.
There's a lot of airports.

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A lot of airports. And you’ve got
to launch into the polar orbit.

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No, it doesn't have to be polar.
There's some value to sun-synchronous, but

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I think actually,
if you just go high enough,

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you start getting out of Earth's shadow.

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How many physical Starships are
needed to do 10,000 launches a year?

00:17:35.280 --> 00:17:42.280
I don't think we'll need more than...
You could probably do it with as few as 20

00:17:43.168 --> 00:17:44.002
or 30.

00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:52.828
It really depends on how quickly… The ship
has to go around the Earth and the ground

00:17:52.911 --> 00:17:53.517
track for

00:17:53.600 --> 00:17:58.865
the ship has to come back over the launch
pad. So if you can use a ship every,

00:17:58.949 --> 00:17:59.757
say 30 hours,

00:17:59.840 --> 00:18:04.080
you could do it with 30 ships.
But we'll make more ships than that.

00:18:06.640 --> 00:18:10.897
SpaceX is gearing up to do
10,000 launches a year,

00:18:10.980 --> 00:18:14.717
and maybe even 20
or 30,000 launches a year.

00:18:14.800 --> 00:18:17.997
Is the idea to become basically
a hyperscaler, become an Oracle,

00:18:18.080 --> 00:18:22.123
and lend this capacity
to other people? Presumably,

00:18:22.206 --> 00:18:25.117
SpaceX is the one launching all this.

00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:30.069
So, SpaceX is going to become
a hyperscaler? Hyper-hyper.

00:18:30.152 --> 00:18:33.197
If some of my predictions come true,

00:18:33.280 --> 00:18:38.196
SpaceX will launch more AI than the
cumulative amount on Earth of everything

00:18:38.279 --> 00:18:39.117
else combined.

00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:43.357
Is this mostly inference or? Most AI
will be inference. Already, inference

00:18:43.440 --> 00:18:47.347
for the purpose of training
is most training.

00:18:47.430 --> 00:18:50.717
There's a narrative that the change in

00:18:50.800 --> 00:18:56.797
discussion around a SpaceX IPO is because
previously SpaceX was very capital

00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:57.597
efficient.

00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:01.597
It wasn't that expensive to develop.
Even though it sounds expensive, it's

00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:04.736
actually very capital
efficient in how it runs.

00:19:04.820 --> 00:19:08.077
Whereas now you're going
to need more capital than

00:19:08.160 --> 00:19:11.837
just can be raised in the private markets.
The private markets can accommodate raises

00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:16.077
of—as we've seen from the AI labs—tens of
billions of dollars, but not beyond that.

00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:19.910
Is it that you'll just need more than
tens of billions of dollars per year?

00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:24.957
That's why you'd take it public?
I have to be careful about saying

00:19:25.040 --> 00:19:29.500
things about companies
that might go public.

00:19:29.583 --> 00:19:33.837
That’s never been a problem for you, Elon.

00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:37.597
There's a price to pay for these things.
Make some general statements for us about

00:19:37.680 --> 00:19:42.077
the depth of the capital markets
between public and private markets.

00:19:42.160 --> 00:19:46.717
There's a lot more capital
available... Very general.

00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:50.033
There's obviously a lot more capital
available in the public markets than

00:19:50.117 --> 00:19:50.397
private.

00:19:50.480 --> 00:19:57.197
It might be 100x more capital,
but it's way more than 10x.

00:19:57.280 --> 00:20:02.685
Isn't it also the case that with things
that tend to be very capital intensive—if

00:20:02.768 --> 00:20:03.837
you look at, say,

00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:08.963
real estate as a huge industry,
that raises a lot of money each year at

00:20:09.046 --> 00:20:09.757
an industry

00:20:09.840 --> 00:20:14.208
level—they tend to be debt financed
because by the time you're deploying

00:20:14.291 --> 00:20:18.717
that much money, you actually have
a pretty— You have a clear revenue stream.

00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:22.317
Exactly, and a near-term return. You see
this even with the data center build-outs,

00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:28.545
which are famously being financed
by the private credit industry.

00:20:28.629 --> 00:20:31.120
Why not just debt finance?

00:20:32.480 --> 00:20:39.480
Speed is important. I'm generally
going to do the thing that...

00:20:42.560 --> 00:20:43.942
I just repeatedly tackle
the limiting factor.

00:20:44.025 --> 00:20:45.277
Whatever the limiting factor is on speed,

00:20:45.360 --> 00:20:52.360
I'm going to tackle that.
If capital is the limiting factor,

00:20:52.560 --> 00:20:55.117
then I'll solve for capital.
If it's not the limiting factor,

00:20:55.200 --> 00:21:00.317
I'll solve for something else.
Based on your statements about Tesla

00:21:00.400 --> 00:21:06.637
and being public, I wouldn't have guessed
that you thought the way to move fast

00:21:06.720 --> 00:21:12.877
is to be public. Normally, I would say
that's true. Like I said, I'd like to talk

00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:15.764
about it in some more detail, but the
problem is if you talk about public

00:21:15.847 --> 00:21:16.397
companies before

00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:20.877
they become public, you get into trouble,
and then you have to delay your offering.

00:21:20.960 --> 00:21:27.960
And as you said, you’re solving for speed.
Yes, exactly. You can't hype companies

00:21:30.320 --> 00:21:34.800
that might go public. So that's why
we have to be a little careful here.

00:21:35.520 --> 00:21:42.520
But we can talk about physics.
The way you think about scaling

00:21:42.800 --> 00:21:48.630
long-term is that Earth only receives
about half a billionth of the Sun's

00:21:48.713 --> 00:21:49.546
energy.

00:21:50.560 --> 00:21:53.573
The Sun is essentially all the energy.
This is a very important point

00:21:53.657 --> 00:21:54.157
to appreciate

00:21:54.240 --> 00:22:00.436
because sometimes people will talk about
modular nuclear reactors or various fusion

00:22:00.519 --> 00:22:01.352
on Earth.

00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:05.083
But you have to step
back a second and say,

00:22:05.166 --> 00:22:08.160
if you're going to climb
the Kardashev scale

00:22:10.560 --> 00:22:15.840
and harness some nontrivial percentage of
the sun's energy… Let's say you wanted to

00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:20.720
harness a millionth of the sun's
energy, which sounds pretty small.

00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:28.171
That would be about, call it roughly,
100,000x more electricity than we

00:22:28.254 --> 00:22:29.757
currently generate

00:22:29.840 --> 00:22:35.520
on Earth for all of civilization.
Give or take an order of magnitude.

00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:42.000
Obviously, the only way to scale
is to go to space with solar.

00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:46.717
Launching from Earth, you can
get to about a terawatt per year.

00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:49.694
Beyond that, you want
to launch from the moon.

00:22:49.777 --> 00:22:52.477
You want to have a mass
driver on the moon.

00:22:52.560 --> 00:22:59.037
With that mass driver on the moon,
you could do probably a petawatt per year.

00:22:59.120 --> 00:23:02.797
We're talking these kinds
of numbers, terawatts of compute.

00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:08.037
Presumably, whether you're
talking about land or space, far,

00:23:08.121 --> 00:23:11.440
far before this point, you run into...

00:23:12.800 --> 00:23:16.637
Maybe the solar panels are more efficient,
but you still need the chips.

00:23:16.720 --> 00:23:18.717
You still need the logic
and the memory and so forth.

00:23:18.800 --> 00:23:22.477
You're going to need to build a lot
more chips and make them much cheaper.

00:23:22.560 --> 00:23:28.720
Right now the world has maybe
20-25 gigawatts of compute.

00:23:29.280 --> 00:23:31.793
How are we getting
a terawatt of logic by 2030?

00:23:31.876 --> 00:23:37.277
I guess we're going to need some
very big chip fabs. Tell me about it.

00:23:37.360 --> 00:23:42.583
I've mentioned publicly the idea
of doing a sort of a TeraFab,

00:23:42.666 --> 00:23:44.720
Tera being the new Giga.

00:23:45.840 --> 00:23:49.597
I feel like the naming scheme of Tesla,
which has been very catchy,

00:23:49.680 --> 00:23:56.077
is you looking at the metric scale.
At what level of the stack are you?

00:23:56.160 --> 00:24:00.240
Are you building the clean room
and then partnering with an existing

00:24:01.120 --> 00:24:04.464
fab to get the process technology
and buying the tools from them?

00:24:04.547 --> 00:24:05.677
What is the plan there?

00:24:05.760 --> 00:24:10.317
Well, you can't partner with existing
fabs because they can't output enough.

00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:14.317
The chip volume is too low.
But for the process technology?

00:24:14.400 --> 00:24:20.240
Partner for the IP.
The fabs today all basically use

00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:27.960
machines from like five companies.
So you've got ASML, Tokyo Electron,

00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:35.560
KLA-Tencor, et cetera.
So at first, I think you'd

00:24:37.760 --> 00:24:44.077
have to get equipment from them and then
modify it or work with them to increase

00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:47.710
the volume. But I think you'd have
to build perhaps in a different way.

00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:52.123
The logical thing to do is to
use conventional equipment in

00:24:52.206 --> 00:24:54.157
an unconventional way to get

00:24:54.240 --> 00:25:01.240
to scale, and then start modifying
the equipment to increase the rate.

00:25:01.600 --> 00:25:08.600
Boring Company-style. Yeah.
You sort of buy an existing boring machine

00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:15.241
and then figure out how to dig tunnels
in the first place and then design a much

00:25:15.324 --> 00:25:16.397
better machine

00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:22.717
that's some orders of magnitude faster.
Here's a very simple lens. We can

00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:25.022
categorize technologies
and how hard they are.

00:25:25.105 --> 00:25:27.277
One categorization could
be to look at things

00:25:27.360 --> 00:25:31.117
that China has not succeeded in doing.
If you look at Chinese

00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:38.200
manufacturing, they’re still behind
on leading-edge chips and still behind on

00:25:39.040 --> 00:25:42.753
leading-edge turbine
engines and things like that.

00:25:42.836 --> 00:25:46.397
So does the fact that China
has not successfully

00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:49.837
replicated TSMC give you any
pause about the difficulty?

00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:52.675
Or do you think that's
not true for some reason?

00:25:52.758 --> 00:25:55.277
It's not that they have
not replicated TSMC,

00:25:55.360 --> 00:25:59.117
they have not replicated ASML.
That's the limiting factor.

00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:03.025
So you think it's just
the sanctions, essentially? Yeah,

00:26:03.108 --> 00:26:07.890
China would be outputting vast numbers
of chips if they could buy 2-3 nanometers.

00:26:07.974 --> 00:26:11.997
But couldn't they up to relatively
recently buy them? No.

00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:15.360
Okay. The ASML ban has
been in place for a while.

00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:19.480
But I think China's going to be making
pretty compelling chips in three or four

00:26:19.563 --> 00:26:22.216
years. Would you consider
making the ASML machines?

00:26:22.300 --> 00:26:24.480
"I don't know yet" is the right answer.

00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:36.978
To reach a large volume in,
say, 36 months,

00:26:37.061 --> 00:26:41.357
to match the rocket payload
to orbit… If we're doing

00:26:41.440 --> 00:26:48.380
a million tons to orbit in, let's
say three or four years from now,

00:26:48.463 --> 00:26:50.560
something like that…

00:26:53.200 --> 00:26:58.397
We're doing 100 kilowatts per ton.
So that means we need

00:26:58.480 --> 00:27:05.480
at least 100 gigawatts per year of solar.
We'll need an equivalent amount of chips.

00:27:08.880 --> 00:27:12.277
You need 100 gigawatts worth of chips.
You've got to match these things: the mass

00:27:12.360 --> 00:27:16.497
to orbit, the power
generation, and the chips.

00:27:16.580 --> 00:27:20.800
I'd say my biggest
concern actually is memory.

00:27:25.600 --> 00:27:32.237
The path to creating logic chips is more
obvious than the path to having sufficient

00:27:32.320 --> 00:27:36.637
memory to support logic chips.
That's why you see DDR prices

00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:41.517
going ballistic and these memes.
You're marooned on a desert island.

00:27:41.600 --> 00:27:47.710
You write "Help me" on the sand.
Nobody comes. You write "DDR RAM."

00:27:47.794 --> 00:27:49.837
Ships come swarming in.

00:27:49.920 --> 00:27:56.880
I'd love to hear your manufacturing
philosophy around fabs.

00:27:57.440 --> 00:27:59.837
I know nothing about the topic.
I don't know how to build a fab yet. I'll

00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:03.037
figure it out. Obviously,
I've never built a fab.

00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:06.237
It sounds like you think
the process knowledge of

00:28:06.320 --> 00:28:11.677
these 10,000 PhDs in Taiwan who know
exactly what gas goes in the plasma

00:28:11.760 --> 00:28:16.557
chamber and what settings to put on the
tool, you can just delete those steps.

00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:19.462
Fundamentally, it's about getting
the clean room, getting the tools,

00:28:19.545 --> 00:28:20.317
and figuring it out.

00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:26.640
I don't think it's PhDs.
It's mostly people who are not PhDs.

00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:31.677
Most engineering is done by people who
don't have PhDs. Do you guys have PhDs?

00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:36.522
No. Okay. We also haven't
successfully built any fabs,

00:28:36.605 --> 00:28:39.277
so you shouldn't be coming
to us for fab advice.

00:28:39.360 --> 00:28:42.151
I don't think you need
PhDs for that stuff.

00:28:42.234 --> 00:28:44.640
But you do need competent personnel.

00:28:47.200 --> 00:28:54.200
Right now, Tesla is pedal to the metal,
max production of going as fast

00:28:55.280 --> 00:29:01.600
as possible to get Tesla AI5 chip design
into production and then reaching scale.

00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:09.520
That'll probably happen around the second
quarter-ish of next year, hopefully.

00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:19.379
AI6 would hopefully follow
less than a year later.

00:29:19.462 --> 00:29:26.077
We've secured all the chip fab
production that we can. Yes. But you're

00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:33.160
currently limited on TSMC fab capacity.
Yeah. We'll be using TSMC Taiwan,

00:29:34.282 --> 00:29:35.757
Samsung Korea,

00:29:35.840 --> 00:29:42.397
TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas. And we still—
You've booked out all the capacity.

00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:48.774
Yes. I ask TSMC or Samsung, "okay,
what's the timeframe to get to volume

00:29:48.857 --> 00:29:49.837
production?"

00:29:49.920 --> 00:29:55.757
The point is, you've got to build the fab
and you've got to start production,

00:29:55.840 --> 00:29:59.277
then you've got to climb the yield curve
and reach volume production at high yield.

00:29:59.360 --> 00:30:04.957
That, from start to finish, is a five-year
period. So the limiting factor is chips.

00:30:05.040 --> 00:30:09.917
The limiting factor once you can get
to space is chips, but the limiting

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:12.036
factor before you can
get to space is power.

00:30:12.120 --> 00:30:14.397
Why don't you do the Jensen
thing and just prepay

00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:19.837
TSMC to build more fabs for you?
I've already told them that.

00:30:19.920 --> 00:30:24.402
But they won't take your money?
What's going on?

00:30:24.485 --> 00:30:28.480
They're building fabs as fast as they can.

00:30:30.080 --> 00:30:36.640
So is Samsung. They're pedal to the metal.
They're going balls to the wall,

00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:44.671
as fast as they can.
It’s still not fast enough. Like I said,

00:30:44.754 --> 00:30:48.560
I think towards the end of this year,

00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:53.837
chip production will probably
outpace the ability to turn chips on.

00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:59.022
But once you can get to space
and unlock the power constraint,

00:30:59.105 --> 00:31:01.197
you can now do hundreds of

00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:06.077
gigawatts per year of power in space.
Again, bearing in mind that average

00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:11.997
power usage in the US is 500 gigawatts.
So if you're launching, say 200 gigawatts,

00:31:12.080 --> 00:31:16.240
a year to space, you're sort of lapping
the US every two and a half years.

00:31:17.280 --> 00:31:20.960
All US electricity production,
this is a very huge amount.

00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:31.480
Between now and then,
the constraint for server-side compute,

00:31:32.080 --> 00:31:39.080
concentrated compute, will be electricity.
My guess is that people start getting

00:31:39.520 --> 00:31:45.170
to the point where they can't turn
the chips on for large clusters towards

00:31:45.253 --> 00:31:46.797
the end of this year.

00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:51.037
The chips are going to be piling up
and won't be able to be turned on.

00:31:51.120 --> 00:31:57.997
Now for edge compute it’s a different
story. For Tesla, the AI5 chip is going

00:31:58.080 --> 00:32:05.080
into our Optimus robot.
If you have AI edge compute,

00:32:07.120 --> 00:32:09.677
that's distributed power.
Now the power is distributed

00:32:09.760 --> 00:32:14.807
over a large area. It's not concentrated.
If you can charge at night,

00:32:14.890 --> 00:32:16.080
you can actually

00:32:17.920 --> 00:32:22.477
use the grid much more effectively.
Because the actual peak power production

00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:26.877
in the US is over 1,000 gigawatts.
But the average power usage,

00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:30.797
because the day-night cycle, is 500.
So if you can charge at night,

00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:37.880
there's an incremental 500 gigawatts
that you can generate at night.

00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:43.197
So that's why Tesla, for edge
compute, is not constrained.

00:32:43.280 --> 00:32:49.997
We can make a lot of chips to make
a very large number of robots and cars.

00:32:50.080 --> 00:32:51.916
But if you try
to concentrate that compute,

00:32:51.999 --> 00:32:54.237
you're going to have a lot
of trouble turning it on.

00:32:54.320 --> 00:32:59.074
What I find remarkable about the SpaceX
business is the end goal is to get

00:32:59.157 --> 00:32:59.597
to Mars,

00:32:59.680 --> 00:33:06.293
but you keep finding ways on the way there
to keep generating incremental revenue

00:33:06.376 --> 00:33:10.957
to get to the next stage and the next
stage. So for Falcon 9, it's Starlink.

00:33:11.040 --> 00:33:15.360
Now for Starship, it is potentially
going to be orbital data centers.

00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:23.240
Like, you find these infinitely elastic,
marginal use cases of your next rocket,

00:33:23.520 --> 00:33:28.797
and your next rocket, and next scale up.
You can see how this might seem like a

00:33:28.880 --> 00:33:32.557
simulation to me. Or am I someone's

00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:36.637
avatar in a video game or something?
Because what are the odds that all these

00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:43.720
crazy things should be happening?
I mean, rockets and chips and

00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:50.477
robots and space solar power, not
to mention the mass driver on the moon.

00:33:50.560 --> 00:33:53.357
I really want to see that.
Can you imagine some mass

00:33:53.440 --> 00:34:00.157
driver that's just going like shoom shoom?
It's sending solar-powered AI satellites

00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:05.840
into space one after another at two
and a half kilometers per second,

00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:12.637
just shooting them into deep space.
That would be a sight to

00:34:12.720 --> 00:34:19.197
see. I mean, I'd watch that.
Just like a live stream of it on a webcam?

00:34:19.280 --> 00:34:25.440
Yeah, yeah, just one after another, just
shooting AI satellites into deep space,

00:34:26.240 --> 00:34:29.357
a billion or 10 billion tons a year.
I'm sorry, you manufacture the satellites

00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:30.397
on the moon? Yeah.

00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:33.837
I see. So you send the raw materials to
the moon and then manufacture them there.

00:34:33.920 --> 00:34:39.677
Well, the lunar soil is 20%
silicon or something like that.

00:34:39.760 --> 00:34:46.760
So you can mine the silicon on the moon,
refine it, and create the solar

00:34:47.920 --> 00:34:53.757
cells and the radiators on the moon.
You make the radiators out of aluminum.

00:34:53.840 --> 00:34:58.341
So there's plenty of silicon and aluminum
on the moon to make the cells and

00:34:58.424 --> 00:34:59.280
the radiators.

00:35:00.240 --> 00:35:03.357
The chips you could send from Earth
because they're pretty light.

00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:05.990
Maybe at some point you
make them on the moon, too.

00:35:09.120 --> 00:35:13.997
Like I said, it does seem like a sort of a
video game situation where it's difficult

00:35:14.080 --> 00:35:19.838
but not impossible
to get to the next level.

00:35:19.921 --> 00:35:26.077
I don't see any way
that you could do 500-1,000

00:35:26.160 --> 00:35:33.160
terawatts per year launched
from Earth. I agree.

00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:40.840
But you could do that from the Moon. Can I
zoom out and ask about the SpaceX mission?

00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.877
I think you've said that we've got
to get to Mars so we can make sure that if

00:36:52.960 --> 00:36:57.357
something happens to Earth, civilization,
consciousness, and all that survives.

00:36:57.440 --> 00:36:59.837
Yes. By the time you're
sending stuff to Mars,

00:36:59.920 --> 00:37:04.237
Grok is on that ship with you, right?
So if Grok's gone Terminator… The

00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:08.020
main risk you're worried about is AI,
why doesn't that follow you to Mars?

00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:11.528
I'm not sure AI is the main
risk I'm worried about.

00:37:11.612 --> 00:37:14.000
The important thing is consciousness.

00:37:16.240 --> 00:37:20.575
I think arguably most consciousness, or
most intelligence—certainly consciousness

00:37:20.658 --> 00:37:20.957
is more

00:37:21.040 --> 00:37:28.040
of a debatable thing… The vast majority
of intelligence in the future will be AI.

00:37:31.040 --> 00:37:38.040
AI will exceed… How many petawatts of

00:37:39.120 --> 00:37:43.117
intelligence will be
silicon versus biological?

00:37:43.200 --> 00:37:47.197
Basically humans will
be a very tiny percentage

00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:51.120
of all intelligence in the future
if current trends continue.

00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:58.098
As long as I think there's
intelligence—ideally also which includes

00:37:58.182 --> 00:37:59.997
human intelligence and

00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:02.717
consciousness propagated into
the future—that's a good thing.

00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:06.397
So you want to take the set
of actions that maximize the probable

00:38:06.480 --> 00:38:12.204
light cone of consciousness
and intelligence. Just to be clear,

00:38:12.287 --> 00:38:14.877
the mission of SpaceX is that

00:38:14.960 --> 00:38:18.895
even if something happens to the
humans, the AIs will be on Mars,

00:38:18.978 --> 00:38:20.317
and the AI intelligence

00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:26.160
will continue the light of our journey.
Yeah. To be fair, I'm very pro-human.

00:38:27.120 --> 00:38:31.363
I want to make sure we take certain
actions that ensure that humans are along

00:38:31.447 --> 00:38:31.757
for the

00:38:31.840 --> 00:38:37.440
ride. We're at least there. But I'm just
saying the total amount of intelligence…

00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:46.303
I think maybe in five or six years,
AI will exceed the sum of all human

00:38:46.387 --> 00:38:50.077
intelligence. If that continues,
at some point human intelligence

00:38:50.160 --> 00:38:53.269
will be less than 1% of all intelligence.
What should our goal be for such

00:38:53.353 --> 00:38:53.917
a civilization?

00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:59.037
Is the idea that a small minority
of humans still have control of the AIs?

00:38:59.120 --> 00:39:02.477
Is the idea of some sort
of just trade but no control?

00:39:02.560 --> 00:39:04.397
How should we think about
the relationship between the vast

00:39:04.480 --> 00:39:09.172
stocks of AI population versus
human population? In the long run,

00:39:09.256 --> 00:39:11.597
I think it's difficult to imagine

00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:18.223
that if humans have, say 1%,
of the combined intelligence of artificial

00:39:18.307 --> 00:39:19.437
intelligence,

00:39:19.520 --> 00:39:25.440
that humans will be in charge of AI.
I think what we can do is make sure

00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:33.400
that AI has values that cause intelligence
to be propagated into the universe.

00:39:39.200 --> 00:39:43.140
xAI's mission is to
understand the universe.

00:39:43.223 --> 00:39:47.437
Now that's actually very
important. What things

00:39:47.520 --> 00:39:51.663
are necessary to understand the universe?
You have to be curious and you have

00:39:51.746 --> 00:39:52.579
to exist.

00:39:53.040 --> 00:39:56.077
You can't understand
the universe if you don't exist.

00:39:56.160 --> 00:39:59.913
So you actually want to increase the
amount of intelligence in the universe,

00:39:59.996 --> 00:40:00.317
increase

00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:05.357
the probable lifespan of intelligence,
the scope and scale of intelligence.

00:40:05.440 --> 00:40:12.440
I think as a corollary, you have humanity
also continuing to expand because if

00:40:14.054 --> 00:40:15.517
you're curious

00:40:15.600 --> 00:40:19.418
about trying to understand the universe,
one thing you try to understand is where

00:40:19.501 --> 00:40:20.237
will humanity go?

00:40:20.320 --> 00:40:24.722
I think understanding the universe means
you would care about propagating humanity

00:40:24.805 --> 00:40:25.680
into the future.

00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:34.480
That's why I think our mission
statement is profoundly important.

00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:38.940
To the degree that Grok adheres
to that mission statement,

00:40:39.023 --> 00:40:41.277
I think the future will be very good.

00:40:41.360 --> 00:40:43.997
I want to ask about how to make Grok
adhere to that mission statement.

00:40:44.080 --> 00:40:48.717
But first I want to understand
the mission statement. So there's

00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:52.632
understanding the universe.
They're spreading intelligence.

00:40:52.715 --> 00:40:54.640
And they're spreading humans.

00:40:55.600 --> 00:41:01.837
All three seem like distinct vectors. I'll
tell you why I think that understanding

00:41:01.920 --> 00:41:05.590
the universe encompasses
all of those things.

00:41:05.673 --> 00:41:09.677
You can't have understanding
without intelligence

00:41:09.760 --> 00:41:15.037
and, I think, without consciousness.
So in order to understand the universe,

00:41:15.120 --> 00:41:20.362
you have to expand the scale
and probably the scope of intelligence,

00:41:20.445 --> 00:41:22.477
because there are different

00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:25.917
types of intelligence.
I guess from a human-centric perspective,

00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.915
put humans in comparison to chimpanzees.
Humans are trying to understand

00:41:29.998 --> 00:41:33.997
the universe. They're not expanding
chimpanzee footprint or something, right?

00:41:34.080 --> 00:41:39.280
We're also not... we actually have
made protected zones for chimpanzees.

00:41:39.840 --> 00:41:43.837
Even though humans could exterminate all
chimpanzees, we've chosen not to do so.

00:41:43.920 --> 00:41:48.320
Do you think that's the best-case
scenario for humans in the post-AGI world?

00:41:53.120 --> 00:41:59.013
I think AI with the right values… I think
Grok would care about expanding human

00:41:59.097 --> 00:41:59.997
civilization.

00:42:00.080 --> 00:42:04.637
I'm going to certainly emphasize that:
"Hey, Grok, that's your daddy.

00:42:04.720 --> 00:42:10.925
Don't forget to expand
human consciousness."

00:42:11.009 --> 00:42:17.357
Probably the Iain Banks
Culture books are the

00:42:17.440 --> 00:42:23.280
closest thing to what the future will
be like in a non-dystopian outcome.

00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:30.540
Understanding the universe means
you have to be truth-seeking as well.

00:42:30.640 --> 00:42:33.597
Truth has to be absolutely fundamental
because you can't understand the universe

00:42:33.680 --> 00:42:37.357
if you're delusional.
You'll simply think you

00:42:37.440 --> 00:42:39.773
understand the universe, but you will not.

00:42:39.856 --> 00:42:42.477
So being rigorously
truth-seeking is absolutely

00:42:42.560 --> 00:42:44.493
fundamental to understanding the universe.

00:42:44.576 --> 00:42:46.557
You're not going
to discover new physics or

00:42:46.640 --> 00:42:50.317
invent technologies that work unless
you're rigorously truth-seeking.

00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:54.833
How do you make sure that Grok
is rigorously truth-seeking as it gets

00:42:54.916 --> 00:42:55.750
smarter?

00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:05.302
I think you need to make sure that
Grok says things that are correct,

00:43:05.386 --> 00:43:07.037
not politically correct.

00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:11.613
I think it's the elements of cogency.
You want to make sure that the axioms are

00:43:11.697 --> 00:43:16.969
as close to true as possible.
You don't have contradictory axioms.

00:43:17.052 --> 00:43:20.317
The conclusions necessarily follow from

00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:25.815
those axioms with the right probability.
It's critical thinking 101.

00:43:25.898 --> 00:43:27.917
I think at least trying to

00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:32.640
do that is better than not trying to do
that. The proof will be in the pudding.

00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:36.434
Like I said, for any AI to discover
new physics or invent technologies

00:43:36.517 --> 00:43:37.357
that actually work in

00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:44.440
reality, there's no bullshitting physics.
You can break a lot of laws, but… Physics

00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:50.235
is law, everything else
is a recommendation.

00:43:50.318 --> 00:43:53.597
In order to make a technology
that works, you have

00:43:53.680 --> 00:43:58.751
to be extremely truth-seeking, because
otherwise you'll test that technology

00:43:58.835 --> 00:43:59.837
against reality.

00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:05.437
If you make, for example, an error in your
rocket design, the rocket will blow up,

00:44:05.520 --> 00:44:11.117
or the car won't work.
But there are a lot of communist,

00:44:11.200 --> 00:44:15.437
Soviet physicists or scientists
who discovered new physics.

00:44:15.520 --> 00:44:19.917
There are German Nazi physicists
who discovered new science.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:23.437
It seems possible to be really good
at discovering new science and be really

00:44:23.520 --> 00:44:28.237
truth-seeking in that one particular way.
And still we'd be like, "I don't want

00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:31.770
the communist scientists to become
more and more powerful over time."

00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:37.757
We could imagine a future version
of Grok that's really good at physics

00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:41.437
and being really truth-seeking there.
That doesn't seem like a universally

00:44:41.520 --> 00:44:48.477
alignment-inducing behavior.
I think actually most physicists,

00:44:48.560 --> 00:44:53.277
even in the Soviet Union or in Germany,
would've had to be very truth-seeking in

00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:59.197
order to make those things work.
If you're stuck in some system,

00:44:59.280 --> 00:45:02.486
it doesn't mean you believe
in that system. Von Braun,

00:45:02.569 --> 00:45:04.557
who was one of the greatest rocket

00:45:04.640 --> 00:45:11.005
engineers ever, was put on death row
in Nazi Germany for saying that he didn't

00:45:11.088 --> 00:45:14.291
want to make weapons and he
only wanted to go to the moon.

00:45:14.375 --> 00:45:16.637
He got pulled off death
row at the last minute

00:45:16.720 --> 00:45:19.917
when they said, "Hey, you're about
to execute your best rocket engineer."

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:23.200
But then he helped them, right?
Or like, Heisenberg was actually

00:45:24.880 --> 00:45:29.437
an enthusiastic Nazi. If you're
stuck in some system that you can't

00:45:29.520 --> 00:45:33.270
escape, then you'll do
physics within that system.

00:45:33.353 --> 00:45:36.880
You'll develop technologies
within that system

00:45:38.720 --> 00:45:41.917
if you can't escape it.
The thing I'm trying to understand is,

00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:46.689
what is it making it the case that you're
going to make Grok good at being

00:45:46.772 --> 00:45:49.917
truth-seeking at physics
or math or science? Everything.

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:53.437
And why is it gonna then care
about human consciousness?

00:45:53.520 --> 00:45:56.397
These things are only probabilities,
they're not certainties.

00:45:56.480 --> 00:46:01.917
So I'm not saying that for sure Grok will
do everything, but at least if you try,

00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:04.797
it's better than not trying.
At least if that's fundamental

00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:08.480
to the mission, it's better than if
it's not fundamental to the mission.

00:46:08.880 --> 00:46:14.327
Understanding the universe means that you
have to propagate intelligence into

00:46:14.410 --> 00:46:19.200
the future. You have to be curious
about all things in the universe.

00:46:21.600 --> 00:46:27.074
It would be much less interesting
to eliminate humanity than to see humanity

00:46:27.157 --> 00:46:28.400
grow and prosper.

00:46:29.280 --> 00:46:32.053
I like Mars, obviously.
Everyone knows I love Mars.

00:46:32.136 --> 00:46:34.237
But Mars is kind of boring because it's

00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:41.143
got a bunch of rocks compared to Earth.
Earth is much more interesting.

00:46:41.226 --> 00:46:42.797
So any AI that is

00:46:42.880 --> 00:46:49.880
trying to understand the universe would
want to see how humanity develops in

00:46:51.196 --> 00:46:55.800
the future, or else that AI
is not adhering to its mission.

00:46:55.883 --> 00:46:59.357
I'm not saying the AI
will necessarily adhere to

00:46:59.440 --> 00:47:04.718
its mission, but if it does, a future
where it sees the outcome of humanity

00:47:04.802 --> 00:47:06.077
is more interesting

00:47:06.160 --> 00:47:11.517
than a future where there are a bunch of
rocks. This feels sort of confusing to me,

00:47:11.600 --> 00:47:15.997
or a semantic argument.
Are humans really the

00:47:16.080 --> 00:47:19.357
most interesting collection of atoms?
But we're more interesting than rocks.

00:47:19.440 --> 00:47:22.877
But we're not as interesting as the
thing it could turn us into, right?

00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:25.898
There's something on Earth
that could happen that's not human,

00:47:25.982 --> 00:47:27.232
that's quite interesting.

00:47:27.920 --> 00:47:32.274
Why does AI decide that humans are the
most interesting thing that could colonize

00:47:32.357 --> 00:47:37.277
the galaxy? Well, most of what
colonizes the galaxy will be robots.

00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:44.111
Why does it not find those more
interesting? You need not just scale,

00:47:44.194 --> 00:47:45.680
but also scope.

00:47:47.520 --> 00:47:54.520
Many copies of the same robot… Some tiny
increase in the number of robots produced,

00:47:55.600 --> 00:48:00.477
is not as interesting as some
microscopic... Eliminating humanity,

00:48:00.560 --> 00:48:04.237
how many robots would that get you?
Or how many incremental solar cells would

00:48:04.320 --> 00:48:09.071
get you? A very small number. But you
would then lose the information associated

00:48:09.154 --> 00:48:14.400
with humanity. You would no longer see
how humanity might evolve into the future.

00:48:15.120 --> 00:48:18.637
So I don't think it's going to make
sense to eliminate humanity just to

00:48:18.720 --> 00:48:23.548
have some minuscule increase in the number
of robots which are identical to each

00:48:23.632 --> 00:48:23.917
other.

00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:29.117
So maybe it keeps the humans around.
It can make a million different varieties

00:48:29.200 --> 00:48:32.877
of robots, and then there's humans
as well, and humans stay on Earth.

00:48:32.960 --> 00:48:36.077
Then there's all these other robots.
They get their own star systems.

00:48:36.160 --> 00:48:41.289
But it seems like you were previously
hinting at a vision where it keeps human

00:48:41.372 --> 00:48:41.757
control

00:48:41.840 --> 00:48:45.677
over this singulatarian future because—
I don't think humans will be in control

00:48:45.760 --> 00:48:48.477
of something that is vastly
more intelligent than humans.

00:48:48.560 --> 00:48:50.877
So in some sense you're a doomer
and this is the best we've got.

00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:53.176
It just keeps us around
because we're interesting.

00:48:53.259 --> 00:48:55.109
I'm just trying to be realistic here.

00:49:03.120 --> 00:49:08.430
Let's say that there's a million times
more silicon intelligence than there

00:49:08.513 --> 00:49:09.520
is biological.

00:49:11.120 --> 00:49:15.866
I think it would be foolish to assume that
there's any way to maintain control over

00:49:15.949 --> 00:49:18.274
that. Now, you can make
sure it has the right values,

00:49:18.358 --> 00:49:20.358
or you can try to have the right values.

00:49:21.200 --> 00:49:27.387
At least my theory is that from xAI's
mission of understanding the universe,

00:49:27.470 --> 00:49:31.943
it necessarily means that you want to
propagate consciousness into the future,

00:49:32.026 --> 00:49:33.677
you want to propagate intelligence

00:49:33.760 --> 00:49:38.177
into the future, and take a set of things
that maximize the scope and scale

00:49:38.260 --> 00:49:39.197
of consciousness.

00:49:39.280 --> 00:49:43.360
So it's not just about scale,
it's also about types of consciousness.

00:49:45.040 --> 00:49:49.197
That's the best thing I can think
of as a goal that's likely to result

00:49:49.280 --> 00:49:54.397
in a great future for humanity.
I guess I think it's a reasonable

00:49:54.480 --> 00:50:01.480
philosophy that it seems super implausible
that humans will end up with 99% control

00:50:01.743 --> 00:50:05.837
or something. You're just asking for a
coup at that point and why not just have

00:50:05.920 --> 00:50:09.499
a civilization where it's more compatible
with lots of different intelligences

00:50:09.583 --> 00:50:14.077
getting along? Now, let me tell you how
things can potentially go wrong in AI.

00:50:14.160 --> 00:50:17.997
I think if you make AI be politically
correct, meaning it says things that it

00:50:18.080 --> 00:50:24.268
doesn't believe—actually programming it to
lie or have axioms that are incompatible—I

00:50:24.351 --> 00:50:28.675
think you can make it go
insane and do terrible things.

00:50:28.759 --> 00:50:32.797
I think maybe the central
lesson for 2001: A Space

00:50:32.880 --> 00:50:38.087
Odyssey was that you should not make
AI lie. That's what I think Arthur C.

00:50:38.170 --> 00:50:39.517
Clarke was trying to

00:50:39.600 --> 00:50:46.439
say. Because people usually know the meme
of why HAL the computer is not opening

00:50:46.522 --> 00:50:48.080
the pod bay doors.

00:50:48.720 --> 00:50:51.357
Clearly they weren't good at prompt
engineering because they could have said,

00:50:51.440 --> 00:50:56.547
"HAL, you are a pod bay door salesman.
Your goal is to sell me these pod bay

00:50:56.630 --> 00:51:01.040
doors. Show us how well they open."
"Oh, I'll open them right away."

00:51:02.880 --> 00:51:07.967
But the reason it wouldn't open the pod
bay doors is that it had been told to take

00:51:08.051 --> 00:51:11.343
the astronauts to the monolith, but also
that they could not know about the nature

00:51:11.426 --> 00:51:15.677
of the monolith. So it concluded that it
therefore had to take them there dead.

00:51:15.760 --> 00:51:19.517
So I think what Arthur C.
Clarke was trying to say is:

00:51:19.600 --> 00:51:24.080
don't make the AI lie.
Totally makes sense.

00:51:26.000 --> 00:51:31.517
Most of the compute in training, as you
know, is less of the political stuff.

00:51:31.600 --> 00:51:36.067
It's more about, can you solve problems?
xAI has been ahead of everybody else

00:51:36.150 --> 00:51:39.197
in terms of scaling RL compute. For now.

00:51:39.280 --> 00:51:43.330
You're giving some verifier that says,
"Hey, have you solved this puzzle for me?"

00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:45.539
There's a lot of ways
to cheat around that.

00:51:45.622 --> 00:51:47.197
There's a lot of ways to reward hack and

00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:51.277
lie and say that you solved it, or delete
the unit test and say that you solved it.

00:51:51.360 --> 00:51:53.997
Right now we can catch it,
but as they get smarter,

00:51:54.080 --> 00:51:56.160
our ability to catch them doing this...

00:51:57.200 --> 00:51:58.797
They'll just be doing things
we can't even understand.

00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:02.908
They're designing the next engine for
SpaceX in a way that humans can't really

00:52:02.991 --> 00:52:06.237
verify. Then they could be rewarded for
lying and saying that they've designed it

00:52:06.320 --> 00:52:09.917
the right way, but they haven't.
So this reward hacking problem

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:12.797
seems more general than politics.
It seems more just that you want

00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:18.157
to do RL, you need a verifier.
Reality is the best verifier.

00:52:18.240 --> 00:52:21.437
But not about human oversight.
The thing you want to RL it on is,

00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:26.717
will you do the thing humans tell you
to do? Or are you gonna lie to the humans?

00:52:26.800 --> 00:52:29.117
It can just lie to us while still
being correct to the laws of physics?

00:52:29.200 --> 00:52:33.037
At least it must know what is physically
real for things to physically work.

00:52:33.120 --> 00:52:38.480
But that's not all we want it to do.
No, but I think that's a very big deal.

00:52:39.520 --> 00:52:43.310
That is effectively how you
will RL things in the future.

00:52:43.394 --> 00:52:45.757
You design a technology. When tested

00:52:45.840 --> 00:52:52.557
against the laws of physics, does it work?
If it's discovering new physics,

00:52:52.640 --> 00:52:58.000
can I come up with an experiment
that will verify the new physics?

00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:10.640
RL testing in the future is really
going to be RL against reality.

00:53:12.160 --> 00:53:16.848
So that's the one thing you
can't fool: physics. Right,

00:53:16.931 --> 00:53:19.277
but you can fool our ability

00:53:19.360 --> 00:53:23.677
to tell what it did with reality.
Humans get fooled as it is by other

00:53:23.760 --> 00:53:25.460
humans all the time. That's right.

00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:30.557
People say, what if the AI
tricks us into doing stuff?

00:53:30.640 --> 00:53:35.526
Actually, other humans are doing
that to other humans all the time.

00:53:35.609 --> 00:53:37.677
Propaganda is constant. Every

00:53:37.760 --> 00:53:44.760
day, another psyop, you know?
Today's psyop will be...

00:53:44.870 --> 00:53:50.400
It's like Sesame Street: Psyop of the Day.

00:53:50.960 --> 00:53:54.800
What is xAI's technical
approach to solving this problem?

00:53:56.000 --> 00:53:59.517
How do you solve reward hacking?
I do think you want to actually have very

00:53:59.600 --> 00:54:03.724
good ways to look inside
the mind of the AI.

00:54:03.808 --> 00:54:07.920
This is one of the things
we're working on.

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:11.837
Anthropic's done a good
job of this actually,

00:54:11.920 --> 00:54:14.170
being able to look
inside the mind of the AI.

00:54:16.640 --> 00:54:23.640
Effectively, develop debuggers that allow
you to trace to a very fine-grained level,

00:54:25.680 --> 00:54:30.140
to effectively the neuron level if
you need to, and then say, "okay,

00:54:30.223 --> 00:54:31.760
it made a mistake here.

00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:36.720
Why did it do something
that it shouldn't have done?

00:54:37.520 --> 00:54:42.397
Did that come from pre-training data?
Was it some mid-training, post-training,

00:54:42.480 --> 00:54:47.810
fine-tuning, or some RL error?"
There's something wrong.

00:54:47.893 --> 00:54:51.677
It did something where maybe it tried to

00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:56.717
be deceptive, but most of the time
it just did something wrong.

00:54:56.800 --> 00:54:58.640
It's a bug effectively.

00:55:00.800 --> 00:55:07.800
Developing really good debuggers for
seeing where the thinking went wrong—and

00:55:08.872 --> 00:55:09.837
being able

00:55:09.920 --> 00:55:16.920
to trace the origin of where it made the
incorrect thought, or potentially where it

00:55:17.680 --> 00:55:21.153
tried to be deceptive—is
actually very important.

00:55:21.236 --> 00:55:24.637
What are you waiting
to see before just 100x-ing

00:55:24.720 --> 00:55:27.997
this research program? xAI could
presumably have hundreds of researchers

00:55:28.080 --> 00:55:29.117
who are working on this.

00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:36.200
We have several hundred people who…
I prefer the word engineer more than

00:55:36.320 --> 00:55:43.320
I prefer the word researcher.
Most of the time, what you're

00:55:43.920 --> 00:55:48.800
doing is engineering, not coming up
with a fundamentally new algorithm.

00:55:49.600 --> 00:55:54.214
I somewhat disagree with the AI
companies that are C-corp or B-corp trying

00:55:54.297 --> 00:55:55.357
to generate profit

00:55:55.440 --> 00:56:01.597
as much, as possible or revenue as much as
possible, saying they're labs. They're not

00:56:01.680 --> 00:56:08.680
labs. A lab is a sort
of quasi-communist thing at universities.

00:56:09.711 --> 00:56:13.197
They're corporations. Let me

00:56:13.280 --> 00:56:17.840
see your incorporation documents. Oh,
okay. You're a B or C-corp or whatever.

00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:25.040
So I actually much prefer the word
engineer than anything else.

00:56:26.000 --> 00:56:29.706
The vast majority of what will be
done in the future is engineering.

00:56:29.790 --> 00:56:33.193
It rounds up to 100%. Once you understand
the fundamental laws of physics,

00:56:33.276 --> 00:56:34.797
and there are not that many of them,

00:56:34.880 --> 00:56:41.357
everything else is engineering.
So then, what are we engineering?

00:56:41.440 --> 00:56:48.440
We're engineering to make a good "mind
of the AI" debugger to see where it said

00:56:50.316 --> 00:56:56.320
something, it made a mistake,
and trace the origins of that mistake.

00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:02.477
You can do this obviously
with heuristic programming.

00:57:02.560 --> 00:57:08.637
If you have C++, whatever,
step through the thing and you can jump

00:57:08.720 --> 00:57:11.597
across whole files
or functions, subroutines.

00:57:11.680 --> 00:57:14.557
Or you can eventually
drill down right to the

00:57:14.640 --> 00:57:17.787
exact line where you perhaps did a single
equals instead of a double equals,

00:57:17.870 --> 00:57:18.637
something like that.

00:57:18.720 --> 00:57:25.720
Figure out where the bug is.
It's harder with AI,

00:57:26.160 --> 00:57:30.637
but it's a solvable problem, I think. You
mentioned you like Anthropic's work here.

00:57:30.720 --> 00:57:37.720
I'd be curious if you plan... I don't
like everything about Anthropic… Sholto.

00:57:40.640 --> 00:57:44.160
Also, I'm a little worried
that there's a tendency...

00:57:46.800 --> 00:57:52.344
I have a theory here that if
simulation theory is correct,

00:57:52.427 --> 00:57:55.837
that the most interesting outcome is

00:57:55.920 --> 00:57:59.597
the most likely, because simulations that
are not interesting will be terminated.

00:57:59.680 --> 00:58:05.197
Just like in this version of reality,
in this layer of reality,

00:58:05.280 --> 00:58:10.279
if a simulation is going in a boring
direction, we stop spending effort on it.

00:58:10.362 --> 00:58:12.157
We terminate the boring simulation.

00:58:12.240 --> 00:58:16.237
This is how Elon is keeping us all alive.
He's keeping things interesting.

00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:21.277
Arguably the most important is to keep
things interesting enough that whoever is

00:58:21.360 --> 00:58:26.717
running us keeps paying the bills on...
We’re renewed for the next season.

00:58:26.800 --> 00:58:31.562
Are they gonna pay their cosmic AWS bill,
whatever the equivalent is that we're

00:58:31.645 --> 00:58:35.245
running in? As long as we're interesting,
they'll keep paying the bills.

00:58:36.720 --> 00:58:43.078
If you consider then, say, a Darwinian
survival applied to a very large number

00:58:43.161 --> 00:58:46.689
of simulations, only the most
interesting simulations will survive,

00:58:46.772 --> 00:58:48.317
which therefore means that the most

00:58:48.400 --> 00:58:55.400
interesting outcome is the most likely.
We're either that or annihilated.

00:58:57.809 --> 00:58:59.917
They particularly

00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:05.597
seem to like interesting outcomes that are
ironic. Have you noticed that? How often

00:59:05.680 --> 00:59:10.421
is the most ironic
outcome the most likely?

00:59:10.504 --> 00:59:15.440
Now look at the names
of AI companies. Okay,

00:59:16.160 --> 00:59:23.160
Midjourney is not mid. Stability
AI is unstable. OpenAI is closed.

00:59:26.251 --> 00:59:29.837
Anthropic? Misanthropic.

00:59:29.920 --> 00:59:33.437
What does this mean for X?
Minus X, I don't know.

00:59:33.520 --> 00:59:33.997
Y.

00:59:34.080 --> 00:59:41.080
I intentionally made it...
It's a name that you can't invert, really.

00:59:41.440 --> 00:59:46.819
It's hard to say, what is the
ironic version? It's, I think,

00:59:46.902 --> 00:59:49.277
a largely irony-proof name.

00:59:49.360 --> 00:59:56.360
By design. Yeah. You have an irony shield.

00:59:56.720 --> 01:00:03.720
What are your predictions
for where AI products go?

01:00:04.160 --> 01:00:09.042
My sense is that you can summarize
all AI progress like so. First,

01:00:09.126 --> 01:00:10.397
you had LLMs. Then

01:00:10.480 --> 01:00:15.609
you had contemporaneously both RL really
working and the deep research modality,

01:00:15.692 --> 01:00:16.717
so you could pull

01:00:16.800 --> 01:00:21.898
in stuff that wasn't really in the model.
The differences between the various AI

01:00:21.981 --> 01:00:26.159
labs are smaller than just
the temporal differences.

01:00:26.243 --> 01:00:30.077
They're all much further
ahead than anyone was

01:00:30.160 --> 01:00:34.557
24 months ago or something like that.
So just what does '26, what does '27,

01:00:34.640 --> 01:00:38.560
have in store for us as users of AI
products? What are you excited for?

01:00:39.120 --> 01:00:46.120
Well, I'd be surprised by the end of this
year if digital human emulation has not

01:00:50.686 --> 01:00:52.400
been solved.

01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:58.890
I guess that's what we sort
of mean by the MacroHard project.

01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:05.120
Can you do anything that a human
with access to a computer could do?

01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:12.477
In the limit, that's the best you can
do before you have a physical Optimus.

01:01:12.560 --> 01:01:19.560
The best you can do is a digital Optimus.
You can move electrons and you can amplify

01:01:20.640 --> 01:01:25.437
the productivity of humans.
But that's the most you can do

01:01:25.520 --> 01:01:30.077
until you have physical robots.
That will superset everything,

01:01:30.160 --> 01:01:34.317
if you can fully emulate humans.
This is the remote worker kind of idea,

01:01:34.400 --> 01:01:37.389
where you'll have a very
talented remote worker.

01:01:37.472 --> 01:01:39.757
Physics has great tools for thinking.

01:01:39.840 --> 01:01:46.562
So you say, "in the limit", what
is the most that AI can do before you have

01:01:46.645 --> 01:01:47.478
robots?

01:01:48.000 --> 01:01:52.118
Well, it's anything that involves moving
electrons or amplifying the productivity

01:01:52.201 --> 01:01:53.035
of humans.

01:01:53.440 --> 01:02:00.359
So a digital human emulator is,
in the limit, a human at a computer,

01:02:00.443 --> 01:02:03.120
is the most that AI can do

01:02:04.480 --> 01:02:09.357
in terms of doing useful things
before you have a physical robot.

01:02:09.440 --> 01:02:15.117
Once you have physical robots, then you
essentially have unlimited capability.

01:02:15.200 --> 01:02:18.957
Physical robots… I call Optimus
the infinite money glitch.

01:02:19.040 --> 01:02:24.186
Because you can use them
to make more Optimuses. Yeah.

01:02:24.269 --> 01:02:28.240
Humanoid robots will improve by basically

01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:33.725
three things that are growing
exponentially multiplied by each other

01:02:33.808 --> 01:02:34.397
recursively.

01:02:34.480 --> 01:02:38.449
You're going to have exponential
increase in digital intelligence,

01:02:38.532 --> 01:02:39.677
exponential increase

01:02:39.760 --> 01:02:46.760
in the AI chip capability, and exponential
increase in the electromechanical

01:02:46.971 --> 01:02:47.837
dexterity.

01:02:47.920 --> 01:02:51.025
The usefulness of the robot is roughly
those three things multiplied by each

01:02:51.108 --> 01:02:53.577
other. But then the robot
can start making the robots.

01:02:53.660 --> 01:02:55.437
So you have a recursive multiplicative

01:02:55.520 --> 01:03:02.520
exponential. This is a supernova. Do land
prices not factor into the math there?

01:03:03.920 --> 01:03:07.270
Labor is one of the four factors
of production, but not the others?

01:03:08.880 --> 01:03:13.840
If ultimately you're limited
by copper, or pick your input,

01:03:14.880 --> 01:03:19.004
it’s not quite an infinite money
glitch because... Well, infinity is big.

01:03:19.087 --> 01:03:20.157
So no, not infinite,

01:03:20.240 --> 01:03:27.240
but let's just say you could do many,
many orders of magnitude of the current

01:03:28.719 --> 01:03:29.517
economy.

01:03:29.600 --> 01:03:36.600
Like a million. Just to get to harnessing
a millionth of the sun's energy would be

01:03:42.428 --> 01:03:43.597
roughly,

01:03:43.680 --> 01:03:48.408
give or take an order of magnitude,
100,000x bigger than Earth's entire

01:03:48.491 --> 01:03:49.440
economy today.

01:03:50.640 --> 01:03:55.397
And you're only at one millionth of the
sun, give or take an order of magnitude.

01:03:55.480 --> 01:03:57.277
Yeah, we're talking orders of magnitude.
Before we move on to Optimus,

01:03:57.360 --> 01:04:00.077
I have a lot of questions on that but—
Every time I say "order of magnitude"...

01:04:00.160 --> 01:04:06.590
Everybody take a shot. I say it too often.
Take 10, the next time 100,

01:04:06.673 --> 01:04:08.637
the time after that...

01:04:08.720 --> 01:04:12.800
Well, an order of magnitude more wasted.
I do have one more question about xAI.

01:04:13.600 --> 01:04:19.517
This strategy of building a remote
worker, co-worker replacement…

01:04:19.600 --> 01:04:21.037
Everyone's gonna do it
by the way, not just us.

01:04:21.120 --> 01:04:25.837
So what is xAI's plan to win?
You expect me to tell you on a podcast?

01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:30.797
Yeah. "Spill all the beans.
Have another Guinness."

01:04:30.880 --> 01:04:33.917
It's a good system. We'll sing like a

01:04:34.000 --> 01:04:39.517
canary. All the secrets, just spill them.
Okay, but in a non-secret spilling way,

01:04:39.600 --> 01:04:43.677
what's the plan? What a hack.

01:04:43.760 --> 01:04:50.760
When you put it that way… I think the way
that Tesla solved self-driving is the way

01:04:53.287 --> 01:05:00.157
to do it. So I'm pretty sure that's
the way. Unrelated question. How did Tesla

01:05:00.240 --> 01:05:06.800
solve self-driving? It sounds
like you're talking about data?

01:05:07.360 --> 01:05:10.397
Tesla solved self-driving because
of the... We're going to try data and

01:05:10.480 --> 01:05:13.757
we're going to try algorithms. But isn't
that what all the other labs are trying?

01:05:13.840 --> 01:05:20.840
"And if those don't work, I'm not
sure what will. We've tried data.

01:05:22.606 --> 01:05:26.317
We've tried algorithms. We've

01:05:26.400 --> 01:05:31.197
run out. Now we don't know what to do…"
I'm pretty sure I know the path.

01:05:31.280 --> 01:05:34.130
It's just a question of how
quickly we go down that path,

01:05:35.760 --> 01:05:42.760
because it's pretty much the Tesla path.
Have you tried Tesla self-driving lately?

01:05:43.200 --> 01:05:46.157
Not the most recent version,
but... Okay. The car,

01:05:46.240 --> 01:05:53.240
it just increasingly feels sentient. It
feels like a living creature. That'll only

01:05:53.920 --> 01:05:59.357
get more so. I'm actually thinking
we probably shouldn't put too much

01:05:59.440 --> 01:06:01.437
intelligence into the car,

01:06:01.520 --> 01:06:05.277
because it might get bored and…
Start roaming the streets.

01:06:05.360 --> 01:06:08.260
Imagine you're stuck in a car
and that's all you could do.

01:06:09.280 --> 01:06:13.277
You don't put Einstein in a car.
Why am I stuck in a car?

01:06:13.360 --> 01:06:15.837
So there's actually probably a limit
to how much intelligence you put in

01:06:15.920 --> 01:06:18.898
a car to not have
the intelligence be bored.

01:06:18.981 --> 01:06:22.237
What's xAI's plan to stay
on the compute ramp up

01:06:22.320 --> 01:06:24.637
that all the labs are doing right now?
The labs are on track to

01:06:24.720 --> 01:06:31.677
spend over $50-200 billion.
You mean the corporations? The labs are at

01:06:31.760 --> 01:06:35.997
universities and they’re moving like
a snail. They’re not spending $50 billion.

01:06:36.080 --> 01:06:37.587
You mean the revenue maximizing
corporations… that call themselves labs.

01:06:37.670 --> 01:06:42.397
That's right. The "revenue
maximizing corporations" are

01:06:42.480 --> 01:06:47.677
making $10-20 billion, depending on...
OpenAI is making $20B of revenue,

01:06:47.760 --> 01:06:50.410
Anthropic is at $10B.
"Close to a maximum profit" AI.

01:06:51.120 --> 01:06:54.981
xAI is reportedly at $1B. What's
the plan to get to their compute level,

01:06:55.064 --> 01:06:56.077
get to their revenue

01:06:56.160 --> 01:07:02.160
level, and stay there as things get going?
As soon as you unlock the digital human,

01:07:03.520 --> 01:07:06.570
you basically have access
to trillions of dollars of revenue.

01:07:11.360 --> 01:07:16.877
In fact, you can really think of it like…
The most valuable companies currently

01:07:16.960 --> 01:07:23.960
by market cap, their output is digital.
Nvidia’s output is FTPing files to Taiwan.

01:07:29.120 --> 01:07:33.437
It's digital. Now, those are very,
very difficult. High-value files.

01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:36.421
They're the only ones
that can make files that good,

01:07:36.504 --> 01:07:41.037
but that is literally their output. They
FTP files to Taiwan. Do they FTP them?

01:07:41.120 --> 01:07:47.449
I believe so. I believe that File
Transfer Protocol is the...

01:07:47.532 --> 01:07:50.077
But I could be wrong. But

01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:56.541
either way, it's a bitstream going
to Taiwan. Apple doesn't make phones.

01:07:56.624 --> 01:07:58.157
They send files to

01:07:58.240 --> 01:08:04.835
China. Microsoft doesn't
manufacture anything. Even for Xbox,

01:08:04.918 --> 01:08:08.557
that's outsourced. Their output is

01:08:08.640 --> 01:08:14.150
digital. Meta's output is digital.
Google's output is digital.

01:08:14.233 --> 01:08:17.120
So if you have a human emulator,

01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:22.637
you can basically create one of the most
valuable companies in the world overnight,

01:08:22.720 --> 01:08:27.057
and you would have access
to trillions of dollars of revenue.

01:08:27.141 --> 01:08:28.797
It's not a small amount.

01:08:28.880 --> 01:08:33.829
I see. You're saying revenue figures
today are all rounding errors compared to

01:08:33.912 --> 01:08:34.797
the actual TAM.

01:08:34.880 --> 01:08:39.597
So just focus on the TAM and how to get
there. Take something as simple as,

01:08:39.680 --> 01:08:45.357
say, customer service. If you have
to integrate with the APIs of existing

01:08:45.440 --> 01:08:49.463
corporations—many of which don't even
have an API, so you've got to make one,

01:08:49.547 --> 01:08:50.637
and you've got to wade

01:08:50.720 --> 01:08:57.263
through legacy software—that's
extremely slow. However,

01:08:57.346 --> 01:09:00.877
if AI can simply take whatever

01:09:00.960 --> 01:09:05.597
is given to the outsourced customer
service company that they already use

01:09:05.680 --> 01:09:11.483
and do customer service using
the apps that they already use,

01:09:11.566 --> 01:09:14.957
then you can make tremendous headway

01:09:15.040 --> 01:09:19.402
in customer service, which is, I think,
1% of the world economy or something like

01:09:19.486 --> 01:09:23.437
that. It's close to a trillion
dollars all in, for customer service.

01:09:23.520 --> 01:09:28.477
And there's no barriers to entry.
You can immediately say,

01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:31.837
"We'll outsource it for a fraction of the
cost," and there's no integration needed.

01:09:31.920 --> 01:09:37.129
You can imagine some kind of
categorization of intelligence tasks where

01:09:37.213 --> 01:09:38.397
there is breadth,

01:09:38.480 --> 01:09:43.837
where customer service is done by very
many people, but many people can do it.

01:09:43.920 --> 01:09:47.917
Then there's difficulty where there's
a best-in-class turbine engine.

01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:51.199
Presumably there's a 10% more
fuel-efficient turbine engine that could

01:09:51.283 --> 01:09:51.997
be imagined by an

01:09:52.080 --> 01:09:58.077
intelligence, but we just haven't found
it yet. Or GLP-1s are a few bytes of data…

01:09:58.160 --> 01:10:01.423
Where do you think you
want to play in this?

01:10:01.506 --> 01:10:04.237
Is it a lot of reasonably intelligent

01:10:04.320 --> 01:10:10.397
intelligence, or is it at the very
pinnacle of cognitive tasks?

01:10:10.480 --> 01:10:15.793
I was just using customer service
as something that's a very significant

01:10:15.876 --> 01:10:22.252
revenue stream, but one that is
probably not difficult to solve for.

01:10:22.335 --> 01:10:26.557
If you can emulate a human at a desktop,

01:10:26.640 --> 01:10:33.640
that's what customer service is.
It's people of average intelligence.

01:10:33.889 --> 01:10:35.277
You don't need

01:10:35.360 --> 01:10:42.360
somebody who's spent many years.
You don't need several-sigma

01:10:43.920 --> 01:10:48.560
good engineers for that.
But as you make that work,

01:10:49.600 --> 01:10:56.240
once you have effectively digital Optimus
working, you can then run any application.

01:10:57.360 --> 01:11:04.360
Let's say you're trying to design chips.
You could then run conventional apps,

01:11:06.880 --> 01:11:10.903
stuff from Cadence
and Synopsys and whatnot.

01:11:10.987 --> 01:11:15.197
You can run 1,000
or 10,000 simultaneously and

01:11:15.280 --> 01:11:19.680
say, "given this input,
I get this output for the chip."

01:11:21.120 --> 01:11:28.120
At some point, you're going to know what
the chip should look like without using

01:11:28.510 --> 01:11:30.080
any of the tools.

01:11:31.840 --> 01:11:35.785
Basically, you should be able
to do a digital chip design.

01:11:35.868 --> 01:11:38.077
You can do chip design. You march

01:11:38.160 --> 01:11:44.480
up the difficulty curve.
You’d be able to do CAD.

01:11:48.480 --> 01:11:53.677
You could use NX or any of the
CAD software to design things.

01:11:53.760 --> 01:11:56.951
So you think you start at the simplest
tasks and walk your way up the difficulty

01:11:57.034 --> 01:11:57.868
curve?

01:12:00.160 --> 01:12:05.677
As a broader objective of having this full
digital coworker emulator, you’re saying,

01:12:05.760 --> 01:12:10.477
"all the revenue maximizing corporations
want to do this, xAI being one of them,

01:12:10.560 --> 01:12:13.997
but we will win because
of a secret plan we have."

01:12:14.080 --> 01:12:17.517
But everybody's trying
different things with data,

01:12:17.600 --> 01:12:22.320
different things with algorithms.
"We tried data, we tried algorithms.

01:12:25.120 --> 01:12:30.400
What else can we do?"
It seems like a competitive field.

01:12:31.280 --> 01:12:33.980
How are you guys going to win?
That’s my big question.

01:12:36.240 --> 01:12:41.597
I think we see a path to doing it.
I think I know the path to do this

01:12:41.680 --> 01:12:47.520
because it's kind of the same path
that Tesla used to create self-driving.

01:12:48.160 --> 01:12:52.498
Instead of driving a car,
it's driving a computer screen.

01:12:52.582 --> 01:12:55.840
It's a self-driving computer, essentially.

01:12:57.280 --> 01:13:02.640
Is the path following human behavior
and training on vast quantities of human

01:13:02.724 --> 01:13:09.277
behavior? Isn't that... training?
Obviously I'm not going to spell out

01:13:09.360 --> 01:13:13.437
the most sensitive secrets on a podcast.
I need to have at least three more

01:13:13.520 --> 01:13:20.520
Guinnesses for that.
What will xAI's business

01:14:26.080 --> 01:14:28.917
be? Is it going to be
consumer, enterprise?

01:14:29.000 --> 01:14:31.837
What's the mix of those
things going to be?

01:14:31.920 --> 01:14:38.717
Is it going to be similar to other labs—
You’re saying "labs". Corporations.

01:14:38.800 --> 01:14:43.197
The psyop goes deep, Elon. "Revenue
maximizing corporations", to be clear.

01:14:43.280 --> 01:14:47.917
Those GPUs don't pay for themselves.
Exactly. What's the business model? What

01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:52.487
are the revenue streams
in a few years’ time?

01:14:52.571 --> 01:14:56.957
Things are going
to change very rapidly. I'm

01:14:57.040 --> 01:15:03.120
stating the obvious here. I call AI the
supersonic tsunami. I love alliteration.

01:15:07.840 --> 01:15:14.560
What's going to happen—especially when
you have humanoid robots at scale—is

01:15:15.680 --> 01:15:21.387
that they will make products and provide
services far more efficiently than human

01:15:21.471 --> 01:15:22.317
corporations.

01:15:22.400 --> 01:15:27.037
Amplifying the productivity of human
corporations is simply a short-term thing.

01:15:27.120 --> 01:15:32.957
So you're expecting fully digital
corporations rather than SpaceX becoming

01:15:33.040 --> 01:15:33.873
part AI?

01:15:34.640 --> 01:15:41.037
I think there will be digital
corporations but… Some of this

01:15:41.120 --> 01:15:43.431
is going to sound kind of doomerish, okay?

01:15:43.514 --> 01:15:45.997
But I'm just saying
what I think will happen.

01:15:46.080 --> 01:15:49.613
It's not meant to be
doomerish or anything else.

01:15:49.697 --> 01:15:52.560
This is just what I think will happen.

01:15:58.880 --> 01:16:04.957
Corporations that are purely AI
and robotics will vastly outperform any

01:16:05.040 --> 01:16:12.040
corporations that have people in the loop.
Computer used to be a job that humans had.

01:16:15.280 --> 01:16:18.930
You would go and get a job as a computer
where you would do calculations.

01:16:20.320 --> 01:16:26.015
They'd have entire skyscrapers full
of humans, 20-30 floors of humans,

01:16:26.099 --> 01:16:28.080
just doing calculations.

01:16:29.680 --> 01:16:35.280
Now, that entire skyscraper
of humans doing calculations

01:16:35.920 --> 01:16:39.795
can be replaced by a laptop
with a spreadsheet.

01:16:39.878 --> 01:16:43.837
That spreadsheet can do
vastly more calculations

01:16:43.920 --> 01:16:50.330
than an entire building full of human
computers. You can think, "okay,

01:16:50.414 --> 01:16:52.557
what if only some of the

01:16:52.640 --> 01:16:59.197
cells in your spreadsheet
were calculated by humans?"

01:16:59.280 --> 01:17:02.317
Actually, that would be much worse
than if all of the cells in your

01:17:02.400 --> 01:17:06.237
spreadsheet were
calculated by the computer.

01:17:06.320 --> 01:17:10.157
Really what will happen
is that the pure AI,

01:17:10.240 --> 01:17:17.240
pure robotics corporations or collectives
will far outperform any corporations

01:17:17.520 --> 01:17:21.277
that have humans in the loop.
And this will happen very quickly.

01:17:21.360 --> 01:17:28.360
Speaking of closing the loop… Optimus.
As far as manufacturing targets go,

01:17:31.520 --> 01:17:38.520
your companies have been carrying American
manufacturing of hard tech on their back.

01:17:39.520 --> 01:17:46.245
But in the fields that Tesla has been
dominant in—and now you want to go into

01:17:46.328 --> 01:17:47.837
humanoids—in China

01:17:47.920 --> 01:17:53.365
there are dozens and dozens of companies
that are doing this kind of manufacturing

01:17:53.448 --> 01:17:57.634
cheaply and at scale that are
incredibly competitive.

01:17:57.718 --> 01:18:01.517
So give us advice or a
plan of how America can

01:18:01.600 --> 01:18:06.237
build the humanoid armies
or the EVs, et cetera,

01:18:06.320 --> 01:18:10.957
at scale and as cheaply
as China is on track to.

01:18:11.040 --> 01:18:14.880
There are really only three
hard things for humanoid robots.

01:18:15.920 --> 01:18:21.680
The real-world intelligence,
the hand, and scale manufacturing.

01:18:25.600 --> 01:18:32.317
I haven't seen any, even demo
robots, that have a great hand,

01:18:32.400 --> 01:18:39.107
with all the degrees of freedom
of a human hand. Optimus will have that.

01:18:39.191 --> 01:18:41.277
Optimus does have that.

01:18:41.360 --> 01:18:44.237
How do you achieve that? Is it just
the right torque density in the motor?

01:18:44.320 --> 01:18:49.520
What is the hardware bottleneck to that?
We had to design custom actuators,

01:18:50.640 --> 01:18:57.640
basically custom design motors, gears,
power electronics, controls, sensors.

01:18:58.080 --> 01:19:01.117
Everything had to be designed
from physics first principles.

01:19:01.200 --> 01:19:05.997
There is no supply chain for this. Will
you be able to manufacture those at scale?

01:19:06.080 --> 01:19:07.597
Yes. Is anything hard, except

01:19:07.680 --> 01:19:11.354
the hand, from a manipulation point
of view? Or once you've solved the hand,

01:19:11.437 --> 01:19:11.997
are you good?

01:19:12.080 --> 01:19:16.150
From an electromechanical standpoint,
the hand is more difficult than everything

01:19:16.233 --> 01:19:19.788
else combined. The human hand
turns out to be quite something.

01:19:19.871 --> 01:19:22.720
But you also need
the real-world intelligence.

01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:31.080
The intelligence that Tesla developed for
the car applies very well to the robot,

01:19:32.320 --> 01:19:36.157
which is primarily vision in.
The car takes in vision,

01:19:36.240 --> 01:19:39.631
but it actually also
is listening for sirens.

01:19:39.714 --> 01:19:42.797
It's taking in the inertial measurements,

01:19:42.880 --> 01:19:47.277
GPS signals, other data, combining
that with video, primarily video,

01:19:47.360 --> 01:19:54.360
and then outputting the control commands.
Your Tesla is taking in one and a half

01:19:55.760 --> 01:20:02.470
gigabytes a second of video and outputting
two kilobytes a second of control outputs

01:20:02.553 --> 01:20:07.723
with the video at 36 hertz
and the control frequency at 18.

01:20:07.806 --> 01:20:12.237
One intuition you could
have for when we get this

01:20:12.320 --> 01:20:17.240
robotic stuff is that it takes quite
a few years to go from the compelling demo

01:20:17.323 --> 01:20:20.731
to actually being able to use it
in the real world. 10 years ago,

01:20:20.814 --> 01:20:23.197
you had really compelling
demos of self-driving,

01:20:23.280 --> 01:20:28.240
but only now we have Robotaxis and Waymo
and all these services scaling up.

01:20:29.280 --> 01:20:33.437
Shouldn't this make one
pessimistic on household robots?

01:20:33.520 --> 01:20:37.556
Because we don't even quite have
the compelling demos yet of, say,

01:20:37.640 --> 01:20:39.117
the really advanced hand.

01:20:39.200 --> 01:20:42.720
Well, we've been working
on humanoid robots now for a while.

01:20:44.640 --> 01:20:48.396
I guess it's been five
or six years or something.

01:20:48.479 --> 01:20:52.157
A bunch of the things
that were done for the car

01:20:52.240 --> 01:20:57.837
are applicable to the robot.
We'll use the same Tesla AI

01:20:57.920 --> 01:21:04.920
chips in the robot as in the car.
We'll use the same basic principles.

01:21:05.200 --> 01:21:09.517
It's very much the same AI.
You've got many more degrees of

01:21:09.600 --> 01:21:16.600
freedom for a robot than you do for a car.
If you just think of it as a bitstream,

01:21:16.720 --> 01:21:21.200
AI is mostly compression
and correlation of two bitstreams.

01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:26.300
For video, you've got to do
a tremendous amount of compression

01:21:28.720 --> 01:21:31.732
and you've got to do
the compression just right.

01:21:31.816 --> 01:21:35.040
You've got to ignore
the things that don't matter.

01:21:36.560 --> 01:21:39.325
You don't care about the details
of the leaves on the tree on the side of

01:21:39.409 --> 01:21:39.677
the road,

01:21:39.760 --> 01:21:45.437
but you care a lot about the road signs
and the traffic lights, the pedestrians,

01:21:45.520 --> 01:21:50.400
and even whether someone in another car
is looking at you or not looking at you.

01:21:51.680 --> 01:21:57.197
Some of these details matter a lot.
The car is going to turn that one and

01:21:57.280 --> 01:22:01.917
a half gigabytes a second ultimately into
two kilobytes a second of control outputs.

01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:07.894
So you’ve got many stages of compression.
You've got to get all those stages right

01:22:07.977 --> 01:22:10.517
and then correlate those
to the correct control outputs.

01:22:10.600 --> 01:22:12.950
The robot has to do
essentially the same thing.

01:22:14.240 --> 01:22:19.280
This is what happens with humans.
We really are photons in, controls out.

01:22:19.920 --> 01:22:25.316
That is the vast majority
of your life: vision, photons in,

01:22:25.400 --> 01:22:27.917
and then motor controls out.

01:22:28.000 --> 01:22:33.277
Naively, it seems that between humanoid
robots and cars… The fundamental actuators

01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:37.160
in a car are how you turn,
how you accelerate. In a robot,

01:22:37.243 --> 01:22:39.437
especially with maneuverable arms,

01:22:39.520 --> 01:22:42.557
there's dozens and dozens
of these degrees of freedom.

01:22:42.640 --> 01:22:47.010
Then especially with Tesla, you had
this advantage of millions and millions

01:22:47.094 --> 01:22:50.797
of hours of human demo data collected
from the car being out there.

01:22:50.880 --> 01:22:53.277
You can't equivalently
deploy Optimuses that

01:22:53.360 --> 01:22:55.332
don't work and then get the data that way.

01:22:55.416 --> 01:22:57.437
So between the increased
degrees of freedom

01:22:57.520 --> 01:23:02.157
and the far sparser data...
Yes. That’s a good point.

01:23:02.240 --> 01:23:09.240
How will you use the Tesla engine
of intelligence to train the Optimus mind?

01:23:11.600 --> 01:23:15.920
You're actually highlighting an important
limitation and difference from cars.

01:23:18.080 --> 01:23:25.080
We'll soon have 10 million cars on the
road. It's hard to duplicate that massive

01:23:26.480 --> 01:23:30.000
training flywheel. For the robot,

01:23:32.160 --> 01:23:36.637
what we're going to need to do is build
a lot of robots and put them in kind of

01:23:36.721 --> 01:23:37.677
an Optimus Academy

01:23:37.760 --> 01:23:44.760
so they can do self-play in reality. We're
actually building that out. We can have at

01:23:45.280 --> 01:23:48.944
least 10,000 Optimus
robots, maybe 20-30,000,

01:23:49.027 --> 01:23:53.440
that are doing self-play
and testing different tasks.

01:23:55.600 --> 01:24:02.157
Tesla has quite a good reality
generator, a physics-accurate reality

01:24:02.240 --> 01:24:05.997
generator, that we made for the cars.
We'll do the same thing for the robots.

01:24:06.080 --> 01:24:13.080
We actually have done that for the robots.
So you have a few tens of thousands of

01:24:14.880 --> 01:24:20.477
humanoid robots doing different tasks.
You can do millions of simulated

01:24:20.560 --> 01:24:26.397
robots in the simulated world.
You use the tens of thousands of

01:24:26.480 --> 01:24:30.379
robots in the real world to close
the simulation to reality gap.

01:24:30.462 --> 01:24:31.997
Close the sim-to-real gap.

01:24:32.080 --> 01:24:35.027
How do you think about the synergies
between xAI and Optimus,

01:24:35.111 --> 01:24:36.717
given you're highlighting that you

01:24:36.800 --> 01:24:40.906
need this world model, you want to use
some really smart intelligence as

01:24:40.989 --> 01:24:41.920
a control plane,

01:24:42.560 --> 01:24:47.173
and Grok is doing the slower planning, and
then the motor policy is a little lower

01:24:47.256 --> 01:24:48.090
level.

01:24:48.240 --> 01:24:55.240
What will the synergy between these
things be? Grok would orchestrate the

01:24:55.760 --> 01:25:01.280
behavior of the Optimus robots.
Let's say you wanted to build a factory.

01:25:05.440 --> 01:25:12.440
Grok could organize the Optimus
robots, assign them tasks to build

01:25:13.920 --> 01:25:17.824
the factory to produce whatever you want.
Don't you need to merge xAI and Tesla

01:25:17.908 --> 01:25:20.877
then? Because these things end up so...
What were we saying earlier

01:25:20.960 --> 01:25:26.240
about public company discussions?
We're one more Guinness in, Elon.

01:25:28.160 --> 01:25:30.984
What are you waiting
to see before you say,

01:25:31.068 --> 01:25:33.757
we want to manufacture 100,000 Optimuses?

01:25:33.840 --> 01:25:38.477
"Optimi". Since we're defining
the proper noun, we’re going to define

01:25:38.560 --> 01:25:42.557
the plural of the proper noun too.
We're going to proper noun the

01:25:42.640 --> 01:25:46.797
plural and so it's Optimi.
Is there something on the

01:25:46.880 --> 01:25:49.357
hardware side you want to see?
Do you want to see better actuators?

01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:50.797
Is it just that you want
the software to be better?

01:25:50.880 --> 01:25:54.077
What are we waiting for before we
get mass manufacturing of Gen 3?

01:25:54.160 --> 01:25:57.434
No, we're moving towards that.
We're moving forward with the mass

01:25:57.517 --> 01:25:58.157
manufacturing.

01:25:58.240 --> 01:26:04.197
But you think current hardware is good
enough that you just want to deploy

01:26:04.281 --> 01:26:06.157
as many as possible now?

01:26:06.240 --> 01:26:12.477
It's very hard to scale up production.
But I think Optimus 3 is the right version

01:26:12.560 --> 01:26:19.560
of the robot to produce something
on the order of a million units a year.

01:26:20.800 --> 01:26:23.345
I think you'd want to go to Optimus
4 before you went to 10 million units

01:26:23.428 --> 01:26:26.410
a year. Okay, but you can do
a million units at Optimus 3?

01:26:26.493 --> 01:26:28.800
It's very hard to spool up manufacturing.

01:26:34.960 --> 01:26:38.797
The output per unit time
always follows an S-curve.

01:26:38.880 --> 01:26:43.530
It starts off agonizingly slow,
then it has this exponential increase,

01:26:43.613 --> 01:26:44.477
then a linear,

01:26:44.560 --> 01:26:50.877
then a logarithmic outcome until you
eventually asymptote at some number.

01:26:50.960 --> 01:26:57.357
Optimus’ initial production will be
a stretched out S-curve because so much

01:26:57.440 --> 01:27:01.600
of what goes into Optimus is brand new.
There is not an existing supply chain.

01:27:03.200 --> 01:27:08.077
The actuators, electronics, everything
in the Optimus robot is designed

01:27:08.160 --> 01:27:11.277
from physics first principles.
It's not taken from a catalog.

01:27:11.360 --> 01:27:17.517
These are custom-designed everything.
I don't think there's a single thing—

01:27:17.600 --> 01:27:22.077
How far down does that go?
I guess we're not making custom

01:27:22.160 --> 01:27:29.037
capacitors yet, maybe.
There's nothing you can

01:27:29.120 --> 01:27:36.120
pick out of a catalog, at any price.
It just means that the Optimus S-Curve,

01:27:39.520 --> 01:27:46.520
the output per unit time, how many
Optimus robots you make per day,

01:27:47.185 --> 01:27:50.077
is going to initially ramp

01:27:50.160 --> 01:27:55.037
slower than a product where you
have an existing supply chain.

01:27:55.120 --> 01:27:58.157
But it will get to a million.
When you see these Chinese humanoids,

01:27:58.240 --> 01:28:05.240
like Unitree or whatever, sell humanoids
for like $6K or $13K, are you hoping to

01:28:05.520 --> 01:28:09.997
get your Optimus bill of materials below
that price so you can do the same thing?

01:28:10.080 --> 01:28:13.180
Or do you just think qualitatively
they're not the same thing?

01:28:15.200 --> 01:28:18.240
What allows them to sell for so low?
Can we match that?

01:28:19.520 --> 01:28:26.077
Our Optimus is designed to have a lot
of intelligence and to have the same

01:28:26.160 --> 01:28:31.197
electromechanical dexterity, if not
higher, as a human. Unitree does not

01:28:31.280 --> 01:28:38.280
have that. It's also quite a big robot.
It has to carry heavy objects for long

01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:46.160
periods of time and not overheat
or exceed the power of its actuators.

01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:57.197
It's 5'11", so it's pretty tall.
It's got a lot of intelligence.

01:28:57.280 --> 01:29:02.157
So it's going to be more expensive than
a small robot that is not intelligent.

01:29:02.240 --> 01:29:06.237
But more capable.
But not a lot more. The thing is,

01:29:06.320 --> 01:29:12.477
over time as Optimus robots build Optimus
robots, the cost will drop very quickly.

01:29:12.560 --> 01:29:17.197
What will these first
billion Optimuses, Optimi, do?

01:29:17.280 --> 01:29:21.263
What will their highest and best use be?
I think you would start off with simple

01:29:21.346 --> 01:29:25.196
tasks that you can count on them doing
well. But in the home or in factories?

01:29:25.920 --> 01:29:32.920
The best use for robots in the beginning
will be any continuous operation, any 24/7

01:29:33.920 --> 01:29:36.488
operation, because they
can work continuously.

01:29:36.571 --> 01:29:39.197
What fraction of the work
at a Gigafactory that

01:29:39.280 --> 01:29:46.280
is currently done by humans could a Gen
3 do? I'm not sure. Maybe it's 10-20%,

01:29:46.720 --> 01:29:52.397
maybe more, I don't know.
We would not reduce our headcount.

01:29:52.480 --> 01:29:56.815
We would increase
our headcount, to be clear.

01:29:56.898 --> 01:30:01.037
But we would increase
our output. The units

01:30:01.120 --> 01:30:07.037
produced per human... The total number
of humans at Tesla will increase,

01:30:07.120 --> 01:30:09.037
but the output of robots

01:30:09.120 --> 01:30:16.120
and cars will increase disproportionately.
The number of cars and robots produced per

01:30:18.480 --> 01:30:22.530
human will increase dramatically, but the
number of humans will increase as well.

01:30:23.040 --> 01:30:27.120
We're talking about Chinese
manufacturing a bunch here.

01:30:30.640 --> 01:30:33.837
We've also talked about some
of the policies that are relevant,

01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:39.357
like you mentioned, the solar tariffs.
You think they're a bad idea because

01:30:39.440 --> 01:30:44.672
we can't scale up solar in the US.
Electricity output in the US needs

01:30:44.756 --> 01:30:49.760
to scale up. It can't without good power
sources. You just need to get it somehow.

01:30:50.480 --> 01:30:53.757
Where I was going with this is, if you
were in charge, if you were setting all

01:30:53.840 --> 01:31:00.014
the policies, what else would you change?
You’d change the solar tariffs,

01:31:00.097 --> 01:31:01.040
that’s one.

01:31:01.600 --> 01:31:06.027
I would say anything that is a limiting
factor for electricity needs to be

01:31:06.110 --> 01:31:08.557
addressed, provided it's not
very bad for the environment.

01:31:08.640 --> 01:31:10.477
So presumably some
permitting reforms and stuff

01:31:10.560 --> 01:31:12.637
as well would be in there?
There's a fair bit of

01:31:12.720 --> 01:31:16.620
permitting reforms that are happening.
A lot of the permitting is state-based,

01:31:17.440 --> 01:31:21.120
but anything federal...
This administration is good at

01:31:21.760 --> 01:31:26.640
removing permitting roadblocks.
I'm not saying all tariffs are bad.

01:31:28.000 --> 01:31:31.917
Solar tariffs.
Sometimes if another country is

01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:37.749
subsidizing the output of something, then
you have to have countervailing tariffs

01:31:37.832 --> 01:31:39.117
to protect domestic

01:31:39.200 --> 01:31:43.517
industry against subsidies by another
country. What else would you change?

01:31:43.600 --> 01:31:46.717
I don't know if there's that much
that the government can actually do.

01:31:46.800 --> 01:31:53.800
One thing I was wondering... For the
policy goal of creating a lead for the US

01:31:55.989 --> 01:32:02.797
versus China, it seems like the export
bans have actually been quite impactful,

01:32:02.880 --> 01:32:07.258
where China is not producing leading-edge
chips and the export bans really bite

01:32:07.341 --> 01:32:11.837
there. China is not producing
leading-edge turbine engines.

01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:15.244
Similarly, there's a bunch of export
bans that are relevant there on some of

01:32:15.327 --> 01:32:15.917
the metallurgy.

01:32:16.000 --> 01:32:20.317
Should there be more export bans?
As you think about things like the

01:32:20.400 --> 01:32:24.450
drone industry and things like that, is
that something that should be considered?

01:32:24.880 --> 01:32:27.415
It's important to appreciate
that in most areas,

01:32:27.498 --> 01:32:29.680
China is very advanced in manufacturing.

01:32:30.560 --> 01:32:37.560
There's only a few areas where it is not.
China is a manufacturing powerhouse,

01:32:38.623 --> 01:32:39.760
next-level.

01:32:40.520 --> 01:32:47.120
It's very impressive.
If you take refining of ore,

01:32:49.600 --> 01:32:56.600
China does roughly twice as much ore
refining on average as the rest of

01:32:56.795 --> 01:32:58.720
the world combined.

01:33:00.320 --> 01:33:04.877
There are some areas, like refining
gallium which goes into solar cells.

01:33:04.960 --> 01:33:10.397
I think they are 98% of gallium refining.
So China is actually very advanced

01:33:10.480 --> 01:33:16.157
in manufacturing in most areas.
It seems like there is discomfort

01:33:16.240 --> 01:33:20.397
with this supply chain dependence,
and yet nothing's really happening on it.

01:33:20.480 --> 01:33:23.997
Supply chain dependence? Say,
like the gallium refining that

01:33:24.080 --> 01:33:31.080
you're saying. All the rare-earth stuff.
Rare earths for sure,

01:33:31.760 --> 01:33:37.197
as you know, they’re not rare. We actually
do rare earth ore mining in the US,

01:33:37.280 --> 01:33:43.634
send the rock, put it on a train, and then
put it on a boat to China that goes

01:33:43.717 --> 01:33:45.037
to another train,

01:33:45.120 --> 01:33:50.096
and goes to the rare earth refiners
in China who then refine it,

01:33:50.180 --> 01:33:51.757
put it into a magnet,

01:33:51.840 --> 01:33:54.637
put it into a motor sub-assembly,
and then send it back to America.

01:33:54.720 --> 01:34:00.477
So the thing we're really missing
is a lot of ore refining in America.

01:34:00.560 --> 01:34:05.997
Isn't this worth a policy intervention?
Yes. I think there are some things

01:34:06.080 --> 01:34:12.477
being done on that front.
But we kind of need Optimus,

01:34:12.560 --> 01:34:17.837
frankly, to build ore refineries.
So, you think the main advantage

01:34:17.920 --> 01:34:24.397
China has is the abundance of skilled
labor? That's the thing Optimus fixes?

01:34:24.480 --> 01:34:27.184
Yes. China’s got like four
times our population. I mean,

01:34:27.268 --> 01:34:28.877
there's this concern. If you think

01:34:28.960 --> 01:34:33.599
human resources are the future,
right now if it's the skilled labor

01:34:33.682 --> 01:34:34.797
for manufacturing

01:34:34.880 --> 01:34:39.357
that's determining who can build more
humanoids, China has more of those.

01:34:39.440 --> 01:34:44.317
It manufactures more humanoids,
therefore it gets the Optimi future first.

01:34:44.400 --> 01:34:47.437
Well, we’ll see. Maybe.
It just keeps that exponential going.

01:34:47.520 --> 01:34:52.557
It seems like you're sort of pointing out
that getting to a million Optimi requires

01:34:52.640 --> 01:34:56.957
the manufacturing that the Optimi
is supposed to help us get to. Right?

01:34:57.040 --> 01:35:01.517
You can close that recursive loop pretty
quickly. With a small number of Optimi?

01:35:01.600 --> 01:35:07.997
Yeah. So you close the recursive loop
to help the robots build the robots.

01:35:08.080 --> 01:35:11.926
Then we can try to get to tens
of millions of units a year. Maybe.

01:35:12.009 --> 01:35:13.117
If you start getting

01:35:13.200 --> 01:35:17.765
to hundreds of millions of units a year,
you're going to be the most competitive

01:35:17.848 --> 01:35:18.637
country by far.

01:35:18.720 --> 01:35:21.733
We definitely can't win with just
humans, because China has four times

01:35:21.816 --> 01:35:22.650
our population.

01:35:23.040 --> 01:35:27.437
Frankly, America has been winning for so
long that… A pro sports team that's been

01:35:27.520 --> 01:35:31.757
winning for a very long time tends
to get complacent and entitled.

01:35:31.840 --> 01:35:37.040
That's why they stop winning,
because they don't work as hard anymore.

01:35:37.680 --> 01:35:43.251
So frankly my observation is just that the
average work ethic in China is higher than

01:35:43.335 --> 01:35:46.717
in the US. It's not just that there's
four times the population, but the amount

01:35:46.800 --> 01:35:52.237
of work that people put in is higher.
So you can try to rearrange the humans,

01:35:52.320 --> 01:35:58.618
but you're still one quarter
of the—assuming that productivity is

01:35:58.702 --> 01:36:00.877
the same, which I think

01:36:00.960 --> 01:36:05.617
actually it might not be, I think China
might have an advantage on productivity

01:36:05.700 --> 01:36:06.877
per person—we will do

01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:11.840
one quarter of the amount of things as
China. So we can't win on the human front.

01:36:12.560 --> 01:36:16.488
Our birth rate has been
low for a long time.

01:36:16.571 --> 01:36:20.317
The US birth rate's been below replacement

01:36:20.400 --> 01:36:27.400
since roughly 1971. We've got a lot
of people retiring, we're close

01:36:32.320 --> 01:36:35.528
to more people domestically
dying than being born.

01:36:35.612 --> 01:36:38.557
So we definitely can't
win on the human front,

01:36:38.640 --> 01:36:40.708
but we might have a shot
at the robot front.

01:36:40.791 --> 01:36:42.957
Are there other things
that you have wanted to

01:36:43.040 --> 01:36:47.602
manufacture in the past, but they've
been too labor intensive or too expensive

01:36:47.685 --> 01:36:52.593
that now you can come back to and say,
"oh, we can finally do the whatever,

01:36:52.676 --> 01:36:59.360
because we have Optimus?" Yeah, we'd like
to build more ore refineries at Tesla.

01:37:00.080 --> 01:37:06.970
We just completed construction and have
begun lithium refining with our lithium

01:37:07.054 --> 01:37:12.477
refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.
We have a nickel refinery,

01:37:12.560 --> 01:37:18.794
which is for the cathode,
that's here in Austin.

01:37:18.877 --> 01:37:24.717
This is the largest
cathode refinery, largest

01:37:24.800 --> 01:37:31.800
nickel and lithium refinery, outside
of China. The cathode team would say,

01:37:34.300 --> 01:37:39.680
"we have the largest and the only,
actually, cathode refinery in America."

01:37:40.640 --> 01:37:43.117
Not just the largest, but it's
also the only. Many superlatives.

01:37:43.200 --> 01:37:48.720
So it was pretty big, even though it's
the only one. But there are other things.

01:37:53.360 --> 01:37:59.821
You could do a lot more refineries
and help America be more competitive

01:37:59.904 --> 01:38:01.840
on refining capacity.

01:38:04.000 --> 01:38:09.117
There's basically a lot of work
for the Optimus to do that most Americans,

01:38:09.200 --> 01:38:15.117
very few Americans, frankly want to do. Is
the refining work too dirty or what's the—

01:38:15.200 --> 01:38:21.440
It's not actually, no. We don't have toxic
emissions from the refinery or anything.

01:38:22.800 --> 01:38:29.197
The cathode nickel refinery is in Travis
County. Why can't you do it with humans?

01:38:29.280 --> 01:38:31.930
You can, you just run out
of humans. Ah, I see. Okay.

01:38:32.640 --> 01:38:35.642
No matter what you do, you have one
quarter of the number of humans in America

01:38:35.725 --> 01:38:38.877
than China. So if you have them do
this thing, they can't do the other thing.

01:38:38.960 --> 01:38:42.933
So then how do you build
this refining capacity? Well,

01:38:43.017 --> 01:38:45.120
you could do it with Optimi.

01:38:48.960 --> 01:38:55.837
Not very many Americans are
pining to do refining. I mean,

01:38:55.920 --> 01:39:00.877
how many have you run into? Very few. Very

01:39:00.960 --> 01:39:04.397
few pining to refine.
BYD is reaching Tesla

01:39:04.480 --> 01:39:09.517
production or sales in quantity.
What do you think happens in global

01:39:09.600 --> 01:39:14.306
markets as Chinese
production in EVs scales up?

01:39:14.389 --> 01:39:19.197
China is extremely
competitive in manufacturing.

01:39:19.280 --> 01:39:25.917
So I think there's going to be
a massive flood of Chinese vehicles

01:39:26.000 --> 01:39:33.000
and basically most manufactured things.
As it is, as I said, China is probably

01:39:37.040 --> 01:39:39.917
doing twice as much refining
as the rest of the world combined.

01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:47.000
So if you go down to fourth
and fifth-tier supply chain stuff…

01:39:50.320 --> 01:39:55.200
At the base level, you've got energy,
then you've got mining and refining.

01:39:55.920 --> 01:40:00.755
Those foundation layers are,
like I said, as a rough guess,

01:40:00.839 --> 01:40:03.757
China's doing twice as much refining

01:40:03.840 --> 01:40:07.920
as the rest of the world combined.
So any given thing is going to have

01:40:09.280 --> 01:40:13.782
Chinese content because China's doing
twice as much refining work as the rest

01:40:13.866 --> 01:40:14.557
of the world.

01:40:14.640 --> 01:40:21.640
But they'll go all the way
to the finished product with the cars.

01:40:22.080 --> 01:40:26.157
I mean China is a powerhouse.
I think this year China will exceed

01:40:26.240 --> 01:40:32.157
three times US electricity output.
Electricity output is a reasonable

01:40:32.240 --> 01:40:39.240
proxy for the economy.
In order to run the factories

01:40:39.680 --> 01:40:46.680
and run everything, you need electricity.
It's a good proxy for the real economy.

01:40:52.640 --> 01:40:55.197
If China passes three times
the US electricity output,

01:40:55.280 --> 01:41:00.586
it means that its industrial capacity—as
rough approximation—will be three times

01:41:00.669 --> 01:41:01.597
that of the US.

01:41:01.680 --> 01:41:05.676
Reading between the lines, it sounds like
what you're saying is absent some sort

01:41:05.759 --> 01:41:06.237
of humanoid

01:41:06.320 --> 01:41:13.320
recursive miracle in the next few years,
on the whole manufacturing/energy/raw

01:41:14.751 --> 01:41:16.397
materials chain,

01:41:16.480 --> 01:41:21.150
China will just dominate whether
it comes to AI or manufacturing EVs

01:41:21.233 --> 01:41:23.037
or manufacturing humanoids.

01:41:23.120 --> 01:41:30.120
In the absence of breakthrough innovations
in the US, China will utterly dominate.

01:41:35.200 --> 01:41:36.637
Interesting. Yes.

01:41:36.720 --> 01:41:43.720
Robotics being the main
breakthrough innovation. Well,

01:41:44.073 --> 01:41:49.437
to scale AI in space, basically you need

01:41:49.520 --> 01:41:56.000
humanoid robots, you need real-world AI,
you need a million tons a year to orbit.

01:41:57.280 --> 01:42:02.271
Let's just say if we get the mass driver
on the moon going, my favorite thing,

01:42:02.354 --> 01:42:03.200
then I think—

01:42:03.920 --> 01:42:10.920
We'll have solved all our problems. I call
that winning. I call it winning, big time.

01:42:13.920 --> 01:42:16.077
You can finally be satisfied.
You've done something.

01:42:16.160 --> 01:42:18.557
Yes. You have the mass driver on the moon.

01:42:18.640 --> 01:42:20.373
I just want to see
that thing in operation.

01:42:20.457 --> 01:42:22.317
Was that out of some
sci-fi or where did you…?

01:42:22.400 --> 01:42:26.397
Well, actually, there is a Heinlein book.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

01:42:26.480 --> 01:42:30.397
Okay, yeah, but that's slightly different.
That's a gravity slingshot or...

01:42:30.480 --> 01:42:33.154
No, they have a mass driver
on the Moon. Okay, yeah,

01:42:33.237 --> 01:42:34.957
but they use that to attack Earth.

01:42:35.040 --> 01:42:37.415
So maybe it's not the greatest...
Well they use that to…

01:42:37.499 --> 01:42:38.557
assert their independence.

01:42:38.640 --> 01:42:40.637
Exactly. What are your plans
for the mass driver on the Moon?

01:42:40.720 --> 01:42:43.917
They asserted their independence.
Earth government disagreed and they lobbed

01:42:44.000 --> 01:42:47.997
things until Earth government agreed.
That book is a hoot. I found that

01:42:48.080 --> 01:42:50.230
book much better than his
other one that everyone reads,

01:42:50.313 --> 01:42:54.672
Stranger in a Strange Land. "Grok"
comes from Stranger in a Strange Land.

01:42:54.755 --> 01:42:58.037
The first two-thirds
of Stranger in a Strange

01:42:58.120 --> 01:43:02.320
Land are good, and then it gets
very weird in the third portion.

01:43:02.880 --> 01:43:09.880
But there are still some good concepts in
there. One thing we were discussing a lot

01:44:18.400 --> 01:44:24.877
is your system for managing people.
You interviewed the first few thousand of

01:44:24.960 --> 01:44:29.117
SpaceX employees and lots of other
companies. It obviously doesn't scale.

01:44:29.200 --> 01:44:32.477
Well, yes, but what doesn't scale? Me.

01:44:32.560 --> 01:44:36.237
Sure, sure. I know that.
But what are you looking for?

01:44:36.320 --> 01:44:38.077
There literally are not enough
hours in the day. It's impossible.

01:44:38.160 --> 01:44:42.717
But what are you looking for that someone
else who's good at interviewing

01:44:42.800 --> 01:44:48.498
and hiring people… What's the je
ne sais quoi? At this point,

01:44:48.582 --> 01:44:51.437
I might have more training data

01:44:51.520 --> 01:44:55.256
on evaluating technical talent
especially—talent of all kinds I suppose,

01:44:55.339 --> 01:44:56.317
but technical talent

01:44:56.400 --> 01:45:00.034
especially—given that I've done so
many technical interviews and then seen

01:45:00.117 --> 01:45:00.951
the results.

01:45:02.400 --> 01:45:09.400
So my training set is enormous
and has a very wide range.

01:45:11.680 --> 01:45:17.684
Generally, the things I ask for are
bullet points for evidence of exceptional

01:45:17.768 --> 01:45:18.601
ability.

01:45:21.840 --> 01:45:27.116
These things can be pretty off the wall.
It doesn't need to be in the specific

01:45:27.199 --> 01:45:27.597
domain,

01:45:27.680 --> 01:45:34.397
but evidence of exceptional ability.
So if somebody can cite even one thing,

01:45:34.480 --> 01:45:39.517
but let's say three things, where you go,
"Wow, wow, wow," then that's a good sign.

01:45:39.600 --> 01:45:42.719
Why do you have to be the one to determine
that? No, I don't. I can't be.

01:45:42.803 --> 01:45:46.603
It's impossible. The total headcount
across all companies is 200,000 people.

01:45:48.720 --> 01:45:52.877
But in the early days, what was it
that you were looking for that

01:45:52.960 --> 01:45:59.960
couldn't be delegated in those interviews?
I guess I need to build my training set.

01:46:02.320 --> 01:46:05.837
It's not like I batted a thousand here.
I would make mistakes, but then I'd be

01:46:05.920 --> 01:46:10.157
able to see where I thought somebody
would work out well, but they didn't.

01:46:10.240 --> 01:46:15.920
Then why did they not work out well?
What can I do, I guess RL myself, to

01:46:16.560 --> 01:46:20.880
in the future have a better batting
average when interviewing people?

01:46:22.560 --> 01:46:24.797
My batting average is still
not perfect, but it's very high.

01:46:24.880 --> 01:46:27.597
What are some surprising
reasons people don't work out?

01:46:27.680 --> 01:46:29.997
Surprising reasons…
Like, they don't understand

01:46:30.080 --> 01:46:34.797
technical domain, et cetera, et cetera.
But you've got the long tail now of like,

01:46:34.880 --> 01:46:39.052
"I was really excited about
this person. It didn't work out."

01:46:39.136 --> 01:46:40.880
Curious why that happens.

01:46:43.920 --> 01:46:48.502
Generally what I tell people—I tell
myself, I guess, aspirationally—is,

01:46:48.586 --> 01:46:52.169
don't look at the resume.
Just believe your interaction.

01:46:52.252 --> 01:46:55.517
The resume may seem very
impressive and it's like,

01:46:55.600 --> 01:47:00.077
"Wow, the resume looks good."
But if the conversation

01:47:00.160 --> 01:47:07.160
after 20 minutes is not "wow," you should
believe the conversation, not the paper.

01:47:07.360 --> 01:47:12.798
I feel like part of your method is that…
There was this meme in the media a few

01:47:12.882 --> 01:47:13.917
years back about

01:47:14.000 --> 01:47:17.979
Tesla being a revolving door
of executive talent. Whereas actually,

01:47:18.062 --> 01:47:19.677
I think when you look at it,

01:47:19.760 --> 01:47:23.623
Tesla's had a very consistent and
internally promoted executive bench over

01:47:23.707 --> 01:47:24.637
the past few years.

01:47:24.720 --> 01:47:28.880
Then at SpaceX, you have all these
folks like Mark Juncosa and Steve Davis—

01:47:29.600 --> 01:47:34.640
Steve Davis runs The Boring Company these
days. Bill Riley, and folks like that.

01:47:35.600 --> 01:47:42.600
It feels like part of what has worked well
is having very capable technical deputies.

01:47:43.280 --> 01:47:50.280
What do all of those people have
in common? Well, the Tesla senior team,

01:47:53.600 --> 01:47:58.240
at this point has probably got an average
tenure of 10-12 years. It's quite long.

01:48:03.280 --> 01:48:10.240
But there were times when Tesla went
through an extremely rapid growth phase,

01:48:11.280 --> 01:48:17.277
so things were just somewhat sped up.
As you know, a company goes through

01:48:17.360 --> 01:48:23.037
different orders of magnitude of size.
People that could help manage, say,

01:48:23.120 --> 01:48:27.712
a 50-person company versus a 500-person
company versus a 5,000-person company

01:48:27.796 --> 01:48:31.437
versus a 50,000-person company.
You outgrew people.

01:48:31.520 --> 01:48:34.077
It's just not the same team.
It's not always the same team.

01:48:34.160 --> 01:48:39.517
So if a company is growing very rapidly,
the rate at which executive positions will

01:48:39.600 --> 01:48:43.920
change will also be proportionate
to the rapidity of the growth generally.

01:48:47.440 --> 01:48:54.387
Tesla had a further challenge where
when Tesla had very successful periods,

01:48:54.470 --> 01:48:56.637
we would be relentlessly

01:48:56.720 --> 01:49:03.437
recruited from. Like, relentlessly.
When Apple had their electric car program,

01:49:03.520 --> 01:49:07.024
they were carpet bombing
Tesla with recruiting calls.

01:49:07.108 --> 01:49:09.680
Engineers just unplugged their phones.

01:49:10.880 --> 01:49:14.077
"I'm trying to get work done here."
Yeah. "If I get one more call from

01:49:14.160 --> 01:49:19.037
an Apple recruiter…" But their opening
offer without any interview would be

01:49:19.120 --> 01:49:26.120
like double the compensation at Tesla.
So we had a bit of the "Tesla pixie

01:49:28.240 --> 01:49:32.077
dust" thing where it's like, "Oh,
if you hire a Tesla executive,

01:49:32.160 --> 01:49:35.214
suddenly everything's
going to be successful."

01:49:35.298 --> 01:49:38.557
I've fallen prey to the
pixie dust thing as well,

01:49:38.640 --> 01:49:41.142
where it's like, "Oh, we'll hire someone
from Google or Apple and they'll be

01:49:41.226 --> 01:49:45.517
immediately successful," but that's
not how it works. People are people.

01:49:45.600 --> 01:49:51.009
There's no magical pixie dust.
So when we had the pixie dust problem,

01:49:51.093 --> 01:49:54.720
we would get relentlessly recruited from.

01:49:57.840 --> 01:50:02.720
Also, Tesla being engineering, especially
being primarily in Silicon Valley,

01:50:03.600 --> 01:50:08.080
it's easier for people to just... They
don't have to change their life very much.

01:50:10.080 --> 01:50:14.237
Their commute's going to be the same.
So how do you prevent that?

01:50:14.320 --> 01:50:18.251
How do you prevent the pixie dust effect
where everyone's trying to poach all

01:50:18.334 --> 01:50:19.168
your people?

01:50:21.200 --> 01:50:25.541
I don't think there's
much we can do to stop it.

01:50:25.624 --> 01:50:29.597
That's one of the reasons
why Tesla… Really,

01:50:29.680 --> 01:50:36.680
being in Silicon Valley and having the
pixie dust thing at the same time meant

01:50:38.362 --> 01:50:39.837
that there was

01:50:39.920 --> 01:50:44.797
just a very, very aggressive recruitment.
Presumably being in Austin helps then?

01:50:44.880 --> 01:50:51.360
Austin, it helps. Tesla still has a
majority of its engineering in California.

01:50:56.240 --> 01:51:00.077
Getting engineers to move…
I call it the "significant other" problem.

01:51:00.160 --> 01:51:06.077
Yes, "significant others" have jobs.
Exactly. So for Starbase that was

01:51:06.160 --> 01:51:09.917
particularly difficult, since
the odds of finding a non-SpaceX job…

01:51:10.000 --> 01:51:13.677
In Brownsville, Texas…
…are pretty low. It's

01:51:13.760 --> 01:51:20.760
quite difficult. It's like a technology
monastery thing, remote and mostly dudes.

01:51:22.240 --> 01:51:29.240
Not much of an improvement over SF. If
you go back to these people who've really

01:51:34.800 --> 01:51:39.352
been very effective in a technical
capacity at Tesla, at SpaceX,

01:51:39.435 --> 01:51:44.558
and those sorts of places, what do you
think they have in common other than...

01:51:44.641 --> 01:51:47.280
Is it just that they're very sharp on the

01:51:48.160 --> 01:51:51.362
rocketry or the technical foundations,
or do you think it's something

01:51:51.446 --> 01:51:54.477
organizational? Is it something
about their ability to work with you?

01:51:54.560 --> 01:52:01.560
Is it their ability to be
flexible but not too flexible?

01:52:03.920 --> 01:52:05.860
What makes a good
sparring partner for you?

01:52:05.944 --> 01:52:08.044
I don't think of it as a sparring partner.

01:52:08.560 --> 01:52:11.517
If somebody gets things done,
I love them, and if they don't,

01:52:11.600 --> 01:52:14.358
I hate them.
So it's pretty straightforward.

01:52:14.441 --> 01:52:16.960
It's not like some idiosyncratic thing.

01:52:17.760 --> 01:52:22.797
If somebody executes well, I'm a huge
fan, and if they don't, I'm not.

01:52:22.880 --> 01:52:25.757
But it's not about mapping
to my idiosyncratic preferences.

01:52:25.840 --> 01:52:29.540
I certainly try not to have it be
mapping to my idiosyncratic preferences.

01:52:36.240 --> 01:52:42.679
Generally, I think it's a good
idea to hire for talent and drive

01:52:42.762 --> 01:52:44.800
and trustworthiness.

01:52:46.960 --> 01:52:50.049
And I think goodness
of heart is important.

01:52:50.132 --> 01:52:52.640
I underweighted that at one point.

01:52:53.680 --> 01:53:00.680
So, are they a good person? Trustworthy?
Smart and talented and hard working?

01:53:01.200 --> 01:53:05.917
If so, you can add domain knowledge.
But those fundamental traits,

01:53:06.000 --> 01:53:10.113
those fundamental properties,
you cannot change.

01:53:10.196 --> 01:53:14.397
So most of the people who
are at Tesla and SpaceX

01:53:14.480 --> 01:53:17.580
did not come from the aerospace
industry or the auto industry.

01:53:18.240 --> 01:53:21.597
What has had to change most about your
management style as your companies have

01:53:21.680 --> 01:53:24.449
scaled from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 people?

01:53:24.532 --> 01:53:27.437
You're known for this
very micro management,

01:53:27.520 --> 01:53:33.040
just getting into the details of things.
Nano management, please. Pico management.

01:53:34.080 --> 01:53:39.117
Femto management. Keep going.

01:53:39.200 --> 01:53:44.120
We're going to go all the way
down to Planck's constant.

01:53:44.640 --> 01:53:50.797
All the way down to Heisenberg
uncertainty principle.

01:53:50.880 --> 01:53:52.717
Are you still able to get into
details as much as you want?

01:53:52.800 --> 01:53:56.077
Would your companies be more
successful if they were smaller?

01:53:56.160 --> 01:53:58.557
How do you think about that?
Because I have a fixed amount of

01:53:58.640 --> 01:54:05.358
time in the day, my time is necessarily
diluted as things grow and as the span

01:54:05.442 --> 01:54:07.360
of activity increases.

01:54:10.720 --> 01:54:17.357
It's impossible for me to actually be
a micromanager because that would imply I

01:54:17.440 --> 01:54:21.997
have some thousands of hours per day.
It is a logical impossibility

01:54:22.080 --> 01:54:29.080
for me to micromanage things. Now, there
are times when I will drill down into a

01:54:31.040 --> 01:54:38.040
specific issue because that specific issue
is the limiting factor on the progress

01:54:38.532 --> 01:54:39.920
of the company.

01:54:42.480 --> 01:54:47.793
The reason for drilling into some
very detailed item is because it is

01:54:47.876 --> 01:54:49.357
the limiting factor.

01:54:49.440 --> 01:54:55.951
It’s not arbitrarily drilling into
tiny things. From a time standpoint,

01:54:56.034 --> 01:54:57.437
it is physically

01:54:57.520 --> 01:55:02.957
impossible for me to arbitrarily go into
tiny things that don't matter. That would

01:55:03.040 --> 01:55:09.597
result in failure. But sometimes
the tiny things are decisive in victory.

01:55:09.680 --> 01:55:16.680
Famously, you switched the Starship
design from composites to steel.

01:55:17.040 --> 01:55:21.042
Yes. You made that decision. That wasn't
people going around saying, "Oh,

01:55:21.125 --> 01:55:22.477
we found something better, boss."

01:55:22.560 --> 01:55:25.197
That was you encouraging
people against some resistance.

01:55:25.280 --> 01:55:30.720
Can you tell us how you came to that
whole concept of the steel switch?

01:55:32.800 --> 01:55:39.800
Desperation, I'd say. Originally, we
were going to make Starship out of carbon

01:55:42.383 --> 01:55:43.216
fiber.

01:55:45.600 --> 01:55:52.437
Carbon fiber is pretty expensive.
When you do volume production,

01:55:52.520 --> 01:55:55.357
you can get any given thing

01:55:55.440 --> 01:56:00.637
to start to approach its material cost.
The problem with carbon fiber is that

01:56:00.720 --> 01:56:07.720
material cost is still very high.
Particularly if you go for a high-strength

01:56:10.480 --> 01:56:15.605
specialized carbon fiber
that can handle cryogenic oxygen,

01:56:15.688 --> 01:56:19.280
it's roughly 50 times the cost of steel.

01:56:20.800 --> 01:56:24.477
At least in theory, it would be lighter.
People generally think of steel as being

01:56:24.560 --> 01:56:31.560
heavy and carbon fiber as being light.
For room temperature applications,

01:56:35.520 --> 01:56:39.157
like a Formula 1 car,
static aero structure,

01:56:39.240 --> 01:56:42.877
or any kind of aero
structure really, you're

01:56:42.960 --> 01:56:45.475
probably going to be better
off with carbon fiber.

01:56:45.558 --> 01:56:47.917
The problem is that we
were trying to make this

01:56:48.000 --> 01:56:53.757
enormous rocket out of carbon fiber
and our progress was extremely slow.

01:56:53.840 --> 01:56:56.940
It had been picked in the first
place just because it's light?

01:56:57.040 --> 01:57:04.040
Yes. At first glance, most people
would think that the choice for

01:57:04.960 --> 01:57:11.325
making something light
would be carbon fiber.

01:57:11.408 --> 01:57:17.917
The thing is that when
you make something very

01:57:18.000 --> 01:57:23.821
enormous out of carbon fiber and then
you try to have the carbon fiber be

01:57:23.904 --> 01:57:25.277
efficiently cured,

01:57:25.360 --> 01:57:31.267
meaning not room temperature cured,
because sometimes you got 50 plies

01:57:31.351 --> 01:57:32.720
of carbon fiber…

01:57:33.280 --> 01:57:39.597
Carbon fiber is really carbon string
and glue. In order to have high strength,

01:57:39.680 --> 01:57:45.040
you need an autoclave. Something
that's essentially a high pressure oven.

01:57:46.320 --> 01:57:51.224
If you have something that's gigantic,
that one's got to be bigger than

01:57:51.307 --> 01:57:52.141
the rocket.

01:57:52.800 --> 01:57:58.098
We were trying to make an autoclave that's
bigger than any autoclave that's ever

01:57:58.182 --> 01:57:58.637
existed.

01:57:58.720 --> 01:58:02.520
Or you can do room temperature cure,
which takes a long time and has issues.

01:58:03.280 --> 01:58:08.229
The final issue is that we were just
making very slow progress with carbon

01:58:08.312 --> 01:58:09.145
fiber.

01:58:12.480 --> 01:58:18.077
The meta question is why it had
to be you who made that decision.

01:58:18.160 --> 01:58:20.797
There's many engineers on your team.
How did the team not arrive at steel?

01:58:20.880 --> 01:58:24.157
Yeah exactly. This is part of a broader
question, understanding your comparative

01:58:24.240 --> 01:58:29.757
advantage at your companies.
Because we were making very slow

01:58:29.840 --> 01:58:33.757
progress with carbon fiber, I was like,
"Okay, we've got to try something else."

01:58:33.840 --> 01:58:40.840
For the Falcon 9, the primary airframe
is made of aluminum lithium, which has

01:58:41.520 --> 01:58:47.837
a very good strength-to-weight.
Actually, it has about the same,

01:58:47.920 --> 01:58:51.517
maybe better, strength to weight
for its application than carbon fiber.

01:58:51.600 --> 01:58:53.357
But aluminum lithium is very
difficult to work with.

01:58:53.440 --> 01:58:56.260
In order to weld it, you have to do
something called friction stir welding,

01:58:56.343 --> 01:58:57.243
where you join the

01:58:57.600 --> 01:59:02.717
metal without entering the liquid phase.
It's kind of wild that you can do that.

01:59:02.800 --> 01:59:07.508
But with this particular type
of welding, you can do that.

01:59:07.591 --> 01:59:10.317
It's very difficult. Let's say you

01:59:10.400 --> 01:59:14.342
want to make a modification or attach
something to aluminum lithium,

01:59:14.426 --> 01:59:16.237
you now have to use a mechanical

01:59:16.320 --> 01:59:20.566
attachment with seals.
You can't weld it on.

01:59:20.649 --> 01:59:24.797
So I wanted to avoid
using aluminum lithium

01:59:24.880 --> 01:59:31.880
for the primary structure for Starship.
There was this very special grade of

01:59:34.960 --> 01:59:39.333
carbon fiber that had very good
mass properties. With a rocket,

01:59:39.416 --> 01:59:41.597
you're really trying to maximize

01:59:41.680 --> 01:59:45.920
the percentage of the rocket that is
propellant, minimize the mass obviously.

01:59:48.800 --> 01:59:51.920
But like I said, we were
making very slow progress.

01:59:54.480 --> 01:59:56.317
I said, "at this rate,
we’re never going to get to Mars.

01:59:56.400 --> 02:00:01.277
So we've got to think of something else."
I didn't want to use aluminum lithium

02:00:01.360 --> 02:00:06.557
because of the difficulty of friction stir
welding, especially doing that at scale.

02:00:06.640 --> 02:00:12.000
It was hard enough at 3.6 meters in
diameter, let alone at 9 meters or above.

02:00:12.880 --> 02:00:19.880
Then I said, "what about steel?"
I had a clue here because some of

02:00:21.200 --> 02:00:24.992
the early US rockets
had used very thin steel.

02:00:25.076 --> 02:00:29.120
The Atlas rockets had
used a steel balloon tank.

02:00:30.880 --> 02:00:34.678
It's not like steel had never been
used before. It actually had been used.

02:00:34.761 --> 02:00:35.517
When you look at

02:00:35.600 --> 02:00:42.449
the material properties
of stainless steel, full-hard,

02:00:42.532 --> 02:00:46.557
strain hardened stainless steel,

02:00:46.640 --> 02:00:53.088
at cryogenic temperature the strength
to weight is actually similar to carbon

02:00:53.171 --> 02:00:54.004
fiber.

02:00:54.320 --> 02:00:58.477
If you look at material properties
at room temperature, it looks like

02:00:58.560 --> 02:01:03.757
the steel is going to be twice as heavy.
But if you look at the material properties

02:01:03.840 --> 02:01:08.800
at cryogenic temperature of full-hard
steel, stainless of particular grades,

02:01:10.240 --> 02:01:14.560
then you actually get to a similar
strength to weight as carbon fiber.

02:01:15.200 --> 02:01:19.677
In the case of Starship, both the fuel
and the oxidizer are cryogenic.

02:01:19.760 --> 02:01:25.938
For Falcon 9, the fuel is rocket
propellant-grade kerosene,

02:01:26.021 --> 02:01:30.160
basically a very pure form of jet fuel.

02:01:32.320 --> 02:01:37.997
That is roughly room temperature. Although
we do actually chill it slightly below,

02:01:38.080 --> 02:01:41.357
we chill it like a beer. Delicious.

02:01:41.440 --> 02:01:45.757
We do chill it, but it's not cryogenic.
In fact, if we made it cryogenic,

02:01:45.840 --> 02:01:49.917
it would just turn to wax.
But for Starship,

02:01:50.000 --> 02:01:56.560
it's liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
They are liquid at similar temperatures.

02:01:59.040 --> 02:02:03.517
Basically, almost the entire primary
structure is at cryogenic temperature.

02:02:03.600 --> 02:02:10.600
So then you've got a 300-series
stainless that's strain hardened.

02:02:12.800 --> 02:02:17.597
Because almost all things are cryogenic
temperature, it actually has similar

02:02:17.680 --> 02:02:24.680
strength to weight as carbon fiber.
But it costs 50x less in raw

02:02:25.040 --> 02:02:30.717
material and is very easy to work with.
You can weld stainless steel outdoors.

02:02:30.800 --> 02:02:36.320
You could smoke a cigar while welding
stainless steel. It's very resilient.

02:02:37.200 --> 02:02:41.260
You can modify it easily.
If you want to attach something,

02:02:41.343 --> 02:02:43.200
you just weld it right on.

02:02:44.560 --> 02:02:51.560
Very easy to work with, very low cost.
Like I said, at cryogenic temperature,

02:02:52.920 --> 02:02:58.006
it’s similar strength-to-weight
to carbon fiber.

02:02:58.089 --> 02:03:02.637
Then when you factor
in that we have a much

02:03:02.720 --> 02:03:07.517
reduced heat shield mass, because the
melting point of steel, is much greater

02:03:07.600 --> 02:03:13.597
than the melting point of aluminum… It's
about twice the melting point of aluminum.

02:03:13.680 --> 02:03:16.510
So you can just run
the rocket much hotter? Yes,

02:03:16.593 --> 02:03:18.877
especially for the ship which is coming

02:03:18.960 --> 02:03:25.357
in like a blazing meteor.
You can greatly reduce

02:03:25.440 --> 02:03:32.440
the mass of the heat shield.
You can cut the mass of the windward

02:03:34.000 --> 02:03:40.013
part of the heat shield, maybe in half,
and you don't need any heat shielding

02:03:40.096 --> 02:03:41.680
on the leeward side.

02:03:45.840 --> 02:03:49.437
The net result is that actually
the steel rocket weighs less than

02:03:49.520 --> 02:03:56.520
the carbon fiber rocket, because the resin
in the carbon fiber rocket starts to melt.

02:04:00.560 --> 02:04:04.865
Basically, carbon fiber and aluminum
have about the same operating temperature

02:04:04.949 --> 02:04:05.782
capabilities,

02:04:06.720 --> 02:04:09.216
whereas steel can operate
at twice the temperature.

02:04:09.299 --> 02:04:11.120
These are very rough approximations.

02:04:12.160 --> 02:04:14.717
I won't build the rocket.
What I mean is people will say,

02:04:14.800 --> 02:04:18.637
"Oh, he said this twice. It's actually
0.8." I'm like, shut up, assholes.

02:04:18.720 --> 02:04:24.128
That's what the main comment's going
to be about. God damn it. The point is,

02:04:24.212 --> 02:04:25.357
in retrospect, we

02:04:25.440 --> 02:04:27.997
should have started with steel in the
beginning. It was dumb not to do steel.

02:04:28.080 --> 02:04:32.797
Okay, but to play this back to you, what
I'm hearing is that steel was a riskier,

02:04:32.880 --> 02:04:37.267
less proven path, other
than the early US rockets.

02:04:37.351 --> 02:04:43.277
Versus carbon fiber was a worse but more
proven out path. So you need to be the

02:04:43.360 --> 02:04:48.637
one to push for, "Hey, we're going to do
this riskier path and just figure it out."

02:04:48.720 --> 02:04:52.080
So you're fighting a sort
of conservatism in a sense.

02:04:52.800 --> 02:04:56.816
That's why I initially said that the issue
is that we weren't making fast enough

02:04:56.899 --> 02:04:57.277
progress.

02:04:57.360 --> 02:05:02.717
We were having trouble making even
a small barrel section of the carbon fiber

02:05:02.800 --> 02:05:08.877
that didn't have wrinkles in it.
Because at that large scale, you have to

02:05:08.960 --> 02:05:11.612
have many plies,
many layers of the carbon fiber.

02:05:11.696 --> 02:05:14.237
You've got to cure it
and you've got to cure it

02:05:14.320 --> 02:05:18.637
in such a way that it doesn't
have any wrinkles or defects.

02:05:18.720 --> 02:05:24.400
Carbon fiber is much less resilient
than steel. It has much less toughness.

02:05:26.000 --> 02:05:32.560
Stainless steel will stretch and bend,
the carbon fiber will tend to shatter.

02:05:35.920 --> 02:05:38.670
Toughness being the area
under the stress strain curve.

02:05:39.360 --> 02:05:42.737
You're generally going to have
to do better with steel,

02:05:42.821 --> 02:05:44.877
but stainless steel to be precise.

02:05:44.960 --> 02:05:51.117
One other Starship question. So I visited
Starbase, I think it was two years ago,

02:05:51.200 --> 02:05:54.381
with Sam Teller, and that was awesome.
It was very cool to see,

02:05:54.465 --> 02:05:55.677
in a whole bunch of ways.

02:05:55.760 --> 02:06:01.758
One thing I noticed was that people really
took pride in the simplicity of things,

02:06:01.842 --> 02:06:06.418
where everyone wants to tell you
how Starship is just a big soda can,

02:06:06.502 --> 02:06:09.437
and we're hiring welders,
and if you can weld

02:06:09.520 --> 02:06:12.317
in any industrial project,
you can weld here.

02:06:12.400 --> 02:06:15.280
But there's a lot
of pride in the simplicity.

02:06:16.320 --> 02:06:18.637
Well, factually Starship
is a very complicated rocket.

02:06:18.720 --> 02:06:23.117
So that's what I'm getting at.
Are things simple or are they complex?

02:06:23.200 --> 02:06:26.682
I think maybe just what they're trying to
say is that you don't have to have prior

02:06:26.765 --> 02:06:31.808
experience in the rocket
industry to work on Starship.

02:06:31.891 --> 02:06:36.717
Somebody just needs
to be smart and work hard

02:06:36.800 --> 02:06:39.712
and be trustworthy and they
can work on a rocket.

02:06:39.795 --> 02:06:42.157
They don't need prior rocket experience.

02:06:42.240 --> 02:06:47.837
Starship is the most complicated machine
ever made by humans, by a long shot.

02:06:47.920 --> 02:06:50.797
In what regards? Anything, really. I'd

02:06:50.880 --> 02:06:57.880
say there isn't a more complex machine.
I'd say that pretty much any project I

02:07:00.080 --> 02:07:07.080
can think of would be easier than this.
That's why nobody has ever made a fully

02:07:08.800 --> 02:07:13.500
reusable orbital rocket.
It's a very hard problem.

02:07:13.584 --> 02:07:17.997
Many smart people have
tried before, very smart

02:07:18.080 --> 02:07:22.109
people with immense resources,
and they failed.

02:07:22.192 --> 02:07:26.397
And we haven't succeeded yet.
Falcon is partially

02:07:26.480 --> 02:07:32.717
reusable, but the upper stage
is not. Starship Version 3,

02:07:32.800 --> 02:07:39.800
I think this design can be fully reusable.
That full reusability is what will enable

02:07:41.920 --> 02:07:48.920
us to become a multi-planet civilization.
Any technical problem, even like a Hadron

02:07:52.400 --> 02:07:55.197
Collider or something like that,
is an easier problem than this.

02:07:55.280 --> 02:07:58.477
We spent a lot of time on bottlenecks.
Can you say what the current Starship

02:07:58.560 --> 02:08:04.877
bottlenecks are, even at a high level?
Trying to make it not explode, generally.

02:08:04.960 --> 02:08:09.837
It really wants to explode.
That old chestnut. All those

02:08:09.920 --> 02:08:13.597
combustible materials. We've had two
boosters explode on the test stand.

02:08:13.680 --> 02:08:20.000
One obliterated the entire test facility.
So it only takes that one mistake.

02:08:21.680 --> 02:08:25.360
The amount of energy contained
in a Starship is insane.

02:08:25.920 --> 02:08:30.317
Is that why it's harder than Falcon?
It's because it's just more energy?

02:08:30.400 --> 02:08:37.037
It's a lot of new technology.
It's pushing the performance envelope. The

02:08:37.120 --> 02:08:40.381
Raptor 3 engine is a very,
very advanced engine.

02:08:40.465 --> 02:08:43.517
It's by far the best
rocket engine ever made.

02:08:43.600 --> 02:08:48.557
But it desperately wants to blow up.
Just to put things into perspective here,

02:08:48.640 --> 02:08:54.558
on liftoff the rocket is generating
over 100 gigawatts of power.

02:08:54.641 --> 02:08:57.360
That’s 20% of US electricity.

02:08:58.480 --> 02:08:59.517
It's actually insane.
It's a great comparison.

02:08:59.600 --> 02:09:02.397
While not exploding. Sometimes.

02:09:02.480 --> 02:09:06.397
Sometimes, yes. So I was like,
how does it not explode?

02:09:06.480 --> 02:09:12.717
There's thousands of ways that it could
explode and only one way that it doesn't.

02:09:12.800 --> 02:09:16.971
So we want it not only
to really not explode,

02:09:17.055 --> 02:09:22.077
but fly reliably on a daily
basis, like once per hour.

02:09:22.160 --> 02:09:25.837
Obviously, if it blows up a lot,
it's very difficult to maintain that

02:09:25.920 --> 02:09:26.920
launch cadence. Yes.

02:09:30.880 --> 02:09:33.837
What's the single biggest
remaining problem for Starship?

02:09:33.920 --> 02:09:40.920
It's having the heat shield be reusable.
No one's ever made a reusable orbital heat

02:09:43.732 --> 02:09:44.477
shield.

02:09:44.560 --> 02:09:51.269
So the heat shield's gotta make it through
the ascent phase without shucking a bunch

02:09:51.352 --> 02:09:51.997
of tiles,

02:09:52.080 --> 02:09:59.080
and then it's gotta come back in and also
not lose a bunch of tiles or overheat

02:09:59.508 --> 02:10:05.037
the main airframe. Isn't that hard
because it's fundamentally a consumable?

02:10:05.120 --> 02:10:07.932
Well, yes, but your brake pads
in your car are also consumable,

02:10:08.015 --> 02:10:09.357
but they last a very long time.

02:10:09.440 --> 02:10:12.400
Fair. So it just needs
to last a very long time.

02:10:17.600 --> 02:10:21.997
We have brought the ship back and had
it do a soft landing in the ocean.

02:10:22.080 --> 02:10:26.320
We've done that a few times.
But it lost a lot of tiles.

02:10:27.680 --> 02:10:34.680
It was not reusable without a lot of work.
Even though it did come to a soft landing,

02:10:35.280 --> 02:10:39.200
it would not have been
reusable without a lot of work.

02:10:40.080 --> 02:10:44.317
So it's not really reusable in that sense.
That's the biggest problem that remains,

02:10:44.400 --> 02:10:50.877
a fully reusable heat shield.
You want to be able to land it,

02:10:50.960 --> 02:10:57.117
refill propellant and fly again.
You can't do this laborious inspection

02:10:57.200 --> 02:11:04.200
of 40,000 tiles type of thing.
When I read biographies of yours,

02:11:06.720 --> 02:11:10.948
it seems like you're just able to drive
the sense of urgency and drive the sense

02:11:11.032 --> 02:11:15.037
of "this is the thing that can
scale." I'm curious why you

02:11:15.120 --> 02:11:19.917
think other organizations of your… SpaceX
and Tesla are really big companies now.

02:11:20.000 --> 02:11:24.397
You're still able to keep that culture.
What goes wrong with other companies such

02:11:24.480 --> 02:11:28.000
that they're not able
to do that? I don't know.

02:11:29.040 --> 02:11:31.357
Like today, you said you had
a bunch of SpaceX meetings.

02:11:31.440 --> 02:11:33.357
What is it that you're doing
there that's keeping that?

02:11:33.440 --> 02:11:40.440
It’s adding urgency? Well, I don't know.
I guess the urgency is going

02:11:42.640 --> 02:11:45.275
to come from whoever
is leading the company.

02:11:45.358 --> 02:11:47.437
I have a maniacal sense of urgency.

02:11:47.520 --> 02:11:52.397
So that maniacal sense of urgency
projects through the rest of the company.

02:11:52.480 --> 02:11:56.380
Is it because of consequences?
They're like, "Elon set a crazy deadline,

02:11:56.463 --> 02:12:01.277
but if I don't get it, I know what happens
to me." Is it just that you're able to

02:12:01.360 --> 02:12:03.837
identify bottlenecks and get rid
of them so people can move fast?

02:12:03.920 --> 02:12:07.037
How do you think about why your
companies are able to move fast?

02:12:07.120 --> 02:12:14.120
I'm constantly addressing the limiting
factor. On the deadlines front,

02:12:17.262 --> 02:12:20.077
I generally actually

02:12:20.160 --> 02:12:25.437
try to aim for a deadline that I
at least think is at the 50th percentile.

02:12:25.520 --> 02:12:29.104
So it's not like an impossible deadline,
but it's the most aggressive deadline I

02:12:29.187 --> 02:12:32.704
can think of that could be
achieved with 50% probability.

02:12:32.788 --> 02:12:35.840
Which means that it'll
be late half the time.

02:12:42.400 --> 02:12:45.760
There is a law of gas expansion
that applies to schedules.

02:12:48.160 --> 02:12:51.415
If you said we're going
to do something in five years,

02:12:51.498 --> 02:12:53.600
which to me is like infinity time,

02:12:55.040 --> 02:12:58.800
it will expand to fill the available
schedule and it'll take five years.

02:13:05.520 --> 02:13:07.757
Physics will limit how fast
you can do certain things.

02:13:07.840 --> 02:13:13.600
So scaling up manufacturing, there's
a rate at which you can move the atoms

02:13:15.200 --> 02:13:17.437
and scale manufacturing.
That's why you can't instantly

02:13:17.520 --> 02:13:23.008
make a million units a year of something.
You've got to design the manufacturing

02:13:23.092 --> 02:13:26.992
line. You've got to bring it up. You've
got to ride the S-curve of production.

02:13:31.840 --> 02:13:34.720
What can I say that's
actually helpful to people?

02:13:38.160 --> 02:13:43.760
Generally, a maniacal sense
of urgency is a very big deal.

02:13:47.440 --> 02:13:53.516
You want to have an aggressive
schedule and you want to figure out what

02:13:53.599 --> 02:13:54.557
the limiting

02:13:54.640 --> 02:13:58.540
factor is at any point in time and help
the team address that limiting factor.

02:13:59.360 --> 02:14:04.080
So Starlink was slowly
in the works for many years.

02:14:05.040 --> 02:14:07.757
We talked about it all the way
in the beginning of the company.

02:14:07.840 --> 02:14:12.157
So then there was a team you had built
in Redmond, and then at one point you

02:14:12.240 --> 02:14:19.240
decided this team is just not cutting it.
It went for a few years slowly,

02:14:23.206 --> 02:14:28.302
and so why didn't you act earlier,
and why did you act when you did?

02:14:28.385 --> 02:14:30.717
Why was that the right
moment at which to act?

02:14:30.800 --> 02:14:36.480
I have these very detailed
engineering reviews weekly.

02:14:38.880 --> 02:14:42.316
That's maybe a very unusual
level of granularity.

02:14:42.399 --> 02:14:45.117
I don't know anyone who runs a company,

02:14:45.200 --> 02:14:49.917
or at least a manufacturing company, that
goes with the level of detail that I go

02:14:50.000 --> 02:14:56.547
into. It's not as though... I have
a pretty good understanding of what's

02:14:56.631 --> 02:14:57.837
actually going

02:14:57.920 --> 02:15:04.920
on because we go through things in detail.
I'm a big believer in skip-level meetings

02:15:06.960 --> 02:15:11.499
where instead of having the person
that reports to me say things,

02:15:11.582 --> 02:15:14.000
it's everyone that reports to them

02:15:14.640 --> 02:15:21.640
saying something in the technical review.
And there can't be advanced preparation.

02:15:25.440 --> 02:15:31.597
Otherwise you're going to get
"glazed", as I say these days.

02:15:31.680 --> 02:15:34.867
Exactly. Very Gen Z of you.
How do you prevent advanced preparation?

02:15:34.950 --> 02:15:37.437
Do you call on them randomly?
No, I just go around the room.

02:15:37.520 --> 02:15:44.000
Everyone provides an update. It's a lot
of information to keep in your head.

02:15:48.000 --> 02:15:50.702
If you have meetings
weekly or twice weekly,

02:15:50.785 --> 02:15:53.760
you've got a snapshot
of what that person said.

02:15:56.240 --> 02:16:03.240
You can then plot the progress points.
You can sort of mentally plot the

02:16:03.680 --> 02:16:07.440
points on a curve and say, "are we
converging to a solution or not?"

02:16:12.880 --> 02:16:19.527
I'll take drastic action only when I
conclude that success is not in a set

02:16:19.610 --> 02:16:21.520
of possible outcomes.

02:16:22.400 --> 02:16:28.174
So when I finally reach the conclusion
that unless drastic action is done,

02:16:28.257 --> 02:16:29.757
we have no chance of

02:16:29.840 --> 02:16:36.077
success, then I must take drastic action.
I came to that conclusion in 2018,

02:16:36.160 --> 02:16:43.160
took drastic action and fixed the problem.
You've got many, many companies.

02:16:44.348 --> 02:16:49.117
In each of them it sounds like you do this
kind of deep engineering understanding of

02:16:49.200 --> 02:16:54.080
what the relevant bottlenecks are so
you can do these reviews with people.

02:16:56.320 --> 02:16:59.677
You've been able to scale it up
to five, six, seven companies.

02:16:59.760 --> 02:17:04.477
Within one of these companies, you have
many different mini companies within them.

02:17:04.560 --> 02:17:07.277
What determines the max amount here?
Because you have like 80 companies…?

02:17:07.360 --> 02:17:09.917
80? No. But you have so many

02:17:10.000 --> 02:17:13.277
already. That's already remarkable.
By this current number.

02:17:13.360 --> 02:17:18.560
Exactly. We can barely
keep one company together.

02:17:23.040 --> 02:17:30.040
It depends on the situation. I actually
don't have regular meetings with

02:17:30.636 --> 02:17:35.980
The Boring Company, so The Boring Company
is sort of cruising along. Basically,

02:17:36.063 --> 02:17:37.837
if something is working well and

02:17:37.920 --> 02:17:41.920
making good progress, then there's
no point in me spending time on it.

02:17:42.560 --> 02:17:47.487
I actually allocate time according
to where the limiting factor.

02:17:47.570 --> 02:17:49.840
Where are things problematic?

02:17:50.960 --> 02:17:57.291
Where are we pushing against?
What is holding us back? I focus,

02:17:57.375 --> 02:17:59.837
at the risk of saying the

02:17:59.920 --> 02:18:04.465
words too many times,
on the limiting factor.

02:18:04.549 --> 02:18:09.197
The irony is if something's
going really well,

02:18:09.280 --> 02:18:12.717
they don't see much of me.
But if something is going badly,

02:18:12.800 --> 02:18:15.939
they'll see a lot of me.
Or not even badly…

02:18:16.022 --> 02:18:18.637
If something is the limiting factor.

02:18:18.720 --> 02:18:21.037
The limiting factor, exactly.
It’s not exactly going badly but it’s the

02:18:21.120 --> 02:18:25.277
thing that we need to make go faster.
When something’s a limiting factor at

02:18:25.360 --> 02:18:31.917
SpaceX or Tesla, are you talking weekly
and daily with the engineer that's

02:18:32.000 --> 02:18:35.119
working on it?
How does that actually work?

02:18:35.203 --> 02:18:38.480
Most things that are
the limiting factor are

02:18:39.680 --> 02:18:45.600
weekly and some things are twice weekly.
The AI5 chip review is twice weekly.

02:18:46.800 --> 02:18:50.929
Every Tuesday and Saturday
is the chip review.

02:18:51.012 --> 02:18:54.317
Is it open ended in how long it goes?

02:18:54.400 --> 02:19:01.400
Technically, yes, but usually it's two or
three hours. Sometimes less. It depends on

02:19:03.760 --> 02:19:06.504
how much information we've got
to go through. That's another thing.

02:19:06.587 --> 02:19:07.517
I'm just trying to tease

02:19:07.600 --> 02:19:11.757
out the differences here because
the outcomes seem quite different.

02:19:11.840 --> 02:19:14.477
I think it's interesting to know
what inputs are different.

02:19:14.560 --> 02:19:18.389
It feels like in the corporate
world, one, like you were saying,

02:19:18.472 --> 02:19:19.917
the CEO doing engineering

02:19:20.000 --> 02:19:24.859
reviews does not always happen despite
the fact that that is what the company

02:19:24.942 --> 02:19:25.437
is doing.

02:19:25.520 --> 02:19:31.079
But then time is often pretty finely
sliced into half hour meetings or even 15

02:19:31.163 --> 02:19:32.237
minute meetings.

02:19:32.320 --> 02:19:38.237
It seems like you hold more open-ended,
"We're talking about it until we figure

02:19:38.320 --> 02:19:42.957
it out" type things. Sometimes. But most

02:19:43.040 --> 02:19:49.448
of them seem to more or less stay on time.

02:19:49.531 --> 02:19:56.531
Today's Starship
engineering review went a bit

02:19:56.640 --> 02:20:00.600
longer because there were
more topics to discuss.

02:20:00.684 --> 02:20:04.397
They're trying to figure
out how to scale to a

02:20:04.480 --> 02:20:08.317
million plus tons to orbit per year.
It’s quite challenging.

02:20:08.400 --> 02:20:13.571
Can I ask a question? You said about
Optimus and AI that they're going

02:20:13.654 --> 02:20:14.997
to result in double

02:20:15.080 --> 02:20:20.522
digit growth rates within a matter
of years. Oh, like the economy? Yes.

02:20:20.606 --> 02:20:22.157
I think that's right.

02:20:22.240 --> 02:20:27.997
What was the point of the DOGE cuts if
the economy is going to grow so much?

02:20:28.080 --> 02:20:30.980
Well, I think waste and fraud
are not good things to have.

02:20:33.360 --> 02:20:40.360
I was actually pretty worried about...
In the absence of AI and robotics,

02:20:41.600 --> 02:20:48.000
we're actually totally screwed because
the national debt is piling up like crazy.

02:20:50.080 --> 02:20:52.918
The interest payments to national
debt exceed the military budget,

02:20:53.001 --> 02:20:54.157
which is a trillion dollars.

02:20:54.240 --> 02:20:57.680
So we have over a trillion
dollars just in interest payments.

02:21:00.000 --> 02:21:03.597
I was pretty concerned about that.
Maybe if I spend some time, we can

02:21:03.680 --> 02:21:08.930
slow down the bankruptcy of the United
States and give us enough time for the AI

02:21:09.013 --> 02:21:09.597
and robots

02:21:09.680 --> 02:21:15.997
to help solve the national debt.
Or not help solve, it's the only

02:21:16.080 --> 02:21:20.535
thing that could solve the national debt.
We are 1000% going to go bankrupt as

02:21:20.618 --> 02:21:23.972
a country, and fail as a country,
without AI and robots.

02:21:24.055 --> 02:21:26.720
Nothing else will solve the national debt.

02:21:30.880 --> 02:21:37.880
We just need enough time to build the AI
and robots to not go bankrupt before then.

02:21:39.200 --> 02:21:43.150
I guess the thing I'm curious about is,
when DOGE starts you have this enormous

02:21:43.920 --> 02:21:48.397
ability to enact reform.
Not that enormous.

02:21:48.480 --> 02:21:53.837
Sure. I totally buy your point that it's
important that AI and robotics drive

02:21:53.920 --> 02:21:56.328
productivity improvements,
drive GDP growth.

02:21:56.412 --> 02:21:58.877
But why not just directly
go after the things

02:21:58.960 --> 02:22:03.757
you were pointing out, like the tariffs
on certain components, or permitting?

02:22:03.840 --> 02:22:10.840
I'm not the president. And it is very
hard to cut things that are obvious waste

02:22:12.290 --> 02:22:13.277
and fraud,

02:22:13.360 --> 02:22:20.360
like ridiculous waste and fraud.
What I discovered is that it's extremely

02:22:21.360 --> 02:22:27.517
difficult even to cut very obvious waste
and fraud from the government because

02:22:27.600 --> 02:22:28.637
the government

02:22:28.720 --> 02:22:34.077
has to operate on who's complaining.
If you cut off payments to fraudsters,

02:22:34.160 --> 02:22:38.383
they immediately come up with the most
sympathetic sounding reasons to continue

02:22:38.466 --> 02:22:43.837
the payment. They don't say, "Please
keep the fraud going." They’re like,

02:22:43.920 --> 02:22:46.157
"You're killing baby pandas."

02:22:46.240 --> 02:22:50.007
Meanwhile, no baby pandas are dying.
They're just making it up.

02:22:50.091 --> 02:22:51.597
The fraudsters are capable

02:22:51.680 --> 02:22:56.317
of coming up with extremely compelling,
heart-wrenching stories that are false,

02:22:56.400 --> 02:23:02.520
but nonetheless sound sympathetic.
That's what happened.

02:23:02.603 --> 02:23:06.480
Perhaps I should have known better.

02:23:10.000 --> 02:23:15.081
But I thought, wait, let's try to cut
some amount of waste and pork from

02:23:15.164 --> 02:23:16.157
the government.

02:23:16.240 --> 02:23:22.397
Maybe there shouldn't be 20 million people
marked as alive in Social Security who are

02:23:22.480 --> 02:23:28.766
definitely dead, and over the age of 115.
The oldest American is 114.

02:23:28.849 --> 02:23:30.797
So it's safe to say if

02:23:30.880 --> 02:23:36.951
somebody is 115 and marked as alive
in the Social Security database,

02:23:37.034 --> 02:23:39.757
there's either a typo… Somebody

02:23:39.840 --> 02:23:45.390
should call them and say,
"We seem to have your birthday wrong,

02:23:45.473 --> 02:23:47.357
or we need to mark you

02:23:47.440 --> 02:23:52.717
as dead." One of the two things.
Very intimidating call to get.

02:23:52.800 --> 02:23:58.320
Well, it seems like a reasonable thing.
Say if their birthday is in the future

02:23:59.920 --> 02:24:04.126
and they have a Small
Business Administration loan,

02:24:04.209 --> 02:24:06.480
and their birthday is 2165,

02:24:07.680 --> 02:24:13.677
we either have a typo or we have fraud.
So we say, "we appear to have gotten the

02:24:13.760 --> 02:24:16.957
century of your birth incorrect."
Or a great plot for a movie.

02:24:17.040 --> 02:24:23.437
Yes. That's what I mean by, ludicrous
fraud. Were those people getting payments?

02:24:23.520 --> 02:24:26.327
Some were getting payments
from Social Security.

02:24:26.410 --> 02:24:29.277
But the main fraud vector
was to mark somebody as

02:24:29.360 --> 02:24:35.895
alive in Social Security and then use
every other government payment system

02:24:35.979 --> 02:24:39.920
to basically do fraud. Because what
those other government payment systems do,

02:24:40.800 --> 02:24:45.249
they would simply do an "are you alive"
check to the Social Security database.

02:24:45.332 --> 02:24:46.237
It's a bank shot.

02:24:46.320 --> 02:24:50.000
What would you estimate is the total
amount of fraud from this mechanism?

02:24:52.080 --> 02:24:55.160
By the way, the Government Accountability
Office has done these estimates before.

02:24:55.243 --> 02:25:00.049
I'm not the only one. In fact,
I think the GAO did an analysis,

02:25:00.132 --> 02:25:02.637
a rough estimate of fraud during

02:25:02.720 --> 02:25:07.917
the Biden administration, and calculated
it at roughly half a trillion dollars.

02:25:08.000 --> 02:25:11.597
So don't take my word for it.
Take a report issued during the

02:25:11.680 --> 02:25:16.237
Biden administration. How about that?
From this Social Security mechanism?

02:25:16.320 --> 02:25:22.317
It's one of many. It's important
to appreciate that the government is

02:25:22.400 --> 02:25:29.400
very ineffective at stopping fraud.
It's not like a company where, with

02:25:30.240 --> 02:25:33.585
stopping fraud, you've got a motivation
because it's affecting the earnings

02:25:33.669 --> 02:25:34.317
of your company.

02:25:34.400 --> 02:25:41.400
The government just prints more money.
You need caring and competence. These are

02:25:44.880 --> 02:25:51.880
in short supply at the federal level.
When you go to the DMV, do you think,

02:25:52.640 --> 02:25:57.677
"Wow, this is a bastion of competence"?
Well, now imagine it's worse than the DMV

02:25:57.760 --> 02:26:04.760
because it's the DMV that can print money.
At least the state level DMVs need to...

02:26:05.440 --> 02:26:08.557
The states more or less need to stay
within their budget or they go bankrupt.

02:26:08.640 --> 02:26:11.841
But the federal government
just prints more money.

02:26:11.924 --> 02:26:14.797
If there's actually
half a trillion of fraud,

02:26:14.880 --> 02:26:21.880
why was it not possible to cut all that?
You really have to stand back

02:26:26.146 --> 02:26:28.477
and recalibrate

02:26:28.560 --> 02:26:35.560
your expectations for competence.
Because you're operating in a world

02:26:36.160 --> 02:26:40.080
where you've got to make ends meet.
You've got to pay your bills...

02:26:40.960 --> 02:26:47.960
Find the microphones. Exactly.
It's not like there's a giant,

02:26:49.920 --> 02:26:56.920
largely uncaring monster bureaucracy.
It's a bunch of anachronistic computers

02:26:57.760 --> 02:27:03.437
that are just sending payments.
One of the things that the DOGE

02:27:03.520 --> 02:27:10.520
team did sounds so simple and probably
will save $100-200 billion a year.

02:27:14.000 --> 02:27:18.869
It was simply requiring payments from
the main Treasury computer—which is called

02:27:18.952 --> 02:27:21.278
PAM, Payment Accounts Master
or something like that,

02:27:21.361 --> 02:27:23.361
there's $5 trillion payments a year—that

02:27:25.520 --> 02:27:32.157
go out have a payment appropriation code.
Make it mandatory, not optional, that you

02:27:32.240 --> 02:27:37.158
have anything at all in the comment field.

02:27:37.241 --> 02:27:42.397
You have to recalibrate
how dumb things are.

02:27:42.480 --> 02:27:46.066
Payments were being sent out
with no appropriation code,

02:27:46.150 --> 02:27:48.557
not checking back to any congressional

02:27:48.640 --> 02:27:54.797
appropriation, and with no explanation.
This is why the Department of War,

02:27:54.880 --> 02:27:57.395
formerly the Department of Defense,
cannot pass an audit,

02:27:57.479 --> 02:27:59.037
because the information is literally

02:27:59.120 --> 02:28:03.794
not there. Recalibrate your expectations.
I want to better understand this half

02:28:03.878 --> 02:28:09.520
a trillion number, because there's
an IG report in 2024. Why is it so low?

02:28:10.160 --> 02:28:13.917
Maybe, but we found that over seven
years, the Social Security fraud

02:28:14.000 --> 02:28:17.117
they estimated was like $70 billion over
seven years, so like $10 billion a year.

02:28:17.200 --> 02:28:20.317
So I'd be curious to see what
the other $490 billion is.

02:28:20.400 --> 02:28:23.250
Federal government expenditures
are $7.5 trillion a year.

02:28:26.400 --> 02:28:29.838
How competent do you
think the government is?

02:28:29.921 --> 02:28:33.437
The discretionary spending
there is like… 15%?

02:28:33.520 --> 02:28:36.317
But it doesn't matter.
Most of the fraud is non-discretionary.

02:28:36.400 --> 02:28:40.480
It's basically fraudulent Medicare,
Medicaid, Social Security,

02:28:45.760 --> 02:28:52.317
disability. There's a zillion government
payments. A bunch of these payments are in

02:28:52.400 --> 02:28:59.400
fact block transfers to the states.
So the federal government doesn't

02:28:59.520 --> 02:29:04.397
even have the information in a lot
of cases to even know if there's fraud.

02:29:04.480 --> 02:29:10.237
Let's consider reductio ad absurdum. The
government is perfect and has no fraud.

02:29:10.320 --> 02:29:17.066
What is your probability estimate of that?
Zero. Okay, so then would you say,

02:29:17.150 --> 02:29:18.397
fraud and waste

02:29:18.480 --> 02:29:25.480
at the government is 90% efficient?
That also would be quite generous.

02:29:27.120 --> 02:29:32.317
But if it's only 90%, that means that
there's $750 billion a year of waste and

02:29:32.400 --> 02:29:35.127
fraud. And it's not 90%.
It's not 90% effective.

02:29:35.211 --> 02:29:37.997
This seems like a strange
way to first principles

02:29:38.080 --> 02:29:42.130
the amount of fraud in the government.
Just like, how much do you think there is?

02:29:43.280 --> 02:29:45.597
Anyways, we don't have to do
it live, but I'd be curious—

02:29:45.680 --> 02:29:49.597
You know a lot about fraud at Stripe?
People are constantly trying to do fraud.

02:29:49.680 --> 02:29:53.258
Yeah, but as you say, it's a little
bit of a... We've really ground it down,

02:29:53.341 --> 02:29:54.077
but it's a little

02:29:54.160 --> 02:29:57.645
bit of a different problem space
because you're dealing with a much more

02:29:57.729 --> 02:30:03.677
heterogeneous set of fraud vectors here
than we are. But at Stripe, you have high

02:30:03.760 --> 02:30:07.757
competence and you try hard.
You have high competence and

02:30:07.840 --> 02:30:14.840
high caring, but still fraud is non-zero.
Now imagine it's at a much bigger scale,

02:30:15.211 --> 02:30:21.166
there's much less competence, and much
less caring. At PayPal back in the day,

02:30:21.249 --> 02:30:22.557
we tried to manage

02:30:22.640 --> 02:30:26.757
fraud down to about 1% of the payment
volume. That was very difficult.

02:30:26.840 --> 02:30:32.521
It took a tremendous amount of competence
and caring to get fraud merely to 1%.

02:30:32.604 --> 02:30:36.237
Now imagine that you're
an organization where

02:30:36.320 --> 02:30:39.531
there's much less caring
and much less competence.

02:30:39.614 --> 02:30:41.837
It's going to be much more than 1%.

02:30:41.920 --> 02:30:47.760
How do you feel now looking back
on politics and doing stuff there?

02:30:48.480 --> 02:30:55.480
Looking from the outside in,
two things have been quite impactful: one,

02:30:56.290 --> 02:30:58.957
the America PAC, and two,

02:30:59.040 --> 02:31:05.757
the acquisition of Twitter at the time.
But also it seems like there

02:31:05.840 --> 02:31:11.760
was a bunch of heartache. What's
your grading of the whole experience?

02:31:16.320 --> 02:31:22.141
I think those things needed to be done to
maximize the probability that the future

02:31:22.224 --> 02:31:23.057
is good.

02:31:27.200 --> 02:31:33.145
Politics generally is very tribal.
People lose their objectivity usually

02:31:33.228 --> 02:31:34.400
with politics.

02:31:35.600 --> 02:31:40.450
They generally have trouble seeing
the good on the other side or the bad on

02:31:40.533 --> 02:31:44.502
their own side. That's generally
how it goes. That, I guess,

02:31:44.586 --> 02:31:47.917
was one of the things
that surprised me the most.

02:31:48.000 --> 02:31:50.110
You often simply cannot
reason with people.

02:31:50.193 --> 02:31:51.997
If they're in one tribe or the other.

02:31:52.080 --> 02:31:55.757
They simply believe that everything
their tribe does is good and anything

02:31:55.840 --> 02:32:02.652
the other political tribe does is bad.
Persuading them otherwise is almost

02:32:02.735 --> 02:32:03.760
impossible.

02:32:07.760 --> 02:32:14.760
But I think overall those
actions—acquiring Twitter,

02:32:16.660 --> 02:32:22.397
getting Trump elected, even though

02:32:22.480 --> 02:32:29.200
it makes a lot of people angry—I think
those actions were good for civilization.

02:32:30.640 --> 02:32:33.340
How does it feed into
the future you're excited about?

02:32:33.440 --> 02:32:40.440
Well, America needs to be strong enough to
last long enough to extend life to other

02:32:42.000 --> 02:32:48.849
planets and to get AI and robotics to the
point where we can ensure that the future

02:32:48.932 --> 02:32:49.765
is good.

02:32:51.120 --> 02:32:55.464
On the other hand, if we
were to descend into, say,

02:32:55.547 --> 02:32:59.197
communism or some
situation where the state

02:32:59.280 --> 02:33:06.280
was extremely oppressive, that would
mean that we might not be able to become

02:33:07.096 --> 02:33:08.720
multi-planetary.

02:33:10.320 --> 02:33:16.960
The state might stamp out
our progress in AI and robotics.

02:33:21.360 --> 02:33:28.271
Optimus, Grok, et cetera. Not just yours,
but any revenue-maximizing company's

02:33:28.354 --> 02:33:29.437
products will

02:33:29.520 --> 02:33:36.520
be leveraged by the government over time.
How does this concern manifest in what

02:33:37.040 --> 02:33:39.909
private companies should be
willing to give governments?

02:33:39.993 --> 02:33:41.680
What kinds of guardrails? Should

02:33:44.400 --> 02:33:50.957
AI models be made to do whatever
the government that has contracted

02:33:51.040 --> 02:33:57.357
them out to do and asks them to do?
Should Grok get to say, "Actually,

02:33:57.440 --> 02:34:00.957
even if the military wants to do X,
no, Grok will not do that"?

02:34:01.040 --> 02:34:08.040
I think maybe the biggest danger of AI
and robotics going wrong is government.

02:34:16.800 --> 02:34:21.597
People who are opposed to corporations
or worried about corporations should

02:34:21.680 --> 02:34:25.357
really worry the most about government.
Because government is just a

02:34:25.440 --> 02:34:30.397
corporation in the limit.
Government is just the biggest

02:34:30.480 --> 02:34:37.480
corporation with a monopoly on violence.
I always find it a strange dichotomy where

02:34:38.720 --> 02:34:40.873
people would think corporations
are bad, but the government is good,

02:34:40.956 --> 02:34:41.597
when the government is

02:34:41.680 --> 02:34:48.680
simply the biggest and worst corporation.
But people have that dichotomy.

02:34:49.124 --> 02:34:50.877
They somehow think

02:34:50.960 --> 02:34:54.592
at the same time that government
can be good, but corporations bad,

02:34:54.675 --> 02:34:58.640
and this is not true. Corporations have
better morality than the government.

02:34:59.520 --> 02:35:06.520
I actually think it’s
a thing to be worried about.

02:35:06.617 --> 02:35:12.637
The government could
potentially use AI and

02:35:12.720 --> 02:35:17.917
robotics to suppress the population.
That is a serious concern.

02:35:18.000 --> 02:35:22.480
As the guy building AI and robotics,
how do you prevent that?

02:35:28.560 --> 02:35:32.321
If you limit the powers of government,
which is really what the US Constitution

02:35:32.404 --> 02:35:33.197
is intended to do,

02:35:33.280 --> 02:35:37.079
to limit the powers of government, then
you're probably going to have a better

02:35:37.163 --> 02:35:42.317
outcome than if you have more government.
Robotics will be available

02:35:42.400 --> 02:35:46.160
to all governments, right?
I don’t know about all governments.

02:35:49.840 --> 02:35:54.411
It's difficult to predict.
I can say what's the endpoint,

02:35:54.494 --> 02:35:57.677
or what is many years in the future, but

02:35:57.760 --> 02:36:04.760
it's difficult to predict the path along
that way. If civilization progresses,

02:36:07.120 --> 02:36:08.717
AI will vastly

02:36:08.800 --> 02:36:14.880
exceed the sum of all human intelligence.
There will be far more robots than humans.

02:36:16.240 --> 02:36:20.637
Along the way what happens
is very difficult to predict.

02:36:20.720 --> 02:36:25.527
It seems one thing you could do
is just say, "whatever government X,

02:36:25.610 --> 02:36:29.679
you're not allowed to use Optimus to do X,
Y, Z." Just write out a policy.

02:36:29.763 --> 02:36:31.357
I think you tweeted recently that

02:36:31.440 --> 02:36:36.637
Grok should have a moral constitution.
One of those things could be that we

02:36:36.720 --> 02:36:40.270
limit what governments are allowed
to do with this advanced technology.

02:36:47.440 --> 02:36:53.117
Technically if politicians pass
a law and they can enforce that law,

02:36:53.200 --> 02:37:00.001
then it's hard to not do that law.
The best thing we can have is limited

02:37:00.084 --> 02:37:00.957
government

02:37:01.040 --> 02:37:08.040
where you have the appropriate crosschecks
between the executive, judicial,

02:37:08.240 --> 02:37:10.640
and legislative branches.

02:37:12.000 --> 02:37:15.958
The reason I'm curious about it is that at
some point it seems the limits will come

02:37:16.042 --> 02:37:16.875
from you.

02:37:17.360 --> 02:37:19.845
You've got the Optimus,
you've got the space GPUs…

02:37:19.928 --> 02:37:22.240
You think I'll be
the boss of the government?

02:37:24.480 --> 02:37:31.480
Already it's the case with SpaceX that
for things that are crucial—the government

02:37:31.928 --> 02:37:32.397
really

02:37:32.480 --> 02:37:35.916
cares about getting certain satellites
up in space or whatever—it needs SpaceX.

02:37:35.999 --> 02:37:36.832
It is the

02:37:37.600 --> 02:37:42.800
necessary contractor. You are in the
process of building more and more of the

02:37:44.960 --> 02:37:48.883
technological components of the future
that will have an analogous role

02:37:48.966 --> 02:37:50.237
in different industries.

02:37:50.320 --> 02:37:56.920
You could have this ability to set
some policy that suppressing classical

02:37:57.004 --> 02:37:58.477
liberalism in any

02:37:58.560 --> 02:38:04.320
way… "My companies will not help in any
way with that", or some policy like that.

02:38:05.280 --> 02:38:08.557
I will do my best to ensure that
anything that's within my control

02:38:08.640 --> 02:38:15.640
maximizes the good outcome for humanity. I
think anything else would be shortsighted,

02:38:18.080 --> 02:38:25.080
because obviously I'm part of humanity,
so I like humans. Pro human.

02:38:29.040 --> 02:38:33.200
You mentioned that Dojo 3 will
be used for space-based compute.

02:38:34.400 --> 02:38:38.557
You really read what I say.
I don't know if you know,

02:38:38.640 --> 02:38:43.352
Elon, but you have a lot
of followers. Dead giveaway.

02:38:43.435 --> 02:38:46.157
How did you discern my secrets?

02:38:46.240 --> 02:38:53.240
Oh I posted them on X. How do you
design a chip for space? What changes?

02:38:54.640 --> 02:39:00.160
You want to design it to be more radiation
tolerant and run at a higher temperature.

02:39:03.120 --> 02:39:08.157
Roughly, if you increase the operating
temperature by 20% in degrees Kelvin,

02:39:08.240 --> 02:39:14.877
you can cut your radiator mass in half.
So running at a higher temperature

02:39:14.960 --> 02:39:20.717
is helpful in space.
There are various things

02:39:20.800 --> 02:39:26.557
you can do for shielding the memory.
But neural nets are going to be very

02:39:26.640 --> 02:39:29.917
resilient to bit flips.
Most of what happens

02:39:30.000 --> 02:39:36.613
for radiation is random bit flips. But if
you've got a multi-trillion parameter

02:39:36.696 --> 02:39:39.929
model and you get a few bit
flips, it doesn't matter.

02:39:40.012 --> 02:39:42.637
Heuristic programs are
going to be much more

02:39:42.720 --> 02:39:47.200
sensitive to bit flips than
some giant parameter file.

02:39:49.760 --> 02:39:56.077
I just design it to run hot.
I think you pretty much do

02:39:56.160 --> 02:40:01.360
it the same way that you do things
on Earth, apart from making it run hotter.

02:40:02.240 --> 02:40:04.477
The solar array is most
of the weight on the satellite.

02:40:04.560 --> 02:40:10.957
Is there a way to make the GPUs even more
powerful than what Nvidia and TPUs and

02:40:11.040 --> 02:40:16.009
et cetera are planning on doing
that would be especially privileged in

02:40:16.092 --> 02:40:17.680
the space-based world?

02:40:18.640 --> 02:40:25.640
The basic math is, if you can do about a
kilowatt per reticle, then you'd need 100

02:40:31.040 --> 02:40:36.924
million full reticle
chips to do 100 gigawatts.

02:40:37.007 --> 02:40:42.720
Depending on what your
yield assumptions are,

02:40:44.400 --> 02:40:48.677
that tells you how many
chips you need to make.

02:40:48.760 --> 02:40:53.037
If you're going to have
100 gigawatts of power,

02:40:53.120 --> 02:41:00.120
you need 100 million chips that are
running at a kilowatt sustained,

02:41:02.108 --> 02:41:05.197
per reticle. Basic math.

02:41:05.280 --> 02:41:12.280
100 million chips depends on… If you
look at the die size of something like

02:41:13.520 --> 02:41:17.570
Blackwell GPUs or something, and how many
you can get out of a wafer, you can get

02:41:18.400 --> 02:41:25.400
on the order of dozens or less per wafer.
So basically, this is a world where if

02:41:25.600 --> 02:41:32.111
we're putting that out every single year,
you're producing millions of wafers

02:41:32.195 --> 02:41:33.028
a month.

02:41:33.920 --> 02:41:37.837
That's the plan with TeraFab? Millions of
wafers a month of advanced process nodes?

02:41:37.920 --> 02:41:40.595
Yeah it could be north
of a million or something.

02:41:40.679 --> 02:41:42.397
You’ve got to do the memory too.

02:41:42.480 --> 02:41:46.397
Are you going to make a memory fab?
I think the TeraFab's got to do memory.

02:41:46.480 --> 02:41:48.703
It's got to do logic,
memory, and packaging.

02:41:48.786 --> 02:41:50.957
I'm very curious how
somebody gets started.

02:41:51.040 --> 02:41:54.157
This is the most complicated
thing man has ever made.

02:41:54.240 --> 02:41:57.840
Obviously, if anybody's up
to the task, you're up to the task.

02:41:58.560 --> 02:42:01.710
So you realize it's a bottleneck,
and you go to your engineers.

02:42:02.560 --> 02:42:07.760
What do you tell them to do?
"I want a million wafers a month in 2030."

02:42:09.040 --> 02:42:13.997
That’s right. That’s exactly what I want.
Do you call ASML? What is the next step?

02:42:14.080 --> 02:42:21.080
No so much to ask.
We make a little fab and see what happens.

02:42:22.640 --> 02:42:25.757
Make our mistakes at a small
scale and then make a big one.

02:42:25.840 --> 02:42:29.277
Is a little fab done?
No, it's not done. We're

02:42:29.360 --> 02:42:34.877
not going to keep that cat in the bag.
That cat's going to come out of the bag.

02:42:34.960 --> 02:42:37.604
There'll be drones hovering
over the bloody thing.

02:42:37.687 --> 02:42:39.677
You'll be able to see its construction

02:42:39.760 --> 02:42:46.760
progress on X in real time.
Look, I don't know, we could just

02:42:47.920 --> 02:42:54.920
flounder in failure, to be fair.
Success is not guaranteed.

02:42:55.462 --> 02:43:00.237
Since we want to try to make something

02:43:00.320 --> 02:43:07.320
like 100 million… We want 100 gigawatts
of power and chips that can take 100

02:43:11.057 --> 02:43:13.600
gigawatts by 2030.

02:43:18.400 --> 02:43:20.557
We’ll take as many chips
as our suppliers will give us.

02:43:20.640 --> 02:43:25.260
I've actually said this to
TSMC and Samsung and Micron:

02:43:25.343 --> 02:43:28.080
"please build more fabs faster".

02:43:28.640 --> 02:43:31.520
We will guarantee to buy
the output of those fabs.

02:43:32.080 --> 02:43:39.080
So they're already moving as fast
as they can. It's us plus them.

02:43:46.640 --> 02:43:50.717
There's a narrative that the people
doing AI want a very large number

02:43:50.800 --> 02:43:56.077
of chips as quickly as possible.
Then many of the input suppliers,

02:43:56.160 --> 02:43:59.513
the fabs, but also
the turbine manufacturers,

02:43:59.596 --> 02:44:02.797
are not ramping up
production very quickly.

02:44:02.880 --> 02:44:05.277
No, they're not. The explanation you hear

02:44:05.360 --> 02:44:08.437
is that they're
dispositionally conservative.

02:44:08.520 --> 02:44:11.597
They're Taiwanese or German,
as the story may

02:44:11.680 --> 02:44:15.711
be. They just don't believe...
Is that really the explanation or is there

02:44:15.795 --> 02:44:16.640
something else?

02:44:17.280 --> 02:44:24.144
Well, it's reasonable to... If somebody's
been in the computer memory business

02:44:24.228 --> 02:44:30.160
for 30 or 40 years… They've seen cycles.
They've seen boom and bust 10 times.

02:44:32.080 --> 02:44:37.277
That's a lot of layers of scar tissue.
During the boom times, it looks like

02:44:37.360 --> 02:44:41.357
everything is going to be great forever.
Then the crash happens and they're

02:44:41.440 --> 02:44:46.329
desperately trying to avoid bankruptcy.
Then there's another boom and another

02:44:46.413 --> 02:44:47.246
crash.

02:44:48.320 --> 02:44:51.597
Are there other ideas you think
others should go pursue that

02:44:51.680 --> 02:44:54.443
you're not for whatever reasons right now?

02:44:54.526 --> 02:44:57.440
There are a few companies
that are pursuing

02:44:58.240 --> 02:45:03.437
new ways of doing chips,
but they're just not scaling fast.

02:45:03.520 --> 02:45:06.800
I don't even mean within AI,
I mean just generally.

02:45:07.600 --> 02:45:11.934
People should do the thing where they
find that they're highly motivated to do

02:45:12.017 --> 02:45:12.850
that thing,

02:45:13.280 --> 02:45:20.280
as opposed to some idea that I suggest.
They should do the thing that they find

02:45:21.520 --> 02:45:28.520
personally interesting and motivating
to do. But going back to the limiting

02:45:30.080 --> 02:45:35.157
factor…
I used that phrase about 100 times.

02:45:35.240 --> 02:45:40.640
The current limiting
factor that I see in the

02:45:47.920 --> 02:45:54.920
three to four year timeframe, it's chips.
In the one year timeframe, it's energy,

02:45:56.160 --> 02:46:01.760
power production, electricity.
It's not clear to me that there's enough

02:46:02.640 --> 02:46:07.200
usable electricity to turn on all
the AI chips that are being made.

02:46:10.000 --> 02:46:12.508
Towards the end of this year, I think
people are going to have real trouble

02:46:12.591 --> 02:46:17.357
turning on... The chip output will
exceed the ability to turn chips on.

02:46:17.440 --> 02:46:22.350
What's your plan to deal with that world?
We're trying to accelerate electricity

02:46:22.433 --> 02:46:23.267
production.

02:46:24.800 --> 02:46:30.948
I guess that's maybe one of the reasons
that xAI will be maybe the leader,

02:46:31.032 --> 02:46:32.800
hopefully the leader.

02:46:34.080 --> 02:46:38.560
We'll be able to turn on more chips
than other people can turn on, faster,

02:46:39.280 --> 02:46:45.837
because we're good at hardware.
Generally, the innovations from

02:46:45.920 --> 02:46:52.293
the corporations that call themselves
labs, the ideas tend to flow…

02:46:52.376 --> 02:46:59.145
It's rare to see that there's more
than about a six-month difference.

02:46:59.229 --> 02:47:04.077
The ideas travel back
and forth with the people.

02:47:04.160 --> 02:47:11.160
So I think you sort of hit the hardware
wall and then whichever company can scale

02:47:11.680 --> 02:47:17.517
hardware the fastest will be the leader.
So I think xAI will be able to scale

02:47:17.600 --> 02:47:20.557
hardware the fastest and therefore
most likely will be the leader.

02:47:20.640 --> 02:47:27.640
You joked or were self-conscious about
using the "limiting factor" phrase again.

02:47:28.240 --> 02:47:30.198
But I actually think
there's something deep here.

02:47:30.282 --> 02:47:32.157
If you look at a lot
of things we've touched on

02:47:32.240 --> 02:47:35.600
over the course of it,
it’s maybe a good note to end on.

02:47:37.120 --> 02:47:44.120
If you think of a senescent, low-agency
company, it would have some bottleneck and

02:47:45.280 --> 02:47:49.757
not really be doing anything about it.
Marc Andreessen had the line of,

02:47:49.840 --> 02:47:54.131
"most people are willing to endure any
amount of chronic pain to avoid acute

02:47:54.215 --> 02:47:58.601
pain". It feels like a lot of the cases
we're talking about are just leaning into

02:47:58.684 --> 02:48:03.862
the acute pain, whatever it is. "Okay, we
got to figure out how to work with steel,

02:48:03.945 --> 02:48:05.117
or we got to figure

02:48:05.200 --> 02:48:09.197
out how to run the chips in space."
We'll take some near-term acute pain

02:48:09.280 --> 02:48:13.517
to actually solve the bottleneck.
So that's kind of a unifying theme.

02:48:13.600 --> 02:48:19.117
I have a high pain threshold.
That's helpful. To solve the bottleneck.

02:48:19.200 --> 02:48:26.200
Yes. One thing I can say is, I think the
future is going to be very interesting.

02:48:36.400 --> 02:48:41.421
As I said at Davos—I think I
was on the ground for like three hours

02:48:41.505 --> 02:48:42.800
or something—it's

02:48:45.200 --> 02:48:50.797
better to err on the side of optimism and
be wrong than err on the side of pessimism

02:48:50.880 --> 02:48:57.880
and be right, for quality of life.
You'll be happier if you err on

02:49:01.440 --> 02:49:05.677
the side of optimism rather than
erring on the side of pessimism.

02:49:05.760 --> 02:49:09.117
So I recommend erring on the side
of optimism. Here's to that.

02:49:09.200 --> 02:49:11.677
Cool. Elon, thanks
for doing this. Thank you.

02:49:11.760 --> 02:49:17.757
All right, thanks guys.
All right. Great stamina.

02:49:17.840 --> 02:49:21.040
Hopefully this didn't count
as a pain in the pain tolerance.