“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.”
Elon Musk
“In life,
we’ve seen, within this part of the world,
great
people, like Al-Khawarizmi who invented algorithm.
Globally,
Newton.
Henry Ford,
the Wright Brothers,
Albert
Einstein and Elon Musk.
See, you are
in rush,
You want to
go to places that nobody has been.
You are
re-inventing a certain industry,
from the
rocket industry with SpaceX to the car industry with Tesla.
What’s your
life mission? Why do you do whatever you do?
Sure, first
of all, thank you for having me.
It’s an
honor to be here.
And I’m
having a really great time with my kids in Dubai.
It’s really
been fantastic. I really encourage
anyone who
hasn’t been to visit, what a great city!
Thank you.
And, in
terms of the motivations,
I used to
like this sort of…
kind of a
long version of the explanation but…
essentially,
when I was a kid I was wondering, what’s the meaning of life?
Like, why
are we here? What is it all about?
And I came
to the conclusion that what really matters is
trying to
understand the right questions to ask.
And the more
that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness,
the better
we’re able to ask these questions.
And… So, I
think there are certain things that are necessary
to ensure
that the future is good.
And…
some of
those things are in the long term having
long term
sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation.
And to be a
space exploring civilization.
And for
humanity to be out there among the stars.
And be a
multi-planetary species.
I think that
being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars
is important
for the long-term survival of humanity.
And, that’s
one reason, kind of like life insurance
for life
collectively. Life as we know it.
But then the
part that I find personally most motivating is that
it creates a
sense of adventure,
and it makes
people excited about the future.
If you
consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth
until
eventually something terrible happens.
Or another
future where we are out there on many planets,
maybe even
going beyond the solar system.
I think that
space invasion is incredibly exciting and inspiring.
And there
need to be reasons to get up in the morning.
You know,
life can’t just be about solving problems.
Otherwise,
what’s the point?
There’s got
to be things that people find inspiring,
and make
life worth living.
So, what is
life for you?
I mean, you
look at our life, and I heard you before speaking.
Is it a
dream? Is it real? Is it a million deal?
What is life
for Elon Musk?
I find that
as I get older I find that question to be
maybe more
and more confusing or troubling or uncertain.
Particularly
when you see the advancement of something like video games.
You know, 40
years ago, you had video games, the most advanced video game would be
like Pong,
when you had two rectangles and a dot.
And you’re
like batting it back and forth.
– I played
it. – Yeah, me too, exactly.
– Us all. –
It sort of dates you a little bit.
Yeah, we
both played the same game.
And that was
like a pretty fun game at the time.
But now, you
can see a video game that’s photo-realistic, almost photo-realistic,
and millions
of people playing simultaneously.
And, and you
see where things are going with virtual reality.
And
augmented reality and…
if you
extrapolate that out into the future with any rate of progress at all,
like keeping
0.1% of something like that a year,
then
eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality.
They’ll be
so realistic you won’t be able to tell the difference between
that game
and reality as we know it.
And then, it
seems like, well,
how do we
know that that didn’t happen in the past?
And that
we’re not in one of those games ourselves?
Interesting.
Interesting.
I mean, it
could be.
Everything
is possible in life.
I mean
there’s…
Yeah,
particularly like things tend to be accelerating to something.
Isn’t it? I
mean, if we look at our life,
it seems in
the past 100 years life has been accelerating quite fast.
– Yeah. – In
the past 20 years.
– It’s
getting faster and faster. – Is it more slow?
So, my
question is really, how will life be 20, 30, 50 years from now?
Our
education, our transport. How do you see it?
Well, I
think this is one of those things that are quite difficult to predict.
When you
think of, say, the first controlled power flight was in 1903
with the
Wright Brothers.
And then, 66
years later we put the first people on the moon.
I mean, if
you asked people, say, in 1900,
what are the
odds of landing on the moon they would’ve said that’s ridiculous.
If you try
to talk to them about the internet
they
wouldn’t know what the heck you’re even…
What are you
talking about? Like, this sounds so crazy.
But today,
with a hundred-dollar device you can video-conference
with anyone
in the world.
On the other
side of the world, and if you have a Wi-Fi connection,
it’s
basically free.
You’re free
to have an instant visual communication with anyone,
or even with
millions of people.
You know,
with social media you can communicate to millions of people
simultaneously.
So, and you
can google something and ask any question.
It’s like an
oracle of wisdom,
that you can
ask almost any questions and get an instant response.
It would be
incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past.
Even the
relatively recent past.
So, I think
the one thing that we can be quite certain of
is that any
predictions we make today for what the future will be like in 50 years
will be
wrong
That’s for
sure. I think directionally,
I can tell
you what I hope the future has, as opposed to maybe what it will be.
This may
just be wishful thinking.
I mean I
hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, Jupiter.
I hope we’re
traveling frequently throughout the solar system,
perhaps
preparing for missions to nearby star systems.
I think all
of that is possible in 50 years.
And I think
it’s going to be very exciting to do that.
And, I think
we’ll see autonomy and artificial intelligence
advance
tremendously.
Like that’s
actually quite near term.
My guess is
in probably 10 years,
it will be
very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous.
– 10 years.
– 10 years from now?
Yeah. I
think almost all cars built will be able of full autonomy
in about 10
years.
As it is,
the Tesla cars that are made today,
have the
sensor system necessary for full autonomy.
And we think
probably enough compute power to be safer than a person.
So, it’s
mostly just the question of developing the software
and
uploading the software.
And if it
turns out that more compute power is needed,
we can
easily upgrade the computer.
And, so
that’s all Teslas built since October last year.
And other
manufacturers will follow and do the same thing.
So, getting
in a car will be like getting in an elevator.
You just
tell it where you want to go and it takes you there
with extreme
levels of safety.
And that
will be normal, that will just be normal.
Like, for
elevators, they used to be elevator operators.
You get in,
there will be a guy moving a lever.
Now, you
just get in, you press the button and that’s taken for granted.
So, autonomy
will be wide-spread.
I think one
of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence.
And I don’t
mean narrow AI, like,
vehicle
autonomy I would put in the narrow AI class.
It’s
narrowly trying to achieve a certain function.
But deep
artificial intelligence,
or what is
sometimes called artificial general intelligence,
where you
can have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth.
This, I
think, is a dangerous situation.
Why is it
dangerous? I mean, there are two views,
one view is
that artificial intelligence will help humanity,
and there’s
another school of thought that
artificial
intelligence is a threat to humanity.
– Why is
that? – I think it’s both.
You know,
it’s like…
one way to
think of it is imagine we’re going to be visited…
imagine
you’re very confident that we’re going to be visited by
super
intelligent aliens,
in let’s say
10 years or 20 years at the most.
– Super
intelligent. – So, you think within 20 years…
– Yeah… –
we’ll have aliens on Earth?
Well,
digital super intelligence will be like an alien.
– It will be
like an alien. – Yeah.
But my
question is, do you think
there is
other intelligent life outside the Earth?
It seems
probable.
I think this
is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy,
is, where
are the aliens?
Maybe they
are among us, I don’t know.
Some people
think I’m an alien.
Not true.
– Not true.
– But maybe we are aliens.
Maybe we
aliens. I mean, if you look at this part of the world.
Yeah.
They believe
that human beings are not from Earth,
they came
from somewhere else.
Eve and Adam
came from somewhere else to Earth.
So, in a
way, human beings are aliens to this land.
Do you think
we’ll make contact with aliens within the next 50 years?
Well, that’s
a really tough one to say.
If there are
super intelligent aliens out there,
they’re
probably already observing us.
That would
seem quite likely and we’re not smart enough to realize it.
But I can do
some back of the envelope calculations
and…
any advanced
alien civilization that is at all interested
in
populating the galaxy,
even without
exceeding the speed of light,
even if
you’re only moving at, say, 10 or 20 per cent of the speed of light,
you could
populate the entire galaxy in let’s say 10 million years.
Maybe 20
million years max.
This is
nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Once you
said you wanted to die on Mars. Why?
To be clear,
I don’t want to die on Mars.
It’s like,
if… we’re all going to die someday,
and if
you’re going to pick some place to die,
then why not
Mars?
You know, if
you’re born on Earth, why not die on Mars?
Seems like
may be quite exciting.
But, I think
given the choice between dying on Earth and dying on Mars,
I’d say,
yeah, sure, I’ll die on Mars.
But it’s not
some kind of Mars death wish.
And if I do
die on Mars, I just don’t want to go on impact.
Let’s come
back to Earth, actually.
You tweeted
that you are building a tunnel under Washington D.C.
Why? What is
it?
– It’s a
secret plot. – Okay.
– Just
between us. – Nobody helps you?
Yeah,
exactly, let’s keep that a secret.
I think this
is going to sound a little…
I mean, it
seems like so much trivial or silly, but…
I’ve been
saying this for many years now but I think that
the solution
to urban congestion is a network of tunnels under cities.
And when I
say that I don’t mean a 2-D plan of tunnels,
I mean
tunnels that go many levels deep.
So, you can
always go deeper than you can go up.
Like, the deepest
mines are deeper than the tallest buildings.
So, you can
have a network of tunnels that is 20, 30, 40, 50 levels,
as many
levels as you want, really.
And so,
given that, you can overcome the congestion situation
in any city
in the world.
The
challenge is how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost
and with
high safety?
So, if
tunnel technology can be improved to the point where
you can
build tunnels fast, cheap and safe,
then that
would completely get rid of any traffic situations in the cities.
And so,
that’s why I think it’s an important technology.
And,
Washington D.C., L.A and most of the major American cities,
most major
cities in the world suffer from severe traffic issues.
And it’s
mostly because you’ve got these buildings which are,
these tall
buildings that are 3-D and you have a road network that is one level.
And then,
people generally want to go in and out of these buildings
at the exact
same time.
So, then,
you get the traffic jam.
Let’s come
back to…
your year in
Dubai.
The first
time I met you it was the 4th of June 2015,
at your
office in SpaceX.
And, I asked
you would you have a presence in UAE?
And your
answer was: I’m busy with China.
Maybe not in
the near future, and almost a year and a half later,
we are here,
seems time goes quite fast.
Why now?
I think
actually things are going really well in China.
So, we have
some initial challenges figuring out charging
and service
infrastructure and various other things, but
now it’s
actually going really well, and…
so the
timing seems to be good to really make a significant debut
in this
region, starting in Dubai.
In your
opinion, what is the new disturbing thing
that will
come next in technology? What’s next in technology?
– What’s
next in technology? – That will disturb the way we live,
the way we
think, the way we do business.
Well, the
most near to impact from a technological standpoint
is
autonomous cars, like fully self-driving cars.
I’d say
that’s going to happen much faster than people realize.
so, and
that’s…
it’s going
to be a great convenience to be in an autonomous car,
but there
are many people whose job is to drive.
So, if… in
fact I think it might be the single largest employer
of people is
driving in various forms.
And so, then
we need to figure out new rules for what do these people do.
But it will
all be very disruptive and very quick.
I should
characterize what I mean by quick.
Because
there are…
Quick means
different things to different people.
There are
about two billion vehicles in the world.
Approaching
in fact 2.5 billion cars and trucks in the world.
The total
new vehicle production capacity is about a hundred million.
Which makes
sense, because the life of a car or truck
before it’s
finally scraped is about 20-25 years.
So, so the
point at which we see full autonomy appear
will not be
the point at which there is massive societal upheaval,
because it
will take a long time to make enough autonomous vehicles
to disrupt
employment.
So, that
disruption I’m talking about will take place over about 20 years.
Still, 20
years is a short period of time to have I think something like
12 to 15 per
cent of the world force be unemployed.
Thank you.
This is the
largest global government summit we have over 139 governments here.
If you want
to advise government officials to be ready for the future,
what three
pieces of advice can you give them?
Well, I
think the first bit of advice is to really play close attention to…
the
development of artificial intelligence.
I think this
is, we need to be just be very careful in…
how we adopt
artificial intelligence,
and to make
sure that researchers don’t get carried away,
because
sometimes what happens is that scientists can get so
engrossed in
their work,
they don’t
necessarily realize the ramifications of what they’re doing.
So, I think
it’s important for public safety that we…
you know,
governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence
and make sure
that it does not represent a danger to the public.
Let’s see,
secondly I would say
we do need
to think about transport in general.
And,
there’s the
movement towards electric vehicles,
sustainable
transport,
I think
that’s going to be good for many reasons, but again,
not
something that happens immediately, that’s going to happen slower than
the
self-driving vehicles.
Because
that’s probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years.
The
transition to electric vehicles.
So, thinking
about that in context…
the demand
for electricity will increase dramatically.
So,
currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world,
it’s about
1/3, about 1/3 transport, about 1/3 heating.
So, over
time that will transition to almost all…
not all, but
predominantly electricity,
which means
that the demand for electricity will probably triple.
So, it’s
going to be very important to think about how do you make
so much more
electricity
And…
It seems
they’ll have an easy job, that’s it,
there are no
more challenges for them.
No, well, I
think maybe…
these things
do play into each other a little bit,
but what to
do about mass unemployment?
This is
going to be a massive social challenge.
And I think
ultimately will have to have some kind of universal basic income
I don’t
think we’re going to have a choice.
– Universal
basic income. – Universal basic income.
I think it’s
going to be necessary.
So, it means
that unemployed people will be paid across the globe.
– Yeah. –
Because there are no jobs.
Machines,
robots are taking over.
There will
be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.
That’s
simply…
And I want
to be clear, these are not things that I wish would happen.
These are
simply things that I think probably will happen.
And so, if
my assessment is correct and they probably will happen,
then we need
to say what are we going to do about it.
And I think
some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary.
Now, the
output of goods and services will be extremely high.
So, with
automation,
there will
come abundance.
There will
be… almost everything will get very cheap.
The…
So…
I think the
biggest… I think we’ll just end up doing
a universal
basic income. It’s going to be necessary.
The harder
challenge, much harder challenge,
is how do
people then have meaning?
Like a lot
of people they derive their meaning from their employment,
so, if you
don’t have… if you’re not needed,
if there’s
not a need for your labor, how do you…
what’s the
meaning? Do you have meaning? Do you feel useless?
That’s a
much harder problem to deal with.
And then how
do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want?
That we so
like.
You know, I
mean do think that there’s a potential
path here
which is,
I’m really
getting into science fiction or sort of advanced science stuff.
But, having
some sort of merger with biological intelligence,
and machine
intelligence.
To some
degree, we are already a cyborg.
You think of
like the digital tools that you have,
your phone
and your computer, the applications that you have.
Like the
fact that as I mentioned earlier you can ask a question
and
instantly get an answer from Google or from other things.
And, and so
you already have a digital touchery layer.
I say
touchery because you can think of the limbic system,
kind of the
animal brain or the primal brain and then the cortex,
kind of the
thinking, planning part of the brain,
and then
your digital self as a third layer.
So, you
already have that, and I think if somebody dies,
their
digital ghost is still around.
All of their
e-mails and the pictures that they posted and their social media.
That still
lives, even if they died.
So, over
time I think we’ll probably see
a closer
merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.
And it’s
mostly about the bandwidth,
the speed of
the connection between your brain and your digital…
the digital
extension of yourself.
Particularly
output, and, if anything is getting worse,
you know, we
used to have keyboards that we used a lot,
now we do
most of our input through our thumbs, on a phone.
And, that’s
just very slow.
A computer
can communicate at a trillion bits per second,
but your
thumb can maybe do maybe 10 bits per second or a hundred
if you’re
being generous.
So, some
high bandwidth interface to the brain I think will be
something
that helps achieve symbiosis,
between
human and machine intelligence and maybe solves
the control
problem and the usefulness problem.
I’m getting
pretty esoteric here, I don’t know is this is…
It’s close,
we got it.
Always you
think out of the box.
Your ideas
are so huge.
You want to
go to space, you decided to go to space, you did it.
You decided
that you wanted to land your rocket back,
– you
failed, 7 times, 8 times? – Yeah, something like that.
– Then it
landed. – 4 times that I care to count.
How do you
come with these ideas?
Sometimes
they are pushing the human limit.
You are
always pushing the human limit, why?
Well, I…
I think
about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve
that
particular goal,
and then try
to make as much progress in that direction as possible.
So, in the
case of space flight, the critical breakthrough
that’s
necessary in space flight,
is rapid
incomplete reusability of rockets.
Just as we
have for air crafts.
You can
imagine that if an air craft was a single use,
almost no
one would fly.
Because you
can buy like, say, 747 might be…
250 million
Dollars, 300 million Dollars, something like that.
You need two
of them for a round trip.
But nobody
is going to pay millions of Dollars for a ticket to fly.
To do air
travel.
So, but
because you can re-use the air craft tens of thousands of times,
the…
Air travel
becomes much more affordable.
And, the
same is true of rockets. Our rocket costs…
60 million
Dollars, roughly.
So, a
capital cost if it can be used once in 60 million Dollars.
But if the
capital cost if it can be used a thousand times is 60 thousand Dollars.
So, then if
you can carry a lot of people for a flight,
then you can
get the cost of space flight to be something not far
from the
cost of air flight.
So, it’s
truly fundamental,
because
earth gravity is quite deep.
Earth has a
fairly high gravity.
The
difficulty of making a rocket reusable
is much
greater than the difficulty of making an air craft reusable.
That’s why a
fully reusable rocket hasn’t been developed that far.
But if you
use the most advanced materials,
the most
advanced design techniques,
and you get
everything just right,
then I’m
confident that you can do a fully reusable rocket.
Fortunately,
if Earth gravity was even 10 per cent stronger,
I would say
it wouldn’t be impossible.
You need a
team around you to deliver a lot of ideas.
How do you
choose your team? Based on what?
Well, I
suppose honestly that it tends to be a gut feeling more than anything else.
So, when I
interview somebody,
the main
questions are always the same.
What do you
ask?
I say: Tell
me the story of your life.
And, the
decisions that you made along the way
and why you
made them.
And then,
and also
tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on
and how you
solved them.
And,
that
question I think is very important, because…
the people
that really solved the problem,
they know
exactly how they solved it.
They know
the little details.
And the
people that pretended to solve the problem,
they can
maybe go one level and then they get stuck.
So, what was
your biggest challenge in life?
Biggest
challenge in life?
– No
challenge? – Well, no, there’s a lot of them.
I’m trying
to sort which is the worst.
I think just
thinking about how to spend time.
One of the
biggest challenges I think is making sure you have
a corrective
feedback loop,
and then
maintaining that corrective feedback loop over time,
even when
people won’t to tell you exactly what you want to hear.
– That’s
very difficult. – Yes.
Time is
over. I’ll ask you just one last question.
If you allow
me.
In the World
Government Summit we have
so many
people from… so many young people actually
from across
the Globe.
If you have
an advice to them,
young people
globally who want to be like Elon Musk.
What’s your
advice to them?
I think that
probably they shouldn’t want to be.
– You? – I
think it sounds better than it is.
Okay.
Yeah, it’s
not as much fun being me as you’d think.
– I don’t
know. – You don’t think so?
It could be
worse, for sure.
But it’s…
I’m not sure
I want to be me.
Okay.
But…
You know, I
think my advice is if you want to make progress in things,
I think that
the best analytical framework
for, I’ll
say in the future is physics.
I’d
recommend studying the thinking process around physics.
Like, not
just the equations, the equations are certainly very helpful,
but the way
of thinking in physics, it’s the best framework
for
understanding things that are counter–intuitive.
And, you know,
always take the position that you are to some degree wrong,
and your
goal is to be less wrong over time.
One of the
biggest mistakes people generally make and I’m guilty of it too
is wishful
thinking.
You know,
like you want something to be true, even if it isn’t true.
And so you
ignore the things that…
You ignore
the real truth, because of what you want to be true.
This is a
very difficult trap to avoid.
And like I
said, it’s certainly one that I find myself in, having problems with.
But, if you
just take that approach of that you’re always to some degree wrong
and your
goal is to be less wrong.
And solicit
critical feedback, particularly from friends.
Like,
friends, if somebody loves you they want the best for you.
They don’t
want to tell you the bad things.
So, you have
to ask them and say: I do really want to know.
And then
they will tell you.
Thank you
very much.
It’s been…
It’s great
for the World Government Summit to have a legend,
who’s
creating the future for humanity,
to share his
thoughts, his ideas, his visions, challenges,
and his hope
for life. Thank you very much.
Thanks for
having me.”
Elon Musk
