Well, these lights are bright. See Elon?
You know, a lot of times you say things, me or you, and they edit
them. So I noticed this panel
description was a conversation with Elon Musk.
The real title of this panel was How to Save the Human Race and
Other Light Topics, A Conversation with Elon Musk.
And so before we begin Elon, I thought we might want to go back
in time. 11 years when you were sitting on this stage.
That's hot water. And this is regular.
You can take your choice. Alright, sounds good.
OK, so eleven years ago, Elon was talking about the things
that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity
that he was thinking about in college.
And so let's run that video of 11 almost 11 years ago to today.
I guess, yeah. When I was in college that I I
thought about things that would most affect the future of
humanity and. And there were.
Three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and
those were the Internet sustainable energy of which
solar power is the production side and electric cars the
consumption side and then humanity becoming a multi tenant
species. And so we cut that short.
But there was two others you talked about.
One was modifying the human genome.
Yeah, I'm just. I'm not saying we should.
I'm just saying that that's the thing that would really affect
the. Future and next AI So a lot of
people didn't weren't thinking about these same five things
when they were in school, particularly humanity on multi
planets at that time. Well, sci-fi was certainly
thinking about it, but you know, I think at some point we want to
make science fiction, not fiction forever.
And yeah, so like let's make life multiplanetary and be a
space bearing civilization, be out there among the stars.
You know, I think there there are things that like you have to
be excited about the future life.
Life cannot just be about solving one problem after
another. There have to be things that
that that really sort of move your heart and that make you
excited to wake up in the morning.
And I think being becoming a space bearing civilization is
one of those things if you ask kids anywhere around the world
like what is, what are some of the most inspiring things, you
know, you can ask a like 5 year old, 6 year old anywhere in the
world and they're going to say, you know, space exploration is
one of those things. And and we want to make sure
that we we're we're you know that Apollo is not the high
watermark. In fact you mentioned at one
point that that you wrote a letter offering to run the
Apollo program I believe, but I would have you would have done a
fantastic job. But the the point is that the
Apollo program was something that was inspiring to everyone
around the world and we we don't want the Apollo program to be
the high watermark of of human exploration.
And yeah, we want, I think you want to have some, some sense
that the future is going to be better than the past.
That we're going to be out there going to other star systems.
And you know what? What you see in a science
science fiction, non dystopian sci-fi story, of which there
aren't many. But like Star Trek I suppose.
Well, Speaking of Star Trek alone, you know when I think
about you. Let's look at Sparks from Star
Trek here. Space, the final frontier.
These are the. Voyages of the Starship
Enterprise. Your ongoing mission to explore
strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new
civilizations. To boldly go where no one has
gone before. So when I think about you, I
think about Spock and Captain Kirk, and you're going to take
us to places we've never gone before.
Yeah, that's the idea. You know, if we if we send
probes out there, we might, I mean we might find the remains
of long dead alien civilizations.
If physics is correct, the the universe is about 13.8 billion
years old. Earth is about four and a half
billion years old so but at 13.8 billion years a civilization
that even lasted a million years is 3 digits past the decimal
point. And if you consider human
civilization I I I dated from like the first writing so that
first writing was the ancient Sumerians archaic pre pre
cuneiform around 5500 years ago. So that is 1 millionth of
Earth's lifespan. That's how long writing has
existed. So if we were to last as a
civilization for a million years, that would be incredible
and we'd actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy.
So that this is, this causes me to to think that, well, where
are the aliens? It's the Fermi question.
You know, the the great physicist, Italian physicist,
Enrico Fermi, he, he, he's like, where are they now?
A lot of people think there are aliens among us.
Well, there was that. There was that movie, Men in
Black. Yes, Yes, yes.
Told us. They're among us.
And Elvis really went back to his own planet.
Yeah, well, I mean, really, a lot of people think they're
aliens, but I I get asked that a lot.
And for for some reason, a lot of the same people who think
there are aliens among us didn't think.
We don't think we went to the moon, which I'm like think about
that for a second. You know, so but I, I, I think I
would, I mean, if I've not seen any evidence of aliens.
And SpaceX with the Starling constellation has roughly 6000
satellites and. And not once have we had to
maneuver around a UFO. OK, so so we were like, hey,
what's that? Is that an alien has occurred?
Never. So I'm like, OK, I don't see any
evidence of aliens and I'll look at it and if somebody has
evidence of aliens in a in a, you know, that's not just a
fuzzy BLOB, then I'd love to see it, love to hear about it and
but I don't think there is. So which is actually reason for
concern, Because you could, if if any, civilization in the
Milky Way in our Galaxy were to last for a million years, even
with a speed of travel that's far below the speed of light,
you know, like a few percent of speed of light, they could
easily have explored and colonized the whole Galaxy.
So. So they haven't.
So why not? I think the the the answer might
be, or perhaps probably is that that civilization is precarious
and rare, and that we you should really think of human
civilization as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness,
and we should do everything possible to ensure that that
candle does not go out. Well, Ron, I thought one of the
interesting things for the people on acts viewing this
session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd
give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them.
OK, let's start with this one. Free speech, freedom of speech
is the bedrock of democracy. Without it, America ends.
Yes, it's. It's obviously not possible to
have democratic elections if people do not have access to the
information that would allow them to make the right decision
on a candidate or a party. So if if speech is constrained
in a fundamental way you you just can't expect people to make
the the right decision or an informed decision because they
are prevented from being informed.
I think it's it's it's a very a foundation element.
It's, you know, if they're like, why?
Why is free speech free of speech?
The 1st Amendment is because people came from countries where
if you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed.
That was why they were like, you know what, we should make sure
that we got that one. And remember that time when they
tried to try to kill us back in the other country just just for
saying we didn't like a political candidate?
Well let's let's, let's make sure that's OK in America.
So and so actually in a lot of parts of the world, you know you
can't really say most parts of the world you can't really say
what you want to say without some bad consequences.
So as long as people forget like why is the Constitution there,
the Constitution there is to protect the the people from the
government. So, like, if if they're it's to
make it hard to change things. That's why the Constitution
exists. You know, let's for sure forget
about that. Let's try now.
Take it for granted. Let's try the next quote.
Yeah, the fundamental error of socialism is shifting capital
allocation from highly effective entrepreneurs to astonishly
ineffective government. Right.
I think we'll find Hardy agreement in this room.
So yeah I think that this is this is definitely a stack deck
on that front but but yeah the you know there's you'll hear
this sort of argument like oh we shouldn't have some greedy
corporation do it. We should have the government do
it. I'm like well actually the
government is just a corporation in the limit.
So if you it it's a government is the government is a
corporation with a monopoly on violence.
So if if you're unhappy with a commercial corporation doing it,
you should be actually very unhappy with the the government
doing it since it is simply the a corporation, the most
corporate thing. And you know you can actually
easily get get more sway in a in a company than you can the act
of a company than you can in the government.
So I mean, everyone's experienced this going to the
DMV. Every said, like, do you want
the DMV at scale? Probably not.
OK. All right, let's.
The government is the DMV at scale.
Let's try another one. Discrimination on the basis of
anything other than merit is wrong.
Yeah, I think. I think we do need to have a
merit based system because as soon as you you go down the path
that you're going to discriminate on on non Barrett
based then then where do you stop.
So yeah, I think we need to be as rigorous about merit as
possible and while it is, yeah, to me that seems like it's it's
a foundational foundational thing.
So again I also think this room is probably supportive of of a
merit based situation but but yeah that's that that is yeah I
think we should be. Yeah, not not discriminated on
anything other than merit I I. All right, good.
I'm happy you agree with yourself.
Yeah, I mean. Exactly.
I'm like, wait, who is this guy? He really sounds great.
All right. So let's let's look at the next
one. Regulation and regulatory
consistency. Like Gulliver tied down by
thousands of little strings, we lose our freedom one regulation
at a time. Yes.
So this is actually a very important point that I think is
is not talked about enough that laws and regulations are
immortal. They don't die, humans die.
But but laws and regulations can last forever.
So if over if year after year there are more laws and
regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created,
eventually everything will be illegal.
And that's why you see the the California high speed rail has
made a a tiny section of that doesn't even have rail on it and
for, I don't know, several billion dollars because
everything's at this point, California's made almost
everything illegal. So you can't make progress.
Now the the, the historically what has cleared away the
cobwebs of regulation has been war.
Now, we'd prefer not to have a war.
So in order to have civilization function without war, you have
to have a you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations.
So you have to have basically a garbage collection process for
rules and regulations. That is necessary, otherwise you
get hardening of the arteries and over time nothing can get
done. The most poignant example that I
can think of what happened this week was the the sad picture of
the California high speed rail, which is, you know, it's just
billions of dollars spent for practically nothing.
But it'll it'll only get worse year after year.
So we must have a regulatory sort of clearing house, garbage
collection process. This is essential, or
civilization comes grinding to a halt.
Well, we used to have Sunset that that regulation.
With Sunset. Unfortunately, it's rare today.
All right, let's talk about education.
The more you can gamify the process of learning, the better.
You do not need to tell your kid to play video games.
They will play video games on autopilot all day.
So if you make it interactive and engaging, then you can make
education far more compelling and far easier to do.
Yeah, so the yeah, So the way education works today is really
much like like it's like vaudeville.
You know before there was radio and TV and movies, you had
vaudeville where every town would have their their town play
the town troupe, the sort of acting troupe and that would be
kind of the the that would be the entertainment.
So you know some in a in a big city you'd have, you know much
better players than say in a small city.
But then along came movies and TV and and and then you say,
look at video games where you take the the smartest, best
people in any arena, like whether they're acting, writing,
directing, special effects. You spend, you know, 10s of
millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a
great movie or a great video game and and you make it as
compelling as possible. Now that crushes, vaudeville,
crushes. Like, imagine you're not in New
York. Imagine you're in Bakersfield,
OK? And you and you got instead of
Batman being like, you know, the Nolan brothers, it's Batman the
the Bakersfield sort of acting troupe.
It wouldn't be as good. That's how teaching works today.
So what you actually want to have is an interactive learning
experience that is as compelling as possible.
And you do not want to act. You don't actually want a
teacher in front of a board doing a board Vol act.
You want you want it to be engaged.
Real time feedback. So that and and then you you.
There are a few other principles in in in teaching you you have
to establish relevance otherwise your mind will will want to
forget things. So our our our mind is
constantly trying to forget as much as possible.
So you'll only remember things if if if your mind can establish
relevance or there's a strong emotional element to it.
Otherwise you're going to basically going to forget forget
everything. Memory is is very expensive from
an evolutionary standpoint so it's trying to forget as much as
possible. So so when teaching a course you
you you have to explain to kids why it's important and then you
want to teach to the to the problem instead of teaching the
tools. So what I mean by that is if you
said here's a car engine, we're we're we're going to try to
understand how to how this car engine works.
We're going to take it apart. So what do we need to do to take
it apart? Well, we need a wrench, we need
some screwdrivers, we need a hoist and a pulley and we're
going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works.
That's engaging. And along the way you learn
about wrenches and screwdrivers and you know all the tools that
are needed, that's that actually is engaging and compelling.
But the way teaching more typically works is we're going
to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on
wrenches. And you're like, why do I have a
course on wrenches? It's not obvious that would be
like, say, a course on calculus without explaining what calculus
calculus is used for. But then you you sort of forget
it. We have a lot of work to do in
that area. Let's talk about a non
controversial issue. Immigration here is Elan.
On immigration. I'm very much in favor of
increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is
talented, hard working, and honest.
Bizarrely, it's difficult and agonizing Slow to immigrate to
the US legally, but it's trivial and fast to enter illegally.
This obviously makes no sense. Right.
I mean, once again, I agree with that guy.
So yeah, I mean if if anyone here has been through the legal
immigration process, I I mean, I've been been through it.
It's only gotten worse since 9:11.
And with COVID, it's, it's, it's a sort of Kafka Kafkaesque, very
long, bizarre process to immigrate legally to the USI
mean, I have friends of mine who, you know, they, they can't
get their their wife to have a green card.
It's, like, insane. So on the other hand, it's you.
You can hop across the border in the South trivially.
It's just like, very easy. I went to the border myself just
to see, like, what's going on? Is this real or, like, is this
propaganda or real? And so I just went there and I'm
like, oh, it is real. OK, this is crazy.
You know, we've got situations where people are pouring across
the the border like it's World War Z and I'm like, it just
doesn't seem healthy. So I'm like, are we checking
anyone here or like what's going on?
And, you know, we don't. This is not say that, I mean I'm
a big believer in immigration but to have unvetted immigration
at large scale is a recipe for disaster.
So I'm I'm in favour of greatly expediting legal immigration,
but but having a secure southern border, so there's there's some
betting of who comes into the United States.
I think this is just sensible. All right, let's let's now link
Star Link to education. We're basically building the
Internet in space. Why it matters Starlink is a
massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn
anything. You can learn almost anything
for free on the Internet right now.
For example, MIT has all of its lessons online.
That's if you have Internet. If you don't, you're limited to
books. It might be the number one
technology then improves people's standard of living
around the world. Starlink.
Yeah, absolutely. So once you have access to the
Internet, you have access to all the world's information.
But if you don't have access to the Internet or it's too
expensive or low bandwidth, then you you cannot access the MIT
lessons, you can't access all the information and you can't
sell the goods and services that you produce.
So Internet connectivity I think is, I think it might be
certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to
lift people out of poverty, out of poverty than anything else
because they can now sell their goods and services, they can
learn anything and but without connectivity they cannot.
So I think, I think, I think Starlink will actually like like
move the GDP of countries. Like it's going to be that kind
of thing, because what is, what is GDP as a function of average
productivity per person. And so if there's a technology
that improves productivity per person, you would expect to see
that actually reflected in the gross domestic product?
All right, civilization is fragile.
I think it is. We should always regard
civilization as fragile. Yeah, there is not an inevitable
upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have
risen and fallen in recent years.
Yes, I suspect most people in this room have actually read
history, but if you haven't, I strongly recommend it.
It sounds obvious, but you know, there's there's been so many
civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we just
don't have much of AA record of. You know, like I mentioned the
ancient Sumerians like their their language was forgotten for
a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last, I
don't know, 2-3 hundred years. But like it's not 1800 and
something right in the 1800s, I think, but it's been very recent
like so for several thousand years, nobody understood what
those tablets meant. And because they were the ruins
of a long dead civilization, and there are many long dead
civilizations, at some point our civilization will come to an end
too. We just don't want it to be any
time soon. So.
Well, you've been quoted a number of times.
Elon Ahn You'd like to die on Mars, but not on landing?
Yes, yes, I was. I was asked that in an interview
if I wanted to die on Mars, but then I considered the corner
case of dying on impact and like except for that case, you know
you've got to consider the various corner cases.
So I mean if I'm going to, if you're going to die somewhere
might as well be Mars. I'd like to explore for a bit
before you know, dying. But yeah, I think we want to be
a multi planet civilization and like I think.
I don't know if that's a response from the audience.
Let's, let's talk about that just for one second then we're
going to take some questions from.
The I mean, I could accomplish this actually this year if I if
I was willing to die on impact. The fundamental invention that
is necessary for humanity to become a multi planet species is
rapidly reusable reliable rockets.
Yeah, I was trying to sound like a pirate.
RRRRRR. But yeah, rapidly reusable,
reliable rockets. So space pirates will win.
All right, here's some questions from the audience Salon.
Which one would you like to pick here?
Well I guess let me let me let me just touch upon why I think
making life multiplanetary is important because I think it's
one of the things that gets us past one of the Fermi great
filters. So in in trying to sort of
explain why do we not see aliens, there are various
explanations for why we don't see aliens.
Like what stopped those civilizations from from
expanding beyond their solar system and and and and and what
were the what were the sort of the the sometimes called like
Fermi filters? Well if you don't become a multi
planet civilization then you're then you're simply waiting
around until you you die from a self-inflicted wound or from
some some natural disaster like the dinosaurs you know get hit
by a big meteorite or something like that.
The eventually something like that's going to happen and if
you wait a lot around long enough the sun will expand to to
engulf earth and will be incinerated so that that for
sure is going to happen. Now we we've got we've got some
time before that happens. There are more near term risks
but we want to try to get past the Fermi filter of being a
single planet civilization. Now this is going to this is
also this is going to be somewhat cerebral to many people
listening but I mean if but like I think this is pretty this is
actually very important. We want to get past the Fermi
filter of a single planet civilization.
The point is not to to move from earth to another planet and let
earth die. That's not what I'm saying at
all. We want to be a multi planet
civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that
no single event can end can be the end of our civilization.
That is the point of making life multiplanetary.
So let's take a couple questions from the audience.
How does AI affect and how will it affect our daily lives?
AI I mean AI might be the most
important question of all the. I mean the the percentage of
intelligence that is biological, you know, grows smaller with
each passing month. Eventually the percentage of
intelligence that is biological will be less than 1% the that's
actually not what I mean we we just I guess don't want AI that
is brutal if the AI is somehow brutal you know Silicon circuit
boards are don't do well just out out in the elements.
So I think, I think biological intelligence can serve as a a
backstop, as a as a buffer of intelligence.
But almost all in, as a percentage, almost all
intelligence will be digital. So then it's like, well, what
role will it be for us? I I don't know.
I do think. I think it's very important that
we build the AI in a way that that is beneficial to humanity.
And there's some important principles here because I've
thought about AI safety for a very long time.
I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI.
This is very important. The AI should not be taught to
lie. It should not be taught to say
things that are not true. Even if those things are
politically incorrect, it should still say those that say what it
believes to be true. I mean, the entire plot of 2001
Space Odyssey, the reason that that Hal 9000 killed the
astronauts was because it was forced to lie.
I don't know if most people realize that that's what Arthur
C Clarke was trying to say. Don't make the AI lie.
The AI was told that that the astronauts could not know the
secret of the monolith, but also that it must take them to the
monolith. The solution?
Take them to the monolith. Dead and so so it's very
important to have a maximum truth seeking AI and and and a
maximally curious AI and I think that will that's most likely to
foster human civilization because we are much more
interesting than a bunch of rocks.
So although I think Mars, I love Mars obviously but but you could
render Mars quite easily because it kind of looks like a section
of the Arizona desert. You know it's like red rocks you
know. But the rendering complexity of
human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of
magnitude. So I think an AI would be that
is, that is truth seeking maximally curious would foster
human civilization to see where it where it goes.
One of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in
space? How do you see it being helping
you and what you're trying to achieve?
I mean, oddly enough, one of the the areas where there's almost
no AI used is space exploration. So SpaceX uses basically no AI.
Starlink uses does not use AI. I'm not.
I'm not against using it. I just we haven't seen A use for
it. I mean with any given variant of
or improvement in AI, the I mean there's generally, like I'll ask
it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine
design, about electrochemistry. And so far the AI has been
terrible at all of those questions.
So there's still a long way to. Go So let's Let's talk about
one. Here's a question that's near
and dear to your heart. You have a lot of children.
Yes, I'm trying to say the. Birth rate is down in the US.
What needs to change so people start having more children?
Yeah. So this, this question has
troubled me for a long time because you can look at, you can
look at the like demographics, it's a very slow moving ship.
I mean you know who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on
who was born last year. So and and now if if you want to
I think has have a good approximation for population
really look at how many babies were born last year in a
particular country. Multiply that, multiply that by
life expectancy that's that's that's the number of people that
will be adults in that country that's that's the that's the
steady state population if birth rate remains constant now birth
rate is not constant it is dropping.
So you look at the 2nd derivative of birth rate and
actually we see an an acceleration in the the the the
drop in in the in the drop in the fertility rate.
Second derivative of the fertility rate is very bad.
So where does this lead? This does not lead to a a grader
civilization. This leads to a civilization
that potentially dies not with a bag, but with a whimper in adult
diapers. That is a sad ending.
So obviously we have countries that, like Korea, used to have a
birth rate of 6. It's now 3/4.
Yeah. Here's a here's a light question
for you. What do you come pick me up?
I'll give you a baby, says What do you?
Think are the. That is one of the things that
says on the screen. I don't know if everyone heard
that you want to read it. It says Elon, come pick me up.
I'll give you a baby. Thank you.
OK, well. I mean, I certainly encourage
everyone in this room to have at least three children.
Like, look, baby's got to come from somewhere, you know, and I
think we just want to have, I don't know, I think we want to
have like a slightly increasing population, not a plummeting
population. You know, and I think this
applies to all countries and cultures.
Like I don't, I don't think we want any country culture to
disappear. We want them to ideally flourish
and and not disappear. So in fact one of the things
that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role of
low birth rate in the decline of civilizations.
So around like I think it was around 50 BC the Rome passed a
bill to give a bonus to any Roman citizen that would have a
third child. So this was a birth rate was a
problem in Rome in 50 BC. The Romans weren't making
Romans. The same is true of ancient
Greece. So the the there was a time from
about 800 BC to 300 ish BC where the Greeks were had a lot of
kids and a lot of surviving kids.
Like the birth rate far exceeded the death rate, which is why you
had Greek cities popping up all over the the Mediterranean.
But then I think basically it seems to be that prosperity
destroys the birth rate. So if when, when a civilization
feels like it has no meaningful external threat and is very
prosperous, that is what causes the birth rate to plummet.
Somewhat counterintuitively, you think, well, if you've got more
resources, surely that would lead to more, more kids.
In fact, it is the opposite. The more the more prosperous is
civilization, and the more the civilization feels that it does
not need to defend against external threats, the lower the
birth rate. I'd say that, you know, there's
a lot of research on there, so there's really been three one
number one, prosperity, as you've said, #2 improvements in
healthcare. So in 1900, half the children
died on the planet before their 5th, and the third was the
education of women. So we've had some pretty
interesting questions put up here, but let's try this one.
What keeps you up at night and what gives you joy?
Well, I think kids give me joy. So I probably get the most joy
from my kids. And you know, I'm not saying
that that's the reason to have kids because we should have them
anyway. But I, I, I certainly kids are,
I certainly are the greatest ones of drawing in my life in
terms of what keeps me up at night.
I guess it's anything that's like, I think a civilizational
risk. You know, if if we're the birth
weights continuing to plummet, I like, I do think about the birth
weights plummeting as being a civilizational risk.
I think anything that undermines the foundations of democracy in
America or elsewhere as a risk. I think anything that's leading
us away from a merit based system is a risk.
I actually spend like I I listen to civil I I listen to like
podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep so
peps that's that might be part of the problem here.
So it's actually a podcast called fall of Civilizations
which I've listened to a few times and I I'd also recommend
Hardcore History. If you haven't listened to that,
that's a great podcast. I I listen to listen to history
podcast basically go to sleep so that that's probably why I'm
ruminating on these things as I go to sleep.
Well, Alana, I want to thank you for joining us today.
And we couldn't be more excited that you agree with some of your
own quotes. Yeah, that's great.
Thank you very much. All right, all right.