{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw", "page_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEo107j-uw", "title": "Elon Musk and Y Combinator President on Thinking for the Future - FULL CONVERSATION", "show_or_channel": "Vanity Fair", "date": "2015-10-08", "duration_s": 2874, "type": "panel", "speakers": ["Sam Altman", "Elon Musk"], "confidence": "high", "notes": "Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit 2015; AI discussed (pre-OpenAI announcement).", "people": ["sam-altman"], "id": "2015-10-08_vanity-fair-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-president-on", "audio_duration_s": 2873.856, "worker": "jc-w10", "transcribe_s": 128.2, "model": "large-v3", "segments": [{"start": 0.37, "end": 24.91, "text": "Thank you all for sticking around this afternoon. We had some great conversations, and we're hoping to have another great one. It is my pleasure and honor and privilege really to have this conversation about the future with two gentlemen who know probably more about it than most. The fellow all the way to my right, to your left, does not need any introduction, Elon Musk. You all know from Tesla and SpaceX, of course, from SolarCity."}, {"start": 24.91, "end": 53.09, "text": "Sam Alban, I would say you don't need too much introduction either, but I'm going to give it to you just in case you don't. He runs Y Combinator. Y Combinator has investments in over 1,000 companies at this point. They're investing in about 250 companies every single year. Those companies collectively are worth about $65 billion in total. That's with a B. And to give you just sort of a sense of the kind of names we're talking about, we're talking about Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart."}, {"start": 53.09, "end": 81.25, "text": "So both folks with an amazing pedigree and an amazing sense of what's going on. Here's where I want to start the conversation with both of you, and I think we're going to probably go to outer space very quickly. But we're going to try to keep it on Earth at least for the moment. When you think about innovation and you think about where we are going to be 10, 15, 20 years and what to invest in and what to make, I'm going to make it hard for you, Elon. If you took Tesla out of it,"}, {"start": 81.25, "end": 114.64, "text": "You took SolarCity out of it, took SpaceX out of it, and you said, I could go start a new company tomorrow. It would be what? It would be in what area? Where would you start thinking about? Well, I think there's a fairly obvious opportunity in electric aircraft. Because all transport will electrify over time, with the exception of rockets, ironically."}, {"start": 115.15, "end": 148.54, "text": "I think there's two areas which are fraught with issues, but it's one of those things where if you don't do something, maybe not doing something is worse, like on the AI front or on genetics. Those are the two things I think, besides sustainable transport, the internet,"}, {"start": 148.54, "end": 177.28, "text": "And making life multi-planetary. Rewriting genetics and AI. The latter two are the ones that can most change the destiny of humanity. But they're really dodgy. Maybe I'd try to do something in one of those two areas. But they're fraught with difficulty. Elizabeth Holmes was here earlier, spoke during the lunch hour. Do you think about..."}, {"start": 177.28, "end": 208.42, "text": "Genetics and longevity and trying to sort of avoid... Your friend Larry Page is investing in a business hoping to end death. I don't... I mean, I'm not actually a huge proponent of longevity. I mean, I do think that having a good life for longer is better. Like, you'd want to address the things that happen to you when you're older, like dementia and so forth."}, {"start": 208.42, "end": 243.14, "text": "Those are pretty important. But I'm not sure I sort of actually want to do that, want to get into the genetics thing. But it is something that's going to fundamentally change humanity along with AI. You don't want to live forever so that you can get to Mars? I definitely don't want to live forever. How many years do you want to live? I don't know, 100 good ones. 100 good ones or 100 more good ones?"}, {"start": 243.14, "end": 273.31, "text": "You're 44? I mean, 100 good ones in total I think is probably fine, and maybe a bit longer. Sam, where would you put your money? You're the investor here. Well, I mean, we try to invest in a very broad range of technology, so we funded an electric airplane company. We've done AI companies. How realistic is the electric airplane, by the way? I think it should work."}, {"start": 273.31, "end": 300.61, "text": "I mean, I think it makes sense that the math should work. I think I actually, no huge surprise, but I'll agree with Elon on those two areas. I think if you could pick two things that I'm not already working really hard on, having AI go in the positive direction, which I really think it can, and I think thinking about sort of genetic technology. Genetic technology."}, {"start": 300.61, "end": 331.76, "text": "I made it unfair for you because I said we had to take SolarCity out and we had to take the cars out, so we didn't get to really talk about energy, but I imagine how big a thing do you think energy all in, and when you think about both your investments and what you're doing, is something that is one of the things that you need to tackle? I think sustainable energy is the most important problem that we face this century. That's like a known difficult thing that we have to solve."}, {"start": 331.76, "end": 362.42, "text": "If we continue to rely on burning hydrocarbons, the future is going to be quite bad, and the vast majority of the scientific establishment believes that. And the evidence, I think, is, well, I mean, anyone with a scientific background is unequivocal. So we've got to solve sustainable energy. I'm a big fan of solar because we've got this big fusion ball in the sky."}, {"start": 362.42, "end": 390.38, "text": "The thing I would add, I think getting the cost of sustainable energy down super low is probably short of friendly AI."}, {"start": 390.38, "end": 419.42, "text": "The most important thing we can do for sort of quality of life of the poorest half of the world. I think that every time I look into this, it's really amazing how much the cost of energy and the quality of life correlate. What about nuclear energy? You have some investments in nuclear energy. Yeah, I mean, what I've always said is I think the end state of the world is a combination of nuclear and solar, probably 80-20 one way or the other, sort of terrestrial-based nuclear. I think fusion is likely to work at some point in the next couple of decades, and that's a really big deal. I think that..."}, {"start": 419.42, "end": 449.46, "text": "It's good to have a backup option. It's good to have two sources. But, you know, like, it's all sort of fusion when you think about it. Yeah, I mean, I'm big... I mean, I think fusion... I think it's definitely possible to make fusion work. But I think... And I used to be a big fan of, like, having that as the long-term energy source. But I'm inclined to think, like, indirect fusion from the sun, essentially, is going to be the primary source. And then, to some degree, there will be fusion reactors."}, {"start": 449.46, "end": 476.62, "text": "What about the risks of nuclear energy? Of fusion? Of fusion? I assume there's some risk. There's no risk? Not really. Zero? I'm an idiot? No. With fusion, the difficulty is keeping it going. With fission, you have some meltdown risk, although there's..."}, {"start": 476.62, "end": 505.81, "text": "There's new technology on the fission front that makes the meltdown risk extremely low. But with fusion, the great difficulty is keeping the fire from going out. It's quite hard to sustain a fusion reaction, unless you have something very big like the sun. The sun has gravitational confinement of the fusion reaction. So since you can't do gravitational confinement on Earth, you have to do some sort of..."}, {"start": 505.81, "end": 535.55, "text": "Electromagnetic confinement, one form or another, or a kinetic confinement by slamming things into each other. So it's quite tricky to prevent a fusion explosion from not immediately extinguishing. Got it. So fusion is like... I mean, probably what you do is just repeat it every second or whatever. I mean, just to sort of... Fusion is like when you take, say, two hydrogen..."}, {"start": 535.55, "end": 564.98, "text": "I didn't do so well in science, so we're going to try to move along."}, {"start": 564.98, "end": 592.51, "text": "You recently said that you wanted to nuke Mars. I didn't really understand that. Then you guys in the back were doing some science talk about how nuking Mars would work. Yeah. Yeah, so nuking Mars, I sort of was a little flippant about that. I think it's a really decent idea. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah."}, {"start": 592.51, "end": 621.01, "text": "What I was really getting at, but it's hard to convey that in 30 seconds on the late show with Stephen Colbert, was that the sun is a fusion explosion. That's what the sun is. It's an ongoing fusion explosion. So if you wanted to add energy to Mars, like warm up Mars, really the source of almost all energy in the universe is fusion. Even fission is..."}, {"start": 621.01, "end": 649.2, "text": "Originally, there was fusion, and then that then later resulted in fission. But what I was really talking about is creating two little suns, two pulsing suns above the north and south pole of Mars that would warm the poles up enough so that the frozen CO2 would gasify and densify the atmosphere. Some of the water would also heat up, and you'd have more water vapor."}, {"start": 649.2, "end": 679.42, "text": "Why would you ever want to live on Mars?"}, {"start": 679.42, "end": 705.49, "text": "Excuse me? Nothing for Mars, but I hope Elon goes. I think that would be cool. But is that just for one person? What's going to happen? No, really, I want to... Well, I mean, the Mars thing is really, like, if you say what is going to be really important to the preservation of civilization or life as we know it, more than just, you know, humanity, because, of course, we bring life as we know it to Mars. And there's no life that we can detect on the surface of Mars. There may be some subterranean..."}, {"start": 705.49, "end": 734.98, "text": "Bacterial life, but on the surface there isn't anything. So this would be the extension of life to another planet, or life as we know it to another planet. And I think would make a huge difference to the probable lifespan of human civilization and life as we know it. So it's sort of like an insurance policy, a life insurance policy of life collectively."}, {"start": 734.98, "end": 763.15, "text": "Yeah, probable. Because you think global warming, what do you think is going to happen here? I do want to be clear. This is a, I mean, I think it's important that we become a multi-planet species, not a single planet species, but on another planet. So this is, if we, it's like, really, it's like, what kind of future do you want to have? Do you want to have a future where we are forever confined to one planet or one where we are out there exploring the stars and on many planets? And I think..."}, {"start": 763.15, "end": 792.27, "text": "The latter one is far more exciting and inspiring because the former is basically waiting around until some extinction event. Because eventually there will be one. And it might be quite far in the future, but it also might not be far in the future. So there's really two main reasons, I think, to make life multi-planetary and to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. One is the defensive reason to ensure that the light of consciousness as we know it is not extinguished."}, {"start": 792.27, "end": 821.1, "text": "Or last much longer. And the second is that it would be an amazing adventure that we could all enjoy vicariously, if not personally. I think it's really important to establish multi-planetary life. I agree with that. I think my concern is that the AI question is likely to become pressing and important to deal with before we can establish a full colony on Mars. That's true."}, {"start": 821.26, "end": 852.0, "text": "And I think even if not, then the AI can, like, go to Mars on a laser beam. The AI goes to... What does that even mean? It just beams itself there. Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to send a human through space. But the AI is going to go. Like 20 minutes, you know, on a laser beam. It's easy. Do you guys believe in life forms outside of Earth? Do you think there are? I mean, I think there's quite a high chance of microbial life. There's a much... Then as you get more advanced in life,"}, {"start": 852.0, "end": 883.94, "text": "There's a great Onion article recently about NASA should only hold a press conference if they find aliens that we can talk to. It's an interesting confluence of events. It's not just that"}, {"start": 883.94, "end": 914.45, "text": "There has to be intelligent life that evolves somewhere, but that life has to last for a long time for us to exist at the same time as that. So what it suggests is this great question. It's called the Fermi paradox. Like, where are the aliens? Like, if there are so many planets out there and the universe is almost 14 billion years old, why aren't the aliens everywhere?"}, {"start": 914.74, "end": 945.26, "text": "And this is one of the most perplexing questions because you could basically bicycle to Alpha Centauri in a few hundred thousand years, meaning at bicycle speed. So it's sort of like in 100 billion years, even at a very slow speed, you could completely blanket the galaxy."}, {"start": 946.13, "end": 976.51, "text": "So why not? Where are they? It's very hard for me to get around this. We were talking in the back, and we've had this conversation before. You please weigh in on this. And I think it's a thought experiment that you have suggested that we are all collectively right now living in a simulation. What does that mean? Yeah, it's a probabilistic thing. So really, if you look at..."}, {"start": 976.51, "end": 1004.08, "text": "I'd say the advancement of video games from, say, 40 years ago when we started out with Pong and just had rectangles batting a rectangle to each other. And now we've got photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, or 3D games with millions of people playing simultaneously that are just getting better. Now we've got virtual reality headsets, so you can just put it on and it feels like you're right there."}, {"start": 1004.08, "end": 1034.26, "text": "You'll have haptic feedback, meaning force feedback sticks, so you can actually pick up something and feel like you're picking up something. Have haptic gloves. And if you extrapolate that advancement at any rate at all, like if you say, okay, let's say it slows down by a factor of 100 starting right now. Okay, so then the video games will be indistinguishable from reality in, let's say,"}, {"start": 1034.7, "end": 1063.36, "text": "You know, 200 years instead of 20 years or something like that. But you don't think that we're in a game right now? Okay, well, this is... Like that we are all... Somebody has a joystick somewhere else in some other... You know where I'm going with this. It certainly doesn't feel like that. I mean, I don't think I'm being played by somebody in a video game. But then people in video games don't generally think that."}, {"start": 1063.36, "end": 1091.3, "text": "I certainly think if you talk to people who use the latest virtual reality equipment in sort of a big space where they sort of map benches in the space to benches in the game and the environment, they have this experience when they do that for the first time and they take it off. And then they just freeze for 10 seconds. And then you talk to them and it's clear that their belief that this is actual reality has been shaken because they were so convinced in virtual reality that that was real."}, {"start": 1091.3, "end": 1121.95, "text": "And so if I can take this off, like, why aren't there other layers? I also think it ties, interestingly, back to the Fermi paradox. Yeah, exactly. You know, if it is a simulation, sort of that would be a pretty good answer for why there are no aliens. How far are we away from sort of virtual reality being a thing that all of us sort of live in to some degree? We would go to this conference... Real close. We would go to this conference from our VR sets. I mean, I do think there's still something to actually..."}, {"start": 1121.95, "end": 1148.03, "text": "Really being there in person that we probably won't lose for a long time, hopefully never. But, I mean, with what Oculus and Valve are coming out with, and I believe some of that, like the first VR headsets are due out... Early next year. Yeah, like in the next several months. And the demos that I've seen, and I think Sam's probably seen too, are incredibly compelling."}, {"start": 1148.03, "end": 1175.86, "text": "And there is that strange feeling, because you put the headset on in, like, a very nondescript, bland room, and you put the headset on, and suddenly you're in anywhere. Like, you could be... Yeah, you know, I got this demo where they would, like, blow air on you when you, like, got near a cliff edge, and when you walked near a fire, they would turn on the heater. You don't see any of this because you're just wearing it. And it's really quite compelling. I want to talk about something else that's compelling, which is Tesla."}, {"start": 1175.86, "end": 1205.39, "text": "It's really nice. We can talk about the X. It's an SUV. It's an SUV, but here's what I was going to say. $132,000. How many people are really going to buy this thing? Yeah, so the first cars that are produced are fully optioned version. So it's not like a base price of $132,000. And we'll have a version that's still expensive on the expensive side, but before any incentives would be about $75,000 next year."}, {"start": 1205.39, "end": 1233.23, "text": "And with incentives and whatnot, it's maybe $65,000. So it's still expensive, but it's not as crazy as $132,000. And in a couple years, we should have the Model 3, and that'll be starting price of $35,000. So it's a smaller car, but it's..."}, {"start": 1233.55, "end": 1261.39, "text": "A lot more affordable. Okay, so for the Tesla sort of real aficionados who follow you on Twitter, you need to answer one thing, which is last week somebody tweeted at you, I think about the X, and then you put out a tweet that mentioned the Y and the 3, and then you deleted the tweet. Yes. And everybody wants to know why you deleted the tweet and what the tweet actually said. No, I think it just said something like there'll be the model."}, {"start": 1261.39, "end": 1290.42, "text": "Three, and the Model Y, and that one of them will have like a falcon wing door, which is like pretty obviously the Model Y. So, but I deleted that and like, I don't know, a dozen other tweets because I just sort of had like kind of a rambling Twitter history. But it had no significance. The delete has no significance. Like I don't think deleting a tweet like makes it go away from the internet or something. So why delete the tweet? I just didn't like the way my Twitter history looked. It was like too rambling."}, {"start": 1292.66, "end": 1321.23, "text": "You've invested in Twitter, in Twitter, in Tesla. Yeah. You own a Tesla. Yeah. Make the case for those who are out there. Let's make it harder because he has to do it now. Why? What is this going to become in your mind? You sure you don't want him to answer? Yeah, we know what he's going to say. Look, I mean, I think as most people who own one think, it's the best car out there."}, {"start": 1321.23, "end": 1348.85, "text": "I had a Roadster before a Tesla Roadster, which was not the best car. But the Model S really is. It's the best car on the market. And I think that people think of this like existing car companies. But actually, this is like a software company with a car attached to it. And you sort of point and click. You point the wheel somewhere, you push the thing down, and it just kind of gets there. It doesn't make noise. It's very reliable. The software actually works. It's the only car with good software."}, {"start": 1348.85, "end": 1378.67, "text": "So I think people really like it. Now, yeah, it's really expensive still, but I think, well, I'm confident that a mass market Tesla will do very well, and I also think the other electric cars I've driven feel like many years behind. Right. You talked about this being a software company. Do you think of yourself as a software company? I think we're a software and a hardware company, but the software component does become increasingly important. So you've got to get both right."}, {"start": 1378.67, "end": 1406.42, "text": "Because it's a holistic product experience, but its software is an increasing proportion of the problem, particularly as you get to autonomy. So there is a view, I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory, that you are building autonomous functionality and other driverless-like functionality into the car without advertising that it's in there."}, {"start": 1406.42, "end": 1435.25, "text": "And that one day you were going to flip a switch and the car is going to start just driving. Well, no, not quite like that. But we are going to upload new software soon. And this is not actually a secret or anything. We have version 7 of our software, which turns on highway autopilot. So the car will be able to steer by itself on highways or any kind of..."}, {"start": 1435.41, "end": 1464.75, "text": "Any kind of road that doesn't have really steep, sharp curves on it. And then also, it'll steer quite well in traffic. So those are the two scenarios where it's going to be quite good at steering. And that's in public beta right now. So we have, I don't know, 600 or 700 Tesla drivers, owners that are testing the auto steer software."}, {"start": 1464.75, "end": 1488.16, "text": "Go ahead. I think full self-driving cars, not Tesla specifically, but just in general, are likely to get here much more quickly than people realize. Yeah, absolutely. I think if you ask most people, they'd still say that's 10 to 20 years away. And I actually think we'll have full point-to-point autonomous driving in a few years. It won't be uncommon. A few years, like two or three years? Three or four, maybe."}, {"start": 1488.16, "end": 1513.52, "text": "Yeah, probably not better. I agree. I think that's something on the two, three-year time frame is likely for it to be technologically... I mean, you'll be able to demonstrate it, but you won't be able to go to fully autonomous until you get regulatory approval. Yeah, that'll take longer. So there's a time difference between when it is technologically possible in a general sense, you know, so that..."}, {"start": 1513.52, "end": 1540.22, "text": "Not just in a very tightly mapped situation like, say, Mountain View or Palo Alto, but in the general sense of can it do point-to-point virtually anywhere. I think that's only two to three years away. But then approval from regulators of having it be autonomous is anywhere from, I don't know, one to five years after that, depending upon the location."}, {"start": 1540.22, "end": 1569.71, "text": "The regulators have to be convinced that it is substantial. I think they'll want to see that it's significantly safer than cars that are driven by people. I want to open it up in about five minutes, so I just have a couple more questions to get to you. And so if you guys have questions in the audience, get your shot on goal in just a second. I want to talk about entrepreneurship, because both of you are entrepreneurs. You invest in them. You are one. And you think about this a lot. Your old pal, Peter Thiel."}, {"start": 1569.71, "end": 1597.97, "text": "He likes to say that he would not invest in somebody who's over the age of 30 years old. That that should be the cutoff. You're 44 now. He's invested in you. Yeah, I guess you make some exceptions. But you may be the exception to the rule. As somebody who invests in companies every day, do you think there's a cutoff? There's a lot of people out here who are over the age of 30. Are we done?"}, {"start": 1597.97, "end": 1627.95, "text": "I mean, we've said this before, but when we've looked at our data, the mean age of entrepreneurs we fund is just around 29 or 30. So there's obviously lots of over-30 entrepreneurs that we fund, some of which have gone on to create multi-billion dollar companies. So I think certainly you can't say it's impossible for people over 30 to create companies. That's ridiculous. And we plan to continue to invest in people of all ages. The correlation that we've noticed is that if you look at the really successful companies we've had, the multi-billion dollar companies,"}, {"start": 1627.95, "end": 1657.92, "text": "The average age for those founders does skew significantly younger, but the success rate of founders of this binary is the company's success or not skews older than 30. So younger entrepreneurs, I think, tend to take bigger risks. Maybe they're willing to work on these very long time horizon projects, but that's the only correlation we see. I think it would be a crazy strategy to say, I'm never going to invest in anyone over 30. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's... I don't think Peter meant that either."}, {"start": 1657.92, "end": 1681.17, "text": "Yeah, I mean, you can definitely start a company at any age and be successful. I mean, it's really just a question of, like, do you have a good idea? Are you working really hard? Are you able to attract a great team and motivate the team? And that's sort of really what matters. But you've had multiple ideas. And there's another view, by the way, which is that you can only really have one great idea, right?"}, {"start": 1681.17, "end": 1707.5, "text": "That everybody sort of has maybe, maybe one great idea. No, it's not really the idea. You know, I mean, like there's that old saying, it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, I think is generally true. I mean, a lot of times companies start out with an idea that's actually wrong, but they adapt quickly enough to get it to something that's right. And I can say, like, at the beginning of Tesla, we started out with..."}, {"start": 1707.5, "end": 1736.03, "text": "We started the company with two false premises that turned out to be really dumb. One was that we'd be able to license the drivetrain technology from a company called AC Propulsion in Southern California and that it would just work. That totally didn't work. And then we also thought we'd be able to adapt the Lotus Elise chassis at low cost and be able to essentially put the AC propulsion"}, {"start": 1736.03, "end": 1765.92, "text": "Drive train technology in a Lotus Elise chassis and then just build that quickly and sell it and that would be okay. But like I said, the AC propulsion technology did not lend itself to any kind of cost-effective, reliable car. It was okay for a small prototype, but not for a commercial product. And then the Lotus Elise,"}, {"start": 1765.92, "end": 1787.6, "text": "That ended up being worse than if we had designed a car from the beginning because we ended up changing like 96% of the components in the car and invalidating all of the crash results and all the safety stuff. The car ended up being 30% heavier. It had to be longer. And it ended up being like..."}, {"start": 1787.6, "end": 1809.5, "text": "If you had a house in mind, and instead of actually building a house from scratch, you got some existing house, and ended up knocking everything except one wall in the basement out, and it would have been better to just build the house from the beginning, the house you wanted. So basically, Tesla was started on the basis of two dumb ideas."}, {"start": 1809.5, "end": 1839.12, "text": "It was a tough one to overcome those two issues, but we managed to get past them. So that's, I think, the more important thing is start somewhere and then really be prepared to question your assumptions, fix what you did wrong, and adapt to reality. How do you run two companies at the same time? Jack Dorsey's about to take this on in a meaningful way. What does a day in the life of Elon Musk actually look like? Yeah, I wouldn't recommend running two companies."}, {"start": 1839.12, "end": 1869.74, "text": "It really decreases your freedom quite a lot. And I'll tell you what, so my day is probably a bit different than people think it is. Most of my time is actually spent on engineering and design. So that's probably, I don't know, like 70% of my time. Like press stuff like this is maybe..."}, {"start": 1869.87, "end": 1900.08, "text": "Two or three percent of my time. It's really, really tiny. And I'm going to reduce it even further to probably like one percent of my time. Real quick, and then we'll go to the audience. Politics. I want to ask you two political questions. One is innovation in politics. Do you think there will ever be a day where we actually vote on our phone? We stupidly seem to still go and vote in our local district, oftentimes at a local school. And I also wanted to get your sense of..."}, {"start": 1900.08, "end": 1929.06, "text": "Who out there you may or may not like right now in terms of what you guys do and who you think might do the best? All right, I'll take the first question. Elon can answer the second. Trump's amazing. I think that, yes, we will someday vote on our phones. And it will have a significant impact because it will really change the people who vote. So I think that may take a while because there are a lot of people who don't want to see the electorate change, but over a 20-year time frame. I always try to think about things over these sort of 10 or 20-year time frames."}, {"start": 1929.06, "end": 1962.67, "text": "I think you can get so caught up in what's happening this month or next year. Are we in a bubble? Are we buying at a low tick or a high tick? But eventually it's going to happen, and I take solace in that. Anyway, Elon on Donald Trump. Yeah. He asked you. I mean, I don't really have strong feelings, except that hopefully Trump doesn't forget the nomination of the Republican Party. Because I think that's, yeah, that wouldn't be good."}, {"start": 1962.67, "end": 1993.17, "text": "Barry Diller said he would move out of the country. What about you? I think at most he would get the Republican nomination, but I think that would still be a bit embarrassing. I think that could happen. You think it will happen? It could. It won't surprise me if it does. I honestly don't have strong feelings about the... Do you get involved in politics? I get involved in politics as little as possible."}, {"start": 1993.17, "end": 2020.98, "text": "Yeah. There's some amount that I have to get involved in, mostly because SpaceX has to battle Boeing and Lockheed for national security and civil space launch contracts. So if we don't battle them, then we'll lose. How corrupt is that whole thing? Yeah."}, {"start": 2021.07, "end": 2049.04, "text": "I actually would say that on balance, I guess it's not that corrupt because if it was corrupt, then SpaceX would have no chance. Because SpaceX, I mean, it's gotten a bit bigger these days, but it was very tiny when we won our first government contract. And if it had been like deeply corrupt, then we would not have won anything. So, you know, I think..."}, {"start": 2049.17, "end": 2078.16, "text": "You know, I think actually the greater the level of visibility politically, the less corruption occurs. So I think there's actually probably like the least corruption at the presidential level, then at the Senate level, and the House, and then there can be a bit more corruption at the state level. It's like basically how much detention are people paying? That defines how much corruption occurs. Right. Yeah. You know, perhaps, and we'll open it up, but it got me thinking."}, {"start": 2078.16, "end": 2108.83, "text": "The only real big critique of some of your businesses is that they are subsidized to some degree by the government. Could these businesses succeed without government help? Yeah, absolutely. At some point, I should probably write a rebuttal because there was like an nonsensical LA Times article from which a lot of this stems. Because what the LA Times article did was add up all incentives that Tesla has received."}, {"start": 2108.83, "end": 2137.09, "text": "And all incentives that Tesla will receive. So like over a 30-year period. And made it sound like a big number. But it's, you know, like if somebody's earning $50,000 a year, you don't call them a millionaire because over the next 20 years they will cumulatively earn a million dollars. But that's effectively what that article did. The incentives, I think, for Tesla and SolarCity"}, {"start": 2137.09, "end": 2165.36, "text": "What they really do is balance out the actual and de facto incentives that carbon producing activities have. And I don't think they actually balance it out. So the carbon producing activities still sort of overwhelm the incentives that electric cars and solar receives. I mean, for example, there's a 20% tax incentive for a stripper oil well."}, {"start": 2165.36, "end": 2195.62, "text": "And the incentive for solar is currently 30%, but dropping to 10% in two years. So in two years, the incentive for solar power will be half that of a stripper oil well. And SpaceX made it in spite of Boeing and Lockheed receiving a billion dollar plus subsidy for their launch activities. So I think in the case of SpaceX, it was sort of success in spite of incentives."}, {"start": 2195.62, "end": 2224.48, "text": "In the case of SolarCity and Tesla, the incentives were moderately helpful, but not the deciding factor. They're catalysts. They made things happen a little faster than they would otherwise happen. But you look at something like there's a $7,500 tax credit for EVs. Okay, so that ends up being a 10% discount that the consumer receives for buying the car. It's not like night and day difference."}, {"start": 2224.48, "end": 2250.11, "text": "Okay, we got a lot of people who are standing, and we want to get to all the questions. We're going to sort of try to do this rapid fire, so I'd ask you to keep your questions short, and these guys are going to keep their answers short as well, or at least we're going to hope. Go ahead. My name is Bruce Gittleman. I'm a private investor in Toronto, Canada, and Elon, if you're not happy with the next election, you're more than welcome to come back to Canada. The question is about artificial intelligence. Like any good new technology, people always fear..."}, {"start": 2250.11, "end": 2279.36, "text": "The change and things that can go wrong. I was wondering if Sam and Elon could share with us their positive vision of AI's impact on our coming life. We didn't even get to AI in this whole conversation. Yeah, I think, look, there is a really positive vision here, right? I think there are, the science fiction version is either that we enslave it or it enslaves us, but there's this happy symbiotic vision, which I don't think is the default case, but what we should work towards. I think already humans and AI are co-evolving and no one's paid attention to this yet."}, {"start": 2279.36, "end": 2309.31, "text": "But I don't think there's any human left that understands all of how Google search results are ranked on that first page. It really is machine learning algorithms. So when we search on Google, it's an AI deciding what we should see. When a dating site matches two people together, there's a machine learning algorithm that no human understands how it works that is getting people together that then have babies. And so, in effect, you know, you have this, like, machine learning algorithm breeding humans. And so, really, I mean, you do. And so there's this... And then, you know, those people, like, work on the algorithms later."}, {"start": 2309.31, "end": 2340.61, "text": "And so I think the happy vision of the future is sort of humans and AI in a symbiotic relationship, distributed AI where it sort of empowers a lot of different individuals, not this single AI that kind of governs everything that we all do that's a million times smarter, a million times smarter than any other entity. So I think that's what we should work towards. I agree with what Sam said. I mean, we are effectively already a human-machine collective symbiote."}, {"start": 2340.61, "end": 2371.78, "text": "Like a giant cyborg. That's actually what society is today. But I have an affinity for the human portion of that cyborg collective. And I do think we need to be careful about the development of AI and make sure it is ultimately beneficial to humanity, that the future is good. Question over here."}, {"start": 2371.78, "end": 2398.83, "text": "Okay, so not too long ago, oh, my name is Jessica Singh, by the way, but not too long ago on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, they had Bill Nye the Science Guy on there discussing the new Mars discovery, and the other panelists basically said that our society doesn't care about the scientific discoveries of NASA, and how does innovation, what does that mean in a society that only values the results, like the final products, like a car, or finally going to space, and not really valuing the process of getting there?"}, {"start": 2400.94, "end": 2432.7, "text": "Well, I mean, I do think that there is, I'm not sure I agree with that. I mean, I think we do value discovery and new things and learning about the universe. I mean, there was quite a bit of attention paid to the discovery of water flowing on Mars. I mean, I'd certainly say there should be more, but I think it's okay. I think it's not bad. I think we're better off than the show would suggest."}, {"start": 2432.7, "end": 2462.1, "text": "Okay, we're going to try to get to everybody up there if we can, so go ahead. Question for Elon. I understand that the Hyperloop was inspired by your opinions about California's high-speed rail, and could you share those opinions as well as a bit about the Hyperloop? Yeah, just if we're to have some new form of transport in California, which I think would be good to have, then we want to aspire to have something that is..."}, {"start": 2462.38, "end": 2491.12, "text": "Cutting edge technology. And when I was reading about the high-speed rail plan, it's a lot of money for something which isn't obviously compelling relative to a car or a plane in terms of the time it would take to complete the journey. And it will saddle California taxpayers with a pretty significant amount of money that they've got to pay. So it's like if you pay..."}, {"start": 2491.12, "end": 2522.05, "text": "If you pay a high price, you should have a great outcome. That should be the sensible thing. And that doesn't seem to be what is happening from what I can tell. And so I was trying to think, well, what would be the fastest way you could get from, say, LA to San Francisco or cities in between? And I ended up mentioning that I had an idea actually at a talk, not unlike this, and then discovered my initial idea didn't work."}, {"start": 2522.05, "end": 2550.56, "text": "And then kept iterating with a bunch of other people and came up with Hyperloop. So that's sort of where it actually, it finally did work from a technical standpoint. And now there are some companies pursuing that, which is awesome. And I hope we see it come to fruition. SpaceX is doing a Hyperloop student competition where..."}, {"start": 2550.56, "end": 2581.09, "text": "Teams will compete to see who can make the best pod. And so we're doing sort of a mile-long Hyperloop section in L.A., just right near SpaceX, really Hawthorne technically, but L.A. County. And so I think that's going to be pretty exciting to see what the students can come up with and who can come up with the most advanced pod design. And I think we're going to set it so that the winner would be who can,"}, {"start": 2581.09, "end": 2608.29, "text": "Get their pod to go the fastest within a one-mile section and then have a big crash area at the end. If the pod doesn't slow down in time, you can get into the crash area. I think that would be quite an exciting competition. We have a couple more seconds. We'll grab it. Thank you. Hello, my name is Baris. I'm a computer science student at Stanford. And so far, the vast majority of startups we heard here today or the ones we hear on the news are brilliant."}, {"start": 2608.29, "end": 2635.57, "text": "Innovations on business models that are supported by technology. On the other hand, the ones that are based on true technical innovations are kind of limited, that we have a few examples here. I want to ask Sam, why do you think that might be the case? And as a follow-up to that to Elon, do you think you'll be able to successfully build Tesla or SpaceX if they were your first ventures and if you were looking funding for them out there?"}, {"start": 2635.79, "end": 2665.55, "text": "So I think that a lot of people talk about how no one's working on anything interesting. We're all just doing software. The world is really shitty. It's getting worse. It's the end of progress. And I've never agreed with this. So two-part answer. One, I actually think we're on an incredible pace of innovation. What's happening, as what happens historically, is that when there's a great opportunity, sort of talent sloshes around and finds that. And there's been incredible progress in software in the last couple of decades. There will be more. And so a lot of talented people are choosing to work on it."}, {"start": 2665.55, "end": 2693.79, "text": "But that doesn't mean we're not making progress. It just means this one area is transforming the world incredibly quickly. People are doing other things as well, as you mentioned. And at Y Combinator, we fund companies doing a lot of things. Here's the issue. The press loves to write about the software companies, and they have very little interest in writing about the other stuff. And so as an outsider, you would say, well, there's only software. But that just doesn't reflect reality. We fund companies doing all sorts of things. And I think we love funding tech. We love funding."}, {"start": 2693.79, "end": 2723.98, "text": "Technological innovation on a long time scale. The press does not love covering it. And also, I think there's nothing wrong with working on software. Yeah, I think for SpaceX and Tesla, probably not the ideal companies to have as the first thing. I mean, generally, because if something is capital intensive, it's really hard to get going. Is it true that you totally ran out of money supporting those two companies? Yeah."}, {"start": 2724.34, "end": 2753.7, "text": "Yeah, so I guess that would not have been a good first. No. I mean, the thought I had in the beginning was, because I'm not really an investor, I just basically invest in the companies that I help create, and I thought, you know, coming out of PayPal, I sort of, I said I thought I'd invest like half the money in SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity, and then I still have the other half left over, except that didn't really work out, because then..."}, {"start": 2753.7, "end": 2781.49, "text": "The recession of 2008 and 2009 came along and it was a choice of either invest everything or the companies would definitely die. So it's like if I invest everything, then they might live. And if I don't invest everything, then they're definitely going to die. So I ended up investing everything and it was real tight, actually. In fact, the Tesla financing round at the end of 2008, I remember quite well because..."}, {"start": 2781.49, "end": 2810.48, "text": "We closed that financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible. It was 6 p.m. Christmas Eve, 2008. And we would have gone bankrupt like two days after Christmas if we hadn't closed that round. Yeah, that was hard. Okay. We've got to wrap up. Final question for both of you, but I'm going to start with Elon with this. Your pal, Larry Page, once said that rather than give all of his money to charity, he would prefer to give all of his money to you. He might have changed his mind."}, {"start": 2811.18, "end": 2841.04, "text": "So my question for both of you is, who would you give all of your money to? Or what would you give all of your money to? Well, I mean, my expectation is, I mean, I want to sort of continue the path of establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars. I think that's an important thing that needs to happen."}, {"start": 2841.1, "end": 2867.5, "text": "And then also sustainable energy, sustainable transport, and then education and pediatric health care. Those are like the areas that, I mean, that's essentially where all my money is going. Sort of the good thing about Y Combinator is I get to pour all of my money back into the technologies I believe in. So I would keep doing that. And Larry Page will give your money to you. Elon Musk, Sam Altman, thank you guys."}]}