[0:00:00] What a challenge to talk to one of the most, in my opinion, 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 brother, Albert Einstein, and Elon Musk.
[0:00:43] Asim, you are in a rush. You want to go to places that nobody been. You are reinventing a certain industry from the rocket industry with SpaceX to the car industry with Tesla. What's your mission life? Why you do whatever you do? Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.
[0:01:14] And we're having a really great time with my kids in Dubai. It's really been fantastic. I'd really encourage anyone who hasn't been to visit. What a great city. Thank you. And in terms of the motivations, I guess there's sort of a long version of the explanation. But essentially, when I was a kid, I was wondering,
[0:01:47] What's the meaning of life? Why are we here? What's it all about? I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask. The more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions.
[0:02:13] So I think that there's 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 bearing civilization and for humanity to be out there among the stars and be a multi planetary species.
[0:02:43] I think being a multi-planet 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.
[0:03:13] And 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 second version 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.
[0:03:42] 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 D? What is life for Elon Musk? I find as I get older, I find that question to be maybe more and more confusing or troubling or uncertain.
[0:04:18] I think particularly when you see the advancement of something like video games, you know, like say 40 years ago, you had video games, the most advanced video game would be like Pong, where you had like two rectangles and a dot, you know, like batting it back and forth. I played it. Oh yeah, me too, exactly. That's all. Exactly, it sort of dates you a little bit. But yeah, we both played the same game. And that was like, wow, that was a pretty fun game at the time.
[0:04:46] But now you can see a video game that's photorealistic, almost photorealistic, and millions of people playing simultaneously. 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 even 0.1% or something like that a year, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality.
[0:05:16] They'll be so realistic, you will not be able to tell the difference between that game and the 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, could be. Everything is possible in life. I mean, there's, I mean, yeah, particularly like things seem to be accelerating to something.
[0:05:49] Isn't it, I mean, if we look at our life, it seems in the past 100 years, life has been accelerating quite fast. In the past 20, much faster. It's getting faster and faster. Is it more slow? So my question is really, how life will be in air 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's quite difficult to predict. When you think of, say,
[0:06:20] I mean, the first controlled powered flight was 1903 with the Wright Brothers. And then 66 years later, we put the first people on the moon. I mean, if you'd ask people, say, in 1900, what are the odds of man landing on the moon, they would have said, that's ridiculous. And if you try to talk to them about the internet, they would not even know what the heck you're even talking about. Like, this sounds so crazy.
[0:06:51] But today, with a $100 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. Free to have an instant visual communication with anyone, or even with millions of people. With social media, you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously.
[0:07:21] And you can Google something and ask any question. It's like an article of wisdom that you can ask almost any question 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.
[0:07:50] I mean, I think directionally, I can tell you what I hope the future has as opposed to maybe what it will be because this may just be wishful thinking. I mean, I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, the moons of Jupiter. I hope we're traveling frequently throughout the solar system, perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems.
[0:08:21] I think all of this is possible within 50 years. And I think that would be very exciting to do that. And I think we'll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously. 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.
[0:08:52] 10 years. 10 years from now. Yeah. I think almost all cars built will be capable 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 a question of developing the software and uploading the software. And if it turns out that the compute power
[0:09:21] That more compute power is needed, we can easily upgrade the computer. And so that's all Tesla's built since October of 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'll be normal. It'll just be normal. For elevators, there used to be elevator operators. You get in, there'd be a guy.
[0:09:53] Moving a lever. Now you just get in, you press the button, and that's taken for granted. So autonomy will be widespread. I think one of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. And I don't mean narrow AI. Vehicle autonomy, I would put in the narrow AI class. It's narrowly trying to achieve a certain function.
[0:10:23] But deep artificial intelligence, or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence, where you could have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on Earth. This, I think, is a dangerous situation. Why it is dangerous? I mean, there is two views. One view is artificial intelligence will help humanity.
[0:10:49] There is another school of think of thought is artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity. Why is that? Well, 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 were going to be visited by super intelligent aliens in, let's say, 10 years or 20 years at the most.
[0:11:17] Superintelligence. So you think within 20 years, we'll have alien in Earth? Well, digital superintelligence 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, but I think this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy, is where are the aliens?
[0:11:49] Maybe they're among us. I don't know. Some people think I'm an alien. Not true. Not true. But maybe we are alien. Of course I'd say that. Maybe we are alien, Ellen. I mean, if you look at this part of the world, 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
[0:12:23] Alien to this land. Do you think we'll make contact with alien within the next 50 years? Well, that's a really tough one to say. I mean, if there are super intelligent aliens out there, they're probably already observing us. That would seem quite likely. And we just are not smart enough to realize it. But I can do some back of the envelope calculations.
[0:12:57] Any advanced alien civilization that was 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% 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.
[0:13:28] You know, in the grand scheme of things. Once you said you want to die on Mars, why? I don't, to be clear, I don't want to die on Mars. It's like, if, I mean, 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 we're born on Earth, why not die on Mars? Seems like maybe it would be kind of exciting. But, so I think...
[0:13:59] Given the choice of dying on Earth or 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 it to be on impact. Got it. Let's come back to Earth, actually. You tweeted that you are building a tunnel under Washington, D.C. Why? What is it? Well, it's a secret plot.
[0:14:30] Okay. Just between us. Nobody helped you? Yeah, exactly. Please keep that secret. Well, I think this is going to sound a little... I mean, it seems like somewhat 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... I don't mean a...
[0:15:02] A 2D plane 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 taller than the tallest buildings. So you can have tunnels, 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
[0:15:31] in any city in the world. The challenge is just figuring out how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost and with high safety. So if tunneling 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 cities.
[0:16:00] And so I think that's why I think it's an important technology. And Washington DC, LA, 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, you have tall buildings that are 3D, and you have a road network that is one level. And then people generally want to go in and out of those buildings at the exact same time. So then you get the traffic jam.
[0:16:30] Let's come back to UAE and Dubai. The first time I met you, it was 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. It seems time goes quite fast. Why now?
[0:17:03] Well, I think actually things are going reasonably well in China. So we had some initial challenges figuring out charging and service infrastructure and various other things. But now it's actually going fairly well. And so the timing seemed to be good to really make a significant debut in this region starting in Dubai. A new opinion.
[0:17:33] The new disturbing thing that will come in technology next. 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-term impact from a technological standpoint is autonomous cars, like fully self-driving cars. Like I said, that's going to happen much faster than people realize.
[0:18:05] And it's going to be a great convenience to be an autonomous car, but there are many people whose jobs it is to drive. 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 roles for what do those people do.
[0:18:35] But it will be very disruptive and very quick. Now, I should characterize what I mean by quick, because quick means different things to different people. There are over 2 billion vehicles in the world, in fact, approaching 2.5 billion cars and trucks in the world. The total new vehicle production capacity is about 100 million.
[0:19:05] Which makes sense because the life of a car or truck before it's finally scrapped is about 20, 25 years. 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
[0:19:35] Over about 20 years. But still 20 years is a short period of time to have, I think, something like 12 to 15% of the workforce 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 are three things or three advices
[0:20:07] Well, I think the first bit of advice would be to really pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence. I think we need to 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 a scientist can get so engrossed in their work
[0:20:38] They don't necessarily realize the ramifications of what they're doing. So I think it's important for public safety that governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence and make sure that it does not represent a danger to the public. Secondly, I would say we do need to think about transport in general.
[0:21:12] 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'll happen slower than the self-driving vehicles. So that's probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years, the transition to electric vehicles. So thinking about that.
[0:21:43] In context, the demand for electricity will increase dramatically. So currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world, it's about one third electricity, about one third transport, about one third heating. So over time, that will transition to almost all, not all, but predominantly electricity, which means that the demand for
[0:22:13] Electricity will probably triple. So it's going to be very important to think about how do you make so much more electricity. It seems they have an easy job. That's it. There's no more challenges for them. No. 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.
[0:22:48] And I think ultimately we 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 is no job. Machine, robot is taking over. There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. That's simply the... And I want to be clear that these are not...
[0:23:18] Things that I wish would happen, these are simply things that I think probably will happen. And 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 a universal basic income is going to be necessary. Now, the output of goods and services will be extremely high. So with automation,
[0:23:48] They will come abundance. Almost everything will get very cheap. I think we'll just end up doing 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...
[0:24:19] How do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want, that we still like? I do think that there's a potential
[0:24:52] We're really getting into science fiction or advanced science stuff, but having some sort of merger with biological intelligence and machine intelligence. To some degree, we are already a cyborg.
[0:25:21] The digital tools that you have, your phone, your computer, the applications that you have, like the fact that, as I was mentioning earlier, you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google or from other things. And so you already have a digital tertiary layer. I say tertiary 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.
[0:25:50] And then your digital self as a third layer. So you already have that. And if somebody dies, their digital ghost is still around. All of their emails 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.
[0:26:19] And it's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital extension of yourself, particularly output. And output, if anything, is getting worse. We used to have keyboards that we'd use a lot. Now we do most of our input through our thumbs on a phone. And that's just very slow.
[0:26:49] Communicate at a trillion bits per second, but your thumb can maybe do 10 bits per second or 100 if you're being generous. So some high bandwidth interface to the brain I think will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem.
[0:27:22] You're getting pretty esoteric here. I don't know if this is... It's close. We got it. Always you think out of the box. Your idea is so huge. You want to go to space. You decided to go to space. You did it. You decided that you want to land your rocket back. You failed seven times, eight times. Yeah, something like that. Then it landed there. How do you come with this idea, actually?
[0:27:57] Sometimes they're pushing the human limit. You are always pushing the human limit. Why? Well, I think about what technology solution is necessary in order to achieve the particular goal and then try to make as much progress in that direction as possible. So in the case of spaceflight, the critical breakthrough that's necessary in spaceflight is rapid and complete reusability of rockets.
[0:28:28] Just as we have for aircraft. You can imagine that if an aircraft was single use, almost no one would fly. Because you can buy, let's say, a 747 might be $250 million, $300 million, or something like that. You'd need two of them for a round trip. But nobody's going to pay millions of dollars per ticket to fly, to do air travel.
[0:28:58] But because you can reuse the aircraft tens of thousands of times, the air travel becomes much more affordable. And the same is true of rockets. So our rocket costs $60 million, roughly. So a capital cost, if it can be used once, is $60 million. But if the capital cost
[0:29:27] If it can be used a thousand times, it's $60,000. So then if you can carry a lot of people per flight, then you can get the cost of space flight to be something not far from the cost of air flight. So it's extremely fundamental. Because Earth's gravity well is quite deep, Earth has fairly high gravity, the difficulty of making a rocket reusable
[0:29:58] It's much greater than the difficulty of making an aircraft reusable. And that's why a fully reusable rocket has never been developed thus far. But if you use the most advanced materials, 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's gravity was even 10% stronger, I would say it would be impossible. You need a team.
[0:30:30] Well, I suppose honestly that it tends to be gut feel more than anything else. So when I interview somebody, my interview question is always the same. What do you ask? I said, tell me the story of your life and the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them.
[0:31:06] 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?
[0:31:39] Biggest challenge in life? No challenge. Well, no. There's a lot of them. I'm trying to decide 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 want to tell you exactly what you want to hear. That's very difficult. Yes.
[0:32:25] Time's 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.
[0:32:54] 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? There's definitely, it could be worse for sure. But it's, I'm not sure I would, I'm not sure I want to be me. Okay. But, you know, I think advice, I mean, if you want to make progress in things,
[0:33:30] I think that the best analytical framework for understanding the future is physics. I'd recommend studying the thinking process around physics. Not just the equations. I mean, the equations, certainly, they're helpful. But the way of thinking in physics is the best framework for understanding things that are counterintuitive.
[0:34:00] And always taking the position that you are 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 want something to be true even if it isn't true. And so you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true.
[0:34:31] This is a very difficult trap to avoid. And like I said, it's certainly one that I find myself having problems with. But if you just take that approach of you're always to some degree wrong, and your goal is to be less wrong, and solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends. Friends, if somebody loves you, they want the best for you. They don't want to tell you the bad things.
[0:35:01] So you have to ask them and say, really, I really do want to know. And then they will tell you. Thank you very much. It's been great for the World Government Summit to have a legend who's creating the future for humanity to share his thought, his idea, his vision, his challenges, and his hope for life. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.