FULL INTERVIEW: Elon Musk on AI, Robots, Tesla, China, Trump and Mars With Larry Fink at WEF — AI1G

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: that was not that was not a large applause start again that's better thank you yeah we're gonna make this interesting how many how many quotes are you gonna want that are gonna be after this session I don't know I didn't five okay so good afternoon everyone it's great to see everybody here it's been an amazing week here in Davos hopefully everybody saw that we are having conversations here hopefully everybody agrees there are some conversations that we may disagree there's a many conversations that we may have agreed but through those conversations and I think today's result with a peace agreement earlier today the World Economic Forum is here to have those conversations that have understandings and also resolution so it's an important component of who we and what we are and I'm thrilled to have Elon Musk here he came all the way from California to be here to see all of you so thank you Elon you guys welcome [00:01:22] Elon Musk: the peace summit and I was like is that that PI EC you know a little piece of Greenland a little piece of [00:01:41] Speaker 1: we got one we want is peace okay I'm gonna know as I said I'm a pretty proud CEO of BlackRock since we went public the compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders with 21 percent since Elon took Tesla public his compounded return is 43 percent this is another advertisement for everybody especially for Europeans this is why more citizens should be investing with growth investing with their countries companies imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon when Tesla went public and how much we return with the all the pension funds that invested side by side with Elon and the growth so a spectacular return there's very few companies well I don't think there's any other company as large as Tesla today that has that compounded return so congratulations I think a good measurement but we have an incredible team at Tesla that's the reason so I want to get into the dirt the meaningful component about technology the possibilities I want to talk about AI and robotics energy space and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering engineering discipline scale execution and few few people if not anyone has the experience and the fortitude to confront these issues head on not just the ideas but the execution across so many different technologies Elon and that's why I thought it was important for us to have this dialogue here in Davos so you're presently building on AI on robotics and space on energy all at the same time when you look across those efforts what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint well they're all vertical [00:03:48] Elon Musk: technology challenges but the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization like basically maximize the probability that civilization has a great future and to expand consciousness beyond earth so if you take SpaceX for example that SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond earth to the moon tomorrow's eventually to other star systems and I think we we should always view consciousness life as we know it as as precarious and delicate because to the best of our knowledge we we don't know if life anywhere else you know I'm often asked are there aliens among us and I'll say that I am one that's or you're from the future they don't believe me okay so but I think if anyone would know if there are aliens among us it would be me and we have 9000 satellites up there and not once have we had to and we have to maneuver around an alien spaceship so like I don't know it's bottom line is I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare and it might only be us and if that's the case then we need to do everything possible to to ensure that the the light of can the light the light the light the light of consciousness is not extinguished because we're effectively the way I view it is the measure in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out and that's why it's important to make life multi planetary such that if there is a natural disaster or a the light of consciousness is not extinguished, because we're effectively, the way I view it is, the image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness, a tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out. And that's why it's important to make life multi-planetary, such that if there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX. Tesla is obviously about sustainable technology, and also, at this point, we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So with robotics and AI, this is really the path to abundance for all. If you say, you know, people often talk about solving global poverty, or essentially, how do we make, give everyone a very high standard of living? I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics, which doesn't mean that it is without its issues. I mean, we need to be very careful with AI. We need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie, you know, Terminator. He's got great movies, all those movies, but we don't want to be in Terminator, obviously. But if you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent. [00:07:18] Speaker 1: Neil, can that expansion be broad, or is it narrow, and how can that be created? How can it broaden the global economy? [00:07:30] Elon Musk: Yeah, it's, I mean, the way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots. Right. And actually, my prediction is, in the benign scenario of the future, that we will, the robots, we will actually make so many robots an AI that they will actually saturate all human needs. Meaning you won't be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point. Like, like, there will be such an abundance of goods and services, because the, my prediction is there will be more robots than people, so. [00:08:18] Speaker 1: But how do you then have human purpose in that scenario? [00:08:22] Elon Musk: Yeah, I mean, you know, there are, nothing's perfect, you know. But, I mean, it is a necessary, like, you can't have both. You can't have work that has to be done and amazing abundance for all. Because if it's work that has to be done, then you, and only some people can do it, then you can't have abundance for all. And it's narrow. It's narrow, exactly. So, but if you have billions of humanoid robots, and I think there will be, I think everyone on Earth is going to have one, and going to want one. Because you, who wouldn't want a robot to, you know, assuming it's very safe, watch over your kids, take care of your pet. If you have elderly parents, a lot of friends of mine said they have elderly parents, it's very difficult to take care of them. [00:09:25] Speaker 1: And it's expensive. [00:09:25] Elon Musk: Yeah, it's expensive, and it's expensive, and there just aren't enough people to take care of the, there aren't enough young people to take care of the old people. Right. So, if you, if they, if you, if you had a robot that could take care of and protect an elderly parent, I think that would be great. That would be an amazing thing to have. And, and that, I think we will have those things. So, I mean, overall, I'm, I'm very optimistic about the future. I think we're headed for a future of amazing abundance, which is very cool. And, and, and definitely, we are in the most interesting time in history. I think there's more, a more interesting time in history. [00:10:10] Speaker 1: Can we, can we, can you and I reverse aging in this new history, or, or, or, are we going to see it? [00:10:18] Elon Musk: You know, I haven't, I haven't put much time into the aging stuff. I, I do think it is a very solvable problem. Like, like you can, I think when, when, when, when, when we find, figure out what causes aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious. It's not a subtle thing. The reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body, you know, with some, pretty much age at the same rate. I've never seen someone with, with an old left arm and a young right arm ever in my life. Um, so why is that? It, it, it, that, that means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock. Right. That is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body. Um, and, uh, you know, uh, there is some benefit to death, by the way. Um, there's, there's, there's a reason why we don't actually have a longer lifespan, uh, because if you, if you have, if people do live forever for a very long time, I think there's some risk of an ossification of society, of, of things just getting kind of locked in place. Um, and, uh, you know, it, it, it, it just may become, um, um, stultifying, just not, uh, lack, lack vibrancy. Um, but, but that, that, that's it. Do I think we'll figure out ways to extend life and, um, and maybe even reverse aging? [00:11:50] Speaker 1: I think that's highly likely I'm looking forward to that so, um, in the future that you talk about, the AI models, autonomous machines, rockets depends on massive increases of compute, massive increases in energy, expensive energy, manufacturing scale. Um, what are the bottlenecks to, to get there? And that, once again, with all that expenditures, again, how can we make sure that it's broad, not narrow? [00:12:28] Elon Musk: Um, I, I just think the natural thing is, it's going to be very broad because, uh, AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can. And the cost of AI will get, it is already very low and it's, it's plummeting, uh, every year. I mean, you still almost, the cost of AI is almost change, meaningfully changing on a month-to-month basis. [00:12:51] Speaker 1: There's open, there's open models now everywhere, yeah. [00:12:54] Elon Musk: Yes, very, there's open models, um, and the open models only lack, there may be a year behind. Right. The, the, the private, the sort of closed models. Um, so, so I, I think the, the, the, the AI companies will seek as, as many customers as possible, which means they'll seek, they'll provide AI to the world. [00:13:14] Speaker 1: But the cost of getting to there, the compute, the chips, um, the fab, um, the powering, that to me, what are the, what are the, what are the, you know, those are a huge. [00:13:28] Elon Musk: The limiting factor. Yeah, I think the limiting factor for, um, AI deployment is fundamentally, uh, electrical power. [00:13:34] Speaker 1: It's just, right. [00:13:35] Elon Musk: It's energy. Yeah, yeah, um, I mean, we're, we're, we're seeing the, the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially, but the rate of electricity being brought online is, uh, 10%, 4% a year. [00:13:49] Speaker 1: Yeah. Max. [00:13:50] Elon Musk: Yeah. It's clear that we're, we're, we're, we're very soon, maybe even later this year, uh, we'll be producing more chips than we can turn on. But except for China, China, China, China is, China's growth in electricity is, is tremendous. [00:14:04] Speaker 1: They're building a hundred gigawatts of nuclear as we speak. [00:14:07] Elon Musk: Uh, actually solar is the, the biggest thing in China. So China is, I believe China's production capacity on solar is 1500 gigawatts a year, um, and they're deploying over a thousand gigawatts a year of, of solar. Um, now, you know, for continuous solar, solar load, you divide that by roughly, I don't know, four or five. I call it that's around 250 gigawatts of steady state power paired with batteries. And that's a very big number. That's half of the average power usage in the U.S. So U.S. power usage on average is 500 gigawatts. China, just in solar, just in solar that can provide steady state power and batteries, can do half of the U.S. electricity output per year just with solar. Solar is by far the biggest source of energy. And actually, when you look beyond, even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth, the sun rounds up to 100 percent of all energy. This is an important thing to consider. So the sun is 99.8 percent of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0.1 percent, and everything else is miscellaneous. Now, even if you were to burn Jupiter in a thermonuclear reactor, the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round up to 100 percent because Jupiter is only 0.1 percent. If you teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun's energy would still round up to 100 percent. So it's really all about the sun. And that's why one of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX within a few years is launching solar powered A.I. satellites. Right. Because the space is really the source of immense power. And then you don't need to take up any room on Earth. There's so much room in space and you can scale to enormous. I mean, you can scale to, I think, ultimately hundreds, hundreds of terawatts a year. [00:16:44] Speaker 1: You and I have had these conversations before, but why don't you tell the audience what would it take for the United States and what type of geography would it take to have that solar field to electrify the United States? And then let me ask a question. Why aren't we doing it? [00:17:01] Elon Musk: Yes. So, I mean, I guess a rough way to think about it is 100 miles by 100 miles, we'll call it 160 kilometers by 160 kilometers of solar is enough to power the entire United States. So, you know, 100 miles by 100 miles by 100 miles by 100 miles by 100 miles. I mean, you could take basically a small corner of Utah, Nevada, Nevada, New Mexico. Obviously, we wouldn't want it all in one place. But it is a very small percentage of the area of the U.S. to generate all of the electricity that the U.S. uses. And the same is true, actually, I mean, for Europe. You could take a small part. You could take relatively unpopulated areas of, say, Spain and Sicily and generate all of the electricity power that Europe needs. [00:17:52] Speaker 1: So why don't you think that there's a movement towards that here and in the United States? Well, there is. As it is in China. [00:17:59] Elon Musk: Well, unfortunately, in the U.S., the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high. And that makes the economics of deploying solar so artificially high because China makes almost all the solar. [00:18:19] Speaker 1: And in the tech that what would it take for Europe or the U.S. to build it commercially if it's that scale? [00:18:26] Elon Musk: Yeah, I think. I think. Well, I can tell you what we're going to do, you know, SpaceX and Tesla was we're building up large scale solar. Right. So the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the U.S., of manufactured solar power. And that will probably take us on about three years or something. But these are pretty big numbers. And, you know, I'd encourage others to do the same. We obviously don't control the U.S. tariff policy. But for other countries, I would recommend that this China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost. [00:19:20] Speaker 1: And I think it would be worth doing large scale solar. So I know you are going to be having a couple of big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean, when I went to the factory, you showed me those robots. Yeah. How quickly you talked about the billions of robots, but how quickly and how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and create that abundance that you talked about? [00:20:04] Elon Musk: Well, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. I think we do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory. We except probably later this year. By the end of this year, I think they'll be doing more complex tasks and still deployed in an industrial environment. And probably sometime next year, I'd say that by the by the end of next year, I think would be selling humanoid robots to the public. But that's when we are confident that it's very higher liability, very high safety and the range of functionality is is also very high. [00:20:54] Speaker 1: You can basically ask it to do anything you'd like. You're already seeing that in Tesla cars is the software changes that you're doing. And what is it, every quarter now, a software change that upgrades the ability of the robot within the car? Yes. [00:21:09] Elon Musk: The Tesla full self-driving software, we update it sometimes once a week. And recently some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe. Tesla full self-driving is so safe that they're offering customers half price insurance if they use Tesla full self-driving in the car. [00:21:34] Speaker 1: And that could be monitored by the insurance company. Is that part of the agreement? [00:21:38] Elon Musk: Yeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point. Right. And Tesla's rolled out sort of robo taxi service in a few cities and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S. And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month. Really quickly. Yeah. And then maybe a similar time timing for China, hopefully. [00:22:18] Speaker 1: I want to move to space because historically space is very capital intensive historically been done by governments. Obviously, SpaceX changed the whole model, but we've seen it slow to scale. And now I'm starting to see it ramping up in what you're doing and other things. Talk to us about the reason, you know, the automation and AI, how it's changing the economics in building and preparing for us in operating in space. [00:22:47] Elon Musk: Sure. Well, the key breakthrough that tells the major breakthrough that SpaceX is hoping to achieve this year is full reusability. So no one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space. We've achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage. We've now landed the boost stage over 500 times. But we have to throw away the upper stage. The upper stage sort of burns up on reentry for Falcon 9. And the cost of that is equivalent to a small to medium sized jet. So with Starship, which is a giant rocket, it's the largest flying machine ever made. [00:23:36] Speaker 1: That's a rocket that you're using for the idea of going to Mars, right? [00:23:39] Elon Musk: Yeah, Mars and the moon, as well as for high volume satellite stuff. So Starship, hopefully this year we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be a profound invention because the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of 100 when you achieve full reusability. Right. It's the same sort of economic difference that you would expect between, say, a reusable aircraft and a non reusable aircraft. Like if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, that would be a very expensive flight. But if you only have to refuel, then it's the cost of the fuel. And so that's really the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space. We think below the cost of freight on aircraft. So, you know, under $100 a pound type of thing easily. Wow. So it makes putting large satellites into space very cheap. And then when you have solar in space, you get five times more effectiveness, maybe even more than that, than solar on the ground. Because it's always sunny and cold. Yeah. Well, it's always sunny. So you don't have a day-night cycle or seasonality or weather. And you get about 30% more power in space because you don't have atmospheric attenuation of the power. The net effect is solar is five times more. Any given solar panel will do five times more energy in space than on the ground. [00:25:40] Speaker 1: Is there any capacity in doing that and taking that power and bringing it back to Earth? Is there any way of doing that? Or are you just taking that power and utilizing it for the needs, like building AI data centers in space? [00:25:57] Elon Musk: I think the case, it's a no-brainer for building AI, solar-powered AI data centers in space. Because as you mentioned, it's also very cold in space. If you're in the shadow, then it's very cold in space, just three degrees Kelvin. So you just have solar panels facing the sun and then a radiator that's, like, pointed away from the sun. So it has no sign incidents. And then it's just cooling. It's a very efficient cooling system. So net effect is that the lowest cost place to put AI will be space. And that will be true within two years. Maybe three. Three at the latest. [00:26:40] Speaker 1: Wow. So looking 10 or 20 years out, how would you describe success with AI or space technology? And where do you see it? Are you more certain what's going to happen in the next three years or five or ten? [00:26:59] Elon Musk: I don't know what's going to happen in 10 years, but the rate at which AI is progressing, I think we might have AI that is smarter than any human by the end of this year. And I would say no later than next year. [00:27:15] Speaker ?: Wow. [00:27:16] Elon Musk: And then probably by 2030 or 2031, call it five years from now, AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively. [00:27:28] Speaker 1: We only have a number of minutes left, but I want to humanize you for a second. So there's no speculation that you're a piece. Right. I mean, I would frame this question by you are the most successful entrepreneur industrialist in the 21st century, maybe beyond. So I want to really get this. You know, what inspired you? Who's inspired you? What was the foundation of your curiosity? And importantly, what was it? Was there an aha moment, an epiphany at any time in your life and career? [00:28:09] Elon Musk: Well, I mean, as a kid, I read a lot of science fiction, sci-fi fantasy books and comic books. And I always liked technology. I didn't expect to be where I am today. It seems incredibly implausible. But yeah, I was inspired by reading books about the future, about science fiction. And I guess I want to make science fiction not fiction forever. At some point, turn science fiction to science fact. And, you know, we want to have like Starfleet and Star Trek, really, for real. Like where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space, going to other planets, traveling to other star systems. [00:28:58] Speaker 1: I'm just beamed up to go back to New York. I'd like to just be beamed back to New York instead of flying. Yeah. [00:29:09] Elon Musk: I guess my essential what I would call the philosophy of curiosity. I'd like to understand the meaning of life. You know, the is the standard model is a standard model of physics. Correct. Regarding the beginning of life, beginning of existence and the end of the universe. What questions do we not know to ask that we should ask? And AI will help us with these things. So I'm just trying to say, how do we get here? What's going on? What's real? Are there aliens? Maybe there are. And if we've got spaceships that are traveling to other star systems, we may encounter aliens and we may find many long dead alien civilizations. But I'm just I just I just want to know what's going on. I'm curious about the universe. And that's my philosophy. [00:30:09] Speaker 1: You see yourself ever going to Mars in your lifetime? [00:30:14] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:30:14] Elon Musk: I mean, I would say like, you know, I think that's a long commitment. I've been asked. Wasn't that three years each way? It's six months. Six months. That's all it is. Yeah. Six months. But the planets only aligned every two years. OK. So I've been asked a few times, like, do I want to, you know, die on Mars? And I'm like, yes, but just not on impact. [00:30:42] Speaker 1: That's a good. That's a good answer. Anyway, we're out of time. I hopefully everybody enjoyed this. And there's so many myths around Elon Musk. I could tell you he's a great friend. And I constantly learned so much from him. And I'm totally inspired by what he's what he has done. I've been inspired who he is. And I'm totally inspired by his vision of the future. And I don't think it's such a bad future. And I agree with his optimism. So, Elon, thank you. Any last words? [00:31:21] Elon Musk: Well, I think generally, I think my last words would be, I would encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. Good. And generally, I think, for quality of life, it is actually better to err on the side of being an optimist and wrong rather than a pessimist and right. [00:31:40] Speaker 1: On that note. [00:31:41] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:31:41] Speaker 1: Thank you. [00:31:42] Speaker ?: Thank you. [00:31:42] Speaker 1: Thank you. [00:31:43] Speaker ?: Thank you.