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00:00What 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 algorithms.
00:22Globally, Newton, Henry Ford, the Wright brother, Albert Einstein, and Elon Musk.
00:36Applause
00:40It seems you are in 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.
01:02Al-Khawarizmi, what's your mission life? Why you do whatever you do?
01:08Sure, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here and having a really great time with my kids in Dubai.
01:19It's really been fantastic. I really encourage anyone who hasn't been to visit. What a great city.
01:26Applause
01:28And in terms of the motivations, I guess there's sort of kind of a long version of the explanation, but essentially when I was a kid I was wondering kind of what's the meaning of life?
01:48Like, why are we here? What's it all about? And I came to the conclusion that what really matters is trying to understand the right questions to ask.
02:01And the more that we can increase the scope and scale of human consciousness, the better we are able to ask these questions.
02:11And so I think that there's certain things that are necessary to ensure that the future is good.
02:18And some of those things are, in the long term, having long term sustainable transport and sustainable energy generation.
02:29And to be a space bearing civilization and for humanity to be out there among the stars and be a multi-planetary species.
02:42I mean, I think being a multi-planetary species and being out there among the stars is important for the long term survival of humanity.
02:53And that's one reason. Kind of like life insurance for life collectively. Life as we know it.
02:59But then the part that I find personally most motivating is that it creates a sense of adventure.
03:07And it makes people excited about the future.
03:12And if you consider two futures, one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens.
03:20Or another future where we are out there on many planets, maybe even going beyond the solar system.
03:27I think that second version is incredibly exciting and inspiring.
03:31And there need to be reasons to get up in the morning.
03:34You know, life can't just be about solving problems. Otherwise, what's the point?
03:38There's got to be things that people find inspiring and make life worth living.
03:43So what is life for you?
03:46I mean, you look at our life.
03:50And I heard you before speaking.
03:53Is it a dream? Is it a real? Is it a million D?
03:59A million D? What is life for Elon Musk?
04:04I find as I get older, I find that question to be maybe more and more confusing or troubling or uncertain.
04:18I think particularly when you see the advancement of something like video games.
04:22You know, like say 40 years ago, you had video games.
04:25The most advanced video game would be like Pong, where you had like two rectangles and a dot.
04:32You're like batting it back and forth.
04:33I played it.
04:34Oh yeah, me too, exactly.
04:35That's all.
04:36Exactly.
04:37It sort of dates you a little bit.
04:39But yeah, we both played the same game.
04:41And that was like, wow, that was a pretty fun game at the time.
04:45But now you can see a video game that's photorealistic, almost photorealistic,
04:50and millions of people playing simultaneously.
04:53And you see where things are going with virtual reality and augmented reality.
05:00And if you extrapolate that out into the future with any rate of progress at all,
05:06like even 0.1% or something like that a year, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality.
05:15They'll be so realistic, you will not be able to tell the difference between that game and the reality as we know it.
05:23And then it seems like, well, how do we know that that didn't happen in the past?
05:30And that we're not in one of those games ourselves.
05:33Interesting.
05:34Interesting.
05:35I mean, could be.
05:38Everything is possible in life.
05:40I mean, there's...
05:42I mean, yeah, particularly like things seem to be accelerating to something.
05:48Isn't it?
05:49I mean, if we look at our life, it seems in the past 100 years, life has been accelerating quite fast.
05:56Yeah.
05:57In the past 20, much faster.
05:58It's getting faster and faster.
06:00Is it more slow?
06:01So my question is really, how life will be in air 20, 30, 50 years from now?
06:07Our education, our transport.
06:09How do you see it?
06:10Well, I think this is one of those things that's quite difficult to predict.
06:14When you think of, say...
06:15I mean, the first controlled powered flight was 1903 with the Wright brothers.
06:26And then 66 years later, we put the first people on the moon.
06:31I mean, if you'd ask people, say in 1900, what are the odds of man landing on the moon, they
06:40would have said, that's ridiculous.
06:43And if you try to talk to them about the internet, they would not even know what the heck you're even...
06:47Talking.
06:48What are you even talking about?
06:49Like, this sounds so crazy.
06:51But today, with a $100 device, you can video conference with anyone in the world.
07:00On the other side of the world.
07:02And if you have a Wi-Fi connection, it's basically free.
07:08Free to have an instant visual communication with anyone.
07:12Or even with millions of people.
07:14You know, with social media, you can communicate to millions of people simultaneously.
07:21And you can Google something and ask any question.
07:23It's like an article of wisdom that you can ask almost any question and get an instant response.
07:29It would have been incredibly difficult to predict these things in the past.
07:32Even the relatively recent past.
07:36So, I think the one thing that we can be quite certain of is that any predictions we make today
07:43for what the future will be like in 50 years will be wrong.
07:48That's for sure.
07:50I mean, I think directionally, I can tell you what I hope the future has.
07:55As opposed to maybe what it will be.
07:57Because this may just be wishful thinking.
08:00I mean, I hope we are out there on Mars and maybe beyond Mars, the moons of Jupiter.
08:09I hope we're traveling frequently throughout the solar system.
08:15Perhaps preparing for missions to nearby star systems.
08:20I think all of this is possible within 50 years.
08:25And I think that will be very exciting to do that.
08:29And I think we'll see autonomy and artificial intelligence advance tremendously.
08:38I think that's actually quite near term.
08:41My guess is in probably 10 years, it will be very unusual for cars to be built that are not fully autonomous.
08:5110 years.
08:5210 years from now.
08:53Yeah.
08:54I think almost all cars built will be capable of full autonomy in about 10 years.
09:03As it is, the Tesla cars that are made today have the sensor system necessary for full autonomy.
09:09And we think probably enough compute power to be safer than a person.
09:14So it's mostly just a question of developing the software and uploading the software.
09:18And if it turns out that more compute power is needed, we can easily upgrade the computer.
09:24And so that's all Tesla's built since October of last year.
09:29And other manufacturers will follow and do the same thing.
09:33So getting in a car will be like getting in an elevator.
09:38You just tell it where you want to go.
09:40And it takes you there with extreme levels of safety.
09:44And that will be normal.
09:46That will just be normal.
09:48Like for elevators, there used to be elevator operators.
09:51You get in, there's a guy moving a lever.
09:54Now you just get in, you press the button, and that's taken for granted.
09:59So autonomy will be widespread.
10:02You know, I think one of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence.
10:09And I don't mean narrow AI.
10:12Like vehicle autonomy I would put in the narrow AI class.
10:18It's narrowly trying to achieve a certain function.
10:21But deep artificial intelligence, or what is sometimes called artificial general intelligence,
10:28where you could have AI that is much smarter than the smartest human on earth.
10:35This, I think, is a dangerous situation.
10:41Why it is dangerous?
10:43I mean, there is two views.
10:44One view is artificial intelligence will help humanity.
10:48There is another school of thought is artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity.
10:54Why is that?
10:55Well, I think it's both.
10:57You know, it's like one way to think of it is imagine we're going to be visited.
11:06Imagine you're very confident that we're going to be visited by super intelligent aliens in,
11:13let's say, 10 years or 20 years at the most.
11:16Super intelligent.
11:17So you think within 20 years we'll have alien in earth?
11:20Well, digital super intelligence will be like an alien.
11:26It will be like an alien.
11:27Yeah.
11:28But my question is, do you think there is other intelligent life outside the earth?
11:37It seems probable.
11:39But I think this is one of the great questions in physics and philosophy,
11:44is where are the aliens?
11:49Maybe they're among us.
11:50I don't know.
11:52Some people think I'm an alien.
11:55Not true.
11:57Not true.
11:58But maybe we are aliens.
12:01Of course I'd say that.
12:02Maybe we are aliens, Ellen.
12:04I mean, if you look at this part of the world.
12:07Yeah.
12:09They believe that human beings are not from earth.
12:13They came from somewhere else.
12:16Eve and Adam came from somewhere else to earth.
12:19So in a way, human beings are alien to this land.
12:26Do you think we'll make contact with aliens within the next 50 years?
12:32Well, that's a really tough one to say.
12:36I mean, if there are super intelligent aliens out there, they're probably already observing us.
12:44That would seem quite likely.
12:46And we just are not smart enough to realize it.
12:49But I can do some back of the envelope calculations.
12:55And any advanced alien civilization that was at all interested in populating the galaxy,
13:06even without exceeding the speed of light.
13:12Even if you're only moving at, say, 10 or 20% of the speed of light,
13:16you could populate the entire galaxy in, let's say, 10 million years.
13:23Maybe 20 million years max.
13:26This is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
13:29Once you said you want to die on Mars, why?
13:34I don't, to be clear, I don't want to die on Mars.
13:38It's like, if, I mean, we're all going to die someday.
13:43And if you're going to pick some place to die, then why not Mars?
13:48You know, if we're born on Earth, why not die on Mars?
13:53It seems like maybe it would be kind of exciting.
13:57But so I think given the choice of dying on Earth or dying on Mars,
14:01I'd say, yeah, sure, I'll die on Mars.
14:04But it's not some kind of Mars death wish.
14:07And if I do die on Mars, I just don't want it to be on impact.
14:11Okay. Got it.
14:13Yeah.
14:14Let's come back to Earth, actually.
14:16Okay.
14:17You tweeted that you are building a tunnel under Washington, D.C.
14:26Why?
14:27What is it?
14:28Well, it's a secret plot.
14:30Okay.
14:31Just between us.
14:33Nobody helped you?
14:34Yeah, exactly.
14:35Please keep that secret.
14:37The, well, I think this is going to sound a little, I mean,
14:42it seems like somewhat trivial or silly, but I've been saying this for many years now,
14:50but I think that the solution to urban congestion is a network of tunnels under cities.
14:58And when I say, I don't mean a 2D plane of tunnels.
15:02I mean tunnels that go many levels deep.
15:05So you can always go deeper than you can go up.
15:11Like the deepest mines are taller than the tallest buildings.
15:15So you could have tunnels, a network of tunnels that is 20, 30, 40, 50 levels,
15:22as many levels as you want, really.
15:25And so given that, you can overcome the congestion situation in any city in the world.
15:34The challenge is just figuring out how do you build tunnels quickly and at low cost
15:41and with high safety.
15:43So if tunneling technology can be improved to the point where you can build tunnels fast, cheap,
15:51and safe, then that would completely get rid of any traffic situations in cities.
15:58And so I think, that's why I think it's an important technology.
16:03And Washington DC, LA, and most of the major American cities, most major cities in the world,
16:10suffer from severe traffic issues.
16:13And it's mostly because you've got these buildings which are, you have tall buildings that are 3D,
16:17and you have a road network that is one level.
16:20And then people generally want to go in and out of those buildings at the exact same time.
16:25So then you get the traffic jam.
16:30Let's come back to UAE and Dubai.
16:36The first time I met you it was 4th of June 2015 at your office in SpaceX.
16:44And I asked you, would you have a presence in UAE?
16:49And your answer was, I'm busy with China.
16:52Maybe not in the near future.
16:54Yeah.
16:55And almost a year and a half later, we are here.
16:57It seems time goes quite fast.
16:59Yeah.
17:00What's going on now?
17:01Well, I think actually things are going reasonably well in China.
17:05So we had some initial challenges figuring out charging and service infrastructure
17:13and various other things.
17:14But now it's actually going fairly well.
17:17And so the timing seemed to be good to really make a significant debut in this region starting in Dubai.
17:30In your opinion, what is the new disturbing thing that will come in technology next?
17:37What's next in technology?
17:39What's next in technology?
17:42That will disturb the way we live, the way we think, the way we do business.
17:48Well, the most near-term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars.
17:55Like fully self-driving cars.
17:57Like I said, that's going to happen much faster than people realize.
18:03And it's going to be a great convenience to be an autonomous car.
18:10But there are many people whose jobs it is to drive.
18:14So if, in fact, I think it might be the single largest employer of people is driving in various forms.
18:27And so then we need to figure out new roles for what do those people do.
18:33But it will be very disruptive and very quick.
18:37Now, I should characterize what I mean by quick.
18:40Because there are, quick means different things to different people.
18:47There are over 2 billion vehicles in the world.
18:51Approaching, in fact, 2.5 billion cars and trucks in the world.
18:56The total new vehicle production capacity is about 100 million.
19:03Which makes sense because the life of a car or truck before it's finally scrapped is about 20, 25 years.
19:10So the point at which we see full autonomy appear will not be the point at which there is massive societal upheaval.
19:21Because it will take a long time to make enough autonomous vehicles to disrupt employment.
19:31So that disruption I'm talking about will take place over about 20 years.
19:37But still 20 years is a short period of time to have, I think, something like 12 to 15% of the workforce be unemployed.
19:50This is the largest global government summit.
19:55We have over 139 governments here.
19:58If you want to advise government officials to be ready for the future,
20:03what is three things or three advice you'll give them?
20:07Well, I think the first bit of advice would be to really pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence.
20:18I think this is, we need to just be very careful in how we adopt artificial intelligence and to make sure that researchers don't get carried away.
20:33Because sometimes what happens is a scientist can get so engrossed in their work,
20:37they don't necessarily realize the ramifications of what they're doing.
20:42So I think it's important for public safety that governments keep a close eye on artificial intelligence
20:50and make sure that it does not represent a danger to the public.
20:57Let's see.
20:58Secondly, I would say we do need to think about transport in general.
21:07And there's the movement towards electric vehicles, sustainable transport.
21:21I think that's going to be good for many reasons.
21:24But again, not something that happens immediately.
21:26That will happen slower than the self-driving vehicles.
21:31So that's probably something that happens over 30 or 40 years, the transition to electric vehicles.
21:41So thinking about that in context, the demand for electricity will increase dramatically.
21:51So currently, in terms of total energy usage in the world, it's about one-third electricity, about one-third transport, about one-third heating.
22:00So over time, that will transition to almost all, not all, but predominantly electricity,
22:10which means that the demand for electricity will probably triple.
22:15So it's going to be very important to think about how do you make so much more electricity.
22:20It seems they have an easy job.
22:29That's it.
22:30There's no more challenges for them.
22:32No.
22:33Well, I think maybe these things do play into each other a little bit.
22:39But what to do about mass unemployment.
22:42This is going to be a massive social challenge.
22:48And I think, ultimately, we will have to have some kind of universal basic income.
22:52I don't think we're going to have a choice.
22:54Universal basic income.
22:56Universal basic income.
22:57I think it's going to be necessary.
22:59So it means that unemployed people will be paid across the globe?
23:04Yeah.
23:05Because there is no job?
23:06A machine or a robot is taking over?
23:08There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.
23:12Okay.
23:13And I want to be clear that these are not things that I think that I wish would happen.
23:20These are simply things that I think probably will happen.
23:27And if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, then we need to say,
23:32what are we going to do about it?
23:34And I think some kind of a universal basic income is going to be necessary.
23:40Now, the output of goods and services will be extremely high.
23:45So with automation, there will come abundance.
23:50There will be, almost everything will get very cheap.
24:03I think we'll just end up doing universal basic income that's going to be necessary.
24:09But the harder challenge, much harder challenge, is how do people then have meaning?
24:16Like a lot of people, they derive their meaning from their employment.
24:21So if you don't have, if you're not needed, if there's not a need for your labor, how do you, what's the meaning?
24:31Do you have meaning?
24:32Do you feel useless?
24:33Do you feel useless?
24:34These are much, that's a much harder problem to deal with.
24:38And then how do we ensure that the future is going to be the future that we want, that we still like?
24:43Now, I mean, I do think that there's a potential path here which is, and we're really getting into science fiction or create, you know, sort of advanced science stuff.
25:01But having some sort of merger with biological intelligence and machine intelligence.
25:10To some degree, we are already a cyborg.
25:15You think of, like, the digital tools that you have, your phone, your computer, the applications that you have.
25:26Like the fact that, as I was mentioning earlier, you can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google or, you know, from other things.
25:34And so you already have a digital tertiary layer.
25:40I 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.
25:49And then your digital self as a third layer.
25:52So you already have that.
25:56And it's like if somebody dies, their digital ghost is still around.
26:00You know, all of their emails and the pictures that they posted and their social media, that still lives, even if they died.
26:08So, over time, I think we'll probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.
26:19And it's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and your digital, the digital extension of yourself.
26:29Particularly output.
26:33And output, if anything, is getting worse.
26:36You know, we used to have, like, keyboards that we'd use a lot.
26:39Now we do most of our input through our thumbs on a phone.
26:44And that's just very slow.
26:47A computer can communicate at a trillion bits per second, but your thumb can maybe do, I don't know, 10 bits per second or 100 if you're being generous.
26:58So some high bandwidth interface to the brain, I think, will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence.
27:11And maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem.
27:18Getting pretty esoteric here.
27:23I don't know if this is...
27:24It's closed.
27:25Okay.
27:26We got it.
27:27Always you think out of the box.
27:32Your idea is so huge.
27:37You want to go to space.
27:39You decided to go to space.
27:40You did it.
27:41You decided that you want to land your rocket back.
27:45You failed seven times, eight times.
27:48Yeah.
27:49Something like that.
27:50Then it landed there.
27:51More times than I care to count.
27:52Yeah.
27:53Yeah.
27:54How do you come with this idea, actually?
27:56Sometimes they're pushing the human limit.
27:59You are always pushing the human limit.
28:02Why?
28:03I 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.
28:20So in the case of space flight, the critical breakthrough that's necessary in space flight is rapid and complete reusability of rockets.
28:28Just as we have for aircraft.
28:30You can imagine that if an aircraft was single use, almost no one would fly.
28:39Because you can buy, let's say, a 747 might be $250 million, $300 million or something like that.
28:47You'd need two of them for a round trip.
28:52But nobody's going to pay millions of dollars per ticket to do air travel.
29:00But because you can reuse the aircraft tens of thousands of times, the air travel becomes much more affordable.
29:12So in the future of rockets, our rocket costs $60 million roughly.
29:19So the capital cost, if it can be used once, is $60 million.
29:25But the capital cost, if it can be used a thousand times, is $60,000.
29:33And 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.
29:45So it's extremely fundamental.
29:48Because Earth's gravity well is quite deep, Earth has fairly high gravity, the difficulty of making a rocket reusable is much greater than the difficulty of making an aircraft reusable.
30:02That's why a fully reusable rocket has never been developed thus far.
30:07But 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.
30:19Fortunately, if Earth's gravity was even 10% stronger, I would say it would be impossible.
30:29You need a team around you to deliver a lot of ideas.
30:33How do you choose your team based on what?
30:39Well, I suppose, honestly, it tends to be gut feel more than anything else.
30:46So when I interview somebody, my interview question is always the same.
30:53What did you ask?
30:54I said, tell me the story of your life.
30:57And the decisions that you made along the way and why you made them.
31:01And also tell me about some of the most difficult problems you worked on and how you solved them.
31:11And that question, I think, is very important because the people that really solved the problem, they know exactly how they solved it.
31:23They know the little details.
31:26And the people that pretended to solve the problem, they can maybe go one level and then they get stuck.
31:32So, what was your biggest challenge in life?
31:38Biggest challenge in life?
31:40Biggest challenge.
31:50Well, no there are a lot of them.
31:52I'm trying to decide which is the worst.
31:55I think just thinking about how to spend time, one of the
32:10biggest challenges, I think, is making sure you have a
32:13corrective feedback loop, and then maintaining that corrective
32:17feedback loop over time, even when people want to tell you
32:21exactly what you want to hear.
32:23That's very difficult.
32:24Yes.
32:25Time is over.
32:27I'll ask you just one last question, if you allow me.
32:33In the World Government Summit, we have so many people from, so many
32:39young people, actually, from across the globe.
32:42If you have an advice to them, young people globally who want to be
32:45like Elon Musk, what's your advice to them?
32:50I think that probably they shouldn't want
32:54to be you.
32:56You?
32:57I think it sounds better than it is.
32:58Okay.
32:59Yeah.
33:00It's not as much fun being me as you'd think.
33:05I don't know.
33:06You don't think so?
33:07No.
33:08There's definitely, it could be worse for sure.
33:10But it's, I'm not sure I would, I'm not sure I want to be me.
33:17I think advice, I mean, if you want to make progress in things, I think that the best analytical
33:35framework for understanding the future is physics.
33:40physics, I'd recommend studying the thinking process around physics.
33:47Like, not just, not the equations.
33:49I mean, the equations, certainly they're helpful, but the way of thinking in physics is, it's
33:55the best framework for understanding things that are counterintuitive.
33:59And, you know, always taking the position that you are to some degree wrong and your goal
34:10is to be less wrong over time.
34:14One of the biggest mistakes people generally make, and I'm guilty of it too, is wishful thinking.
34:18You know, like, you want something to be true even if it isn't true.
34:24And so you ignore the things that, you ignore the real truth because of what you want to be true.
34:31This is a very difficult trap to avoid.
34:35And like I said, it's certainly one that I find myself in having problems with.
34:41But if you just take that approach of you're always to some degree wrong and your goal is to be less wrong,
34:47and solicit critical feedback, particularly from friends.
34:52Like, friends, particularly, friends, if somebody loves you, they want the best for you.
34:57They don't want to tell you the bad things.
34:59So you have to ask them, you know, and say, really, I really do want to know.
35:06And then they will tell you.
35:09Thank you very much.
35:10It's been...
35:14It is great for the World Government Summit to have a legend who's creating the future for humanity
35:31to share his thought, his idea, his vision, his challenges, and his hope for life.
35:37Thank you very much.
35:38Thank you for having me.
35:39APPLAUSE
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