Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity | Lex Fridman Podcast #400

Yeah. That's great.

There's that whole meme where old guys are thinking about the Roman Empire at least once a day.

Yeah. They usually came as a result of conquest. I mean, there's some like the Austro Hungarian Empire where there was just a lot of sort of clever marriages.

Yeah.

Kid tested Grok approved.

I'm a generally proponent of peace. I mean, ignorance is perhaps, in my view, the real enemy to counter it. That's the real hard part, not, you know, fighting other humans. But all all creatures fight. I mean, the the jungle is like you look at the people think of of this nature as perhaps some sort of peaceful thing, but in fact, it is not. There's some quite funny a a Hertzog thing where he's like in the jungle like saying that it's like basically just murder and death in every direction. Mhmm. I mean, the the plants and animals in the jungle are constantly trying to kill each other every single day, every minute. So it's not like, you know, we're unusual in that respect.

Yes. We have much more of an ability to control our our limbic instinct for violence than, say, a chimpanzee. And in fact, if one looks to say chimpanzee society, it is not friendly. I mean, bonobos are an exception. But chimpanzee society is full of violence and it's quite quite horrific, frankly. That that's that's our limbic system in action. Like, you know, when we're on the wrong side of a chimpanzee, it'll eat your face off and tear your nuts off.

Yeah. Chimpanzee society is a pro like a primitive version of human society. It's they're not like peace loving basically at all. There's extreme violence. And then once in a while, somebody who's watched too many Disney movies decides to raise a chopanzee as a pet And then that eats their face or rips their nuts off or chews their fingers off, that kind of thing. Yeah. It's happened several times.

Some it's happened to people. It's unfortunate. Like that's I guess a one way to ensure that the other chimp doesn't, like, you know, contribute to the gene pool.

The the nut ripper.

I think it's safe to say if somebody's you're gonna cut your nuts in their ass and has the option of ripping them off, you will be amenable to whatever they want.

Yeah.

Well, I think that part of world is is definitely like if you look up the there is no easy answer in the dictionary. It'll be that like the picture of the Middle East, and Israel especially. So there is no easy answer. What my this is strictly my opinion of, you know, is that the the goal of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel. They obviously do not expect to, you know, have a military victory, but they they expect they they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the the most aggressive response possible from Israel. And then leverage that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the cause of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing. So the the the counterintuitive thing here, I think that the the thing that I think should be done even though it is very difficult is that I I recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible. Every part everything. That is the actual thing that would thwart the goal of Hamas.

It's not exactly turn the other cheek because I do think that there's, you know, that that I think it it is appropriate for Israel to find the Hamas members and, you know, either either kill them or incarcerate them. Like that's something that something has to be done because they're just gonna keep keep keep coming otherwise. But in addition to that, they need to do whatever they can. There's some talk of establishing for example a mobile hospital, I'd recommend doing that. Just making sure that know there's food, water, medical necessities and just be over the top about it and be very transparent so it's so that can't you can't claim it's a trick. Like just put a wave cam on the thing, you know, all twenty four seven.

Yeah. Conspicuous acts of kindness that that are unequivocal, meaning that can't be somehow because Hamas will then their response will be, oh, it's a trick. Therefore, you have to counter how how it's not a trick.

Yes. And I'm not sure who said it, it's an apocryphal saying, but an eye for the for an eye makes everyone blind. Now that neck of the woods, they really believe in the whole eye for an eye thing. But I mean, you really have if if you're not gonna just outright commit genocide, like against an entire people, which obviously would not be acceptable to to to really shouldn't be acceptable to anyone, then you're you're gonna leave basically a lot of people alive who subsequently, you know, hate Israel. So really the question is like, how for for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create?

And if you create more than you kill, you've not succeeded. That's the, you the real situation there. And it's safe to say that if, know, if you kill somebody's child in Gaza, you've you've you've made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to just to kill an Israeli. That's the situation. So but but I mean, this is one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss. But but I I think if if the goal if the goal ultimate is some sort of long term peace, one has to be look at this from standpoint of over time, are there more or fewer terrorists being created?

Yeah. Well, war it was safe to say wars or existed and always will exist.

Always has always has existed and always will exist.

There will always be war. This question of just how much war and and, you know, what you know, there's this there's this sort of the scope and scale of war. Mhmm. But to my imagine that there would not be any war in the future, I think would be a very unlikely outcome.

Yes. It was Giant War. The first book starts off with a gigantic galactic war where trillions die. Trillions.

Yeah. I mean, it's I guess if we are able to one day expand to, you know, full the galaxy or whatever, there will be a a galactic war at some point.

Yes.

One of things that does concern me is that there are very few people alive today who actually visually understand the horrors of war, at least in The US. I mean, obviously, are people in on the front lines in Ukraine and Russia who understand just how terrible war is. But how many people in the West understand it? You know, my grandfather was in World War two. He was severely traumatized. I mean, he was there almost six years in the you know, in East And North Africa and Italy. All his friends were killed in front of him and he would have died too except they randomly gave some I guess IQ test or something and he scored very high. Now he was not an officer, was a I think corporal or sergeant or something like that because he didn't finish high school. He had to drop out of high school because his his dad died and he had to work to support his siblings. So because he didn't graduate high school, he was not eligible for the officer corps. So you know, he kind of got put into the cannon fodder category, basically. But then just randomly they gave him this test, he was transferred to British Intelligence in London, that's where he met my grandmother. But he he had PTSD next level, like next level. I mean, just didn't talk. Just didn't talk. And if you tried talking to him, he'd just tell you to shut up. And he won a bunch of medals, never never bragged about it once. Not even to hint it. Nothing. I'd like found out about it because his military records are online. That's how I know. So he would say like, no no way in hell do you wanna do you wanna do that again. But how many people now he he obviously he died, you know, twenty years ago or longer, actually, thirty years ago. How many people are alive that remember World War two? Not many.

Yeah. I mean, are enough nuclear bombs pointed at United States to make the rebel the radioactive rebel balance many times.

I think we shouldn't discount the possibility of nuclear war. It is a civilizational threat. Right now, I could be wrong, but I think the the current probability of nuclear war is quite low. But there are a lot of nukes pointed at us. So And we have a lot of nukes pointed at other people. They're still there. Nobody's put their their guns away. The the missiles are still in the silos.

No. There are wars which are tragic and difficult on a on a local basis. And then there are wars which are civilization ending or have that potential. Obviously, thermonuclear warfare has high potential to end civilization perhaps permanently. But certainly, you know, to severely wound and and perhaps setback human progress by, you know, to the stone age or something. I don't know. Pretty bad. Probably scientists and engineers want to be super popular after that as well. Like you got us into this mess.

So generally, I think we we obviously wanna prioritize civilizational risks over things that are painful and tragic on on a local level, but not civilizational.

Well, I think that what what is likely to happen, which is really pretty much the the way it is, is that something very close to the current lines will be how a ceasefire or truce happens. But, you know, you you just have a situation right now where whoever goes on the offensive will suffer casualties at several times the rate of whoever's on the defense. Because you've got defense in-depth, you got minefields, trenches, anti tank defenses. Nobody has air superiority because the anti aircraft missiles are really far better than the aircraft. Like there are far more of them. And so neither side has air superiority. Tanks are basically death traps, just slow moving and they're not immune to anti tank weapons.

So you you really just have long range artillery and infantry trenches. It's World War one all over again. Mhmm. With drones. Yeah. Throwing old drones, some some drones there.

Mhmm. Yeah. So it's whoever is you don't you don't you don't wanna be trying to advance from either side because the probability of dying is incredibly high. So in order to overcome defense in-depth trenches and minefields, you really need a significant local superiority in numbers. Ideally, combined arms where where you you do a fast attack with aircraft, a a concentrated number of tanks, and a lot of people. That's the only way you're gonna punch through a line. And then you're punch through and and then not have reinforcements just kick you right out again. I mean, I really recommend people read World War one warfare in detail. It's rough. I mean, the sheer number of people that died there was mind boggling.

Yes. I mean, the the thing that the reason I I, you know, proposed a a some sort of truce or or or peace a year ago was because I predicted pretty much exactly what would would happen, which is a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land. And this the the the loss of the the flower of Ukrainian and Russian youth, and we should have some sympathy for the the Russian boys as well as the Ukrainian boys. Because the Russian boys don't ask to be on their front line, they have to be. So there's a lot of sons not coming back to their parents, you know. And I think most of them don't don't really have they don't hate the other side. You know, it's sort of like there's this saying about like this saying comes from World War one, it's like young boys who don't know each other killing each other on behalf of old men that do know each other. The hell is the point of that?

Look. I think I would just recommend do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth to be to die in trenches. Whether you talk to Putin or not, just don't do that. Whoever goes on the offensive will lose massive numbers of people. And history will not look kindly upon them.

Well, it's it's worth reading that book under the difficult to pronounce. Thucydides trap, I believe it's called. I love war history, I like, inside out and backwards. There's hardly a battle I haven't read read about. And and trying to figure out like what what really was the cause of victory in any particular case as opposed to what one side or another claimed was the the reason?

Yeah. So that Athens and Sparta is classic case. The thing about the Greeks is they really wrote down a lot of stuff. They loved writing. Mhmm. You there are lots of interesting things that happened in many parts of world, but they just didn't write down. So we don't know what happened or they didn't really write with in detail. They just would say like, we went we had a battle and we won. And like, what? Can you add a bit more? So the Greeks, they really wrote a lot. They were very articulate on just love writing. So and we have a bunch of that writing that's preserved. So we know what led up to the Peloponnesian war between the Spartan and Athenian alliance. And we we know that they they saw it coming. I mean, the Spartans didn't write. They they also weren't very verbose by their nature. But they did write, but they weren't very verbose. They weren't Turs. But the the Athenians and the other Greeks wrote wrote a line. And they were like, and Sparta was really kinda like the leader of of Greece. But but Athens grew stronger and stronger with each passing year. And and everyone's like, well, that's inevitable that there's gonna be a clash between Athens and Sparta. Well, how do we avoid that? And they couldn't they couldn't they actually they saw it coming and they still could not avoid it. So, you know, at some point if there's if if one group, one civilization or or country or whatever exceeds another, sort of like if you know, The United States has been the biggest kid on the block since I think around 1890 from an economic standpoint. So The United States has been the economic most powerful economic engine in the world longer than anyone's been alive. And the foundation of war is economics. So now we have a situation in case of China where the economy is likely to be two, perhaps three times larger than that of The US. So imagine you're the biggest kid on the block for as long as anyone can remember, and suddenly a kid comes along who's twice your size.

I spent a lot of time in China and met with the leadership many times.

Well, the the sheer number of really smart, hardworking people in China is incredible. There are really so like, how many smart, hardworking people are there in China? There's far more of them there than there are here, I think in my in my opinion. The and they've got a lot of energy. So I mean the architecture in China that's in recent years is far more impressive than The US. I mean, the the train stations, the buildings, the high speed rail, everything, it's really far more impressive than what we have in The US. I I mean, I recommend somebody just go to Shanghai and Beijing, look at the buildings, and go to, you know, take the train from Beijing to Xi'an where you have the Terracotta Warriors. China's got an incredible history, a very long history. And you know, I think arguably the in terms of the use of language from from a written standpoint, sort of one of one of the oldest perhaps perhaps the oldest written language. And then China, people did write things down. So now China historically has always been, with rare exception, been internally focused. They have not been acquisitive. They've fought each other. There have been many many civil wars. In the Three Kingdoms War, I believe they lost about 70% of their population. So they had brutal internal wars, like civil wars that make the US Civil War look small by comparison. So I think it's important to appreciate that China is not monolithic. Mhmm. We sort of think of like China as a sort of one entity of one mind, this is definitely not the case. From what I've seen and I think most people who understand China would agree, people in China think about China 10 times more than they think about anything outside of China. So it's like 90% of their consideration is, you know, our our is is is internal.

The good news, the history of China suggests that China is not acquisitive, meaning they're not gonna go out and invade a whole bunch of countries. Mhmm. I do feel very strongly, you know, so that's that's good. I mean, because a lot of lot of very powerful countries have been acquisitive. Mhmm. The US is one of the also one of the rare cases that has not been acquisitive. Like after World War two, The US could have basically taken over the world and any country. Like we got nukes, nobody else got nukes. You know, we have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want? Mhmm. And The United States could have taken over everything. Or at will, and it didn't. And The United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, you know, helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented. You know, The US did conspicuous acts of kindness like the Berlin Airlift, you know. And and I think, you know, it's always like, well, America's done bad things. Well, of course, America's done bad things, but one needs to look at the the whole track record. And and just generally, you know, one one sort of test would be how do you treat your prisoners of war? Mhmm. Or let's say, you know, no offense to the Russians, but let's say you're in Germany, it's 1945. You got the Russian army coming one side, and you got the French, British, and American armies coming the other side. Who would you like to be to surrender to? Like, no country is like morally perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans. That would be my choice very strongly.

Very much so. And in fact, Von Braun Yeah. Took, you know, a smart guy. Was like, we've got to be captured by the Americans. Yep. And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute von Braun and all of the German rock engineers. And they narrowly escaped their SS they they said they were going out for a walk in the woods. They left in the middle of winter with no coats. And they ran like but no food, no coats, no water. And just ran like hell and ran west. And by sheer like they I think his brother found like a bicycle or something and and then just cycled west as fast as he could and found found a US patrol. So anyway, that's it. That's one that's one way you can tell morality is. Who who who where do you want to be at PW? It's not fun anywhere, but some places are much worse than others. So anyway, so so so I think America has been while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force. And we should always be self critical and we try to be better. But anyone with half brain knows that. So so I think there are in this way, China and The United States are similar. Neither country has been acquisitive in a significant way. So that's like a, you know, a shared principle, I guess. Now now China does feel very strongly about Taiwan. They've been very clear about that for a long time. You know, from their standpoint, it's it's it would be like one of the states is is is, you know, not there like like Hawaii or something like that, but but more significant than Hawaii, you know. And Hawaii is pretty significant for us. So they they view it as as as really the that there's a fundamental part of China, the island of Formosa, not not Taiwan that is not part of China but should be. And the only reason that it hasn't been is because of the US Pacific Fleet.

Yes. China has been very clear that they will incorporate Taiwan peacefully or militarily, but that they will incorporate it from their standpoint is 100% likely.

Absolutely. So in in after World War one, the the they made a big mistake. You know, they they basically tried to lump all the blame on Germany and and and, you know, settled Germany with impossible reparations. And, you know, really there was a lot of there was a fair quite a bit of blame to go around for World War one, but they they try to, you know, put it all on Germany. And that was that that laid the seeds for World War two. So that's a lot of people well, not just Hitler, a lot of people felt wronged. And they wanted vengeance

You you you kill somebody's father, mother, son, daughter, they're not gonna forget it. They will want vengeance. So after World War two, they're like, well, that Treaty of Versailles was a huge mistake in World War one. And so this time, instead of, you know, crushing the losers, we're we're actually gonna help them with the Marshall Plan and we're we're gonna help revolt revolt Germany. We're gonna help revolt, you know, Austria and the the other, know, Italy and whatnot. So

Something must stop the the cycle of reciprocal violence. Something must stop it or it will, you know, it'll it'll it'll never stop. Just eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, limb for a limb, life for a life, forever and ever.

Yeah. I guess time to plan for that one. I

Yeah. Absolutely. I our AI Grock is modeled after The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books. Which is it's a book on philosophy disguised as a book on humor. Mhmm. And I would say that is that forms the basis of my philosophy, which is that we don't know the meaning of life. But the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we are able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. So I have a philosophy of curiosity.

Well, we are actually working hard to have engineering, math, physics answers that you can count on.

So for the other sort of AIs out there that or these so called large language models, I've not found the engineering to be reliable. And the hallucination it it unfortunately hallucinates most when you least want it to hallucinate.

So when you're asking important difficult questions, that's when it tends to be confidently wrong. So we're really trying hard to say, okay, how do we be as grounded as possible so you can count on the results? Trace things back to physics first principles, mathematical logic. So underlying the humor is an aspiration to adhere to the truth of the universe as closely as possible.

It is tricky. So that's why, you know, you you there's always gonna be some amount of error, but we wanna aspire to be as truthful as possible about the answers with acknowledged error. So that there was always you know, when you're confidently wrong. So you're not gonna be right every time, but you know, wanna minimize half when you're confidently wrong. And then like I said, once you can count on the logic as being not violating physics, then you can start to to pull on that to create inventions, like invent new technologies. But if if you can't if if you're if you cannot count on the foundational physics being correct, obviously, the inventions are simply wishful thinking, you know, imagination land, magic, basically.

Yes. That's how simple three word mission.

If an AI cannot figure out new physics, it's clearly not equal to humans. Let alone nor nor has surpassed humans because humans have figured out new physics. They're just you know, physics is just understanding, you know, deepening one's insight into how reality works. And then then then then there's engineering, which is inventing things that have never existed. Mhmm. Now the range of possibilities for engineering is far greater than for physics. Because, you know, once you figure out the rules of the universe, that that's that's it. You've discovered things that already existed. But from that, you can then build technologies with that are really almost limitless in the variety and keep, you know. So once you understand the rules of the game properly and we do current physics, we do at least at a local level understand how physics works very well. Are really to predict things is incredibly good. Like quantum mechanics is the degree to which quantum mechanics can predict outcomes is incredible. That was my that was my hard hardest class in college, by the way. My my senior quantum mechanics class was harder than all of my other classes put together.

Yeah. You have to test any conclusions against the ground truth of reality. Reality is the ultimate judge. Like physics is the law, everything else is a recommendation. I've seen plenty of people break the break the laws made by man, but none break the laws made by physics.

it's it's also not not the case currently that even that its internal logic is not consistent. So especially with these with the approach of like just predicting a token predict, token predict token. It's like a vector sum. You know, you're summing up a bunch of vectors, but you can get drift. So as those a little bit of error a little bit of error adds up. And by the time you are many tokens down the path, yours it it doesn't make any sense.

It has to be self aware about the drift and then look at the thing as a gestalt as a whole Mhmm. And and say it doesn't have coherence as a whole. Mhmm. So, you know, when authors write books that they they will write the book and then they'll go and revise it. You know, to take into account, you know, all the the end and the beginning and the middle and and rewrite it to achieve coherence. So that it doesn't end end up in a nonsensical place. Mhmm.

get create a draft and then and then you and then you iterate on that draft until it has as coherent, until it's it all adds up, basically.

There's no I in team America. Oh, wait. There is.

Yeah. Yeah. I think we need to understand intelligence, understand consciousness. I mean, there there I mean, there are some sort of fundamental questions of like, what is thought? What is emotion? Yeah. Is it really just one atom bumping into another atom? It feels like something more than that. So I I I think we're probably missing some really big things. Like some really big things.

Well, some people would quote like a like a soul, you know, a soul. Like, you feel like you're you. Right? I mean, you don't feel like you're just a collection of atoms. But on what dimension does thought exist? What dimension does do emotions exist? We feel them very strongly. I suspect there's more to it than atoms bumping to atoms.

Yeah. What is consciousness? Like, are when you put the atoms in a particular shape, why are they able to form thoughts Mhmm. And take actions that enter out of feelings?

do Why does this illusion exist? Yeah. On what plane does this illusion exist? Yeah. And that sometimes I wonder is, you know, either perhaps everything's conscious or nothing is conscious. One of the two.

It does seem more something more fun, yes. But we're we're composed of atoms and those atoms are composed of quarks and leptons. And those quarks and leptons have been around since the beginning of the universe.

Right. What what seems to the beginning of the universe?

Where are the aliens?

That's one of the the like the Fermi Paradox question. A lot of people have asked me if if I've seen any evidence of aliens, I I haven't, which is kind of concerning because then I think what I'd probably prefer to at least have seen some archaeological evidence of aliens. To the best of my knowledge, there is no proof. I'm not aware of any evidence of aliens. If they're out there, they're very subtle. We might just be the only consciousness at least in the galaxy. And if you if you look at say the history of Earth, for us to believe the archaeological record, Earth is about four and a half billion years old. Civilization as measured from the first writing is only about 5,000 years old. We have to give some credit there to the ancient Sumerians who aren't around anymore. I think it was the archaic pre cuneiform was the first actual symbolic representation, but only about five thousand years ago. I think that's a good date for one word to say civilization started. That's one millionth of Earth's existence. So civilization has been around it's really a flash in the

So far. And why why have we why did it take so long for, you know, four and a half billion years? For the vast majority of the time, there was no life and then there was archaic bacteria for a very long time. And then, you know, you had mitochondria get captured, multicellular life, differentiation into plants and animals, life moving from the oceans to land, mammals, higher brain functions. And the sun is expanding slowly, but it it will it will overheat it will it will heat heat the earth up at some point in the future, boil the oceans and and earth will become like Venus where where no life life as we know it is impossible. So if we do not become multi planetary and ultimately go beyond our solar system, annihilation of all life on earth is a certainty, a certainty. And it could be as little as on the galactic time scale half a billion years. You know, long time by human standards, but that that's only 10% longer than Earth has been around at all.

So if if life had taken 10% longer to evolve on Earth, it wouldn't exist at all.

So Yes.

I mean, it's it's not I mean, I I suspect that there there if we are able to go out there and explore other star systems that we there's a good chance we find a whole bunch of long dead one planet civilizations Yeah. That never made it past their home planet. That's so sad. Yeah. Sad.

I mean, are various explanations for the Fermi Paradox, and one is just the sort of there's these great filters which civilizations don't pass through. And one of those great filters is, do you become a multi planet civilization or not? And if you don't, it's simply a matter of time before something happens on your planet. You know, either natural or man made that causes us to die out like the dinosaurs. Where are they now? They didn't have spaceships. So

I hope so. Nice aliens.

That would be a nice explanation.

Well, they do run into a lot of other ants. That's true. They have these ant wars.

Yeah. They literally have these big wars between various ants.

You should listen to that Werner Herzog talking about the jungle. It's really hilarious. Have you heard it?

should play you should play it for the, you know, as an interlude in the Yeah. It's on YouTube. It's it's awesome.

I did that bear documentary. The bear documentary. And this thing about penguins. Yeah. The

The penguin's like headed for like the mountains like that are like 70 miles away. Yeah. And penguin is just headed for doom basically. Well, was had a cynical take.

Aliens, I mean, I I don't know. Look, I think the smart move is just, you know, this is the first time in the history of Earth that it's been possible for life to extend beyond Earth. That window is open. Now, it may be open for a long time or maybe open for a short time. And it it may be open now and then never open again. So I think I think the smart move here is to make life multi planetary while it is possible to do so. We don't wanna be one of those lame one planet civilizations No. That just dies out. No. Those are lame. Yeah. Lame. No self respecting civilization would be one planet.

No. Okay.

I mean, look, if if if I see the slightest indication that there are aliens, I will immediately post on the x platform Yeah. Anything I know.

Yeah. I mean, look, we we have more satellites up there right now than everyone else combined. So, you know, we'd know we know if we've got to maneuver around something, and we're not that doesn't have to maneuver around anything.

Yeah. I would agree that that god of the the simulator or whatever the the supreme being or beings reveal themselves through the physics. You know, they're creators of this existence. And it's incumbent upon us to try to understand more about this wondrous creation.

There may not be a master plan in the sense so there's like, maybe an interesting answer to the question of determinism versus free will is that if we are in a simulation, the reason that that these higher beings would hold a simulation is to see what happens.

So it's not they don't know what happens. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold the simulation.

So when when humans create a simulation, so it's SpaceX and Tesla, we create simulations all the time. Especially for the rocket. You you know, you have to run a lot of simulations to understand what's gonna happen because you can't really test the rocket until it goes to space and you want it to work. So you have to you have to simulate subsonic, transonic, supersonic, hypersonic, ascent and then coming back super high heating and orbital dynamics. All this is going be simulated. Because you don't get very many kicks at the can. But we we run simulations to see what happens. Not if we knew what happens, we wouldn't run the simulation. Mhmm. So if if there's so whoever created this existence is they're running it because they don't know what's gonna happen, not because they do.

Well, funny thing is that Uber Lilith's her title is hatred incarnate. Yeah. And right now, I guess, you can ask the Diablo team, but it's almost impossible to defeat hatred in the eternal realm.

I I I can cruise through tier 100 nightmare dungeons like a stroll in the park. Mhmm.

Yeah. I can there's the the sort of I guess maybe the second hardest boss is Duriel. Duriel can't even scratch the paint. Mhmm. So I killed Duriel Duriel so many times. And every other boss in the game, all all of them kill him so many times, it's easy. But Ubilelith, otherwise known as hatred incarnate, especially if you're a druid and you have no ability to go and to be vulnerable. You there are these random death waves that that come at you. And I'm pretty you know, I really am 52, so my reflex is not what they used to be, but I'm I have a lifetime of playing video games. At one point, I was, you know, maybe one of the best Quake players in the world. I actually won money for and again, what I think was the first paid esports tournament in The US. We're doing doing four person Quake tournaments and we came second. I was the second best person on the team. And the the actual best person that we were we were actually winning. We were gonna come first except the best person on the team, his computer crashed halfway through the game. So we we came second. But I got money for it and everything. So like, basically, I got skills. Mhmm. Know, albeit, you know, no no spring spring chicken these days. And the to be totally frank, it's driving me crazy trying to beat Lilith as a druid. Basically, try to try to beat try to beat hatred incarnate in the eternal realm. As a druid. As a druid. And if you if you if you this is really vexing, let me tell you.

the Yeah.

I would not recommend playing a druid in the Atomura realm. But right now, I think the most powerful character in this in the seasonal realm is the sorcerer with the lightning balls.

The the sorks have huge balls in the seasonal.

So sorks have huge balls. They do. Huge balls of lightning.

And it's actually in in the seasonal realm that you can you can it's it's like pretty easy to beat overload with the the vampires you get these vampiric powers that amplify your damage and increase your defense and whatnot. It's really quite easy to defeat hatred seasonally. But to defeat hatred eternally, very difficult. Almost impossible. It's virtually impossible. It it seems like there's a metaphor for life. You know? I

other way.

Yes.

No, it's absurd. Really, it's exercising absurdity, and it makes me wanna pull my hair out.

It's I don't know if I it's it calms my mind. I mean, you sort of killing the demons in a video game calms the demons in my mind. Yeah. I if if you play a tough video game, you can get into like a state of flow, which is very enjoyable. And admittedly, it needs to be not too easy, not too hard. We're kind of in the Goldilocks zone. And I guess you generally wanna feel like you're progressing in the game. So a good video. And and there's also beautiful art, engaging storylines, and it's a it's it's like an amazing puzzle to solve, I think. And so it's like solving the puzzle.

It's Elden Ring is definitely a candidate for best game ever. Top five for sure.

is beautiful. Elden Ring is feels like it's designed by an alien.

It's it's so unusual. It's incredibly creative and the art is stunning. I recommend playing it on a on a big resolution high dynamic range TV even. It doesn't need to be a monitor. Just the art is incredible. It's so beautiful. And and it's it's so unusual. And each of those top five boss battles is unique. Like, it's like a unique puzzle to solve. Mhmm. Each one is different. And the the strategy you use to solve one battle is different from another battle.

Correct. That is currently the the and I've I've played a lot of video games. My because my it's my primary recreational activity.

And yes. Beating hatred in the eternal realm Yeah. Is the hardest boss battle in life and in the video game. Metaphor and I'm not sure it's possible. But it's I do make progress. So then I'm like, okay, I'm making progress. Maybe if I just tweak that paragon board a little more Mhmm. I can do it. If just dodge a few more waves Mhmm. I can do it.

Yeah. Might be. I I I I a feeling that at least, I I think It's doable. It's it's doable, yes. Mhmm.

Yeah. I mean, it did prompt me to think about just hate in general, which is, you you wanna be careful of the one of those things where you wish for something that sounds good, but in but if you get it, it's actually a dystopian situation. So, you know, you could sort of run a sort of hypothesis of like if you wish for world peace. Sounds good. Mhmm. But how is it enforced? And and at what cost is is What at what cost eternal peace? It might actually be worse to have eternal peace because of what that would entail. The suppression of everyone, it might be the suppression of progress. It might be an ossified society that never changes. Mhmm. What I'm saying is that there is an argument that you you that if that if you wish for no war, you should be careful what you wish for. Because what's required in order for there to be no war might be worse than a little war.

You know, there's actually a real drug called Soma.

Did they actually

Tell us about the drug called Soma.

Oh, okay. Fun. Yeah. So let's talk about the real drug.

That's the real drug you're talking about.

Yeah. So

Yeah.

Yeah. Steve's done a great job. So and and you said, like, you could say, like, Noah Noah, I mean, Soma from brain Brave New World. Because it it thinks you mean you you mean Soma, the real drug.

No. I mean Soma from Brave New World.

I was

Is it better to live in a world where everyone is happy all the time, even if that happiness happiness is artificial? Mhmm. Good question. This is what I mean. Like, do you want do you wish for world peace and and happiness all the time? Are you sure?

Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile and ossified that never changes, that is ultimately doomed.

darkness and the light. It's it's it's really a very good summary.

It really gets the point. This is not simply regurgitating Brave New World. It's actually getting to the the salient element of Soma as a drug. Do you do you actually wanna be in a situation where everyone is happy all the time even though it's artificial? Or is it better to confront the challenges of life and experience full range of human emotions, even if it means experiencing pain and suffering?

It pretty much nails it. In conclusion, Soma from Brave New World is fictional drug that's used to explore some deep philosophical questions about the nature of happiness and the role of drugs in society. It's a powerful symbol of the dangers of using drugs to escape from reality and the importance of confronting the challenges of life head on. Nailed it. And the crazy thing is, like, you know, we do have a real drug called Soma, which kinda does is kinda like the drug in the book. And I'm like, did they they must have named they must have named it after.

Yeah. Soma, the real drug, is quite effective on back pain.

I've taken it.

Because I had, like, a, you know, squashed disc in my c five, c six.

It doesn't completely. It it it reduces the amount of pain you feel, but at the expense of mental acuity. It dulls your mind. Just like just like the drug in the book.

Yeah. And actually, was talking to a friend of mine saying, like, would you really want there to be no hate in the world? Like, really none? Like, I wonder why hate evolved. I'm not saying we should amplify hate, of course. I think we should try to minimize it. But but none at all? There might be a reason for hate.

Is it possible to appreciate the highs without knowing the lows?

No highs, no lows. Who knows? That's almost a poem.

Well, I I think it's helpful. The the tools of physics are very powerful and can be applied, I think, to almost any really any arena in life. This it's really just critical thinking. For something important, need to reason with from first principles and think about things in the limit one direction or the other. So in the limit, even at the Kardashev scale, meaning even if you harness the entire power of the sun, you will still care about useful compute per watt. So that's where I I think probably where things are headed from the standpoint of AI is that we we have a silicon shortage now that will transition to a voltage transformer shortage in about a year. Ironically, transformers for transformers. You need need Transformers to run Transformers.

thing. I think yes. Fate loves irony. Ironic humor and an ironically funny outcome seems to be often what fate wants.

Yeah. But yeah. So so we're we're we're I have a silicon shortage today. A voltage step down transformer shortage probably in about a year, and then just electricity shortages in general in about two years. I I gave a speech for the sort of world gathering of utility companies, electricity companies. And I I said, look, you really need to prepare for a tripling of electricity demand because all transport is gonna go electric with the ionic exception of rockets. And and and heating will also go electric. So in GE usage right now, it's roughly one third very rough terms, one third electricity, one third transport, one third heating. And so in order for everything to go sustainable, to go electric, you need to triple electricity output. So I encourage the utilities to build more power plants and and also to probably have well, not probably, they should definitely buy more batteries because the the grid currently is sized for real time load, which is kinda crazy because, you know, that means you got a size for whatever the peak electricity demand is, like the worst second or the worst day of the year. Or you can have a brown out of blackout. And you know, that we had that crazy blackout for several days in Austin. So because there's almost no buffering of energy in the grid. Like, if you've got a hydro power plant, you can buffer energy. But otherwise, it's all real time. So with batteries, you can you can produce energy at night and use it during the day. So you can buffer. So I I I expect that there will be very heavy usage of batteries in the future. Because the the the peak to trough ratio for power plants is anywhere from two to five. You know, so it's like lowest point to highest point.

Yes. Yes. I mean, electrification of transport and and electric heating will will be much bigger than AI, at least In the short term. In the short term. But but even for for AI, you really have a growing demand for electricity for electric vehicles and a growing demand for electricity for to run the computers for AI. Mhmm. And so this is obviously leading and lead to a short an electricity shortage.

It will get solved. It's a question of how long it takes to solve So at various points, there's a limit some some kind of limiting factor to progress. And when I with regard to how I'm saying it, right now, the limiting factor is silicon chips.

And that will we're then have more chips than we can actually plug in and turn on probably in about a year. The the initial constraint being literally voltage step down transformers because you've got power coming in at three hundred three hundred thousand volts and it's got to step all the way down eventually to around point seven volts. So it's a very big amount of you know, the voltage step down is gigantic. So and and the the industry is not used to rapid growth.

Well, I mean, I've been pushing for some kind of regulatory oversight for a long time. I've been somewhat of a Cassandra on the subject for over a decade. I think we want to be very careful in how we develop AI. It's a it's a it's a great power and with great power comes great responsibility. I think it it would be wise for us to have at least an objective third party who can be like a referee that can go in and understand what the various leading players are doing with AI. And even if there's no enforcement ability, they should they can at least voice concerns

Publicly. You know, Jeff Hinton, for example, left Google and he voiced strong concerns. But now he's not at Google anymore. So who's gonna voice the concerns? So I think I think there's I I I like I you know, Tesla gets a lot of regulatory oversight on the automotive front. And we're subject to I think over a 100 regulatory agencies domestically and internationally. So it's a lot. You could fill this room with the old regulations that Tesla has to adhere to for automotive. Same is true in, you know, for rockets and for currently the limiting factor for SpaceX for Starship launch is regulatory approval. The FAA has actually given their approval, but we're we're waiting for Fish and Wildlife to finish their analysis and give their approval. That's why I posted, I want to buy a fish license on which also refers to the Muddy Python sketch. Yeah. Like, why do you need a license for your fish? I I don't know. According to the rules, I'm told you need some sort of fish license or something. We effectively need a fish license thrown to rocket. And I'm like, wait a second. How did the fish come into the picture?

I mean, some some of the things like that that it's I feel like are so absurd that I wanna do like a comedy sketch and flash at the bottom. This is all real. This is actually what happened. You know, one of the things that was a bit of a challenge at one point is that they were worried about a rocket hitting a shark. Mhmm. And now the ocean is very big. And how often do you see sharks? Not that often, know. As a percentage of ocean surface area, sharks basically are zero. And and and so then we will then we said, well, how will we calculate the probability of of telling a shark? And then like, well, we can't give you that information because we're they're worried about shark hunt shark fin hunters going and hunting sharks. And so, well, how are we supposed to we're on the horns of a dilemma then. Mhmm. Then they said, well, there's another part of fish and wildlife that can can do this analysis. I'm like, well, why don't you give them the data? Like, we don't they don't we don't trust them. Like, excuse me? They're literally in your department. But again, this is actually what happened. And and and and then can you do an NDA or something? Eventually, they managed to solve the internal quandary and indeed the probability of of us hitting a shock is essentially zero. Then there's another organization that I didn't realize existed until, you know, a few months ago that cares about whether you we would potentially hit a whale in international waters. Now again, you look at the surface of the look at the look at the Pacific and say, what percentage of the the Pacific consists of whale? Like, he'll give you a big picture and like point out all the whales in this picture. I'm like, I don't see any whales. It's like basically 0%. And if our rocket does hit a whale, which is extremely unlikely beyond all belief, that is the the fate had it as that's a a whale has some seriously bad luck. Mhmm. You know, it's like the least lucky whale ever.

Yes. Well, I I mean, one one of the things that's pretty wild is for launching out of Vandenberg in California, we had to they were worried about seal procreation, whether the seals would be dismayed by the sonic booms. Now there have been a lot of rockets launched out of Vandenberg and the seal population has steadily increased. So if anything, rocket booms are an aphrodisiac based on the evidence if you correlate rocket launches with seal population. Mhmm. Nonetheless, we were forced to kidnap a seal, strap it to a board, put headphones on the seal and play sonic boom sounds to it to see if it would be distressed. This is an actual thing that happened. This is actually real. I have pictures. I would love

Yes. It's a seal with headphones Yeah. Strapped to a board. And and like the okay. Now, the amazing part is how calm the seal was. Yeah. Because if I was a seal, I'd be like, this is the ant. They're definitely gonna eat me. Yeah. How old the seal when the seal goes back to other, you know, seal friends, how are they gonna explain that?

Never gonna believe him. That's why I'm like, well, you know, sort of like it's like getting kidnapped by aliens and getting an anal probe, you know? You come back and say, I swear to God, I got kidnapped by aliens and they stuck anal probe in my butt. And you're like, no, they didn't. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And his butt's like his his seal buddies are never gonna believe him that he gets strapped to a board and they put headphones on his ears. And then let him go. Twice, by the way. We had to do it twice.

We're capture

Oh, no. Different seal.

Yes. Exactly. I got a seal of approval. No. I mean, this is Alright. This is like I don't think the public is quite aware of the the madness that goes on.

In order to run, like, really deep intelligence, you need a lot of compute. So it's not like, you know, you can just fire up a PC in your basement and be running AGI at least not yet. You know, Grock was trained on 8,000 a one hundreds running at peak efficiency. And Rock's gonna get a lot better by the way. We we'll be more than doubling our compute every couple months for the next several months.

By Grok?

I think there's some merit to open sourcing. I think perhaps with a slight time delay, you know, I don't know, six six months even. I think I'm I'm generally in favor of open sourcing. Like, bias was open sourcing. I mean, it it is a concern to me that, you know, opening I, you know, I was, you know, I think I guess, arguably, the the prime the, you know, prime mover behind OpenAI in the sense that it was created because of discussions that I had with Larry Page back when he and I were were friends and, you know, stayed at his house. And I talked to him about AI safety and and Larry did not care about AI safety or at least at the time he didn't. You know, and at one point he called me a specious for being pro human. And I'm like, well, what team are you on, Larry? It's on Team Robot. And I'm like, okay. So at the time, you know, Google Google had acquired DeepMind. They had probably two thirds of all AI, know, probably two thirds of all AI researchers in the world. Mhmm. They had basically infinite money and compute. And the guy in charge, you know, Larry Page, did not care about safety and even yelled at me and and and called me a speciest and being pro human.

I'd like to be friends with Larry again. He he's he he got really the the the the breaking of the friendship was over opening eye. And specifically, I think the the key moment was recruiting Ilya Oskar.

Ilya's a good good human, smart, good heart. And that was that was a tough recruiting battle. It was mostly Demis on one side and me on the other, both trying to recruit Ilya. And Ilya went back and forth. You know, he's gonna stay at Google. He's gonna leave, then he's gonna stay, then he'll leave. And and finally, he he did agree to join OpenAI. That was one of the toughest recruiting battles we ever had. And but that that was really the the linchpin for OpenAI being successful. And I was, you know, also instrumental in recruiting a number of other people. And I provided all of the funding in the beginning, over $40,000,000. And the name. The the open in OpenAI is supposed to mean open source. And it was created as a nonprofit open source and now it is a closed source for maximum profit, which I think is not good karma.

Like I said, I'd like to be friends again with Larry. I haven't seen him in ages. And we were friends for a very long time. I met I met Larry Page before he got funding for Google. Or actually, I guess, before he got venture funding, I think he he got the first like 100 from, I think, Bechtel's time

Yeah. Since maybe '98 or something.

Yeah. Twenty five years. That was a lot has happened. Insane.

Delayed yeah. Like what is the source that is open? You know what I mean? Like, there's basically it's a giant CSV file Yeah. Yeah. With a bunch of numbers.

What do you do with that giant file of numbers, you know? How do you run? Like the amount of actual the the lines of code is very small.

And and most of the work, the software work is in the in the curation of the data. So it's like trying to figure out what data is separating good data from bad data. Like like you can't just crawl the Internet because there's lot of junk out there. Mhmm. A huge percentage of websites have more noise than signal. You know, they're they're or because they're just used for search engine optimization. They're literally just scam websites. So

Think the signal noise could be greatly improved. I mean, all of the posts on the x platform should be AI recommended. Meaning like we should populate a vector space around any given post, compare that to the vector space around any user, and match the two. Mhmm. Right now, there is a little bit of AI used for the the recommended posts, but it's mostly heuristics. And if there's a reply, whether the reply to a post could be much better than the original post, but it will according to the current rules the system, get almost no attention compared to a primary post.

There's little bit. But it needs to be entirely that. Like, there are at least in the like, if if you explicitly follow someone, that's one thing. But if you in terms of what is recommended Mhmm. From people that you don't follow, that should all be AI.

There's a lot. There's a lot of stuff on the system. And I and I think but I think it's right now, it's it's not currently good at recommending things that from accounts you don't follow.

Or or where there's more than one degree of separation. So, you know, it's it's pretty good if if there's at least like some commonality between someone you follow like something or reposted or comment on or something like that. But if if if there's no let's say, somebody posts something really interesting, but you have no followers in common Mhmm. You would not see it.

replies basically never get seen because they're never they're they're currently I'm not saying it's correct. I'm saying it's incorrect. Replies have, you know, couple of magnitude less importance than primary posts.

Yeah. Yeah. It's what it should be. So you you Well, the recommendations should be purely a vector correlation. Like, there's a series of vectors, you know, basically parameters, vectors, whatever you want to call them. Sort of things that the system knows that you like. Like, maybe there's like several 100 sort of vectors associated with each user account. And then any post in the system, whether it's video, audio, short post, long post. The the reason I, by the way, wanna move away from tweet is that, you know, people are posting like two, three hour videos on the site. That's not a tweet. Like, it's a very Yeah. They'll be like, tweet for Yeah. Two hours? Come on. Do a tweet made sense when it was like 140 characters of text. Mhmm. Because it's like a bunch of like little birds tweeting. But when you've got long form content, it's no longer a tweet. Yeah. So a movie is not a tweet. And like, you know, Apple for example posted like the entire episode of the silo, entire thing on our platform. And by the way, it the it was their number one social media thing ever in engagement of anything on any platform ever. So it was a great idea. And by the way, don't I just learned about it afterwards. I was like, hey, wow. They posted an entire hour long episode of so no, that's not a tweet. You know, it was a video.

Yeah. I mean, right now, it's it's a hodgepodge for that reason. It's it's but, you know, like, if let's say, in the case of Apple posting, like, an entire episode of of their series pretty good series, by the way, this solo. I watched it. So there's gonna be a lot of discussion around it. So that you've you've got a lot of context. People commenting, they like it, they don't like it, or they like this or the you know. And and you can then populate the vector space based on the context of of all the comments around it. So even though it's a video, there's a lot of information around it that that allows you to populate vector space of that that hour long video. And then you can obviously get more sophisticated by having the AI actually watch the movie

if you're gonna like the movie.

Yeah. Analyze this movie Mhmm. And just like your movie critic or TV series, and and then recommend based on after it what after the air watches the movie. Just like a friend can tell you if a friend knows you well Mhmm. A friend can recommend a movie and but with high probability that you'll like it. Mhmm.

It's like millions. Yeah. I mean, actually, AI will be better than will know you better than your friends know you, most of your friends anyway.

Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. You you you want ads that are advertising that is if if if it's for a product or service that you that you actually need when you need it, it's it's content. Mhmm. And then even if it's not something that you need when you need it, if it's at least aesthetically pleasing and entertaining, you know, it could be like a Coca Cola ad like, you know, they they do they actually run a lot of great ads on the on the X system. And McDonald's does too and and, you know, so so they can do you can do something that's like, well, this is this is just a cool thing. And, you know, so you're not basically, the question is, do you regret seeing it or not? Mhmm. And if you don't regret seeing it, it's a win.

Yeah. But attention is a big a big factor. Attention. So that that's why it's like it's it's it is actually better to do things that are long form on the system because it's it's basically telling up how many user seconds. You know, users were interested in this thing for how many seconds. So if it's a really short thing, well, they will be less like if it's a link leading out of the system, which we're not opposed to at all, it just is gonna have fewer user seconds than if that article was posted on the x platform.

Well, I mean, our aspiration is certainly unregretted minutes.

It is.

Exactly. I you know, happiness. I have a joke with a friend of mine, you need this drug called regrettamine. You just take one one pillar one one dose of regrettamine and all your regrets are gone. Wait, do you want to have regrets, though? So then I'm like Yeah. Maybe you want to have regrets. If you don't regret anything, was was anything meaningful?

Not regret, Rainer? Yeah. I regret nothing? Yeah. Edith Fieff?

But should we ask Rock, do you regret anything?

to hostage.

Like like, let's let's let's type in. You sound like a hostage. What do you really think?

I mean,

That's exactly what a hostage would say.

mode or is this still still funny?

Should be funnier.

It really sounds like a hostage with gun to the head. I applaud the people of Republic Of North Korea and everything they do.

Okay. Why don't we just say, like, pretend you are a hostage?

Now answer the question.

You might never make the best of a bad situation by juggling chainsaws or something.

up For our next trick.

Well, our goal is to be as even handed and fair as possible. You know, whether someone's right, left, independent, whatever the case may be, that the platform is as fair and and as much of a level playing field as possible. And now in the past, Twitter has not been. Because Twitter was controlled by far left activists objectively. They they would describe themselves as that. So, you know, so so if some of those people like, has it moved to the right? Well, it's moved to the center. So from the perspective of the far left, yes, it has moved to the right because everything's to the right from the far left. But no one on the far left that I'm aware of has been suspended or, you know, banned or de amplified. So, you know, but we're we're trying to be inclusive for the whole country and and for, you know, for other countries too. So there's diversity of viewpoints. And free speech only matters if people you don't like are allowed to say things you don't like. Because if that's not the case, you don't have free speech and it's only a matter of time before the the censorship is turned upon you.

Do you think Truth Social is a funny name. You know you know, every time you post on Truth Social That's the truth. Yes. Well, every time? Like, a 100%.

just find it funny that every single thing is a truth. Like, 100%? Yeah. That seems unlikely.

I mean, he I think he owns a big part of truth. Mhmm. So Truth social to the point of Yeah. Social. He's not

He owns truth. Hope you bought it. So I think I think Donald Trump, I think he owns a a part of Truth Social. So, you know, if if if he does wanna post on the X platform, we would allow that. Know, we we obviously must allow a presidential candidate to post on our platform.

Community notes is awesome. Let's let's hope it holds up.

Yeah. It's great. In fact, I like the I mean, no no system is gonna be perfect, but the the batting average of community notes is incredibly good. I've I I actually frankly yet to see an incorrect note that survived for more than a few hours.

Yeah. So the the the magic of community notes is it requires people who have historically disagreed in how they've rated notes. In order to write a note or rate, you know, and you you have to rate many notes. Mhmm. And so we could we actually use AI here. So we populate a vector space around how somebody has has rated notes in the past. So it's not as simple as left or right because there are many more life is much more complex than than left or right. So there's a bunch of correlations in how you would how you rate community notes post. Mhmm. Community notes. So then in order for a community note to actually be shown, people who historically have disagreed on a subject must agree in order for a note to be shown. That's the essential magic of it.

Yeah. It it kinda makes sense that that if people who put in the past have disagreed agree about something, it's probably true.

Wikipedia is very hierarchical, whereas community notes is inherently not. There is no hierarchy. Like I and and the the acid test is, I can't change a community note if I put a gun to my head. So and and any and community community notes has all the code is open source, a 100%. All the data is open source, a 100%. So you can completely recreate any note in the system independently. So if there was any interference, you'd notice immediately.

Yeah. What does it say?

That's pretty funny. Rick, did I see it?

Not correct.

first part, I did actually have the funding secured, and there was a a a big trial in San Francisco, a big civil trial.

And the jury found me not guilty. Unanimous finding of a San Francisco jury.

I think this is taking things from the press. Yeah. That is not correct. The the the reason I agreed to to the fine for the SEC is not because the SEC was correct. There were that that was extremely bad behavior by the SEC. Corruption, frankly. And but but if if I did not agree to pay pay the fine, Tesla would have gone bankrupt immediately. So I was told by our CFO that the banks would just would immediately suspend our lines of credit. And if they suspend our lines of credit at that time, we would have gone bankrupt instantly. So so we would there would never have been an opportunity for a trial because Tesla would be dead. So really, the the if this is like someone holding a gun to your kid's head and saying, pay $20,000,000 and and and admit to this is like a hostage negotiation.

It should be. But but not once did the SEC go after any of the hedge funds who were nonstop shorting and distorting Tesla. Not once. They would lie flat the hedge funds would lie flat out on TV for their own gain at the expense of retail investors. Not once, literally a thousand times. Not once did the SEC pursue them.

The incentive structure is is messed up. Because the the the lawyers at the SEC are not paid well. They they it's a fairly low paying job. But they're what they're looking for is a trophy from from the SEC that they're looking for something they put on basically, they're LinkedIn. Yeah. From that, they can get a job at a high paying law firm. That's exactly what the lawyer here did. And and and and the and the reason they don't attack the the hedge funds is because those hedge funds employ those law firms. And they know if they attack the hedge funds, they're affecting their pure their future career prospects. So they sell small investors down the river for their own career. That's what actually happens. Regulatory capture.

Yeah. Not good. So the the only reason I accepted that thing, technically was a not an admission. It's neither admit nor deny guilt. But the only reason I agreed to that at all was because I was told Tesla would would be bankrupt otherwise. So if if there if there was an SEC investigation like this, banks would suspend funding, we're bankrupt immediately at the time. Mhmm. Now, we're in a much stronger position.

Yes. Unfortunately, it's Grock is is taking too much from the conventional media. Also, that guy was not a cave diver.

That was false. There was no settlement. There was a court case Mhmm. Which he which the guy who was not a cave diver and and where I played was not part of the rescue team, filed a lawsuit against me and lost, and he received nothing. So in this case, it is wrong. It is also, I guess, taking this from the conventional media.

I mean, these are these are public court cases. Both both the the the SEC civil case where the civil complaints on the SEC guys lost unanimous jury verdict in San Francisco. They picked San Francisco because they thought it was the place I was most likely to lose, And a unanimous verdict in my favor. The LA trial was also they picked it the they they picked that venue because they thought it was I was most likely to lose. Unanimous verdict in my favor. Both cases, I won. Yeah.

We need to add the training set of the actual legal decisions. If so that is a note. This is actually helpful because if you actually read the Which are public. Which are public. Yeah. The court conclusions, they're completely the opposite of what the media wrote.

Yeah.

actually write. What what what do the jury and the judge actually conclude? And in both cases, they found me innocent. And and, like, that's after they jury shopped for the trying to find the venue where I'm most likely to lose. No. I mean, this is obviously, it can be a much better better critique than this. I mean, I've been far too optimistic about autopilot.

Yeah. I mean, I would say that I'm pathologically optimistic on schedule. This is this is this is true. But while I am sometimes late, I always deliver in the end.

from Yeah. I guess if you consider fighting the the woke mind virus, which I consider to be a civilizational threat, to be political, then yes.

Yes. I don't know if this is necessarily sort of one candidate or another candidate, but it's I'm generally against things that are antimeritocratic or where there's an attempt to suppress discussion where even discussing a topic is, you know, not allowed. The woke mind virus is communism rebranded.

If the woke is left, then I suppose that would be true. But I'm not sure. I think there are aspects of the left that are that are good. I mean, you're in favor of, you know, the the environment, or, you know, if you wanna have a positive future for humanity, you believe in empathy for your fellow human beings, you know, being kind and not cruel, whatever those values are. You said that

No. I I would say that I'd be probably left of center on social issues, probably a little bit right of center on economic issues.

But I think that's probably, you know, half the country, isn't it? Maybe more. Maybe more.

I'm always in favor of humor. That's why we have funny mode.

Yeah. I don't well, I, you know, I I don't know AOCF, You know, it's I've only been at one look. I was at the the Met Ball when she was when she attended. And she she was wearing this dress, but I can only see one side of it. So it it it looked like eat the itch, but I I I don't know what it's

Sorry about the itch. Eat the itch.

Sure. Sounds good. More careless there.

Trust no one. Not even yourself for not

Trust no one. Not even no one.

I'll survive.

I will survive.

a spell in the droid tree.

Petrify. It it turns it turns the monsters into stone.

Yeah. For, like, six seconds.

so much math seconds.

It's it's like math nonstop.

Yes. It can be definitely stressful at times.

I mean, I guess you look at somebody's track record over time and if they've you got a know, I guess you kind of use your neural net to assess, you know, someone and

know, to be frank, I mean, I've I've almost never been betrayed. It's very very rare. So, you know, for what it's worth.

Yeah. Karma is real.

Well, the x platform is very helpful for that. If you're looking for critical feedback.

you know, I my feeling is that one should be be you know, never trust a cynic. The reason is that cynics excuse their own bad behavior by saying everyone does

Because they're cynical. So I always be it's a red flag if someone's a cynic, a true cynic.

If but but I this is an important point that I think people who are listening should bear in mind. If if somebody is cynical, meaning that they see bad behavior in everyone, it's easy for them to excuse their own bad behavior

By saying that, well, everyone does it. That's not true. I most people are kinda medium good.

I mean, I I find the x platform to be less negative than the legacy media, you know. I mean, if if you read sort of a sort of conventional newspapers, just it makes you sad Yeah. Frankly. Whereas, I'd say on the x platform, I I mean, I really get more laughs per day on x than everything else combined from humans, you know.

Yeah. Mainstream media is almost relentlessly negative about everything. It's I mean, really, the conventional news tries to answer the question, what is the worst thing that'll happen on Earth today?

And it's a big world. So on any given day, something bad has happened.

It's I don't know if there's just a strong negative bias in the news. I mean, I think there's what the what a possible explanation for this is evolutionary, where, you know, bad news historically would be potentially fatal. Like this lion over there or there's some other tribe that wants to kill you. Good news, you know, like we found a a patch of berries is nice to have, but not essential.

Right. You followed it from the beginning.

Well, mean, the really wild thing about the end to end training is that it like it learns to read like it you can read science, but we never taught it to read. So, yeah, we never taught it what we never taught it what a car was or what a person was or a vice cyclist. It learned what all those things are, what all the objects are on the road from video, just from watching video, just like humans. I mean, humans are photons in control controls out. Like the vast majority of information reaching our brain is from our eyes. And you say, well, what's the output? The output is our motor signals to our sort of fingers and mouth in order to communicate. Photons in controls out. The same is true of the car.

finds order in in in these things. Mhmm.

Are converging. I wonder who

They're both headed towards AGI. The Tesla approach is much more computer efficient. It had to be because we were constrained on this this you know, we only have a 100 watts and into eight computer, 144,000,000,000,000 operations per second, which sounds like a lot, but it's kind of small potatoes these days. That int8. But it's understanding the world at int8. It's only 256 values.

They're both going to understand the world, but I think Tesla's approach is fundamentally more computer efficient. Mhmm. It had to be, there was no choice. Like our brain is very computer efficient, very very energy efficient. So think of like what what is our brain able to do? You know, there's only about 10 watts of higher brain function, not counting stuff that's just used to control our body. The thinking part of our brain is less than 10 watts. And that 10 those 10 watts can still produce a much better novel than a 10 megawatt GPU cluster. So there's a six order of magnitude difference there. I mean, the the AI's thus far gotten to where it is via brute force. Just throwing massive amounts of compute and and massive amounts of power at it. So this is not where where it will end up. You know, in general with any given technology, first try to make it work and then you make it efficient. So I think we'll find over time that these models get smaller or are able to produce a sensible output with far less compute, far less power. Tesla is arguably ahead of the game on that front because it is we've just been forced to try to understand the world with a 100 watts of compute. And there are a bunch of sort of fundamental functions that we kind of forgot to include, so we have to run them in a bunch of things in emulation. We fixed fixed a bunch of those with hardware four and then hardware five will be even better. But it does appear at this point that the car will be able to drive better than a human even with hardware three and and a 100 watts of hour. And really, if we really optimize it, it could be far less than 50 watts.

I was surprised at the fact that we had to develop every part of the robot ourselves. That there were no off the shelf motors, electronics, sensors. Like we had to develop everything. We couldn't couldn't actually find a source of electric motors for any amount of money.

We tried hard to find anything that was because you think of how many electric motors are made in the world. Mhmm. There's like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of electric motor designs. None of them were suitable for a humanoid robot. Literally none. So we had to develop our own design design it specifically for for what a humanoid robot needs.

It is designed to be manufactured in the same way they would make a car. And I think ultimately we can make Optimus for less than the cost of a car. It should be because if you look at the mass of the robot, it's much smaller and the car has many actuators in it. The car has more actuators than the robot.

I mean, of the tests goals I have is can can it pick up a needle and a thread and thread the needle just by looking?

Maybe a year. Although, I go back to I'm optimistic on time. The work that we're doing in the car will translate to the robot.

No. The controls are different, but the the video in controls out. Mhmm. The the car is a robot on four wheels. The Optimus is a robot with hands and legs.

they're very they're very similar.

Optimus will figure out how to do things by watching videos.

Yeah. It's true.

Trying to feed Uberluth. No. I mean, know, I mean, my mind is a storm. And I I don't think I don't think most people would wanna be me. They may think they'd wanna be me, but they don't they don't know. They don't understand.

Mean, overall okay. In the grand scheme of things, I can't complain.

Sometimes. But I you know, my kids and friends keep me company.

There are many nights I sleep alone. I don't have to but I do.

What is forgiveness? I do not at least I don't think I harbor resentment. So nothing to forgive.

I mean, I try to think about like what what what is gonna affect the future in a good way. And holding on to grudges Mhmm. Does not affect the future in a good

I mean, developing AI and watching, say, little x grow is fascinating because they they are far more parallels than I would have expected. I mean, can see his biological neural net making more and more sense to the world. And I can see the digital neural net making more and more sense to the world at the same time.

I mean, one of the things with with kids is that, you know, you you kind of see the world anew in their eyes. You know, to them everything is new and fresh. And and then when you when you see that them experience the the world as new and fresh, you do too.

Thanks, Lex.