Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, Evolving with AI, Why the West is Imploding

I'm at Tesla Global Engineering headquarters in Palo Alto.

Yeah? Yeah. Haven't been to DC since May.

That was a that was a hell of a side quest.

The government is basically unfixable.

I applaud David's noble efforts in this it's good to it's good to have talented people in the administration. But at the end of the day, if you look at our national debt, which is insanely high, the interest payments exceed the defense department. I guess, sorry, more department budget. And they keep rising. So if AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're we're toast.

Well, yeah. No. Everything would take a long time.

We're we're finalizing the design of Optimus version three, and that that really is gonna be a very remarkable robot. It will have the essentially, the manual dexterity of a human, so meaning a very complex hand. The an AI mind that can navigate and comprehend reality, and we made in very high volume. Those are the three things that are missing. Like, you see any other robotics company, they're missing those three things. Those are the three really hard things. And I I I spent actually at this point it it might be more of my mental cycles than anything anything else, any other single thing on Optimus. That's that's that's solving for real world AI, all of the electromechanical issues of Optimus, the the supply chain and production challenges of it, because we have there there is no supply chain that exists for humanoid robots. So it has to be we have to recreate it from scratch and which requires doing a lot of vertical integration. None of the actuators in Optimus are available from an existing supply chain. So but I I think it is accurate to say that if successful, Optimus will be the biggest product ever.

I think that the the marginal cost of production, once you hit a million units per year, is probably around the $20,000 range. It it it sort of depends on how much you spend on the AI chip in the robot. And you need to achieve a lot of efficiencies in the actuators. There are 26 actuators per arm. Like, 26 electric like, motors, gearboxes, and power electronics. So so it but but the the the AI chip will be pretty expensive. Like, that that might be like $5.05 or $6,000 of the of the bill of materials, maybe more. And but but so I but I think at volume, at a million units a year, the the production cost is probably in the order of 20,000, maybe 25, something like that. And price will be as a function of demand.

Well, it turns out human hands are incredibly they've evolved to this to be this incredibly sophisticated machine. Like, your hand is an an actually a remarkable thing. It's look look closely at your hands and and think of all the things you can do with your hands, which is a lie.

You know, your hands are very versatile instrument.

Very versatile. You know, you you you can swing a baseball bat, you can thread needles, you you put thread in a needle, you can play the piano with violin. You know, you could disassemble or assemble a car. The hands are incredibly versatile instruments. And most of the muscles of of of the hand are are actually in the forearm. So your your hand is kinda like a like a like a like puppet. Like, it's mostly a puppet. The mus the muscles are coming from the forearm and they're pulling the tendons, which are, you know, also human tendon designs or human human tendon evolution is incredibly good. So you've you've got this web of tendons, you've you've you've got I think I think the human hand is something like, depending on how you count it, 27 or 28 degrees of freedom per, you know, in in the hand. It's it's amazing. So in order to create a robot that can be a generalized humanoid, you you must solve the hand the hands problem. Yeah.

we had already It's got Knees hands.

Yes. We we we could not actually buy the actuators for any amount of money. They simply didn't exist. Even though there are, I don't know, ten, twenty thousand electric motors out there of various sizes and shapes. We've had to design every electric motor gearbox and of and the controlling electronics from scratch, basically from physics first principles.

Right. It's hotter than any any of those things.

Yeah.

Well, it's No. More Not hot. Starship's hotter.

Right now we're struggling with the final design of the hardware. Like I said, it's really primarily the hand. Not to just just dismiss the rest of the robot. The rest of it is also important. But but the hands are the hands inclusive of the forearm are a majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No problem.

Not not that long. Maybe I went a little over the top for Burning Grock, imagine.

You could get the embodiments of Annie as well.

Well, if you wanted to do all the things that a human can do, it turns out you need a humanoid robot. So if you wanted to do a subset, that's much easier. But it turns out humans evolved to this the shape and capabilities that we we we have. It it for for good reasons. There actually is there is like, there's value to having five, you know, four fingers in the thumb. And even the pinky actually is is quite useful. Toes are much more question mark, but but the fingers

Yeah. So at at Tesla we basically had two different chip programs. One dojo and one dojo on the training side and then what we call, you know, AI four. It's just our inference chip. The the AI force is currently shipping in all vehicles, and we're finalize finalizing the design of AI five, which will be an immense jump from AI four. By some metrics, the improvement in AI five will be 40 times better than AI four. Wow. So 40%, 40 times. And and this is because we work so closely at a very fine grade level on the AI software and the AI hardware. So we know exactly where the limiting factors are. And and and so effectively, the AI hardware and software teams are co designing the chip.

Yeah. To be precise, the 40 x is on if you say, like, compared to the worst limitation on AI four, which is running the softmax operation. Yeah. We currently have to run softmax in around 40 steps in emulation mode, whereas that'll be just be done in a few steps natively in AI five. AI five triple also be easily handled mixed precision models. So you don't have it'll dynamically handle mixed precision. There's a bunch of sort of technical stuff that AI five will do a lot better. In terms of of nominal sort of raw compute, it's it's eight times more compute, about nine times more memory, roughly five times more memory bandwidth. So but because we're addressing some core limitations in AI four, you multiply that by that that eight x computer improvement by another five x improvement because of of optimization at a at a at a very fine grain silicon level of things that are currently suboptimal in AI four, that's where you get the 40 x improvement.

Keep going. So now that said, I I I am confident that the current chips, AI AI four chips that are in the cars will achieve self driving safety that is at least two to three times that of of human and and maybe even 10x. And the software that will be released for that is is coming out over the next few months. So version 14 will be the biggest upgrade in Tesla software since version 12. We are increasing the parameter count by an order of magnitude. The there's there's there's a lot of reinforcement learning that's been used as we we there there there's a like, you can think of AI sort of as a way of compressing reality. And and and some of those compression steps, we were too lossy, and and we addressed the lossiness in the compression steps. So the these are all software updates that'll that'll go out. So just over there updates. Your car is going to feel like it is sentient by the end of the year.

Yeah. Alright. Cool. So this is a kind of a long term thing. It it it will allow SpaceX to deliver high bandwidth connectivity directly from the satellites to the phones. But there are hardware changes that need to happen in the phone. So the since these frequencies are not supported in current phones, they the chipset has to be modified to add these frequencies. And that probably is a two year time frame. So the phones that are able to use the spectrum that was acquired probably start shipping in around two years. And and then we also need to build the satellites that are gonna communicate on those frequencies. So in parallel, we're building the satellites and working with the handset makers to add these frequencies to the phones. And then the the satellites and the phones will then handshake very well to achieve high bandwidth connectivity. But the the net effect is that you should be able to watch videos anywhere on your phone. It's gonna be crazy.

like If you're if you're if you're in a building with a with a like a thick metal roof, then no. But

of Yeah. Normal normal homes. Yes.

Yeah.

That that would be one of the options. To be clear, we're not we're not gonna put the other carriers out of business. They're still gonna be around because they they own a lot of spectrum. So there's but but, yes, you'll you should be able to have a Starlink like you have like you have an AT and T or T Mobile or Verizon or whatever. You should go you you could have a a, you know, account with Starlink that works with your, you know, Starlink antenna at home with free Wi Fi as well as on your phone. And, yeah, it would be a comprehensive solution for high bandwidth at home and for high bandwidth direct to cell.

Not out of the question. Suppose if if if that may happen.

I I I think we will recover the ship next year. We've got one more launch of the Starlink version two stack, but there's only one one booster and chip left that's in the version two design. And then thereafter, it's it's version three, which is a gigantic upgrade because that's got Raptor three, and pretty much everything changes on the rocket with version three. So version three, you know, might have some initial TV pains because it's such a radical redesign, but it's it's capable of over a 100 tons to orbit fully reusable. And I think it's I think I think unless we have unless we have some very major setbacks, SpaceX will demonstrate full reusability next year, catching both the booster and the ship and being able to deliver over a 100 tons to a useful orbit.

Well, in terms of sort of commercial rockets, there's there's Falcon Heavy

Which we'll do in with with side booster reuse, we'll do about 40 tons.

Two and a half times bigger in but but Star Ship will be full reuse full reusability.

Hey So everything comes back.

Which failed

Well, there were a lot of questions and reviews. We got through them all and credit to the SpaceX team. They worked incredibly hard and they got the next shipment booster tested and on the pad and and flown and huge credit to the SpaceX team. Very proud of them for doing doing such a job, a a great job recovering. I mean, it's it's creating a fully reusable orbital rocket is one of the hottest engineering problems ever. It's certainly, you know, a candidate for most difficult engineering project ever. You know, it is on the podium at least. So it's a that that that's been the goal of SpaceX from the beginning, from 2002. And here we are twenty three years later. So it's it's a long journey. And with with a super talent like, by far, the I think the most talented group of rocket engineers that's ever been assembled. And and we're finally, next year, I think we'll be able to achieve full reusability.

Well, that the for for full reusability of the ship, there's still a lot of work that remains on the heat shield. So no one's ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield. Like, the shuttle heat shield had to go through nine months of repair after every flight. Right. So no one has ever made a fully reusable orbital heat shield.

Yeah. I mean, it's a material science engineering problem. So it's but we really are looking at the fundamental physics here. Again, physics first principles and trying to figure out how do we make something that is it, you know, it can withstand the heat. It's very light. It doesn't transmit the heat to the the primary ship. Yeah. Primary structure. And

stay on. They don't crack.

And then as you ascend, if you hit some rain, you know, the tiles don't dissolve in rain, there's there's a lot of different issues. And and then you really need to know that these tiles are working. You you can't, you know, go through this laborious inspection. So it really needs to be we're you know, these these tens of thousands of tiles all work and don't need to be refurbished or checked one by one. That was the case with the shuttle.

Yeah. So we're we're running a lot of using a lot of of inference compute and and reasoning to look at all of the source data, which is really the the corpus of human knowledge. And then thinking about each piece of information and then adding adding what's missing and correcting correcting mistakes and removing falsehoods from this from that training data. So it's it's it's like, if you take the Wikipedia as an example, but this really applies to to books, PDFs, the websites, every form of information. The Grok is using heavy amounts of inference compute. Let's say, to look at, as an example, a Wikipedia page and say, what is true, partially true, or false, or missing in this page? Now rewrite the page to ink to correct the remove the falsehoods, correct the half truths, and add the missing context.

Alright. I'll talk talk about that. So talk to the team about that, like, a Grokfedia or whatever. This here's the Grokfedia version.

And then just have it out there for just Where

Yeah. But there yeah.

I think I think there's a natural logarithmic function associated with the amount of compute. So then, like, say for argument's sake, like, 10 x more compute will double the intelligence. Maybe that's that that might be a rough rule of thumb. But, you know, that still means that, you know, you go from a 100 IQ to 200 IQ. So pretty pretty big deal. So I and and I think I think we'll see intelligence continue to scale all the way up to where, you know, most of the power of the sun is harnessed for compute and then ultimately most of power of the galaxy. Know, sort of Kotoshev two, Kotoshev three scale compute. So I guess I want you to think about artificial intelligence not as sort of this, you know, a destination that you reach, but really as part of the overall escalation of intelligence that that that we are aware of. You know, human intelligence has also scaled as you've have as the population has increased and we've been able to store more and more information, human intelligence has scaled. Now human because of population declines and low growth rate, human intelligence is is somewhat plateauing and will actually decline. And my guess is that I I I I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human at anything as soon as next year.

And Yeah. And then and then probably within five like say, 2030, probably AI is smarter than the sum of all humans.

May yeah. Maybe we implicitly know that it's coming.

hope the birth rates turn around. I'm big proponent of increased birth rate, obviously.

Yeah. I'm trying to set a good example.

But it's

Like Right.

I mean

going I'm very worried about it. Yeah. I'm very worried about it. You know, I I think there's a there's let's just say that the actions of the West are indistinguishable from suicide. It's so but it's and look, at least in America, there's there's there's generally a sense of optimism. But when's the last time you you talked to someone from Europe who lives in Europe who's optimistic?

Like, even one? It's rare. So I I think unless people have a sense of optimism and purpose about the future, they suicide might be just what happens. Like like like, having a child is an act of optimism about the future. So if you're not optimistic, this So so I think we need to maybe give people a sense of optimism and excitement about the future, and a and a belief that the future will be better than the past, and they'll be more interested in having kids.

think so. Nature abhors a vacuum. And if you take away religion, then I think you actually you you you get something in its place which is actually worse than what was there before. I mean, it's, like, destructive, basically. You get you get like the white work mind virus filling filling the hole that religion used to have. Taking the place of of of religion, you you get these dystopian de facto religions Right. That that are that are very very self destructive. So I I think perhaps some some sort of revival of religion or at least what we need is is some coherent philosophy that people can get excited about. You know, I mean, for me, it's a philosophy of curiosity. I'm curious about the nature of the universe, and I wanna go out there, and I I want humanity to be out there exploring the stars, maybe meeting alien civilizations. Maybe in some cases, we we see the ruins of a long dead alien civilization, but they were they were very strong for ten million years. You know, the kind of stuff that you see in Star Trek in the in a non dystopian sci fi book or or movie or show. And so I'm I'm just I have a I have a philosophy of curiosity of of, like, I just wanna know what's going on. And and and in order to know what's going on, we we must have an an increase in this in the scope and scale of consciousness. We must we must expand as a consciousness. We must grow we must grow humanity, and we must extend humanity in order to comprehend the and to to understand the universe. Even what what questions should we should ask about the answer that is the universe. You know, Doug Douglas Adams' book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is actually a book a a deep book on philosophy disguised as humor. And what the point he was trying to make in that book was that the questions are the really the the hard part. The answer is the universe. Like, it answers everything you see around you. But but but what are the questions that we don't know to ask? Yeah. Now now some of the questions, I guess, I would would I do know. I'd like to know, is the standard model of physics correct about the origins of the universe? Are we actually 13,800,000,000 years old? How does the universe end? Does it end in a heat death or in some other way? You know Are we

We might be. Elon,

Is this the sort of simulation question? Are we a simulation? Maybe.

Yeah. I don't know if if I hope I hope more people can get behind a philosophy of curiosity Yeah. Because I think it's very exciting Yeah. And and and and inherently optimistic. You you like, because there's there's this amazing sense of wonder about the nature of the universe. Yeah. And when you just when you uncover some secrets of the universe, that's amazing. And you're like, a whole world of understanding has opened up. I mean, we we used to not even know where all the continents were. You know, it used be like, just the map would be there'd be dragons. And like, all we know is that when they sailed in that direction, they didn't come back.

That's all that's all they knew.

or just

Yeah. I I think it I think having I think we wanna try to reach new heights as a civilization. Yeah. So I I think it's it's fine to go to the moon, but but we we should go to the moon in order to establish a lunar base, like a a lunar research base. Yeah. I mean, there are parts of the moon that are perhaps older than parts of of Earth, and we we we might understand more about the nature of the universe if we had a science based on the moon. Yeah. That would be very cool. And then we we obviously wanna go beyond the moon to Mars and build a self sustaining city on Mars. The I I I do think that that that there is a fork in the road of human destiny where if we can establish a self sustaining city on Mars, the with the the key test being if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming for any reason, does Mars continue to to prosper, or does it die out? At the point at which Mars is able to prosper and grow on its own, the probable lifespan of consciousness is dramatically greater because we are no longer dependent on everything going right on Earth. You know, there's there's always some possibility of self annihilation on Earth with World War three or or a supervirus or or or a meteor, like, extinct but, you know, that destroyed the dinosaurs. We know from the fossil record that there have been many mass mass extinction events. So the question that that I sort of I'm always wondering about is, will civilization the civilizational arc continue to ascend such that we can make Mars self sustaining before the civil civilizational arc descends? Because the the window of opportunity to make life multi planetary exists now for the first time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth.

But there's this point that I I think I I wanna just emphasize again that that's it's more important than the form of governance on Mars or who's there in the early days. What really matters is that Mars is self sustaining, that we are truly a multi planet species and such that we've achieved planetary redundancy. So that if if something and and I obviously wish we should do everything possible to make sure life on Earth is great, but there's always some risk that of an annihilation event on Earth. Yeah. Like I said, self annihilation or some natural disaster. And and so the the probable lifespan of consciousness increases dramatically as soon as as soon as we are a multi planet species with the key test being, can Mars survive if the resupply ships stop coming? So so so getting like, the first missions to Mars are not that important. The what matters is, can you get sufficient tonnage tonnage to Mars such that Mars can prosper on its own? And that means it has to have all of the ingredients of civilization. It it it's not just that you need to build, for example, a chip factory on Mars or ship fab on Mars, but you you need the ability Ability to build fabs.

I think it can be done in in thirty years. Wow. So if if provided there's an exponential increase in the in the tonnage to Mars with each successive Mars transfer windows, which is every two years. So every two years, the the planets align, and you can you can transfer to Mars. So I think in roughly 15, but maybe as few as 10, but a sub 10 to 15 ish Mars transfer windows, if you're seeing exponential increases in the tonnage to Mars with each Mars transfer window, then it should be possible to make Mars self sustaining in in about, call it roughly, twenty five years.

Alright.

all. Alright. Thanks, guys.