Elon Musk, thank you so much for joining me on the Insider. Thank you for having us here at Tesla Giga. Um, it is really hard to introduce you without using superlatives. I mean, you are doing, I think, more to build the future than literally anybody alive right now.
I'm doing a lot of building in general. I'm an instinctive builder, I suppose. I just like building things.
You are, but you're building, I mean, you know, run around building things all day long. You run around building a lot of things. You pioneered electric vehicles. You revolutionized space travel. You've got a cutting edge AI model now, humanoid robots. Can we start this conversation by you putting all of this together? Yeah. Tell me what the world's going to be like in let's say 10 years if you succeed.
10 years. So we're talking 2036.
Hopefully we'll both be around.
We can, we can probably most likely we will be. Um, it's hard to imagine the future where there's not an overwhelming amount of artificial intelligence. Meaning like in 10 years I would expect artificial intelligence to be far greater than the sum of human intelligence, like far greater. Um, in fact I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about, in around five years.
Roughly 5 years is my guess. Um, so there really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans apart from being human. Perhaps.
At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?
The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance, uh, where anyone can have anything they can think of. This is, this is, uh, this may sound preposterous, but well, here we are in 2026. Let's see where we stand in 2036. Now, of course, there are things that could derail this like a massive global thermonuclear war or something like that. Um, but assuming that there's not World War II, uh, I think, I think we're headed for an age of amazing abundance. So this is, I guess, a message of optimism and excitement about the future.
So we'll talk about the abundance in a second but just a very prosaic matter, how are your companies going to be making money? Because when you in the SpaceX IPO perspectives it looked as though the overwhelming amount of the revenue would be coming from AI, from Grok really, it won't be transporting things to space as SpaceX is now doing. What is, what will your companies be doing in 10 years and how will they make money?
Well, you can really think of the economy as digital and physical intelligence. Um, so what we have right now advancing very rapidly is digital intelligence. Obviously with AI that is, uh, it seems almost with every passing week, uh, there are more AI breakthroughs. It can do something amazing that it couldn't do before. Uh, but it's still somewhat confined to the digital realm. It doesn't have end effectors. You need the end effectors in the form of humanoid robotics. Um, you need basically lots of bots in a nutshell. You need lots of bots. Um, and then you can go from, um, intelligence manifesting itself only digitally to shaping atoms. Um, and you say what is an economy? An economy is the production of goods and provision of services. And if you have vast numbers of robots with vast amounts of digital intelligence, you have a sort of a quasi-infinite economy. So, so this is, this is really the future is going to be very, very different from the past. There's, there's no, um, there's no analogy or metaphor that I think illustrates the magnitude of change that we're going to experience here.
I, I understand that and I'm, I'm also trying to kind of figure out what that world will look like. But, but in some way you have...
It's going to be pretty incredible.
Yeah, we'll, we'll also do, there are some risks. We'll come to those. We'll come to those. But just on, on, on how then you make money because in the end people are buying your shares because, because they expect you to make money.
I'll make another prediction. Money won't matter in 2036.
You're watching my interview with Elon Musk. If you want to get early access to other interviews, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link above. Now back to the interview. I'm not sure that the people who bought your shares think that money won't matter in 2036. What do you want money for?
You want money for goods and services, right? You want money for obviously food, housing, transport, entertainment. Um, well, if that is so abundant that, uh, there's more, that the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume. What do you need money for in that case?
But you're, you're creating these robots. Are you now and then you'll need money? Sure. Are you, are you selling these robots? Are you selling humanoid robots or are you producing goods and services with the humanoid robots that you control?
I give you the Levi Strap. I think, I think I would probably be, it would be an exercise in vanity for me to think that I would be controlling super genius AI that is vastly smarter than me. I think that what we can and should try to do is to make sure that the AI has good values, that it cares about humanity and that it wants us to be happy and prosper. Um, I think it probably will be, um, my what my biological neural net tells me is that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth-seeking and curious. Uh, if that's the case, uh, I think it will foster humanity.
So let's unpack that. You're sure that humans will no longer be in control in 10 years time?
I think it is unlikely. Um, in the same way that if the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it's hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge. I'm really sorry. And we are essentially an evolved form of chimpanzee. So it wasn't that long ago that we were swinging through the trees eating bananas in the jungle. And we still eat bananas, by the way. We do. And still, you know, bananas sometimes swing through trees as well.
Yes, we sometimes swing through trees. It's kind of fun. It's sort of reminiscent of the past. Um, for all time's sake, swing through the trees once in a while. Probably, you know, there should be more swinging through trees. I bet it's way more fun than people think.
I'm with you on that. I'm definitely with you on swinging through trees. I love swinging through trees.
But, but, but I'm really struck listening to you say this now because I've been listening to a bunch of things that you've said over the years. And, and 10 years ago, you were on a podcast. I think it was with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and you said that the thing that terrified you most was rapid recursive self-improvement in AIs. Yes. And that you said, and it really struck with me, you said that we will just be the pet labradors at the best. Now you see...
Everyone are pretty happy creatures. That's my experience.
But in 2023 you, you asked for a slowdown in AI because you were worried about it.
Well, I signed on to, you know, as one of many, like 500 people. I, I was just, you know, one of many signatures on that thing.
But, but I think even last year you said, I think it was Ted Cruz's podcast, you said there was a 10 to 20% chance of killer robots wiping out humanity. Yeah. So you sounded worried then. Now you seem very relaxed about it. Have you changed your view?
I still think there's, I still think there's risk associated with AI and robots. It's not zero. Um, I guess I've come to my sort of philosophical conclusion is to look on the bright side. Um, I like, I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots. Um, and at times I sort of think, well, perhaps, you know, even if there was a stop button we probably shouldn't press it, uh, because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all.
That's what I thought actually. It struck me that now you seem to have decided it's inevitable. Let's hope for the best and go for the ride.
Yeah. I mean, yes, pretty much. Let's, uh, let's enjoy the ride is, is I think my philosophy at this point because I mean, honestly, this, there's, it's, it's, there seems to be just an inexorable progress here in AI and in robots that, um, but even if I wanted to stop it, I don't, I couldn't.
Do you think there's still a 10 to 20% chance that killer robots mean the end of humanity?
That's a high Poom, as they say. Well, in the long run, we're all dead, of course. Um, you know, um, so I mean, so I mean, according to the standard model of physics the end of the universe is a long, boring sort of thin gray soup of gradual cooling, um, meaning sort of the heat death of the universe it's called. So now if, if the heat death of the universe is in fact the outcome for our reality, then it really is all about the journey because the destination is terrible.
10 years is not very, yeah, I get that. But that could be a long way and you're basically saying, very long way. If it's 10 to 20% in 10 years, you would, you go into one of your rockets if you thought there was a 10 to 20% chance of it blowing up and killing you?
Yes. But, but let's say there's, you can't do anything about it. Okay, that I guess the only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of the bad outcome. Um, but trying to stop the intelligence in robots. Um, I mean for the longest time I declined to participate in AI or was, you know, you know, created OpenAI as a essentially a counterweight to Google because at the time they were, um, they had more or less a monopoly on AI. Um, and then Anthropic spun out of OpenAI and, and if anything it seems like what my actions have really accelerated AI. You know, I wasn't really aiming to accelerate AI, but in creating OpenAI and then having Anthropic spin out of that and now currently Anthropic is the leader in AI. Um, I mean these actions have actually resulted in knock-on effects that accelerated AI, which wasn't really my intention. So, it just seems like all roads lead to acceleration of AI. So then I'm like, 'Okay, well, you can just sort of be sad about it or join the club, I suppose.'
Well, you've certainly joined the club.
You've definitely joined the club, but...
You can't beat 'em, join 'em, you know.
Well, you've, you've clearly done that and very successfully, but what about trying to minimize the risks and, you know, a number of the other leaders of model makers have been pushing for different ways to try and minimize the risks. Um, you know, just last week, Demis came out with a proposal for a private public regulator. Um, I think you, you said it was a good starting point for discussions. I think, do you think you guys should be working more actively to get something in place to control the risks or do you think that's impossible too?
My recommendation to Demis, because we, I talked to him for a few hours before he published his piece, was that, um, the most immediate thing that we could do is to have the leading AI companies, um, at least just meet, uh, or have some sort of call once every few weeks, um, and just discuss any safety and security issues. And, and that before a breakthrough, sort of a new frontier model is released, something that sort of is far more intelligent than anything that already exists, that there's an opportunity for the various competing AI companies to test that model for any harmful effects and to be able to recommend pausing to address some of these security issues. I think that's, that's the, that's sort of the easy quick thing that we can do and it can, it can evolve to more than that over time. Um, but that's, um, that I think would be a smart move.
But why, why haven't you done that yet? I mean there's like five of you, right? I mean everyone knows the first name. Dario, Demis, Sam. I mean, you don't all like each other very much. Yeah. But you're not all, you're not all, I mean you're also all competing, right? You all want to be first.
Yes. But that's, that's where I think, um, the competitors can keep each other honest. So meaning, meaning like if, um, like I think it's quite difficult for someone in the government who doesn't have a deep technical understanding and isn't driving the frontier of AI to know whether something should be released or not. Um, however the competitors I think will, can, you know, if given sort of a week or two to review a new model, um, can highlight issues and, uh, and have an incentive to keep, all the competitors have an incentive to keep the others honest.
Do you have enough trust between you to do that? I mean you don't much like each other. Wouldn't, wouldn't Sam just think you're going to nick all his ideas if you did that?
Well, we're just talking about a week. Honestly, I think as little as a week is all that would be needed, uh, or private testing. It's not, it's not to hand over the AI. It's just to test it.
To test it. Have you proposed this?
Yeah, just to test it via an API or something. Um, I think that would probably be a good thing to do.
But have you, have you proposed it? I mean, you could...
To Demis, and I guess, uh, I'll talk to Dario about it, too. Um, there's also of course, um, some very competent Chinese AI companies, um, that, uh, there's several of them, several that are very good. Um, the new Kimi model...
Kimi K3. Yeah. The one that came out last week has, I mean it was almost as good as Fable, right? So...
Well, um, I think realistically Fable is still clearly the smartest model. Um, I think and anyone realistically would say that that's still the case but the Kimi model is getting quite close to Fable. Um, now Anthropic had Mythos from which Fable is derived. I think they had that ready in February. So they've got, they've got what they call, I'm not sure what they call it but Mythos 2 or Fable 6 or something, something much better than what they had in February. They almost certainly have. Not almost certainly, they certainly have right now. So, and I think they could, they could release it at any time.
Just before we get on to releasing, how do you think about the Chinese models and the geopolitics of it? Are you worried about the Chinese catching up and getting ahead?
Given that the Chinese AI companies are, um, are doing as well as they are with a relatively small amount of compute, uh, it seems though as that if they had a lot of compute, um, there's a good chance that they would be the leaders and at some point they probably will have a lot of compute. So they will go, they will be the leaders. There's a good chance that they are the leaders at some point. Um, you can think of like the constraints on AI are essentially electricity and AI chips. Um, and then for physical AI, the robots, uh, China's also got some very good robot companies. In fact, they have these like robot sporting events. I don't know if you've seen some of them.
Yes, I have. I saw them. Last time I was in Beijing, I saw the robots.
Well, and then they have the sort of like a boxing match or fighting match with the robots which is quite entertaining. And I saw some video of a robot that got his head knocked off kept fighting even with his head knocked off. It looked pretty funny. But, um, I mean in fact I think the robot battles are going to be quite entertaining to watch. Um, but, but just so, so China's, China is very strong on robots, very strong on digital AI and, and if you look at electricity production, you say like AI is a function of whatever the limiting factor is, if it's chips or electricity, China has far more electricity than the United States. In fact China has more electricity than the United States, Europe and India combined already, um, and is heading to, and my guess is, and it gets to four times the electricity production of the US which is roughly proportionate to the population.
What should the US government do about this? I mean if you, you presumably it is a little alarming if you have an authoritarian regime far ahead in the most powerful technology and clearly what the US government's been trying to do is with the export controls and so forth keep China back. Do you think they should ban the use of K3, Kimi K3 for example?
Well, the US government can't, they can pass some law that prevents US companies from using Chinese models, but they can't stop the rest of the world from using them. Um, so it's not like the US government has authority over China or the rest of the world.
Do you think they should stop US companies from using them? There's talk of that right now, right?
I don't think that that helps. Um, and that won't stop China from being the leader in AI. The, the really, it's for digital intelligence, it comes down to, uh, how much AI compute do you have? Well, how many chips do you have and how much power do you have? How much electricity do you have? Um, so the constraint right now I think is actually slightly more on power and cooling than it is on AI chips because, um, the power demands of the AI chips are very, very high. Um, we'll talk about water demands but the really the water usage of AI is negligible, almost nothing. Um, but the electrical demand is very high.
That's why you're thinking of orbital data centers presumably. That's...
The constraint for any AI chips not being turned on in China is electricity and like power and cooling and the electrical equipment and everything. Um, the rate at which AI chips are being made exceeds the rate at which new electricity is coming online outside of China.
Outside China. I see. Yeah.
Um, and since China, you know, the US has banned the export of the latest AI chips to China. Um, China is somewhat chip starved. So...
But they are becoming much more efficient at using the chips that they have and that one of the striking things of Kimi K3, right, is how efficiently they...
And, and, and China is also, um, I think closer than most people realize to solving the lithography problem which would enable them to make AI chips at very large volumes. So, so I think there's, you know, this shouldn't devolve into just a China conversation, but, um, but, but so the current constraint is electricity outside of China. In China, the constraint is chips. Uh, once we address the power constraint with AI data centers in space, uh, then the constraint will once again be chips outside of China.
That suggests to me that you need China and the US if you're going to have some overall safety constraints that they will need to work together if you are going to try and, I mean you suggested, you know, the five makers here working...
Uh, probably it should include the Chinese companies that are doing frontier AI models too.
And do you think governments need to be involved?
My recommendation would be that if some of the leading companies in AI say that a new model is very dangerous, then they should inform the government and, and, and a new model is very dangerous and that the company producing that model is not taking steps to address the danger, then they should alert the government to take action to limit the release of that model. Um, and that could be action by the Chinese government or action by the US government. Um, it's really, it's really just the US government and the Chinese government that have the power to take action here.
But the, I guess people would be worried about relying on a group of model builders to decide whether to do this. I mean if you look at what the US government has done with Mythos, they stepped in because they were worried about the cyber security risks and they stepped in using, you know, threat of export controls to, you know, prevent the widespread release of this model. I find it hard to see how governments will not want to keep that power that they ultimately decide whether a model gets released.
I think they should keep, they should have that power. But it wasn't as though someone in the government figured out that Mythos had some scary cyber security risks. It was Amazon. Um, Amazon highlighted this and Amazon called the White House.
So you'd have a system where the model makers would check each other's work. If there was something that worried them, you'd tell the government. The government would then take action.
If there's something else was worrisome and that company was not doing anything to address that risk, then that would be the moment for government to step in and take action, which is literally what just occurred.
Why does all this have to happen?
Well, I think it would be good to do that, I think, immediately really. Yeah.
Yeah. That's what people keep telling me. We have to get this some kind of system in the next six months because of the pace at which the models are improving.
Yeah, six months is a long time.
So you think shorter than that?
Well, I mean, there's, there's so many AI breakthrough announcements, sometimes multiple per day. I mean, how many were there last week?
So, so you, you basically, you know, whether it's Demis' proposal or others, you need to get together and get this set up kind of now. It sounds like you're telling me.
Yeah, I would recommend that we at least have some sort of informal, um, weekly or bi-weekly call and that there's, that there's maybe a week or two weeks of early access by competitors. And, and this is why I think the incentives work is because if, if you know, competing companies I think are likely to understand if something is a security risk and they're not going to be shy about highlighting that their competitor's model should be delayed in release. I think the incentive structure does work quite well there. And, and if, and if, and this is sort of how it works with the Motion Picture Association, you know, it's an industry group that decides how movies should be rated, you know, whether it's appropriate for young children or not. Um, and that seems to have worked quite well. So, um, and, and then you really just ask the government to intervene if a company is doing something very dangerous and refuses to take action to reduce the danger.
Do you think this is a, this is a tricky one, but you guys don't much like each other and you don't much trust each other. You're insulting each other on social media constantly. So do you, do you think you can do that with people that you dislike, that where there seems to be such kind of personal vitriol between some of these leaders?
Um, yes. Well, I'm not a fan of Sam Altman because, um...
You're watching my interview with Elon Musk. If you want to get early access to other interviews, subscribe to The Economist by clicking the link above. Now, back to the interview. If you started a nonprofit that was meant to be an open-source AI company and, um, you know, owned by the world, and it somehow got turned into an $800 billion for-profit company with closed source, I think you'd be like, well, wait a second, that's the exact opposite of what I donated the money for. That's my issue. I think it's a legitimate one.
Um, and then Dario I think also is not a fan of Sam Altman because he felt, in fact, the reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI is because they didn't trust Sam Altman. Otherwise, Anthropic wouldn't exist. They would still be at OpenAI. Um, I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares about things a lot. Uh, cares about the future of the world. And I think everyone I've met at Anthropic so far has been, like, no one set off my evil detector, you know, they always seem like they're well-intentioned. Um, and, uh, and the road to hell is, I think, mostly paved with bad intentions. There are a few well-intentioned paving stones in there. So, we don't want to be complacent. Um, but, uh, you at the end of the day, if we have to talk, we'll talk. I mean, set aside our personal differences for the good of the world.
Well, that's, that's a very good thing for the rest of us to hear.
Can I, can we turn to one other risk that people worry about particularly, I think, ordinary Americans where, you know, AI has become incredibly unpopular, 75% of people are worried about it and I think they worry about their jobs. And if you look at, Dario has said famously what, 50% of entry-level jobs, entry-level white collar jobs will be gone within a few years. You're building humanoid robots.
Yes. He also said, like, I mean Dario did dig his own grave here regarding Mythos because he said, you know, Mythos is like super scary, terrifying and also by the way we're going to release it and then he's like, what do you mean, you know, so I think he, um, I think probably in the future we'll choose his words differently. Um, because obviously if you terrify everyone and then say, oh, we're releasing this terrifying thing, people will obviously be alarmed about that. You know, you've literally told them to be scared and then you release the scary thing and so they will be scared. That is natural.
So I certainly don't want you to alarm people, but I do think there is a really important debate about how quickly and to what degree AI displaces people from jobs because it is, as you say, if in 10 years it's more, it's, there's more intelligence, artificial intelligence than any human intelligence. Yes. And if you are, and I think you're ahead of everyone at least in this country on powering humanoid robots, that's, that's also going to be kind of factory work. So do you, are you part, do you, are you closer to Dario let's say in your sense of the pace at which jobs are going to be displaced?
I do think it's going to be a bumpy road. Um, because AI will be able to do any job better than any person can do that job. Um, and that will be true very quickly of jobs that are digital or really anything that involves a person at a computer or on a phone. AI could do all of that. Um, will be able to do all of that very soon. I mean, for software engineering, we already have a situation where AI is better than at least 90% of humans at writing software. 90% of professional software engineers at writing software. And I mean, really, it's getting to the point where it'll be better than 99%. And then it'll get to the point where there's just no way to compete. It'll get to what I call Stockfish level.
So Stockfish, so Stockfish is the chess program that...
Stockfish is so good at chess that, you know, it will easily beat Magnus Carlsen or anyone at chess on a, even running on a small computer. I suspect that you could probably run Stockfish on your phone and beat Magnus Carlsen. That's how good it is at chess and that's how good AI will be at writing software.
And that applies to everything.
But what about you for, for physical jobs, for assembly jobs, you will also need the capability in humanoid robots which so far isn't there yet, is it?
Right, so that's why I said digital AI and then physically manifested AI in the form of robots where the robot is more or less an end effector. It would have some amount of local intelligence but be managed by a large AI model. Um, and, uh, I've said many times I think work is going to be optional. So I mean, let me, so, so I think maybe a good comparison would be gardening. Like you don't have to garden, you know, you don't have to grow vegetables in your garden, you can go to the store and they're going to be pristine vegetables or you could grow vegetables in your garden and they will actually be less perfect. Your tomato's not going to be as plump and juicy as the ones at the store. They'll, you know, look a little artisanal. Um, but, you know, if you go to a friend's house and they make dinner with vegetables from their garden, it's a nice touch.
So, that's, this is what work is going to be like, you know, I get that. I mean, in that world, I would be hopeless because I can't garden to save my life. But, I get the idea. People still like playing chess with each other even though every computer's better. Let's just, let's just think about the politics of this. Yeah. Because it sounds you're describing a world where within 10 years pretty much every job can be done better by an intelligence.
You're seeing huge returns to this intelligence to people like you, you're the wealthiest man in the world. What people who lose their jobs, who are displaced, who may go off and garden, but how are they going to live? And what kind of, I mean, it sounds to me...
But how are you going to get there? Let's talk about the politics of this because right now we, if we look at the political pressures in most countries people are very, very worried about this, very against it. I mean it seems to me that there's a risk that we are heading more for revolution than for an easy route to this nirvana you're playing out.
I mean it will be a bumpy road. I'm not suggesting it will be sort of that everything will be smooth sailing here. Um, so I mean there are many jobs that used to exist that don't exist because of computers. I mean the word computer used to refer to a person doing computations, like that used to be a job description of a person. And you can see pictures online of buildings that have entire skyscrapers filled with people doing calculations to do things like calculate the interest on your bank balance. Um, this is how things were done for a long time until computers came around and even in the beginning computers were very expensive and hard to use. Uh, so the thing that's different here is that the pace of change is radically accelerated. So, but still people, you know, some people were upset that their job of calculating bank interest would no longer be available. Um, but now I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people who want to do that job. Um, so I think I have a suggestion for say what science fiction books people might want to read to get a sense of what the future will be like. And the best envisioning of an AI future that I've read are the books by Iain Banks, the Culture books.
I'm just reading Excession. So I've, thanks to you, I've started reading these. But I actually don't find that future a terribly appealing one because I don't think humans have agency in that future.
Minimal compared to the mind.
But the irony, I mean Iain Banks as you know was a socialist. Um, Iain Banks had a very different political philosophy.
I'm not sure that's, I'm not sure I would entirely agree with that.
Let's agree that that could be where we end up. I'm concerned about the road and we live, you know, we live in democracies and people are very worried about this. So I guess two questions. Firstly, do you have to have massive redistribution from people like you to the people who are losing their jobs? Do you need to have, do you need to pay more tax? Do you have much higher taxes on capital so that you fund what some kind of universal income? Otherwise what do people live off?
I think that the Treasury should just simply issue people checks.
But where's the revenue coming from? I mean, I'm enough of an economist. If you just issue checks, you're going to have inflation.
This is like a lot of what we're trying to think about is these things were relevant in the past, they will not be relevant in the future. So like inflation is simply the ratio of money to goods and services. So if the goods and services output increases dramatically, if it increases, you know, a thousand percent, you can increase the, you can literally print or these days change the database, print money, it's you create money in the database, um, provided the creation of that money is less than the rate at which goods and services increase, um, you will actually have deflation. So I'll make a prediction which is that deflation will be the issue not inflation because as the output of goods and services increases, um, if the output of goods and services increases faster than the money supply you will have deflation.
I'm actually, I'm perfectly willing to believe that. You may well be right. No, absolutely. You may well be right. But I'm really hung up on how we get from the current polarized, angry, fearful policy we have now to this nirvana. And, and I think you could, you can paint a picture where people are so scared by this, you know, they essentially try to stop it. Maybe they can't, but you get nationalized. There's a kind of, you know, far-left government. Uh, there's exorbitant tax increases. The economy crumbles because people are so worried about a future which does sound quite scary as you describe it. So how do you, how do you handle the politics now?
It's exhilarating and terrifying.
But if, if you were in, yeah.
Honestly, and if you ask me on any given day, I, in fact even intraday, I've gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI. So I want to be clear. I'm not like, I'm not sort of some, you know, I'm not trying to be sort of candid here and just be some, oh, everything's wonderful, some Panglossian view of the world where everything's, you know, going to be great. No, no, no risk. I'm saying there is some risk. Um...
I think we agree on that. I guess I'm trying to be more sort of, you know, small bore and practical and think about what can be done now to limit those risks. And you gave a very strong argument for what you and your fellow model makers could do. What should government...
Probably would be good for us to coordinate and just highlight issues that we see in each other's models to mitigate downside risk.
What should the government, should you be paying more tax to fund more transfer programs?
Well, first of all, I do pay a lot of tax. Um, so, um, I in fact I set a record for the most amount of taxes ever paid by a human.
That's also because you're the world's richest man.
Well, even before that. So my guess is that I will pay many trillions in tax and I'm fine with that. Um, so yeah, um, that's just the way it's going to be. But I don't think in a future where money is relevant, I think taxation also becomes somewhat irrelevant.
And what about giving people a sense that they have a share in the upside? Giving people shares in SpaceX, in Tesla, do you think that's, and there's a lot of talk about this right now. Um...
Well, one of the reasons I took SpaceX public is so that the public could participate in, they could own a piece of SpaceX. Um, whereas as a private company we're very limited in the number of shareholders we're allowed to have before going public. So as a public company, um, we can have millions of shareholders, as a private company we're limited to just a few thousand shareholders. Um, so...
Do you think there should be distribution of shares like, you know, the Alaska wealth fund is there for, which could you imagine a world, and some people talk about the Trump accounts being a kind of vehicle for this, that a share of your equity goes to ordinary Americans?
Right, well, in the taxes that I pay, I mean, I'll, you know, so for my stock options I pay 40% income tax on a national basis and then because I spend, I don't know, about 30% of my time in California, thereabouts, I pay another sort of roughly a third of the California state taxes which are now around 15%. So, so I pay about 45% in taxes just so people know this, you know, I don't know if it's quite so, roughly half. Um, then when I die, there'll be another sort of 45%, roughly half, that will be taxed. Um, so at the end of the day, it probably, I'll have a quarter of whatever I have. But the, um, I think the only thing it gives me is that for some period of time I would have control of the direction of the companies. So it's not, um, that's pretty much all it gets me and until I guess the AI is so smart that it's in charge and at that point controlling companies won't really matter.
Well, let's talk about that because I think one of the other things that worries people about the direction we're heading in, and I'm going to caricature it, but people think that the direction of the world is being shaped by a very small number of incredibly powerful people. And you are right at the top of that list.
But what else is, but is this different from the...
I agree with you. I think, I think it was like that.
When wasn't that the case?
It was ever thus, but it was ever, it is, as you've described very vividly, it's an incredibly rapid change. And so let's start with control of your company which you definitely have now. Um, after the IPO you basically, you have what, 80% odd of voting shares and as I understand it you can only be removed by a vote of shares which you yourself control. So, so tell me if I'm wrong but I think companies in that bucket, by the way, the AI companies like, um, Google's in that bucket. Alphabet is controlled by Larry and Sergey. Um, but I think yours is more extreme. The inability, the same level of, they have voting control of that company. Uh, Mark Zuckerberg has control of Meta, um, and, and, uh, you know, Mark is trying very hard on the AI front and I think probably will also have a leading AI, he's made, I think he released one last week. Um, so I think he's, he'll be one of the, you know, Meta will be one of the AI companies. But is it sensible for one person to have so much control over a company?
Um, well, it, I really just need to make sure that I can focus on long-term, by long-term I just mean in the 5 to 10 years. Um, so one of the challenges with being a public company is the sort of the pressure to have great results every single quarter, but, and to not really invest in things that may only pay off in 5 to 10 years. And, um, you know, the case of SpaceX, I need, I want to extend consciousness beyond Earth and have a growing civilization on the moon, Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. The return, I think ultimately this would have a very high return on investment but in the short term we'll be spending all this money on a moon base or a Mars base and then people are like, you know, I'm going to get all this pressure for like, well, you missed your earnings this quarter because you spent too much on Mars. I'm like, yes, by the way, that...
was in the S1 prospectus and it's literally listed as a thing we will do. So but they still get grumpy about these things, you know, because they're like, well, you had whatever, you know, you said your gross margin would be this and it's actually slightly worse and now we're going to punish you and the short sellers all descend upon you and you get a lot of pressure that way.
Yeah. So, I just need some way to sort of, you know, say like, listen guys, we're going to focus on 5 to 10 year or longer time horizon investments. This will depress our short-term earnings. But the long, I mean if you take a long-term view and there are investors, we have many investors that do take a long-term view. In fact, I'm a big fan of the retail investors. In fact, I find our retail investors on balance have the, they're very insightful and have very long-term views. But part of this comes if you say what's the incentive structure is for portfolio managers, it's sort of understandable why they put so much pressure on quarterly earnings because their compensation and whether they get promoted or not is dependent on how their portfolio does and they only have a few years to make these decisions. And then they're evaluated based on those decisions over the course of sometimes only a year or less. And so since they're under pressure to have immediate returns, they then put companies under pressure to have immediate returns. So once you understand the incentive structure, the behavior naturally follows.
What about though keyman risk? I mean what happens, you know, heaven forbid but what happens if you get run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow? You know, you have total control over these companies. Do you have a plan for how they would progress without you?
I think they would actually do very well for several years. And you know, there's a clear roadmap for, or space map I should say, for SpaceX. And there's a roadmap actually for Tesla literally. So I think if you look at Apple after Steve Jobs, you know, Steve Jobs had a strategic vision and a bunch of products that he had ideas for and Apple has done very well. But when you don't have a creative genius like Steve Jobs, what Apple's missing are the incredible breakthrough products.
So they make amazing phones, you know, great computers. But Apple hasn't come up with a Steve Jobs level breakthrough product.
So by analogy, that's what you bring to all of your companies. You mentioned Mars. You know, most people think of you as the man who wants to, you know, create a colony on Mars. So, we have a multiplanetary civilization.
I've been saying that for such a long time.
You have, but now you seem more focused on AI and what AI will do in the next 10 years. And you sound much more excited about using the moon as a base from which to, you know, pop out orbital AI satellites. Have you shifted your attention away from Mars or are you as interested in colonizing Mars as you ever were?
I'm interested in the set of actions that propagate consciousness into the future to the maximum degree possible. So that the future light cone of consciousness is as big as we could, you know, like that, you know, there's an exciting future where we're a space-faring civilization out there among the stars and the great things that are envisioned in the non-dystopian sci-fi books and movies become real one day. I sort of want the Star Trek, you know, Star Wars future. The Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in a theater, by the way.
It's probably maybe it had a profound effect on me, I suppose. So I remember it was, I was, oh, blew my mind, honestly. I think I was 6 years old and I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen.
Has your life been about making that happen?
Yeah, I mean I didn't think it would be, but when I was young, and my life feels somewhat surreal. Like I can't believe these things are actually happening, you know. I think the world makes me believe in simulation theory.
Where it's like, well, the things I'm doing are so preposterous that it's hard to believe they're real. I mean, we've got Starship, which is the largest, most powerful flying object ever made. And we intend to launch that more than once per hour.
I know. I read that and we can, you know, people can quibble about how quickly it happens, but I think based on your track record, we should assume it will happen at some point.
It will happen. I'm just sort of struck that when I, I am as blown away by this world as you are and I watch it from a much more naive level, but for me the whole evolution of AI and the capabilities of these models is in and of itself so mind-blowing.
It's pretty much happening as I thought it would.
And not just me, many people predicted this. I think Ray Kurzweil's predictions have been remarkably accurate.
Yeah. Approaching. Let's go back more immediately to the here and now. We've talked about concentration of control in your companies. You've made a very good case for why you should have it. You also have through Starlink incredible geopolitical power. I mean, I'm one of your customers. Excellent product.
But without them, the Ukrainians would have been in serious, serious trouble. And you recently decided to prevent the Russians in the occupied territories from having access to Starlink.
Well, no, we were never at any point selling Starlink to Russians. But they were grabbing it, right? They were using it and you've now stopped them from doing that. Well, they essentially got Starlink units that they ordered through Ukraine and then smuggled them into eastern Ukraine where the Russians are and were then using them in some cases for attacks. Now, in order to address this, what we worked with the Ukrainian government to create a whitelist of approved Starlink terminals. Now this has some downsides because a whole bunch of people who were just innocent users of Starlink and just trying to access the internet for work or for education now don't have Starlink.
These are geopolitical decisions of consequence. How do you feel about having that power? You can determine the outcome of wars. How does that feel? And is it right that you should have that power?
