following is a Year’s conversation I had with Elon Musk arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our time perhaps the greatest entrepreneur ever during this conversation which is called the coming age of abundance we talk about how Technologies including Ai and humanoid Robotics are creating a world of abundance uplifting Humanity across Food Water Energy Healthcare education we’ll be talking about longevity we’ll be talking about AI we’ll be talking about the decreasing global population and what are the reasons that you should have for being optimistic about the future join me happy New Year Yan happy New Year 2024 I love Yeah it feels like the future it is the future it is the future it’s going to be awesome um you know I’m hoping we get a little bit of conversation on some hope and good news for folks on this uh on this spaces I think people can use it you are the most optimistic person that I know
[00:01:02] of by far and uh I mean I guess it is a refreshing to to hear such optimism I I think people need I think people need a positive mindset I think it’s self-fulfilling prophecy to a large degree you know if you’re pessimistic and we can talk about how the news media just decimates our minds uh constantly uh yeah the news is so negative I mean it makes me sad to read the news frankly I I well let me ask you a question I don’t watch I don’t watch Network news and I don’t read any newspapers they couldn’t pay me enough money yeah to do that time I I’ll accidentally read the news and I’ll just be sad it’s insane well I mean as you as you know the the news The Daily News um um really really attempts to answer the question
[00:02:00] what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today it is and and and and let me show let me show it to you every 5 minutes in your living room over and over and over again yeah and it’s a big world there’s eight billion people on Earth so you know somewhere on Earth something horrible is happening every single day but there’s also great things happening every single day you know what I call CNN the crisis News Network or the constantly negative newth Network and the problem is if they’ve got to scare you otherwi yeah you know if they say hey it’s been a pretty good day overall um you know violence is an alltime low yeah we’ve got more access to food energy water healthc care education on the pl than ever before I mean people would just start watching horror movies I think instead yeah yeah the challenge is it’s uh it’s our neural Nets the wiring of our brains you know evolved in a world of constant
[00:03:00] danger and so we’re sort of just wired for fear and scarcity constantly Yeah well yeah I think You’ made this point um maybe others have which it it sort of makes sense as a as an evolutionary asymmetry that we would respond more to Danger than to reward um in that like the consequences of danger could be fatal like it could be like well if you go over there there’s a lion that’s going to eat you or some neighboring tribe that’s going to kill you and it’s game over yeah your jeans are out of the Jean Pool yeah you’re you’re out whereas say like uh news that there there’s a there’s a a nice bush with berries over there it’s it’s nice to have it’s it’s optional um but it’s the in one case you die in other case you’re you’re hungry but death is worse than hunger so so that’s is B
[00:04:00] basically we’re any anyone who did not respond more to negative news than positive news didn’t make it they were they were select they were selected against for sure that sucks yes I mean anyone who was complacent about where the lion was e by L and and you know the reality is you know the news media has one job to deliver your eyeballs to their advertisers and when we pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news that’s all we get 24/7 so I mean listen I I it’s yeah it is I mean I do get my my news invariably you know on my on my feed on X but I also get all the great things happening in the world because I can selectively choose to watch that but when you’re watching TV or you know in the newspaper uh some editor someplace or some producers deciding what gets fed into your mind and it can really with your
[00:05:01] mindset um yes exactly so I mean this this space is uh uh called it the coming age of abundance and you know you were really when my first book came out abundance the future is better than you think uh you were super supportive and I and I appreciate that was 12 years ago and I think the story whoa 12 years amazing yeah and it’s gotten so much better um so I it is in so many ways not not every way I mean I mean obviously we go back ways um the the I I I remember when we were at Ado’s party in Brazil yeah how Longo he was it was his 40th or was it his 30th I don’t no was was this was just when SpaceX was just when I was forming space yeah it was it 2003 there about it just before the X prise Was Won right I was trying to convince you not to build
[00:06:01] Rockets 21 years ago could like like you could have a kid that that has could legally or legally up kids yeah yeah um so 21 years ago uh yeah so and you know things things are mostly better most you I want to give everybody listening a dose of Hope and optimism on the abundance inside because the world has gone better in so many ways all you hear about is the negative constantly and I think that’s going back to our sort of core dystopian mindsets from you know evolving 100,000 years ago but if we just look at some of the look at some of the areas right so like Global extreme poverty right I mean what’s more what’s what’s a more important metric you know here are the numbers 90% of the world was in global extreme poverty in in the 1800s in 1981 it was 42% today
[00:07:01] it’s under 10% of the world right yeah hunger Hunger is actually rare and it used to be common exactly um and another one is obviously one har that you’re leading the charge on is energy you know we used to kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights and we ravaged mountainsides and we drilled kilometers under the ground uh and what’s the figure it’s like 8,000 times more energy hits the surface of the Sun surface of the Earth from the Sun than we consume as a species what’s the rate at which batteries and solar is increasing it’s it must be massive yes I mean uh I mean Tesla we we’ve made a couple of presentations what one sort of simplistic and then one in extreme detail um on how to make Earth completely uh self- sustaining from an energy standpoint and demonstrating that there that there is no that if you break down all of the materials for lithium ion
[00:08:01] battery and for solar um you can easily make earth uh not I mean there there’s no shortage material it’s easy it’s a lot of work obviously um but but but there’s not like some critical material that we don’t have enough of in order to make earth fully self- sustaining um even if the only way that you powered all of Industry on Earth and and all power including heating um and transport uh electrically you could do that with solar and leine batteries um and and not uh not come anywhere close to depleting the resources of Earth yeah um my favorite my favorite example there was uh back in the 1800s the most precious metal on the planet was aluminum it was more precious than gold uh and and platinum and even though the Earth’s crust is you know 8% boxy you know basically aluminum it was just so energetically difficult it wasn’t that
[00:09:00] it was scarce it just wasn’t in usable form yet and that’s what technology does it takes something which is scarce and not usable and makes it usable right so yeah yeah ex aluminum oxide is extremely common um and um but but it is it is a low energy state in fact thermite thermite thermite is just uh iron oxide rust and and and pure aluminum um and the the energy difference between uh iron oxide and aluminum oxide is so great that it generates incredible enough heat to melt through steel so that’s what thermite is so uh yeah you do need a lot of energy to um turn aluminum oxide into aluminum um but but yeah it in World War II there was a massive scarcity of aluminum for aircraft sure um and uh that in fact in Britain the the mosquito uh sort of
[00:10:01] fighter bomber was U made of mostly of wood um and but it was it was done with uh it was basically an early form of of of composits but using stiff wood on the on the outside and and Lightwood and like Balsa on as a sandwich structure it’s pretty clever and the whole thing was intended to to address the shortage of and that and then then we get technology we get better uh better mechanisms of extracting the aluminum from the from the aluminum oxide from the boxy and this happens over and over again in fact that’s just what we do I mean I think the number was last year in 2023 or maybe in 22 we had more new electricity production from solar than from any other form and and and you’ve done an extraordinary job on battery production yeah and the battery production is growing um actually almost at well at several
[00:11:01] times the rate of vehicle production so um you know in some cases almost 10x the rate of vehicle production um so so yes the there’s a massive demand for batteries and you know as as the world uses more uh electricity uh there’s actually a lot more capability that the grid has if you can buffer the energy uh then without it because the vast majority of electrical sure it’s wasted assume no they assume no buffering um so they have to size the power plants for for Peak output Peak power output which is typically a hot summer day um and and and then for at night you can have anywhere from half optimistically half power output to sometimes one/ tenth of the power output um so so so basically the the grid almost everywhere the grid is sized for excess um
[00:12:02] electrical power output um and if you just buffer it with batteries uh you can in increase the output of the grid uh by you know two or three times I mean to make to make the point here on the abundance theme um there is no limitation on energy right we are increasing the amount of energy per capita and there’s a direct correlation between uh the GDP of a nation and its energy production right and the direct correlation between health and education and energy everything scales as you increase the energy per capita of a Nation yeah yeah um I talk about another category Communications um another area that you’re revolutionizing I think the number right now I just was uh checking it earlier it’s like 6.9 billion smartphone users in 2023 like 8 86% and that’s what I got when I when I Googled it um I don’t know what 6.9 you know
[00:13:03] what to say yeah uh 6,900 million 6,900 million let go there that my my my 12-y olds would say the same uh it’s like 85 85% of the planets got a smartphone and uh uh and well I mean if if you add up the total number of smartphones uh uh made ever made it exceeds oh I think it so it’s it’s amazing so we’ve gone from like zero telepan to the majority vast majority of the planet in under a century um you know global internet as well the same thing and uh did I your your next iteration of starlink uh spacecraft have gone up uh the direct to cell phone okay uh yes that just went up um so you know we still have to prove that
[00:14:01] it works and all but um we’re confident that even if the if these early satellites don’t work we’re confident from from a physics standpoint that it can work um it it’s it is h a challenge because we have to emulate uh a cells celf tower on the ground in order for the phones to accept the signal so we have to do do compensation for example um and and and and do some sort of because because you’ve got a speed of light limitations pal if if it were easy it would have been done already yeah yeah some speed of light limitations so you know this this like light is is so fast and yet so slow um so um you know I I yeah a good way to think about light at least in the space context uh or for the low or context is is it travels about 300 km every
[00:15:00] millisecond um in in air or uh in in space and and then and then around just over 200 kilm per per millisecond uh in fiber hey everyone I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day in fact I use it twice a day it seeds ds01 daily symbiotic hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health you know your gut microbiome is connected to everything your brain health your cardiac health your metabolic health so the question is what are you doing to optimize your gut let me take a moment to tell you about what I’m doing every day I take two capsules of seeds ds01 daily symbiotic it’s a two-in-one probiotic and Prebiotic formulation that supports digested Health gut health skin Health heart health and more it contains 24 clinically and scientifically proven
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[00:17:02] was a coin flip of whether your kid survived um and it’s decreased now to under 5% and it’s gone down by 50% in the last 30 years um so just childhood mortality and women dying in child birth all of these things people don’t think about when they’re listening to all in news on and all the issues and then life expectancy my favorite subject uh has gone up from you know 30 years old to uh to 75 plus I still disagree with you on longevity though that that we should solve it or not like we should you think we should solve well I I listen I’m not necessarily saying live forever but I’d like to make it to 120 150 um I yeah I I sort of wonder if we should not Sol it too soon um
[00:18:00] just presidential elections expect first and and do you really want them to get that life expectancy first well uh you know you know I I I think we uh I think uh being able to have the Vitality the cognition the physical prowess uh you know that you have when you’re in your 40s or 50s through the age of 100 that’s my goal um I mean you don’t want to you don’t want to you know you want to make it to at least 100 don’t you um well I guess it does depend on whether I’m you know have dementia I I don’t think I’d want to be a burden on society or have dementia not know what’s going on um i’ prefer it to be dead well yeah I think that’s that’s for sure uh but let’s assume that you had you know all the cognitive power you have today your physical strength is
[00:19:00] there any reason why you wouldn’t want to you know have an extended lifespan or health span yeah sure um I I guess I I think we are end up there’s such a strong forcing function for Life Extension or health span extension that I think we will see uh advancers in that area whether I want them to be there or not um and actually my opinion on the subject is that it’s I I think it’s actually not that hard to solve uh because the if you just consider arguments of symmetry it’s are quite helpful the the the cells in our body all age age at basic almost exactly the same speed um like what like I’ve not seen anyone who has an old left arm and a young right I’ve never seen that not even once yes
[00:20:02] so how how are the cells communicating and how what is keeping them what is synchronizing their behavior um something there’s there’s a very clear mechanism for synchronizing aging among the 30 to 40 trillion cells in your body like depending on your body mass you’re typically going to have 30 to 40 trillion cells that’s correct you know keep you know in sync um I mean the other the other the other reference uh proof point is you know boohead whales one the largest mammals can make it to 200 years repeatedly Greenland sharks can make it to 500 years and have babies at 200 years old I remember when I was in medical school hearing that I said you know why can they why can’t we I said it’s either an engineering problem or software problem a hardware problem or software problem and I think I think this is one of the biggest areas AI is going to give us is a real understanding and then to your other point about your left arm arm and right arm you know when you have a baby uh woman’s 30 35 you’re
[00:21:04] 40 45 your baby starts out at zero yeah um I I do find it remarkable that we decompress from a single cell to um an adult human and then and then we you know to procreate compressed back down to a single cell that is fascinating you know I mean look you sort of look look at yourself as a sort of you know Blas assist and say like I haven’t changed a bit here we go again let’s recycle it’s like it’s like the big bang it’s like right the Big Crunch um you know one of the things people argue about on extended Health span uh and you know increasing the population getting to 100 120 150 and there’s a concept called Longevity Escape velosophy right that there’s going to be a point at which for every year you’re alive science is
[00:22:00] extending your life for more than a year and that’s an interesting uh idea to think about um in which case you know accidents become really uh a thing to be concerned about um they concern about overpopulation and and you’ve you’ve hit this multiple times right the and I saw you Tweeting about it or sorry you’re Xing about it today uh sorry uh but it’s you know overpopulation is one of the biggest myths and biggest uh false over population is outer BS yeah um you know and and you know it’s it’s such nonsense um Earth is UN underpopulated not overpopulated with under look out the window when you’re flying across the country it’s empty absolutely exactly it’s like if you say like if your goal was to like flying from aliot to New York to drop a bowling ball on a human you would
[00:23:04] fail um you know I think one of one of my goal I think the greatest gift we can give people in this abundance world is increased Health span I mean when you think about what people want they want happiness and they want Health right no one wants to die in a painful cancer or or uh dementia um so yeah and you know I I have extended to you many times my friend come down to Fountain Health let me put you through our our program the world needs you around for another 30 30 years okay well what do you have any what should I do let’s say well I mean so there two what actions can be taken two this could be helpful for listeners two on on this discussion yeah so they’re two there are three things you need to know number one is there anything going on inside your body that you don’t know about so the body is
[00:24:00] amazingly good at hiding disease so we found in our seemingly healthy adults 2% have a cancer they don’t know about two and a half% 2% 2 and a half% have an aneurysm 14.4% either have metabolic disease coronary disease uh neurogenerative disease and okay and so your body is incredibly good at hiding disease all right so you don’t actually uh feel any cancer until stage three or stage four 70% of all heart attacks have no precedence your body is compensating constantly and you know for most of us we know more about what’s going inside our cars or airplanes than we do our bodies yeah I had a question for you how many how many sensors are going up on on Starship when you’re launching how many Star sensors are going are on board that vehicle rough order magnitude getting back data uh well I guess there’s when you count
[00:25:01] everything up there’s several thousand sensors and if I were I mean there are 33 engin so they they count from the bul of sure and but you also have uh uh stress sensors and looking what’s going on in in the structures and avionics and Communications across all the subsystems and if I ask you how 39 engines including the uper stage so so there’s several thousand sensors um and way more sensors than than yeah I was going to say if you if ask you how many sensors do you have in your body and so we don’t look which is insane because we do have the technology now to look to determine is there anything going on I need to know about and when’s a good time to find out about like now or what’s likely to break what’s likely to undergo failure cycles and then what’s the most extraordinary Therapeutics available to extend the human lifespan so um I mean for me that’s that’s uh that’s a that’s a big one let me ask you another another uh abundance uh theme which is
[00:26:02] education um do you think any of our schools today middle schools or high schools are preparing any of our kids for the future um well none that I know of well there might I mean there might probably are a few schools that are doing it but probably 99% of schools are not yeah uh schools are very slow slow to change um and and I think that there there there there is do seem to move away from teaching the fundamentals you know of uh writing well and math and history um you know I’m concerned about the whole work agenda and ideology perating through education agreed um and actually being destructive to education agreed I mean you know how do you think do you have
[00:27:02] these thoughts I mean so at the end of the day I think our best our best healthc care and our best teachers are going to be AIS right that understand everything and they demonetize and they democratize every aspect mean the AI knows your your kids favorite color sports star movie star what they know the languages they know what they did today um I mean it’s a way of giv every child on the planet the best education I mean you you funded back years ago if you remember the Global Learning X prise that we did we did a uh that we we demoed in Tanzania with AIS on tablets it was the earliest days of of AI imod mustak who you know was one of the uh winners of that competition who went on now to create stability um I mean the the challenge is I don’t think the Educational Systems are going to give up uh that control anytime
[00:28:00] soon um true well if I mean if I look at how my kids were educated they seem to be mostly educated by YouTube and Reddit yeah um and X as well I suppose um but they’re constantly on the internet um that that seems to be and I guess a lot of cases these days uh Tik Tok unfortunately yeah yeah um so I think yeah the education situation is is problematic um not sure what to do about it um I think I think ultimately uh you know KH Academy is one step in the right direction um but I think part of it is getting our educational institutions to First realize they’re not preparing kids for the world that’s coming I mean this hits another point we are such linear thinkers right we’re projecting what we
[00:29:01] have and putting it out four or five years I don’t think people let me ask you do you think people are ready for what the world’s going to be like in 2030 uh no um I I don’t know what the world’s going to be like in 2030 so probably I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily the the we definitely live in the most interesting of times uh you know like this legally this Chinese saying that may you live in interesting times is is is a not a good thing um but I mean I I I think personally I would like to live in the most interesting of times and this is the most interesting of times I also think it’s is the best time to be alive ever the only time more exciting than today is tomorrow I mean you know by what measure yeah we have environmental issues but I think we have the best chance of solving those environmental issues with the technology
[00:30:01] we have now versus the technology we had 10 years ago yeah I well I generally think it’s as as a as a general sort of rule of living it is it is better to ear on the side of being optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right um if you’re going to make if you’re going to ear one side of the other better it’s just a higher quality of life to ear on the side of being optimistic and risk being wrong than than than pessimistic um you know and you know and right I mean it’s it’s better to be you’ll just have a just enjoy life yeah what optimism is is is is gonna make you happy there was a study of 14,000 people uh for it was 14,000 women and 1500 guys um and it showed that uh opt those who had an optimistic mindset lived 14 to 15% longer than those who with a pessimistic mindset I mean mindsets a powerful thing
[00:31:01] and I think undervalued by almost everybody one my one of my favorite examples of This was um do you know what the environmental disaster of the 1880s and 1890s was I’m sure you know um of the is this is this back to whal no no it’s it’s it’s another form of life it’s a the HSE Manor uh disaster the the hored problem yes yeah what what is this hor well yeah no no you’re right the I mean New York was was basically a a hor manure and and and urine uh and carcass it was it was terrible people brought their Motive Power I mean basically like if you think if you think you think New York subways are stinky right now wait I mean try when it’s just everywhere everywhere you know people
[00:32:01] everywhere people people moved from people moved into downtown New York Detroit Chicago they brought their Motive Power with them and and the articles in the 1880s and 90s and into the 1900s as you as you read this the projection was disaster it was going to be a disaster because hor horse horse manure was like grow they had like special parking lots for horeshit at the corner of every street well well I it seems like there’s also a challenge because I think if a horse lives um you know for on the order of 15 years um that means 1/5th of all horses are kicking the bucket every year um so you just got and so so if you if you got like uh 300,000 horses it means you got 20,000 horses dropping dead every year and then you need a horse to move the horse the dead horse or just or just cover it with Horseman or let it
[00:33:02] decompose yeah I mean it’s going to be like decomposing horse caucuses throughout major cities then and then and then like it’s like well whose whose dead horse is this are people are probably quick to claim a live not rushing to claim a but then and then Innovation came along and here comes the car and solves the problem and I think that’s the problem that we keep on forgetting we we forget that we are incredibly Innovative at solving problems that’s what humans are amazing at yeah yeah true true um um actually on the whale front I don’t if you know back to the whales it’s a whale of a tail whale Tales okay um the the so a lot of people think that the um the the low point on
[00:34:00] whale uh population was was in the 1800s because you know whales were being hunted for for whale and whale oil yeah um but but actually the the low Point uh by far was in fact um uh in the mid 20th century uh because uh of a bureaucratic error in the Soviet Union okay this I have to year they they can’t so they would always have these five-year plans and quotas uh for for how for whale tonnage um now it didn’t they didn’t actually have even a whether the whale tonnage was usable tonnage um in anyway they just had a quota for whale tonnage and what they would do in the sovi union they would just keep increasing the quota of everything every year every five years so the so the whale tonnage just got Higher
[00:35:00] and Higher and Higher and and if you if you were a captain and you and you and you had a high whale tonnage you’d get a metal and a raise and if your whale tonnage was low you’d be sent to the G you get you get what you incentivized baby yes incentives matter and and so it it got to it to it just got to absurd levels um and you had Soviet whaling ships like going into uh you know us and Australian Waters to desperately trying to find whales and and they they would catch the whale weigh the whale and then dump the cus over I mean there there’s there’s a whole AET rabbit hole that you can go down on this and which is basically a lesson in the the folies of central planning so and this is the problem of keeping laws on the books way way after they’re useful to society well we do have actually have a fundamental uh issue with the
[00:36:00] accumulation of laws and regulations because they are Immortal um and humans are mortal as we were just discussing you know with life extension um so so naturally every year you’re going to have this accumulation of laws and regulations um until eventually everything is legal I mean everything is illegal everything is illegal yes nothing is allowed because you have overlapping laws regulations and and some of which are in fact uh contradict each other um that whether you go left or right they’re both left and right [Laughter] are um my God you know um it like SpaceX is I mean sham you know the doj in this respect in this particular case with it doj as you may know is suing SpaceX for um hiring only a permanent residents and and um citizens of the US the reason um
[00:37:01] that we did this was because we were told uh very clearly that if we did not hire permanent residents uh of the United States that that would con constitute a violation of international trade tra traffic and arms regulations itar and the entire executive team of SpaceX and the board would go to prison sounds like a good motivation yes and so we we were literally told us by the government in very clear terms and and you mean you’re well aware of it I well aware yes it’s it’s a nightmare um and we would like to which which by the way uh puts us in a non-competitive world against uh other nations yes it it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s pretty bad so um but but then then then the doj um you know is suing uh SpaceX um for not hiring Asylum Seekers now important
[00:38:00] Point here not Asylum those who have been granted Asylum those who are seeking Asylum there’s a lot of those there’s a lot of people seeking Asylum yes so we’re damned if we do and don’t so if if we hire someone who’s not a perent residence we’re breaking the law and if we don’t hire someone who who’s not a permanent resident we’re breaking the law so what this is this is an example of the madness that we’re facing um buddy I I want to compliment you on something which and I’ve seen I’ve known you for long enough to have seen you gone through this where you have bet everything over and over again you’ve bet uh your entire Fortune gone into debt to do the things that you believe in and I I I have a question to ask you which I’ve been dying to ask and I’m going to start making this uh this known there are so many billionaires on the planet who have tens of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars who are
[00:39:01] effectively sitting on it and not changing the world um not putting it in you know other than for increasing its return which is not a bad thing I think the more wealth and free energy there is out there to do things but um can you speak to that I don’t know if you’re willing to but uh there are a few people like Mark Benny off and uh and Eric Schmid and your yourself top of the list who invest on making the world a better place solving Global Grand challenges um thoughts on that sorry I just have some some kids and stuff right problem um sort of family noises in the background um so uh let’s see um yeah
[00:40:01] well yeah I mean I do think that uh smart people with resources should care about the the good of civilization the future of civilization um even if there is not even if they’re not particularly altruistic um because you can’t really can you cannot exist um absent civilization um you you know if civilization collapses it’s all over um you know there’s like people who’ve got like these sort of um bunkers and you like other countries or Hawaii or whatever um I’m like listen do you really think that you’re going to make it in in an apocalyptic situation um like they’ll they’ll they’ll come and find you in that bunker and they pry they’ll pry you out and get your stuff um and and and and it’s it’s going to anyway so really uh smart people with
[00:41:01] resources any smart person with resources they just have some long-term perspective I mean listen it’s it’s you and it’s you and and Jeff Bezos right now who’ve got the biggest long-term perspective and I see I uh you know uh I’m just curious about how do you incentivize other people to really um help the world accelerate uh you know and and make the world a more productive place right the best way to become a billionaire is help a billion people the world’s biggest problems the world’s biggest business opportunities uh do you believe that well I guess maybe we should just talk to people more um I guess just talking to them and you know I think it’s perhaps just raising conscious awareness the fact that um there is no living without
[00:42:01] civilization um when when you like one doesn’t actually have to make an altruistic argument you can actually you know make a even it’s a purely self-seeking argument um say like life would be miserable without civilization and if you want to know what life is like without civilization just go try living in the forest naked for a day and you will be naked and afraid and and quickly realize civilization is awesome have to eat bugs and get eaten by bugs and and and we’re so interdependent upon each other to enable the state of technology and capability we have today um you know I’m curious is there anything that you think um that isn’t becoming more abundant out there or anything we have an abundance uh constraint on you know I’ll just mention
[00:43:02] well answer that first then I want to come and talk about the carbon removal ex prise that you funded one second you know we’re we’re creating abundance of food energy water Health Care education um are we constrained in any way no not really no um I mean no I I think I I agree with you that the future most likely has abundance um we shouldn’t be complacent about the future um you know complacency and entitlement are not a recipe for success but the most likely outcome is one of abundance of goods and services um that is certainly where we’re headed uh uh yeah yeah when I when I saw you lasty likely where we’re at very likely yeah when when I saw you last you said you know definitely a bunch after AGI and I saw you know when
[00:44:00] you were talking about uh Optimus which is Awesome by the way let’s just start with that congratulations um well thanks mean Optimus I need to make sure the Optimus is you know doesn’t cause it doesn’t add to civilizational risk um you know because you don’t want like a billion of these things or with centralized control um unless unless what could go wrong has anyone made a movie about that unless they obey you well I don’t think they should any any one personation yeah like I think you have to have Lo local control but um it has to be decentralized um because and any Central uh control is going to be problematic um CU you just can’t be like it could be the a rogue AI takes I mean let’s literally movie a rogue AI you know
[00:45:02] Terminator uh takes over somehow gains control of um the mothership of that controls all the you know the Optimus robots or something like that um that is uh you basically it needs to be DEC it needs to be impossible for that to occur um let me ask you I always love combining your companies because it’s like you know you know it’s like uh uh a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup um you know sterlink and and and uh and and Starship together how about Optimus and neuralink when can I plug into an Optimus with my neuralink connection um well hopefully the first neural links will the First new link um in a human will hopefully be soon with from the next maybe this month or or next um now this is really just at first
[00:46:05] just trying to give um you know quadr quadriplegics and tetraplegics um the ability to control their phone and computer it’s it’s basically like the first the first product is TE telepathy essentially um um or telekinesis um and uh and then the second product uh sort of tentatively called Blind sight where uh we can restore sight even if somebody is uh has uh lost both eyes and their optic nove amazing um go straight to the visual cortex yeah yeah exactly now these things all already work uh in monkeys um and uh i’ just like to reemphasize no no monkey has ever died because of a neuralink um and we treat our monkeys extremely well last time last time I spoke to you about this you were playing uh you were playing
[00:47:01] pong against pager I think that’s right um actually it turns out monkeys love playing video games um they they’re they’re really just like us I mean they they they love uh eating eating snacks and playing video games I’ll tell my 12-year-old boys about that yeah I mean you you see the video of Pedro playing you know um monkey mind you know telepathic playing pong telepathically he’s not restrained in any way he’s just sitting on on the the sort of tree branch drinking smoothies and drinking smoothies drinking a smoothie and playing pong yeah he’s not held down you know um in fact he’s he gets upset when we take his video game away just like like hum just like our kids that’s that’s awesome and and this I mean giving sight to the blind I mean it’s biblical stuff and and this is again coming back to the original uh you
[00:48:00] know kicking off the new year with a positive mindset with an abundance mindset with an exponential mindset with a moonshot mindset right which I and I think I hope you agree like I think for entrepreneurs and people listening like the single most important thing we have is our mindset how we see the world I mean would you agree with that yeah yeah I mean you can choose to be I mean happiness is I think is a decision I mean Lely I mean there’s obviously people that have chemical imbalances but uh for most people the difference between being happy and unhappy is deciding to be happy over the years I’ve experimented with many intermittent fasting programs uh the truth is I’ve given up on intermittent fasting as I’ve seen no real benefit when it comes to longevity but this changed when I discovered something called prolon 5day fasting nutrition
[00:49:01] program it harnesses the process of autophagy this is a cellular recycling process that revitalizes your body at a molecular level and just one cycle of the 5-day prolon fasting nutrition program can support healthy aging fat focused weight loss improved energy levels and more it’s a painless process and I’ve been doing it twice a year for the last year you can get a 15% off on your order when you go to my special URL go to prolon life.com p r o l n l.com back slm moonshot get started on your longevity Journey with prolong today now back to the episode I want to take a second for everybody listening uh uh to point something out uh you know Elon it was uh 2021 uh I was texting with you and uh I said you should fund an another exerprise you funded an exerprise years AO go on teaching kids in the middle of Tanzania Reading Writing and arithmetic
[00:50:00] without any adults no schools around just on a tablet they were handed and the software had to teach them and it was an amazing success and then in 21 um I asked you if you’d do an exerprise on carbon removal and uh you said yes almost instantly um and we launched it three months later it was like the fastest yes to an xprize launch ever um so thank you for that I want to give you a quick up on it if I could you’re welcome um absolutely well um I hope the the education ex prise and the the Caron removal ex prise are result in you good out they I’m sure we had 6,000 teams enter the carbon removal prize um we have uh 1300 active teams in the competition right now as we down select uh uh about 36% 460 are focused on carbon air capture uh 4 30 are land related capture 240 are ocean related
[00:51:02] capture um and the we’ve given away 20 million of your money already five million to students and 15 million to the a million to the top 15 teams and the finals are coming up in two years in Earth Day of 2025 and uh interestingly enough you know the winning team needs to demonstrate uh uh Megaton level capture that can scale to G level capture and so just the final competition is going to capture four megatons uh of carbon which is twice what’s being done on an annual basis today so uh good progress so far great that’s that’s good to hear um well as we as we uh as we begin to wrap up what other thoughts for people on abundance what other mindset thoughts do you have for folks here is um
[00:52:02] H well I I I I do think that uh the birth rate is too low for humans as I I’m always going on about that um just a longevity baby I’m solving it with longevity I’m G to keep people alive longer okay well and robots and AI sure um but I mean it just uh the current situation is is grim Dr yeah yeah yeah yeah um I mean a lot of countries are um you know if you look at say say Korea Italy yeah they’re they’re losing roughly half their population per generation yeah um that means three generations they’re on10th of their current size and and and with the one1 that remains um being very old yeah the uh the numbers folks the replacement number is 2.1 children per family on the
[00:53:00] average and um Europe is at 1.5 um Asia uh dropped from 5.7 in the 1950s to 1.9 today which is crazy uh North America dropped from about 3 to 1.6 were below the replacement level in the United States um and it’s an it is an issue I mean we we need smart people on the planet yeah well I mean know if we don’t make new humans we won’t have Humanity um and and even with longevity uh we’ll live longer but we’re not live forever uh so I think we just need it’s it’s you know I’m concerned that like a lot of people think that the plan planet is overpopulated and that’s one of the things contributing to a low birth rate um in fact some people I’ve encountered think they’re basically um being Martyrs for not having kids and that’s just it’s
[00:54:00] just not true um I think we should uh take the position that we we we actually have a civic responsibility to have kids to at least keep uh the human population constant um ideally we should grow it but we should at least not have population collapse which is what we currently have I I think people people fear the future and I mean the ations I’ve heard is I don’t want to bring children into this world it’s too dangerous AI is going to destroy Humanity uh the environment you know we’re destroying the environment and so forth so I think part of it is getting people to be optimistic about the future uh versus pessimistic which is one of as you said in the beginning of this of this space is one of my one of my missions if people think the world is getting better and they have a hand in making it a better place uh you most definitely do um yeah I I think people should be
[00:55:00] optimistic about the future um they still Earth can handle Far More Humans than currently exist um and uh the danger is not a population explosion but collapse um so I would just encourage as many people as possible to uh have kids and ideally have a lot of kids because they they’re going to make up for those who whatever reason don’t buy an extra bottle of wine tonight folks yeah it’s a big deal um so would you would you let’s let’s close out on the conversation of AI and AGI which I know a lot of people are always interested in and and and there’s a real fear um about AI um what would you say to dissuade people I mean it’s you you’ve you I’ve heard you say 80% probability we make it through and we need to protect it downside um can you speak to that what how do how
[00:56:01] can people walk away more optimistic than pessimistic on on this front and how do you how do you think about you know is is it containment is it shaping how we train our AI systems how do you think we navigate uh super digital super intelligence well the the rate which AI is growing is it really boggles the mind yeah um so it currently seems as though the amount of compute dedicated to artificial intelligence is um increasing by a factor of 10 roughly every six months um it’s it’s faster than annual that’s for sure so um I mean I’ve I recently heard today about a gigawatt class uh
[00:57:00] AI uh compute cluster wow um that’s I think it’s being being built in Kuwait or something to that effect um and it’s a like 700,000 um v100s uh which is a couple Generations above two generations Beyond that’s Curr in production so this is staggering amount of compute um and and there are many such such things that’s just the biggest one I’ve heard of so far but there are there’s a 500 megawatt installation happening um there’s and there’s there’s there’s multiple 100 100 megawatt installations um in the works I I I don’t even clear to me what what you do with that much um compute um because when you when you actually add up all human data ever created uh you really just run out of things to train on very quite quickly um like you you know if you’ve got maybe I
[00:58:01] don’t know 20 or 30,000 h100s you can train on synthetic data almost yeah yeah you basically you have to have have synthetic data um because forly well under 100,000 h100s you can train on all human data ever created including video uh um and it’s not and it’s not just the compute which is the major scarce resource but it’s also the number of of uh entrepreneurs focusing this area the amount of capital that’s going into this area uh the amount of data Avail I mean it’s all increasing and it’s all feeding on itself and so it’s just you know hitting your point about the speed at which it’s progressing is is I think the word awesome is is comes to mind or staggering yeah it’s it’s really staggering and and for sure um so I’m just trying to give a tense of scale it’s I’ve never seen anything move this fast any of any technology this is the
[00:59:00] fastest moving thing so um in terms of aiming for AI safety my my best guess of my sort of primitive biological NE man is is that we should uh aim for maximum truth seeking and and curiosity um that that’s that’s that’s my gutfield for this for how to make AI as safe as possible if the the danger with programming morality and explicit with an explicit morality program is what is sometimes referred to as the Waluigi problem if you create Luigi you automatically create Waluigi by inverting Luigi sure um so um so I think we we have to be careful about programming and you know sort of an arbitrary morality
[01:00:01] um but but if if we focus on maximizing truth with acknowledged error that’s that’s probably I think that’s the the way to maximize safety um and and also to have the AI be curious um because I think that you know Earth is much more interesting to an advanced AI with humans on it than without humans I have a I agree with you now a interesting question of do you think vast intellig with vast intelligence comes uh significant empathy and respect for Life yeah I think so because that’s the that’s the hope at the end of the rainbow here that uh I don’t want to use the word AGI I’ll use a super digital super intelligence as a as a term uh with a dig super intelligence that is able to be more
[01:01:00] benevolent and support us because sometimes I’m not sure us squishy meat sacks can make it through our own our own uh horseshit problems that we put together um so maybe there’s a value there um my you know I think on the whole AI is the single most important technology we ever invented and it is going to uplift all of human I think it’s what you said you know post AGI comes abundance uh I think it’s the interim issues in the next one to four years right it’s it’s not artificial intelligence it’s human stupidity yeah um well I mean one way that AI could go wrong is if the extinctionist philosophy is programmed into the AI whe whether implicitly or explicitly I mean probably not explicitly but there’s a strong danger of of an implicit extinctionist philosophy being
[01:02:00] programmed into AI um you know and and what would that look like what would like well like there’s this guy on the front page of New York Times um think about a year ago um he’s head of the extinctionist society and he was literally quoted as there are 8 billion people on on Earth it would be better if there were none oh my God and yeah um so uh and if you if you take the extreme environmentalist argument especially like the implicit extreme environmentalist argument um they they there’s an imp implicit conclusion that humans are a plague on the surface of Earth um so we I think we have to be quite careful about um an an implicit like like if the extinctionist movement was somehow programmed into AI as as the optimization that would be extremely dangerous yeah to say say the least um
[01:03:04] yeah and but you know there there there are people quite a few people actually who who view Humanity um as as a blight on the surface of the oan yeah and there we’re we are coming down to there is the you know accelerationist movement the deceleration movement the Boomers and the doomers um but I think people forget to realize or don’t realize forget the fact that you know uh we romanticize the past and the past life was short brutish and you were dead by 40 um you know the life that we enjoy today is a result of the extraordinary technology that we brought to bear um yeah the like you know Hobs life is nasty brsh and um I I actually I I had a little Yorkshire terer once um who was uh nasty brutish and short and kept
[01:04:00] kept biting people so I called him hob perfect I would tell friends that that that came over watch out for the dog and and they’d look at this miniature York ter and laugh and then then bite them on the ankle and I said watch I said watch out for the uh you know that extinctionist Meme is the same sort of you know you discount it uh until it starts um uh being a mind virus uh in part as you’ve called it and it starts disrupting us yeah um if you convince people that you know we’re running out of resources on Earth that there are too many people in the world and the only way to survive is to have fewer people which a lot of people are believe to be the case and
[01:05:01] like I said if that if that somehow gets programmed into Ai and that AI becomes the most powerful AI then we’re in deep trouble uh yeah we need to counterforce the population bomb I mean what an extraordinary disservice to humanity um yeah er’s book was terrible nightmare maybe the most Anti anti-human book ever written yeah for sure for sure um the but get people Hope on the flip side here uh those who are saying again going back to I don’t want to bring up my children because I hear this all the time and I’m sure you do too in an age where AI is going to destroy us so um short-term problems long-term problems short-term Solutions long-term Solutions you said make it curious make it uh maximum truth seeking 100% um um is it okay to say that we’re going to have issues in the short term and we’re
[01:06:01] going to have to deal with them or do you there won’t be there will be there will be some issues um I mean essentially at this point no way to stop AI it it’s it is accelerating whether people like it or not um I mean that’s that’s uh that’s why together with a number of really smart people we created uh xai um and um you know hopefully you know some really small humans will continue to join xai and and build uh what is intended to be a maximally truth seeking and maximally curious um AI um anyway I think that’s that’s really important um so listen on behalf of of those of us and I think everybody here listening who
[01:07:01] are pro- humanity and pro uplifting Humanity um and making us a multiplanetary species and uh living a longer healthier life and I the one place I disagreed with you on on uh on X is on uh you know having people live longer you don’t people don’t need to die for there to be new ideas you know that the CEO of Ford and GM didn’t have to die for Tesla to come into existence so we’re uh yeah uh you know I’m I want to just say thank you for all that you’re doing and and setting a model for other other in industrialists and entrepreneurs out there uh to take on uh and solve the big huge problems well uh thank you um I would encourage people to be optimistic about the future um like or on the side of optimism um
[01:08:00] you will be happier for it um and and as you pointed out probably live longer so and I’m not I’m not totally against life extension I I think we did we you know um we want to be I’m I don’t think we want to necessar have people live forever that’s or live for a very long like thousands of years that I think that would potentially lead to OIC of society it it it would I think lead to oif of society um but but I mean solving de dementia and um you know curing cancer I think are good things obviously um so so I’m not sure we’re actually that far apart on the life extension thing um I think we’re prob probably mostly in agreement um I yeah we just don’t want to have like you know can you live for like do you want Kim Jong Un living for a thousand years no but I I’d like I’d like Elon Musk and Peter D mandis living for 150 years and a few other thousand
[01:09:00] amazing entrepreneurs out there sure um so it’s it’s a you know there there is a a challenge that like a lot of people they really never change their mind they just die and this this is actually I’m not sure who originally said this but even in physics where which is extremely rigorous um that you know that that you know physics in a lot of cases has advanced one Death at a time yeah my my friend Brian keading who’s a a astrophysicist reminded me of that and and maybe it was true but in this world of Entrepreneurship I think we do live with meritocracy to a large degree and the best ideas can bubble up to the top um faster than ever before especially with with AI now where you can build companies you know extraordinary companies with a couple of
[01:10:01] people and a lot of tech so yeah um I have one last question and then uh uh it’s I know it’s dinner time there uh uh the future of X xai um what’s your vision there pal well as I was saying I think the the path to AI safety is to BU an AI that is maximally truth seeking with acknowledged error that is maximally curious and I think um that I think that that is most likely to lead to a good outcome for Humanity um because we are we are much more interesting than than than not Humanity like like obviously you know I’m a big fan of Ms but m is much less interesting because there is no human civilization there um and
[01:11:03] um you take humans for example we we we could hunt down all of the chimpanzees and kill them but we don’t and in fact we make efforts to preserve their habitats um we so anyway I think that that’s that is a path to a great future and and a a maximally positive AI to be rigorously truth seeking always acknowledging some amount of error and and maximally curious um that’s and that’s that’s the the goal of XI is uh and you know the company MTO is understand the universe uh and that’s a it’s a it’s a good Mission and and one that’s going to take a bit of time I can’t wait till the first uh AI is able to come up with new
[01:12:02] theories of physics um and new Innovations that’s going to be I mean I don’t think that’s far away and I think that’s gonna be one of the most awesome times ever to be alive true like we we definitely live in the most interesting times and actually for a while I was kind of depressed about AI but then I I kind of got fatalistic about it and said like well even if even if AI was going to you know end all all Humanity would I prefer to be around to see it or not I I guess I would prefer to be around to see it um just out of curiosity but I obviously hopefully AI is extremely beneficial to humanity but but the thing that sort of reconciled me to be less anxious about it was to say well I guess even if it was apocalyptic I’d still be curious to see the it’s
[01:13:01] like you know I be curious to see it I remember I was at your birthday party at one of your homes here in La before you sold them uh and Larry Page was there and Sergey was there and we were having a conversation about living in a simulation and the notion was this is we’re in the 99th level of the game play and this has got to be a simulation because you couldn’t why would be why would be alive right now in this single most interesting time and then uh the only comment was don’t poke the simulation or will end yeah yeah well if we are in a simulation the the the way to keep the simulation going is to keep being interesting so like humans run lots of computer simulations because we we we don’t know what the outcome’s going to be and we’re
[01:14:00] curious to see we’ll run lots of simulations like in like will run crash and SpaceX will run you know rocket flight simulations and um we only stop doing the simulations when the when the outcome is extremely predictable and boring yes so if we’re in some alien Compu that’s a great argument that is perfect right when it’s absolutely known if we’re if we’re not if we’re not entertaining enough to the uh the digital gods or the universe Gods they’ll Land The Sim yeah we just need to make sure we keep the ratings [Laughter] up but but this why also why I think like one of the um ways to predict the future is that the most entertaining outcome is the most likely as seen by a third party as seen by as though we were an alien soap opera I love that yeah like so it’s not necessarily
[01:15:02] good for those in the soap opera like you could be watching a World War I movie and seeing you know people get blown up um and and you’re just eating popcorn and drinking of soda um but we’re we’re we’re in the movie um yeah well let’s not get let’s not get dystopian here because I think we can have a we can have a we can have a really positive outcome of a lot of other cool stuff um yeah for sure I think the most likely outcome is positive and and I think if you you know and I think that’s partly a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don’t believe so if you believe it’s going to be a distopian outcome then you’re going to be back on your heels protecting yourself not investing in the future and it unravels and this yeah and and so you know I think the the message of this entire space is is this is the most extraordinary time to be alive the most exciting time to be alive a time where you know a lot a lot
[01:16:03] of individuals listening on the spaces has more power than Kings or queens or heads of Nations had just a few decades ago and it doesn’t take a government or a large corporation to solve a problem anymore you know an entrepreneur with you some a few h100s can do a good job yeah I I think we should ear on the side of optimism um we should we should ear on the side of optimism and we should have kids like uh you know to to to air is human and h e i r and to reproduce is human all right buddy listen thank you so much for your time thanks for sharing you’re welcome all right thanks Peter take care buddy [Music] bye n