Elon Musk and EEI Chair Pedro J. Pizarro, President and CEO, Edison International at EEI 2023

our next guest is somebody that I think is familiar to all of us so not much of an introduction needed here but it's my pleasure to invite on stage the Techno king of Tesla the CEO of SpaceX and the owner of the boring company neuralink and Twitter please join me in welcoming Elon Musk [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Elon it is really a pleasure to have you here yeah thanks for having me yeah Mr Tony it was funny uh history kind of repeats itself the last time you spoke with us my predecessor Ted Craver was in the role in him in now and he got to interview you and so now we're kind of at New Orleans repeating history here and I would say reminiscing with you I think the last time I we saw each other SE had just done a large deal for storage at one of our substations so you were kind enough to host me at SpaceX a great conversation but I have to admit it was pretty cool sitting on that mezzanine cafeteria looking under the rocket Fab so thank you for that well a lot has happened at Tesla over the last few years and uh you you confirm delivering fifty thousand yeah fifty thousand cars in 2015 more than 1.3 million carats last year that's a whole lot of growth and so you look back over these last eight years since we chatted with you last this faster or slower adoption than you expected any any big surprises that you weren't expecting well it's actually gone reasonably close to what I thought would happen which is from that point roughly a 50 year over year compound annual growth uh which is a compliments that the Tesla team it's the fastest growing um large manufactured object ever which I think the second is Like the Model T back in the day so about 100 years ago so the the Tesla team are very proud to work with them they've executed incredibly well um and we anticipate uh something close to you know 50 growth um to continue so uh that is uh very exciting um and it means that uh we should expect electrification of Transport especially passenger vehicles um you know quite quite quickly is it because the normal human instinct is to extrapolate on a linear basis um but really if you look at the curves uh electric vehicles are growing exponentially so um I think that's great news for those in the room um you have a lot of customers uh uh well you have a lot of EB customers ready and and soon you'll have many more um you know and uh thank you forgive me for waxing on a little bit here but uh I sometimes have asked well when will um EBS be most of the cars the important thing to remember is that you've got two two billion cars and trucks out there so um and about 100 million of uh per year new vehicle production which kind of makes sense so sort of a life of about 20 years before a vehicle finally goes to the scrap yard um so even if um 100 of electric vehicles were our new vehicle production was was electric today would still take 20 years to replace the fleet so just important to bear that in mind um percentage of new vehicle production versus versus total Fleet um but uh I think we're moving quickly to the point where I know probably half of all new vehicles made will be electric um and I think that's that's like that's likely to happen I think before the end of this decade um but then there's still you know quote another 20 years beyond that before that the fleet really uh becomes majority even so yeah and it's interesting because as we've done the analysis for California right we have uh uh an executive order that calls for all new vehicle sales being zero emission by 2035. that's in line with the forecasts that we've had in our own scenario analysis that still puts us at about three quarters of passenger vehicles being Electric in 2045 when the state gets sent at zero it could be off by a little bit but I mean I think the the largest point is that um demand for electricity is going to be extremely high so so I I you know hope this is good news um the you know the you've just do the rough back the envelope uh math um you need to roughly triple electricity um to get to equally electric economy um you know roughly a third of power is electric and then uh you know right these are very rough numbers roughly a third is spent in transportation um of various kinds uh with the fossil fuels or hydrocarbons um and then roughly a third is heating um so um even assuming the the sort of current economy economic usage electricity per capita being uh constant you're looking at roughly a tripling of electricity demand um and the um so it's really going to take a tremendous effort to address this demand um this is a sort of you know I think very very good news for those producing electricity uh but but also impels a tremendous amount of work ahead um in new production capacity and production capacity that is as sustainable as possible well I mean in fact it requires a whole uh you know system to be ramping up it's you know you you are dealing with the storage side and the vehicle side and the charging side and we'll talk a bit more about that a bit yeah we have the wires but you know we need we need support from all across the economy absolutely it's really it's really very much a joint effort um I think it's it's a it's a very positive very positive uh future for the producers and Distributors of electricity um really couldn't ask for a better you know they're growing Market that's going to grow in a better way than this but it is a trans amount of hard work as everyone here knows uh to actually uh put that generation in place and then transport it to where where it gets used uh and then dealing with the the Peaks um uh and and and and and then taking advantage of The Valleys of power production um I mean that's really where like the Tesla mega pack that you're just learning to um is is actually incredibly helpful is in um sort of peak shaving the grid basically charging up when you have Excess power production and then and then releasing it when you have um insufficient power production or you want a peak shave it's the you know I really believe that stationary battery packs are absolutely the way the way to go um and um it is actually the fastest growing portion of the entire Tesla business so we're um so our vehicle is growing at 50 a year but our stationary storage is growing at two to three hundred percent a year um so it's really um you know it's it's really a big deal and really helpful um it's like it's just a obviously it's a battery that scale and it buffers electricity if you need electricity buffered then uh that's a good product well I don't well uh we'll get back to uh electric vehicle set in a minute but I remember when you and I spoke a number of years ago you already had that vision of global electrification yeah um and I think you've positioned your company right with storage fees with solar so this integrated view of where the market is going and how Tesla fits into it yeah yeah well there's I mean there's fundamentally um three three pillars to a sustainable energy future um one you know one is sustainable energy generation which is a solar wind um Hydro actually you know a fan of of nuclear of good good old Vision um I think is underrated um I mean we could easily supply all of the world's electricity with vision but we will I don't know some of that sometimes they're understanding of physics is not amazing and so they get scared of things they shouldn't be scared of um so um so I'm very much Pro anyway basically any electricity we say okay this is not going to meaningfully change the chemistry of the climate Notions you know the atmospheric oceans and so um anyway so you've got sustainable electricity generation one side then you've got um stationary batteries as the third second pillar uh which uh is needed for any kind of intermittent electricity production and by its nature uh solar and wind are intermittent so batteries and solar wind go together extremely well um and uh and then the third pillar is electric transport so get all three of those pillars going and we have a sustainable uh futurist as long as the sun shines and the wind blows which will give me a long time well I think you know this idea of having a balance across these resources it takes a lot of tools in the toolbox let me get back to electric vehicles though because left to go a couple levels deeper here sure um we're talking some you know a few minutes ago I think that was more on passenger vehicles uh but let's talk a bit about about bigger ones so you know we're all excited to see the first Tesla semi trucks on the road in California um and that means a lot in terms of the viability of trucking systems uh in the future you also have the U.S EPA you know proposed vehicle standards it could accelerate the medium and heavy duty electrification you have California doing its thing as well it's a number of other states um but ultimately the vehicles need to be economical for Fleet operators and particularly in Southern California where we have all the uh the traffic coming up from the ports a lot of those truck operators are not big fleets right they're small mom-and-pop owner so absolutely so how how quickly are you thinking that Freight movement really goes electric and and in a way that's affordable so that you can really serve that mix of ownership yeah well I think I'd certainly encourage people to look at our semi-truck presentations um because in fact the one of the things we emphasize with electric semi truck is that it's it's much more energy efficient than a diesel truck you know so um and I mean you get things like regenerative braking so like let's say you're you know going over a mountain range um well in diesel truck you actually don't capture that the energy of height or potential energy uh you you have to actually spend a lot of money on expensive brakes going down the other side so you don't run out of control so whereas an electric semi truck um is able to recapture the the energy the gravitational potential energy and and actually when it goes down the other side uh does not overheat the brakes and in fact puts the energy back in the pack so things like that are incredibly helpful for the Energy Efficiency and then just it generally looks the entire chain from electricity production um to take into account the the efficiency of energy produced the energy loss during transmission energy lustering charging and then see how many miles we're driven you could take the same diesel that is used to um power a a truck use it and burn it for electricity and still be at least 50 to 100 better with an electric uh semi-truck than with many people put that diesel directly in the truck yeah Frank that's in line we were talking earlier in our board meeting about just the official security you know it's efficiency of electric Technologies right so it's a big part of the uh of the story here yeah just fundamentally um combustion engines in in a vehicle are constrained in mass volume so uh you you have to you're therefore Limited in how much efficiency how much useful energy you can extract from a fuel when you have a very constrained massive volume for the truck um whereas a power plant does not have the constraints of massive volume it can be heavier and bigger obviously and you can take the waste heat and run a steam turbine so you can your sort of Carno efficiency of a power plant is dramatically greater than if it's grown in a mobile application like vehicle and even when taking into account uh transmission losses and charging losses they better still don't account for the massive difference in efficiency of even a hydrocarbons being put at a power plant versus being used in a car yeah which sets up you know thinking about well what's a transition there and but ultimately though looking at a feature that's electric so we're all we're all agreeing on the efficiency of the the trucks uh let me State something that's plainly obvious bigger and more trucks bigger and more batteries right so let's talk about the supply chain for batteries and I want to say thank you because a number of the folks here were able to get a tour of the gigafactory uh here in Austin yes yeah and actually I apologize I don't probably answer your question with respect to trucks because so semi trucks because they do uh use a large battery um we'll be um will be later than other vehicles um because we need to have excess sufficient battery supply in order to um have a battery that's you know maybe four or five times larger there would be in a passenger car um have that be in a in a semi truck that's the reason why we haven't gone to scale production of semi truck yet is because there just weren't enough batteries now as the battery problem is solved we will go to volume production with the semi truck and I I'm pretty sure it sounds will be first on this but we're expecting to reach volume production probably sometime um next noon end of next year is you know we're waiting for and and again it's not going to be overnight all the trucks become electric because you you have to uh reach a certain percentage of new semi trucks built then replace the fleet the fleet is you know at least 10 years old um in the semi-truck case and so um you know but I think it probably gets to 50 of new semi trucks built within probably three or four years maybe five years um and then it's another 10 15 years before you see most trucks be electric so that's I don't know depending on on your perspective that's either really soon or far away or a little bit of both right yeah yeah yeah so um that's uh that helps get a sense of the time scale here I think a one level level deeper though and when you think about the actual underlying challenges in getting that battery scale again a gigafactor here seems like it's a great advancement in terms of the manufacturing side yeah but how do you think about the supply chain behind that the rare earth materials are you thinking about different chemistries over time or other ways to make sure you're getting the support supply of batteries you need for that kind of scale growth yeah so the raw materials are not really an issue here um especially when you consider iron-based uh um cathodes so we think probably the most of the batteries made will be um with an iron cathode iron is extremely common it's actually the most common element on Earth by mass is iron second is oxygen everything else is in the remaining roughly 38 um so we we have more iron that we were basically a rusty well that's what Earth is iron oxide iron and oxygen and a little some silicon and a few other things um but it's it's funny that Earth is by mass almost two-thirds uh iron and oxygen yeah um so uh We're not gonna run out of iron that's for sure um and uh especially for stationary storage where mass and volume are not that important um an iron-based uh lithium ion cell so the thing about lithium-ion cells is like it's a lot of folk of lithium but actually lithium is like the salt on the salad it's not the salad itself um so um the the costs tend to be predominate and certainly the mass of the fact that nominates in the cathode which is a it's going to be a metal um and the higher energy chemistries are tend to be a nickel and then the lower end lower energy density chemistry will be Iron so to use nickel for kind of long-range stuff uh where where mass and volume uh really matter and you'd use iron where it's less important so medium range cars stationary storage iron long-range cars and aircraft would definitely be a nickel interesting so well let's uh let's talk about how we actually charge all those batteries and uh again back in 2015 you described the need for fast charging to help long-distance travel work um even as most of the charging we think you know ends up happening at home so we built the supercharger Network I think it's still the end of The Benchmark in terms of public EV charging out there you've made some really big announcements recently you've been you know fun to watch with the uh with Ford and more recently with GM just curious you know why are you opening up the network you know how do you see this creating competitive advantage and working with uh with others well I don't know if it is a competitive Advantage um but it might be actually competitive disadvantage but the the the purpose of Tesla from the beginning has been to accelerate the Advent of sustainable energy um and so you know we're and I've been very clear with that even when we went to IPO I said hey look some of the things we do may not be you know super profit maximizing so don't invest if that's a problem encourage people to sell our stock if that's a problem um on the other hand we'll make up for it with some epic products so I think on balance we'll be okay um and um we went public at uh I think one point roughly just over one and a half billion dollars so it's improved since then um a bit yeah you know made some progress um but you know some of the things I maybe we could have done that were not totally profit optimizing I mean we've open sourced all of our patents so anyone can use our patents which is uh pretty unusual yeah um um so you know it's and I mean once you do the patents just to stop like that and trolls and people are doing blocking actions so we'll do a patent and then make it open so that there's because like patents are like a Minefield you know it's just like you don't want those you want a clear path to the future of sustainability um and then you know as far as opening up our Network I actually don't even know if this is a actually you know a good thing for Tesla or bad thing I mean I think it's morally right but it's uh whether it's naturally smart or means to be seen um but it was uh you know it was something that would help the rest of the industry go electric so we opened it up and so we don't want to use it as kind of a wall Garden or competitive weapon um it's if it's something that would help advance sustainable energy we'll do it let's say a powerful statement about the commitment to sustainability I'm I'm curious Elon in doing taking that step might it also influence how you think about the evolution of your own charging Network so for example I think some of the other charging networks might have higher uh you know voltages for for fast charging is that something that you think would then lead you to migrators at or do you think you're in the right sweet spot well um it depends on which cars we're talking about here there's a maximum rate at which you can charge a pack so you know if you once you see that rate it's not it's not relevant to that particular vehicle um you know our latest superchargers will do over 300. yeah um 300 kilowatts I should say very big one yeah we had to go back to some more planning yeah yeah exactly so big big cable or very high voltage we just cranked it up to a million volts look at the same cable [Laughter] we'll start working on that okay yeah um so yeah if you um I mean that I squared r heating is real it can really get you but you just crank up the voltage um so yeah I mean it's 350 kilowatts I mean you really are exceeding the rate at which um almost any battery Can it can take like can actually charge without damaging the battery so um I think we'll be fine on that front our voltage for a long time has been roughly 400 volts um plus minus 30. um and with the Next Generation we're doubling that to the uh 800 volts um so I mean there's there's it's not it's not as big again as it may seem but it's um you know it's uh slightly better so that our superchargers will be able to operate it either 400 or 800 volts um and just you know impedance match to whatever the vehicle is that's uh wants to be charged well again it's a really fascinating move and it'll be interesting to see how other oems you know approach the Ford and GM announcements yeah like I said we're you know really just trying to do the right thing here um and uh you know I was there with uh Jim Folly and Mary Barra that you know we will support uh GM and Ford cars on equal footing no you know special status for for Tesla vehicles that kind of thing um it's got to be fair um so yeah let's talk a bit more we'll stick to it sounds like it's in line with uh making your patents open source right yeah yeah well um all of those Chargers are going to drive the need for a lot of infrastructure on our side of the grid yes I actually I I can't emphasize enough we need more electricity much electricity you think you need is more than that is needed I assure you you if you're thinking should I build this incremental production capacity of electricity yes definitely as fast as possible amen so you have a room full of folks here some of folks are you know members of eei regulated utility folks there's suppliers here vendors it's a whole Community that's that's needed here to make this happen we also need the support of government right and so it's been exciting to see the IRA funding we're talking about this earlier today Ira iija transformational for the U.S yeah but we still need more help right than getting permitting and citing reform for example to get the steel in the ground I feel I feel the same way yeah like it's it's man I mean we're like practically making construction illegal in this country um and especially in California I mean you know no offense like I lived there for a long time and I still suppose I still spend a lot of time in California FYI and I'm slow Pro California not easy sometimes [Laughter] try getting a permit to radio Kitchen in L.A I mean it's a pretty good no deal but you know what but Elon that that is it it is really something we're all dealing with across all states it's Federal permitting it's state level we're just like you know Gulliver's Travels and each one of those regulations by themselves maybe not so bad but it's like a like you've got a thousand ten thousand little strings you know holding the giant of America down frankly from a regulatory standpoint so that so that's one part that we need to solve and appreciate Tesla's engagement and policy space what you've done yeah there's another part of this there which is the collaboration between utilities and our customers whether it's Tesla or somebody else I was out in a in Barstow California recently at CE territory and I was seeing the upgrades that our team was making yeah accommodate a large supercharger station because you know Barstow for those of you who don't know smack between the drive between LA and Las Vegas right so popular spot for Charter yeah I've charged there so I think this one's going to open uh you know right right the following weekend or something but so many superchargers are like major powered role like serious right yeah and so so they are and that means we need good collaboration one of the things that eei has done is reach out to the customer Community whether it's charging companies whether it's large Fleet operators to to get that collaboration but um I'm curious from your perspective what more do we need to be doing to collaborate better with you and with the oems and you know with frankly you're charging competitors because we need everybody to get this ecosystem going well I I guess uh anything we can do to making it grow faster would be would be great um and um it's obviously it's not all in your hands there's there's um a lot of Permitting and whatnot that has to happen um but but I I really can't emphasize enough where we're at like I think a very exciting juncture for electricity providers uh which is that the amount of electricity is going to go is is going exponential um and we'll like I said roughly roughly triple uh where it is today to get to a fully sustainable economy um so so I think I would just be cautious about extrapolating from the past because the future is not like the past if the future is is a massive increase in electricity demand and it's going to take everything we've got to just keep up with it um so I think speed like just figure out like how to remove faster how do we have um faster deployment of electricity and that's the whole everything matters from generation to transmission to the local substation um and um and I understand there's like a quite a long lead time on like step down Transformers um so man I hope Tesla doesn't have to make those too um but uh um look forward to it we need more of them yeah well well I mean my my challenge to this the mega pack team is like okay guys look let's try to get it to where you just take the the big cables the power cables and you just plug them in you know no substation you know that'll be sweet you know you just just take the big metal wire and uh can I put down here and um you're done uh what about our Engineers talk a little bit about that I mean it's it's totally doable uh you know if you don't go too crazy on the voltage it's totally doable um you know you do start having these like you know can't have the wires too close together because we're arcing limits and stuff um but um but but generally like uh if they look at mega pack uh deployments uh one of the limiting factors is the substation equipment uh to do voltage step up you know um and um and so we're just looking at like okay how can we make what are all the things that uh slow us down to getting to a sustainable energy economy and then we just tackle whatever appears to be the biggest issue um and um and I think as we'll know we also have this sort of consumer side uh Power wall which is obviously it's very tiny compared to the mega pack um but it's also uh very can be very helpful in a neighborhood for balancing power um and after having having the power walls operate collectively uh to to smooth out the power in a neighborhood which we've got working quite well in Australia at this point um and I believe we've got some uh test efforts in California as well no in fact we do with SCE virtual power plant efforts I think PG e has some as well that's a it's a good transition tour I wanted to go next which is when you think about that interaction with the customer right now clearly we are interacting with a customer you are as well it can be through virtual power plants uh I'll throw in bi-directional charging into the equation too right so you put all these things together technology is enabling some different relationships with the customer what's your vision for you know how how that evolves over that experience well like so I can't emphasize enough that um we're just going to hit um constraints on electricity production and and uh transmission um on mass okay across the board so that's why I'm like I know obviously it takes time to uh plan for and permit and build um a New Power Generation Plant but but I that's why I'm encouraging everyone to start now um I'm not sure what your plans are for future electricity demand but it's going to be I I'm pretty sure it's gonna be much higher than what what you currently think um electricity man is going to be well I mean necessarily must be three times what it is today in order for us to have a sustainable energy future so that means power plants transmission um I mean there's always some some I think there's not this this some to some degree we can improve um the power throughput of some of the lines by jacking up the voltage um you know may require separating tables a bit more but um and also need to step up step down Transformers um so the different cables too so just we have an area here called the Hub uh with a number of companies that have different Technologies we had Bill Gates join us yesterday and you know with a number of the companies uh that breakthrough uh energy Ventures is uh supporting one of those was a company that's making a you know cable that can carry a lot more uh you know capacity right so I agree that all those technologies will be important by the way as we do the analysis for California why yeah um we do see a future where California gets in at zero in 2045 and it's not quite fully electrified it's mostly electrified yeah right there's other other tools in the toolbox that's at least a 60 increase in load whereas mode has been flat for decades now so it's coming we agree okay so I I like I think that's that's basically that's it will be much more low than that it may be yeah uh but I like a lot um uh like um it's just everything's gonna be electric and I think the actually the average power usage per person is going to increase a fair bit um I mean it's an interesting thing to consider is like he is um total power used by humans on average um over time you know and you say like you go from not that long ago when the best we could do is kind of make a campfire um so you say in a token like electricity and thermal energy for for human was extremely tiny um if you even go back 200 years we literally had to you know burn what are called locally uh ticket Heats there was no electricity uh you know the so and even if you take all of the like all the steam engines and everything and divide that by total number of humans um power usage per human uh thermal electrical otherwise was a minuscule 200 years ago and even less uh 300 years ago now it is incredibly high and it is rising um and and this is and you're going to see I think a lot of electricity usage by um the sort of neural net data centers as well those are heavy powered drawers so in fact I think one of the scaling constraints for AI is going to be power availability um that they are quite far-hungry so you've got you've got basically that average energy usage for a person increasing dramatically and a transition from uh running hydrocarbons to things that are more sustainable anyways the point is is it's going to be 3x current and I think that 3x number is probably it probably happens around 2045 ish so this is the thing about exponential growth is it it really is counterintuitive and you know actually exponentials are it tend to be kind of um sort of underestimated just you know just um there's a long tradition of that it's cell phones other technology instead yes you know humans have not been able to see escalating you know this brings up a different question area around some of the other places where electrification is going to play a role so we know we spent a long time talking about cars but you know building electrification maybe another important uh you know tool to help reduce emissions over time um you know again California different from other states but we think that we're going to see something like uh you know 30 percent of all buildings uh needing heat bumps to get to the 2030 targets of the state has 90 by 2045. um how much Focus are you putting on the building side of electrification right now and is that a place where you think testimonica uh well I mean we have the power wall which is but that's that's somewhat more of a supports it yeah that's like a for for homes um homes and small businesses it's powerwall um I would certainly appreciate support from utilities uh with bringing power walls online um and uh one of the you know selling points of a power wall is to give um uh the homes like some amount of uh protection against brownout blackout type of thing but sometimes we we do get some uh pushback from utilities about enabling a sort of a cut-off switch because if you if you don't cuddle power to the grid if you if the grid loses power then this pointless you just end up say if you've got if you've got you're not pushing electricity you know back onto the grid and it's kind of pointless it doesn't doesn't work um so we would appreciate some support in uh approving and installing the backup switch which really just enables um homeowners to have power if for whatever reason this this goes down for some reason um so that would be most most appreciated um and it will continue to engage on that also from the Utility side I want to make sure we're managing you know safety reliability issues but you know it's making sure we're understanding the technology and engaging with your team to work through to the details yeah yeah so but I mean it can be pretty helpful and then like I said the the power walls um you know operating collectively can help to stabilize the Grid in a particular neighborhood um I I do think like local uh Power Generation uh you know basically rooftop solar um and and uh with an accompanying battery pack is is a helpful part of solving the energy problem because there's a lot of neighborhoods where it's hard to get incremental power to that neighborhood like because you need like more substations you need more you know uh overhead wires and then you know in a lot of places that can be extremely difficult to achieve um you know because just from opposition from people not wanting additional interesting wires overhead and not wanting to expand substation so so it's a sort of a solution to this is where local solar and local storage helps uh alleviate uh some some very thorny uh situations where you just can't it's extremely difficult to get more power to that neighborhood so a little bit of local power generation is is pretty helpful well in fact when when we do our lab our analysis for California we see the state needing to add something like 80 gigawatts of both power Renewables and 30 gigawatts a volt power storage but we're also counting on 30 gigawatts of distributed Renewables and 10 gigs of distributed uh storage okay great we see we need all the tools in the toolbox for what for what's coming in exactly yeah well you know one other touch point you've had with our sector has been the work that you're doing um here in uh in Texas where as I understand that you're you announce an energy retail business uh with a subscription program right that allows powerful customers to uh a 30 monthly flat fee yeah I mean we're trying different experiments yeah so um we're just we don't know what what actually makes sense but we're trying different experiments to see what why it might work um so yeah for sure trying to figure out like 10 power walls all working together uh help uh stabilize the grid which they can we've actually done that many times now um and um and then of course our mega pack which is is great at the sort of utility or heavy industry level um so uh yeah it seems you know we're Foster a sustainable energy future and it's going to take many many different Technology Solutions in different Arenas to to solve this kind of tripling of electricity demand and provision problem well let me um let me shift topics a little bit and you mentioned AI earlier in the context of being one of those drivers of electricity uh load increases but you've also been pretty outspoken about both the potential and the risk of AI I think a number of us are actually moving really quickly right now with use cases and how we use it I'll give one example at Edison last year we did almost 200 000 asset inspections in high Wildfire risk areas you've seen drones it's generating terabytes of data you know great ability to capture images all around there's no way humans could process all those images so we've been using an AI enabled tool to down select the images that we're going to look at looking at other use cases right now but what we recognize there's risk too so love your thoughts about you know broadly across the industry and then if you think about our sector how should we be thinking about AI from your perspective and both the uh the opportunities and the risks there well I mean I've had many sleepless nights thinking about AI so I am worried about AI on the downside you know I just it's sort of a technology like like nuclear um it's extremely powerful um but it could get out of hand um and um so I have been struggling with this question for a long time of what to do AI existential risk um and I've been a big proponent actually of regulation of at least some having some oversight by the government uh you know acting as kind of a referee to make sure that AI companies don't do super dangerous things um and nobody's even watching them or there's no there's no sort of uh agent of the public which is really you know regulation when it's done done right is there uh trying to oversee the good of the public um and make sure that companies don't kind of cut corners or break rules or do things that would endanger the public and this is the origin of the FAA and it's in um various regulatory organizations that exist um and and now those Regulatory Agencies only came into being after a lot of people died you know a lot of things went wrong so uh with the AI I don't think we can afford the luxury of like waiting until it goes wrong you know um so I think we need to be preemptive on this run so um I've had a number of conversations with world leaders um you know with including you know pricing your uh people in China and around the world Europe I'm actually heading to Europe tomorrow I have some AI safety conversations uh with with some of the um country leaders there um yes because I think I think this is the kind of thing where the world needs to work together uh on AI safety it's a really big deal um I can't emphasize this enough so uh I was somewhat encouraged by uh China's willingness to um engage in AI regulation um and I did point out that um you know if you get some digital super intelligence it might be in charge of China instead of you and I'm not sure you would like that [Laughter] that argument seemed to resonate [Laughter] well you know since you're bringing up China you know and you're you're very active there you're also active with government leaders um a little off script here but as you think about U.S China relationship and how it helps navigate or hurts you know try to navigate whether it's AI whether it's technically competitiveness for your products uh both in the US and in Chinese markets uh how are you thinking about how that evolves and what's the end game here in terms of being able to work at both markets I don't know what the end game is but um I can say the mid game is going to be spicy have you um with your operations in China have you you feel like you've enjoyed good support and are you comfortable with intellectual property um yeah we've actually gotten very good sport in China uh Tesla has the only uh fully foreign Owned Car Factory in China um and we do very well in the domestic Market in China and our you know our Shanghai Factory is our highest performing Factory globally so it's a very impressive team that Tesla has in China and um the work ethic there is incredible um so you know I think it's gonna be interesting future um the you know we are entering a phase where U.S will will not be the biggest economy in the world um and there's nobody alive today who can remember when the United States was not the biggest economy in the world so it is a it's going to be a little um probably discomforting at first uh to a lot of people to have uh trying to be probably you know two or three times the size of the US economy so it's already higher the industrial output manufactured output is already significantly higher than the us and that will increase and they've had a significant investment focus in electric vehicles uh yes um the China is actually of any large country the most board-leaning uh with sustainable energy um so they have massive solar projects wind projects and have done the most with respect to electric vehicles of any uh large country of smaller countries Norway is uh the leader but for any logic very large economy it's China is by far the most forward-leaning for sustainability well let me pull up from Tesla and you do have a few other places where you spend your time yeah so so you know again I mention and introducing you have a SpaceX twitter a boring company neural link which is really exciting I saw you at some uh approvals recently offering free brain shipping as you leave the conference can I suggest a few folks to go first um Sarah yeah you won't feel a thing yeah you know joking aside you you're making a personal choice to spend time across these is there is there a Common Thread in terms of mission across all of these and uh you know and what what excites you most about your portfolio well I mean the the aspiration with these various things is to maximize the probability of the future is good for civilization so it's um you know the future is just a set of probabilities like we don't know you know for sure what's going to happen um but to the degree we can check the probabilities towards um a positive future for civilization I think we want to do that um and to me this is really just you know if you're sort of long-term thinker at all it's this is uh naturally what one should want to do because you know how can we really exist in the absence of civilization I mean you can see what it's like just watch you know Naked and Afraid is what is this when you don't have civilization [Laughter] it's a civilization pretty great um so um I think we want to keep it going and um you know and and uh keep advancing civilization so um I think we can we should try to expand the scope and scale of Consciousness such that we are better able to understand the universe and not place in it um so I would call you know my philosophy of philosophy of curiosity um and um and while we will all die as individuals civilization um can continue a theory for a very very long time millions of years or more uh so we should try to make sure that happens um so the these various things that I'm doing are trying to trip the probability of future being good now I hope that's it may turn out that some of these things uh the road to hell is paved with good intentions uh so hopefully you know those good intentions do not translate to something bad but I think the road to hell is mostly paved by Bad Intentions um and uh you know once in a while there's a good intention of Paving stone in there um but the intent is to maximize probably the future is good for civilization um so with in the case of say neural link it's like well how does that affect things it's like well um if we are to link um the sort of the path of the AI to human well then what are the what what could act to impair that that linkage and we're getting pretty esoteric there but one of the issues is the bandwidth between your cortex and your computer or your AI the AI extension extension of yourself um and if that bandwidth is too low then the computer will simply be bored you will you know as a matter of it gets very low you you effectively um have a very thin straw between yourself and the AI extension of yourself now now we're already cyborgs when you think about the fact that your phone and your computer are an extension of yourself and probably you know what I think most people if you forget your phone somewhere it's like having missing limb syndrome you know any like sort of padding your pockets and it's like the phone is basically an extension of yourself starting with you don't know anybody's phone number anymore yes right exactly I had this like nightmare like where I was stuck at a party and someone else had taken my phone and and and so I had the iPhone but I couldn't use it and and then they were like so well well who should we call them like I don't know anyone's number [Laughter] so New Orleans you don't even know who to call or how do you especially having to must happen a lot you know it's like you don't know anyone's number and you have they've got your phone and you you can't call whatever an Uber or anything um and uh you're just stuck so I like that idea of increasing the bandwidth between the computer assistant and the brand but apparently we also need a safety lock to make sure we don't lose the computer in the process Elon um this has been terrific and I hope that it's not another eight years before we see you here appreciate all the efforts you have and frankly the the sentiment you provided around trying to improve humanity and recognizing that the collaboration that we have between our sector and your company is critical to helping Humanity deal with climate to help thank you so much for doing and please know we're all stand ready to continue to partner to make this transition a real thing sounds good everybody let's thank Elon very much and thank you so much foreign

Channel: EEITV

Views: 195,787

Keywords:

Id: t_WFsgjqpOU

Length: 52min 22sec (3142 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/juggle]

Interesting takeaway I wasn't aware of before: For people that say the electric grid can't support all the charging that needs to happen.

If you simply took the fuel used by ICE vehicles and used it as the fuel source for electric power generation at scale, you would come out ahead due to the efficiency of large power generators compared to small engines in vehicles. This makes sense but I never thought about it before

[u/chasingreatness]

Elon stated (when originally talking about the damaging barriers to construction) “there are 10,000 little strings holding the giant that is America down from a regulatory standpoint.”

[u/Ithinkstrangely]

"On June 13, 2023, EEI Chair Pedro J. Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, spoke with renowned technologist and engineer Elon Musk about the future of electrification driven, in part, by electric vehicles. The dynamic conversation took place during EEI 2023 in Austin, Texas"

A conversation focusing around Tesla Energy.

[u/lowspeed]

Interesting, he talks about opening up the SC network. https://youtu.be/t_WFsgjqpOU?t=1205