Elon Musk - Full Interview : July 15, 2017 NGA Conference

I know each governor has a vision for his or her own States and we have a responsibility to enact policies to help our citizens and our states thrive so I've asked Elon to join us today to share his thoughts on how governor's can not only stay ahead of the curve but become innovation governors so with that please join me in welcoming Elon Musk here good afternoon and welcome Ilan I was gonna take off my ties all right if I do that I came in with a tie but then I was like tell them is nice that's good well thanks appreciate your your being here today hey you know it's when I'm with you I it's difficult to know where to start let's start just what drives you what what is it that when you wake up in the morning do you see a problem and you want to solve it I think the thing that drives me is that I want to be able to think about the future and you know feel good about that and so that you know we're doing what we can to have the future B be as good as possible to be inspired by what is likely to happen and to look forward to the next day so that's that's what really worried drives me is trying to figure out how do we how to make sure that things are great mm-hmm and I'm gonna be so and that's the unlined principle behind Tesla and SpaceX is that I think it's it's pretty important that we accelerate the transition to sustainable generation and consumption of energy it's inevitable but it's it matters if we had if it happened sooner or later and then SpaceX is about helping make life multiplanetary and doing what we can to continue the dream of Apollo and ultimately make contribution to life becoming multiplanetary let's talk a little more about that I think everyone very interested that when you say making life multiplanetary that's exciting it is exciting so what's your vision there you know I think you know particularly for Americans you know like you think about America is a nation of explorers people who came here from other parts of the world they you know chose to give up the known in favor of the unknown so I think exploration like the United States is a distillation of the human spirit of exploration and so that's why it appeals to Americans so much you know you can see this when say there was a shuttle craggy and seven people died it and that's that's terrible but you know a lot of people die all the time but why do we care so much because it was the dream of exploration that was dying along with those people that's why no and I'm one of those that probably like many of you remember exactly where you were when that that tragedy happened so you have 30-plus governors here today and we're very excited about your willingness to be with us and you hopefully heard me talk a little bit about my initiative which is being ahead of the curve what do you tell us as governors what we what should we be thinking about in terms of innovation and and developing public policy for the future well it sure is important to get the the rules right and you know it's sort of in terms of legislative and executive actions you know it's sort of like you ever think of say like professional sports or something if you if you don't have the rules right if there isn't you know if a game isn't set up properly it's not gonna be a good game so it's real important to get the rules right no I think it's worth noting that I think still in the United States the rules are still better than anywhere else but the you know it's it's very easy to put something in place which is an inhibitor to to innovation without realizing it so in terms of the regulatory environment it's always important to bear in mind that regulations are immortal and they they never die unless somebody actually goes and kills him and then they get a lot of momentum so a lot of times regulations can be put in place for all the right reasons but then nobody goes back and gets rid of them afterwards when they are no longer make sense you know that and they used to be a rule in the early days when people concern about automobiles because that was a pretty scary thing see carriage was going wrong by itself you know you never know what those things might do so there were like rules where you have to in a lot of states we had to carry a lantern in front of the automobile at like a hundred paces ahead of the automobile there should be someone with a lantern on a pole okay but he's really give her that regulation and I did you know really awkward so so just regulations even if done correctly and for and being right at the time it's always important to go back and and scrub those you know periodically to make sure they still sensible and they still serving the greater good I think in terms of tax structure and to what what is what is economically and scented and what it is what is not economically incentive just make sure that the incentive structure is is correct I don't think I'm saying just totally common sense things here but it's economics 101 what are you what have you incent will happen so if you incent one thing that we'll hit tan to happen more than the other thing you said another thing that that thing will happen and so the the economics should favor innovation and and this is particularly important to protect small to medium sized companies because because it's sort of like trying to grow Trina forests like it's real hard for a new company to grow when it's just a seedling or a sapling it needs a lot more protection then if it's a giant redwood or something like that so very important to give support to small and small to medium-sized companies on the innovation front and the other ones that needed more than big companies and I think this point tez is almost big company biggest company anyway so I'd favor you know supporting smaller companies in Tesla relatively speaking what would your response be because there are critics out there with regard to incentives and that and the Tesla has been and I can speak from experience the beneficiary of incentives economic incentives when with regard to the gigafactory sure what would you tell those those people yeah I think well first of all as you know the those incentives were a little overstated the the case the gigafactory it's a it's a five billion dollar or investment capital investment to get that factory going and I don't actually know this thing by the weather I didn't I don't know this until we did the press conference actually that over 20 years the Nevada in centers added up to 1.3 billion actually don't even know this but but but it now he's telling me at the press conference I'm like really no but I mean it's the the thing is that they act that took what added up over 20 years and made it sound like Nevada was writing us a 1.3 billion dollar check you know I'm still waiting for that track mug did it get lost in the mail I don't know so I mean you know this is the way the press works of course so if now if you divide 1.3 billion by 2010 it's it's like okay Tesla is on average receiving receives a sort of a tax well that doesn't it's rate basically sales and use tax abatement is what it amounts to so till he gets like on the order of we get on the order of 50 to 60 million of sales and use tax abatement divided over 20 years and but but this is for something which has a five billion dollar capital cost just get going and then it would have to generate about a hundred billion dollars over that period of time to to achieve a 1.3 billion dollar tax benefit so so essentially it's a little over 1% over that period of time and that's great okay but it's not you know it's not like it's it's not the way it was characterized in the press but if because if put in the proper context that sounds like okay well that's neat you know it's about five five percent helpful on setting up the factory and about 1 percent helpful over the next 20 years cool that actually sounds pretty reasonable and yeah so that that was that was helpful but there are a lot of other factors as well and we actually had slightly bigger incentive packages from from some other states that were offered but we factored in how quickly could we get the gigafactory into operation what were the risks associated with that progress what would be over what would be the logistics costs over time of transferring battery packs and power trains to a vehicle factory in California and you know and all of those factors weighed together is what me is what led us to make the decision in favor Nevada and and working with with your team was great I was very forward-leaning and a big part was also just like making you know sure if you feel really welcome you know within within a state so that's sort of what would lets you make the decision for the gigafactory and then then we have another factory and in New York doing solar panels also actually it's will be the biggest solar panel producer in North America when it's done and then we expect just to establish probably at least two or three more Giga factories in the US in the next several years as well as a couple overseas but the overall objective of Tesla is is really what what set of actions can we take to accelerate the advent of sustainable production and consumption of energy and I think the you know sort of the way the way I would assess the historic good of Tesla is in terms of of how of what that how many years of acceleration was it you know and if we can accelerate a sustainable energy by ten years I would consider that to be a great success hope even if there was only five years that would still be pretty good that that's the that's that's the overarching optimization so you you've talked about interplanetary travel and sustainable energy and the vehicles a little bit what what would you want things to look like in five to ten years associated with with energy and with autonomous vehicles electric vehicles hmm well I think things are going to be that they're gonna grow exponentially so there's a big difference between five and ten years you know my guess is you have probably in ten years more than a half of new vehicle production is electric in the United States and China is probably gonna be ahead of that because China has been super Pro UV something a lot of people know this but like I mean China's environmental policies are way ahead of the US like their mandate for Newville energy far exceeds the US I think this soon as people are under the impression that China is either dragging their feet over or somehow behind the u.s. in terms of sustainable energy promotion but they're they're by far the most aggressive on earth it's crazy I mean like in fact the coalition of Chinese car manufacturers just wrote the Chinese government to beg for them to slow down the mandate because they could it's like too much they they need to make 8% electric vehicles I think like next year or in two years or something there's like they can't physically do it so China isn't by far the most aggressive on electric vehicles and solar so but that's a common misperception that they're not there's one Google search way to figure this out whether it's really first rate pretty easy so and in ten ten yeah ten years man I think yeah yeah so half of all production I think will be BV I think almost all cars produced will be autonomous in ten years almost all it will be rare to find one that is not continues that's gonna be a huge transformation now thing to bear in mind though is that new vehicle production is only about five percent the size of the vehicle fleet do you think about how long does a car truck last and they last 15 to 20 years so before they finally scrapped so new vehicle production is only roughly one at at most 115 of the fleet size so even when new vehicle production say switches those which is over to electric or two autonomous that slow means the vast majority of the fleet on the roads is not it'll take another you know five to ten years before that becomes majority majority the fleet becomes evey or autonomous but if you were to say go twenty years a whelmingly things are electric autonomous a whelmingly fully autonomous will the autonomous so no one will have to touch the steering wheel if there is one there will not be a steering wheel twenty years it will be like having a horse people have horses which is cool but so so having a regular car will be like having a horse is that what you say yeah yeah and there will people that if that have you know non autonomous cars like people have horses I just would be unusual to use that as a mode of transport yes alright let's talk about the energy piece and rooftops allure and storage yeah so the variable it's important to appreciate that the earth is almost entirely solar powered today in the sense that the Sun is the only thing that keeps us from being at roughly the temperature of cosmic background radiation which is three degrees above absolute zero so one person would be a frozen dark ice ball and the the amount of and if so the amount of energy is the side that reached us from the Sun is tremendous it's it's over it's the it's 99 percent plus of all energy that that Earth has then there's there's this energy we need to use to run civilization which to us is big but compared to the amount of energy that reaches us from the Sun is tiny so it's very easy like it actually doesn't take much if you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels it would take put a fairly small corner of Nevada Texas Utah anywhere look it's it's you only need about a hundred miles by 100 miles of solar panels it's part of the entire United States and then the the batteries you need to store that energy to make sure you have 24/7 power is one mile by one mile there's one one square mile that's that's it I showed the graph of the image of this where this is what a hundred miles 100 miles looks like there's like a little square on the US map and then what there's a little pixel inside there and that's the size of the battery pack that you need to support that real tiny so well you talked about 20 years from now none of us well some people still be using horses or be zero yeah but it's so rare so what will the energy piece look like I mean what will there be transmission lines will there be a need yeah I think the so there's the use of energy can is roughly divided it into three areas and they're more or less equal at a high level there's about a third of energy is used for transportation of various kinds about a third is used for electricity about a third is used for heating so if you want to have of the electricity production call it you know something on the order of 10% and upon how you count it is renewable maybe 15% today so that means that there's a massive amount of Sola that would need to be produced and connected in order to to be fully sustainable because fully sustainable means they're tackling transport non renewable electricity generation and heating so that that means that will need to be a combination of utility scale solar and rooftop skips solar combined with wind geothermal and hydro probably some some nuclear for a while in order to transition to a sustainable situation which means really for the most part massive massive growth in solar and it's gonna be important to have rooftop solar in neighborhoods because otherwise you're gonna they'll need to be massive you transmission lines built and people do not like having transmission lines go through the neighborhood you really don't like that I agree so you want to have some localized energy production combined with utility it's it's a what rooftop solar utility solar and yep that's that's really going to be the solution from a physics standpoint that I can't see any other way to really do it I've people talking a lot about fusion and a lot but the the Sun is a giant fusion reactor in the sky and it's really reliable comes up every day so if it doesn't we got bigger problems yeah somebody asked me to ask you this we we talked about workforce today but they asked me our robots gonna take our jobs everybody's jobs in the future and how much do you see our tichel intelligence coming into the workplace well I think on the artificial intelligence front you know III have exposure to the very most cutting-edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it I keeps not sounding the alarm bell but you know until people see like robots going down the street killing people like they don't know how to react you know because it seems so ethereal and I think we should be really concerned about AI and I think we should yeah this is AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive because I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation it's too late and don't normally the way regulations are set up is that a whole bunch of bad things happen does public outcry the and then after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry there's a bunch of opposition from companies who don't like being told what to do by regulators Android takes forever that they that in the past has been bad but not something which represented a you know a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization ai is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization in a way that car accidents airplane crashes faulty drugs Oh bad food we're not they were not they were harmful tain to a set of individuals within society of course but they were not harmful to society as a whole ai is a fundamental existential risk for human civilization and I don't think you hopefully appreciate that you know it's not it's not fun being regulated it's not you know you're pretty you're some but I you know in the car business you know we get regulated by Department of Transport by EPA and a bunch of others and there's regs for agencies in every every country you know in the in space we get regulated by FA and but but you know if you ask the average person hey you want to do you want to get rid of the FAA and just like take it take a chance on manufacturers not cutting corners on the aircraft because you know profits were down that quarter I was like hell no that's not zero so you know I think even people who are pretty extremely like the libertarian free market they were like yeah we should pull have somebody keeping an eye on the aircraft companies making sure they build a good aircraft and good cars and that kind of thing so yeah I think there's there's a role for regulators that's very important and I'm against over-regulation for sure but man we I think we'd better get on that with AI the front Oh and so they'll certainly be a lot of job disruption because what's gonna happen is robust will be able to do everything better than us I mean I'm quitting I mean all of us you know yeah what's real exactly what to do about it is it's like the it's the like it was really like the scariest problem to me I'll tell you and yeah so I really think we need to go a regulation here just uh because this is you know ensuring the public good is served because you've got companies that are racing that they kind of have to race to build AI or they're gonna be made uncompetitive you know like that essentially if your competitor is Racing's evolved AI and you don't they will crush you so then you're like ah we don't be crushed so you know I guess we need to bullet to that's where you need the regulator's come in and say hey guys you all need to really you know just pause and make sure this is safe and like when when it's cool and working a bit and regulators are convinced that it's safe to proceed then you can go but otherwise slow down and bit slung them but you kinda need the regulator's to do that for all the teams in the game you know otherwise the shareholders will be saying like hey why you developing AI faster because your competitor is like okay we've got to do that anyway so it's like okay there's like something like twelve percent of jobs or transport transport will be one of the first things to go fully autonomous but when I say everything like the robust will be it will do everything barn bar nothing let's move back to you're rolling out the model three this year right and how many orders would it what does that gonna look like yeah it's gone well on that front um we got I don't know what I think like if somebody orders a model 3 today they'd only get it probably late next year we're just actually just other production made the first production unit last week and the thing that it's not well appreciated about something but about cars and any kind of new technology is how hard it is to do the manufacturing is vastly harder to do the manufacture by factor of a hundred like a hundred than to make the to make that hard to make one of something with with maybe 50 or 60 people we could make a prototype for practically anything and in six months it's now to manufacture that thing we need five thousand people to spend you know three years and that's considered really fast so manufacturable does this kind of s-curve where it's excruciatingly ly slow at first and then it it grows exponentially and then but people tend to extrapolate on a straight line so if it's real slow at first I saw a lose real slow look at that if they're only gonna make five cars a week forever like nope it it'll be ten cars a week then 20 cars a week then you know 40 cars a week and 5,000 cars a week eventually just goes crazy fast so we're hoping to get to you know something you know like 5,000 cars a week by the end of the year well I wanted to give an opportunity for some of the governors to ask questions and perhaps some audience questions right I was told that you'd be willing to do that great so governors any questions for free lawn Governor Scott well thank you very much we in Vermont have partnered with Tesla in in terms of a powerpack in our homes they have $15 a day you can rent this for 15 years and it will carry power as a backup generation device for 12 hours and it's been really really interesting from my perspective but I'm curious about vehicles in and where we're going in the future or how far in the future do the cars themselves become the charging device like the the roof and deck lids and hood or does or do the batteries get so efficient that you don't need that and then you just power up for a week or something like that where are we going in the future with battery storage yeah I think the future is it's there just there's three legs to the stool there's a electric cars there's a stationary battery pack and solar power with those three things you can have a completely sustainable energy future let's hope this was needed on this off on the solar front like said it's gonna be a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale solar you'll need both because of the you know enormous demand for electricity and then you know one of the things that's that's been missing I think up till now is having rooftop solar that looks good and isn't an you know that's we've got this the solar glass roof that we're developing and we're doing any different styles so that it matches the aesthetics of a particular house or it's a regional style that's like this actually pretty important and the conventional flat panels so is willful flat roofs and for commercial will be the way at the way to go but yeah it's and and putting solar panels on the on the car itself not that not that helpful because the actual surface area of the car is not not very much and it cars very often indoors and so it's the least efficient place to put solar is on the car just wondering about maybe a wrap of some sort is it is that make any sense in the future like a rap of solar around either a building made of a solar panel or of a vehicle actually being the solar panel but being the components of the vehicle itself I don't think so I'll scrap that idea it's just it's just way better to put her on the roof for sure and I've really thought about this I mean really and I pushed my team about like isn't there some way we could do it on the car I mean technically if you have like some sort of transformer like thing which will pop out of the trunk like like a you're not go hardtop convertible and just like just like ratchet solar panels over the whole surface layer of the car extending like this for the entire say square footage of a parking space provided you're in the Sun that would be enough to generate about 28 at 30 miles a day of electricity but that is for sure the expensive difficult way to do it governor burger so thought about maybe we should you know and think thanks for being here with your background in Payment Systems you understand the important role of security and transactions yeah I think security is a huge concern cybersecurity it's like a laptop on wheels yes so what to share with us a little bit about your thoughts on cybersecurity and how you how we protect us you talk about protecting society when they've got a rolling fleet of I I think one of the biggest risks for autonomous vehicles is somebody achieving a fleet-wide hack you know in principle if if somebody was able to hack say all of the autonomous Tesla's they could say I mean just as a prank like it's a six animal to Rhode Island across the United States and I'd be like well okay that would be the end of Tesla and liberal of angry people in Rhode Island that's for sure so we're gonna make super sure that that athlete white hack is basically impossible and that if people are in the car that they have override authority on whatever the car is doing so if the car is doing something wacky I you can press a button that no amount of software can override that will ensure that you get in control of the vehicle head cut cut cut the link to the servers so that's uh that's pretty fundamental within the car we actually have even even if somebody gains access to the car there are multiple subsystems within the car that that that also have specialized encryption so the powertrain for example has specialized encryption so even if so you wouldn't gain access to the car they cannot gain access to the powertrain or to the braking system and but it is my top top concern from a security standpoint at Tesla's making sure that the white hack or any vehicle specific hack can't occur they say that they have the same problem with cell phones you know well it's kind of crazy today or that we live quite comfortably in you know in a world that George Orwell would have thought it was super crazy like we'll carry a phone with it with with a microphone that could be turned on really at any time with our knowledge with a GPS that goes our position and a camera and well kind of all about personal information we do this willingly and it's kind of wild to think that that's the case so so the phone like Apple and and Google kind of have the same challenge of making sure that cannot be a fleet-wide hack or a system-wide hack of phones or or a specific hack so that that's not top top concern yeah becoming it's gonna become a bigger and bigger concern I think Tesla's an order to have fate here but Tesla's Tesla's pretty good at software compared to the other car companies and so I do I think it's gonna be a bit of like an even bigger challenge for for the other car companies to ensure security yeah Thank You governor du Gard Thank You governor I'm mr. musk thank you for speaking to all the governors today it's an honor to have you here one question I had we saw when gasoline prices went to three and a half dollars a gallon there was a big jump in interest in hybrid vehicles and you saw those vehicles become very much in demand and then as gasoline prices have fallen you've seen a reversal of that and I'm wondering to what extent you have a concern about the future of electric vehicles in the face of those very low prices you speak to that well the economics they kind of said set the slope of the curve so there's no question on mind whatsoever that all transport with the ironic exception of rockets will go fully electric everything Planes Trains automobiles well trial of trains already electric pole shifts and but it's question of what that timeframe is and the economic incentive structure drives that timeframe that's really what it amounts to you know there's there's the big challenge is that there's a none priced externality in the cost of fossil fuels so unpriced externality is the the the probability weighted harm of changing the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans it's since it is not captured in the price of gasoline it does not drive the right behavior you know be like if tossing out garbage was just free and you know there was no you just do as much as you want and like streets be full of garbage so and we regulated a lot of other things like sulphur emissions and nitrous oxide emissions that kind of thing it's done a lot of good on that front with co2 it's tough because there's so many vested interests on the sort of fossil fuel side and sometimes I think like those guys feel like kind of hard done by because you know wasn't obvious like when they were creating their oil and gas companies that it would be bad from the environment and they worked really hard to create those companies and then they feel like well now they're being kind of attacked on moral grounds when they didn't originally start those well companies oh we'll build them up on on bad moral grounds and and it and it is true that we cannot instantaneously change to a sustainable situation but then those guys will also fight pretty hard to slow down the change and that's really what I think is morally wrong Governor Bevin and then Governor Hutchinson then we'll take a couple auto and then governor Hickenlooper and then we'll take some audience questions governor Bevin you looking on thank you for being here the short version of the question then slightly longer the short version is do you ever feel pressure by others expectations of you and your endeavors in light of the progress you've made thus far is the short version and more specifically when you look just a Tesla alone and you look at a company with a fifty four billion dollar valuation and seemingly by typical market market metrics no justifiable reason for that what do you think does I'm just saying sorry I'm just in all seriousness do you feel a concern ever that your intellect in your intellectual curiosity and your ingenuity cannot be matched by those that are trying to commercialize it does that ever affect how you think or decisions that you make well it it is actually I find it quite tough when there are very high expectations I try to actually tamp down those expectations as you know to be possible in fact I've on a record several times is saying that the stock price is higher than we have any right to deserve and that's for sure true based on you know where we are today and have been in the past so the stock price obviously reflects a lot of optimism about where Tessa will be in the future and now the thing that makes that you know quite a difficult emotional hardship for me is that you know those expectations sometimes get out our out of control and I like I hate disappointing people and so I'm like trying to real hard to meet those expectations but that's a pretty tall order and a lot of times real not really not fun I have to say a lot less fun that may seem so yeah I mean I don't ever sell any stock and there's a half year for your taxes so you know said publicly I'm not gonna like take money off the table yeah you know I'll be last I don't go down with I'm going down with so I'll be the last to do it but yeah I mean it's uh I really wouldn't recommend anyone start a car company I really wouldn't recommend it it's not a recipe for happiness and freedom thanks governor Bevin governor hutchinson mr. musk ASA Hutchinson from Arkansas thank you for your frank observations about exploration you know I look at the spirit of invention and the spirit of exploration which is really the hallmark of America what is your comment on NASA its mission I was in Congress I supported NASA but I always feel like it's floundering does not have the support of the American people that's needed what what's your comment on NASA its mission and what advice would you give us sure well I'll put supply should say I'm a big fan of NASA in fact at one point my password was I loved NASA literally that was my password and you know I think the NASA does a lot of good things for which people before it doesn't get enough credit and that the public I guess doesn't know that much about I like a lot yeah most members of public they're not really into hard science you know it's like not it's not the thing they're tuning in for was the time I love hard science you know but it's not that popular so but there's great things in terms of that the telescopes like the Hubble and the James Webb and you know the Rovers on Mars and the protein approach to the outer solar system those were all like really great things but to get the public excited you got to get people in the picture it just it's just the hundred times different if there are people in the picture and you know if there's some criticism of NASA it's like it's like important to remember people in the picture you know if you want to get the public support and but like if you talk to a scientist about that so like where's the science in that like you're not getting it it's like that's not why people giving you money it's not that's I mean it's a little bit of the reason but but this is the serious scientists or like people just make things more expensive like why we have people like okay well why do we have people at all anywhere sometimes the scientists are the ones who just don't don't understand even they're like smart people if I'd like yeah so you're gonna have something that's gonna fire up the you know fire fire people up and get them really excited and like I think if we had a serious goal of having a base on the moon and sending people to Mars and said okay this is we're gonna be outcome oriented how we're gonna do this okay we've got to change the way contracting is done you can't do these like cost-plus contracts cost plus sole source contracts because then the incentive structures all messed up so as soon as you don't have any competition well okay business what sense of urgency goes away and as soon as you make something a cost-plus contract you're in Sandton the contractor to maximize the costs of the program because they get a percentage so they never want that gravy train to end and they want to make it an ends if they become cost maximizers and then you have good people engaged in cost maximization because you just gave them incentive to do that and told them they'll get punished if they don't essentially that's what happens so it's critically important that we change the Contracting structure to be a competitive commercial bid make sure there or there always to at least two entities that that are competing to serve NASA and that the contracts a milestone based was with concrete milestones PowerPoint presentations do not count like everything works in PowerPoint okay exhibit Ella portation device look there's my powerpoint presentation so milestone based competitive commercial contracts with with competitors and then and then you've got to be prepared to fire one of those competitors if they're not if they're not cutting it and and recompete the rest of the remainder of that contract and by the way nASA has actually already done this and they did it with the commercial with the commercial cargo transportation to the space station and that was a case where NASA you know the NASA actually an RF they thought it would work or not work but they didn't have the budget to do anything else so they're like okay we're gonna try this competitive commercial milestone based contracting and it worked great and they watered it to two companies submit to SpaceX and company called Kistler and SpaceX managed to meet and meet the milestones Kistler did not so then they nasa we competed the remainder of the contract to openal sciences but then orbital sciences got across the finish line so now nasa has got two suppliers for taking cargo to the space station and it's a great situation same thing for commercial crew to the space station nasa competed that and in the commercial career case it's a SpaceX and Boeing and that's also a good situation so now like I can tell you like the SpaceX team is like we're gonna do this before Boeing that's for sure and then like I've read up the buying team that like we're gonna do this before SpaceX that's good that's it's a good forcing function to get things done but that can't tell you how important that contracting structure is that is night and day there's way too much in government which is where it's the sole source cost plus contract that that Justin again economics 101 whatever you incent what that will happen and then people shouldn't be surprised it's like well you're just you know it said okay if that company manages to find some excuse to double the cost of the contract they're going to get double the profit because they're getting a percentage so they can be they can do exactly that and and it will so they're not gonna say no to requirements so the government along with some cetera climates 99% of them could make a lot of sense in 10% of all cockamamie the double but the price of the of the the project for those ten percent of cockamamie requirements in a cost-plus contract the contract will always say yes there could be a future for you in government contracting at the state level yeah let's go to governor Hickenlooper and then Governor Ducey I find so refreshing to have the unbridled truth I do suspect every time you say publicly that the stock price is higher than we have any right to believe price but I guess you probably get some calls from investors suggesting that maybe you don't say that so frequently yeah that's true I wanted to go back and just just briefly because I think I wrote this down that you said that artificial intelligence is the fundamental existential risk facing civilization do I get that in my opinion it is it is the biggest risk that we face as a civilization is artificial intelligence it's sold to a group of leaders what would you advise that we should how should we be addressing something that's it's such a large landscape and yet obviously so important I think that the you know one of the rules of government is to ensure the public good and to that dangerous to the public are addressed so that hence the regulatory thing I think the first order of business would be to try to learn as much as possible you know to understand the nature of the issues to look closely at the progress that is being made and the remarkable achievements of artificial intelligence I mean last year I go which is a quite a difficult game to beat that people thought would never be beaten with by a black computer that the curricula computer would we either never beat the best human player or that it was 20 years away and last year alphago which was done by deep mind which is a kind of a Google subsidiary absolutely crushed the world's best player and now now that now I can crush it can play at the top 50 simultaneously akarsha ball so just like that pace of progress is remarkable and and there's that you can see more and more coming out like robotics you can see robots that can learn to walk from from nothing you know within hours like way faster than any biological being but the thing that's most dangerous is and it's the hottest that kind of rap kind of get your arms around because it's not a physical thing is kind of a deep intelligence in the network you said well what harm could a deep intelligence the network do so well I could start a war by creating fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases and just by you know manipulating information the pen is mightier than the sword so I mean as an example I want to be emphasized I do not think this actually occurred this is purely a hypothetical that I'd taken my grave here but you know that like that though there was that second Malaysian airliner that was shot down on the Ukrainian Russian border and that that really amplified tensions between Russia and the EU in a massive way well like let's say if you had a an AI that was where the ai's goal was to maximize the value of portfolio of stocks one of the ways to maximize value would be to go long on defense short on consumer start a war and then how could it do that well you know hacked into the Malaysian Airlines rat aircraft routing server a route of over a war zone then sent an anonymous tip that an enemy aircraft is flying overhead right now let's go to Governor Ducey and then [Laughter] we'll have after Governor Ducey we'll finish our gubernatorial questions and then to questions and we quick questions or one audience question and we'll be done we're running short on time governor Ducey thanks Elon I really enjoyed your comments today and as someone who has spent a lot of time in his administration trying to reduce and eliminate regulations I was surprised by your suggestion to bring regulations before we know exactly what we're dealing with with AI you know I've heard the example used if I were to come up with a colorless odorless tasteless gas that was explosive people would say well you have to ban that and then we'd have no natural gas so you've given some of these examples of how a AI can be an existential threat but I still don't understand his policy Maker's what type of regulations beyond slowdown which typically policymakers don't get in front of entrepreneurs or innovators well I think the first order of business would be to gain insight right now the governor does not even have an insight and I and the right order of business would be a stand-up regulatory agency initial goal gain insight into the status of AI activity make sure it the situation is understood once it is then put regulations in place to ensure public safety and for sure the company is doing AI will most of them not mine will squawk and say hey this is really gonna stifle innovation blah blah it's gonna move to China it won't and it won't because like it's like it has like it has Boeing moved to China nope they were pulling aircraft here same with aren't cars and so it's not it's the notion that if you say establish regulatory regime that companies will simply move to countries with with lower regulatory comments is false on the face of it because none of them do and unless it's really overbearing but that's about what I'm talking about here I'm just talking about you know make sure that there is awareness at the government level I think once there is awareness people will be extremely afraid as they should be one audience question we'll take the first hand that came up right here thanks Ilan enough read with Axios early on in this administration you had argued pretty vociferous Lee that it was best to engage and better to be in the room that not be in the room than when the president decided to pull out of Paris you said that was kind of last Ron you were gonna drop off what drove you to that and if you were still speaking to him today what would you say to the president well I thought it was worth doing they're trying hard to you know to do what's worth it was worth trying I got a lot of flack from from multiple fronts for even trying when some guy ran up billboards and like attacking me and like full-page ads in the New York Times and whatnot just a bit just for being on the panel and and you know in every in every meeting I was like just trying to make the arguments in favor of sustainability and it's sometimes other issues like we need to make sure that our immigration laws are not unkind or unreasonable and you know do my best and I I think in a few cases I did actually make some progress which gave me some encouragement to continue but but then I just really think that the Paris Accord man I I'm if I stayed on the council's then I'd be essentially saying that that wasn't important but it was super important because I think the country needs to keep his word and you know that that's there's not even a binding agreement so we could always like slow it down the argument that there would be job losses what we could see if there are job losses before we exit the agreement and maybe there won't be job losses maybe there we drop gains but yeah there's just no way I could stay on after the so you know did my best alright well everybody if you would please join me in thanking Ilan for being here today [Applause] well that was a treat wasn't it

Channel: Caleb Brandalise

Views: 55,747

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Keywords: elon, musk, conference, q&a, interview, ted, full, entire, nga, governors, national, live, tesla, meeting, july, new, update, news, spacex, sustainability, future, tech, technology, breakthrough, solar, city, solarcity, batteries, battery, amazing, talk, neat, record, boring, funny, informative, info, details, questions, 2017, nasa, gigafactory, production, model, model s, model 3, model x, model y, ludicrous, performance, open ai, artificial intelligence, regulation, energy, ai, threat, warns, bfr, bfs, international, outerspace

Id: PeKqlDURpf8

Length: 59min 47sec (3587 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2017