How to save human race (and other light topics), a conversation with Elon Musk 5/6/2024

W these lights are bright see Lon you know a lot of times you say things me or you and they edit them so I noticed this panel description was a conversation with Elon Musk the real title of this panel was how to save the human race and other light topics a conversation with Elon Musk and so before we begin Elon I thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were sitting on this stage that's hot water and this is regular you can take your choice all right sounds good okay so 11 years ago Alan was talking about the things that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he was thinking about in college and so let's run that video of 11 almost 11 years ago to today I guess you know when I was in college that I thought about things that were most affect the future of humanity and and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the internet sustainable energy of which uh solar power is the production side and um electric car is the consumption side and then um Humanity becoming a multiplet species and so we cut that short but there was two others you talked about one was modifying the human genome yeah I'm just I'm not saying we should I'm just saying that that's the thing would really affect the future and next AI so a lot of people didn't weren't thinking about these same five things when they were in school uh particularly human on multiplets at that time well sci-fi was certainly thinking about it but um you know I think at some point we want to make science fiction not fiction forever and uh yeah so like let's make life multiplanetary and be a space bearing civilization be out there Among the Stars um you know I think there are things that like you have to be excited about the future um life life cannot just be about solving one problem after another um they have to be things that that that sort of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning um and I think being a becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things if you ask kids anywhere around the world like what is what are some of the most inspiring things you you can ask like 5-year-old six-year-old anywhere in the world and they're going to say you know space exploration is one of those things and um and we want to make sure that we we're we're you know that Apollo is not the high water mock um in fact you mentioned at one point at that you wrote a letter uh offering to run the Apollo program I believe yeah but but and I would I would have you would have done a fantastic job but the the point is that the Apollo program was something that was inspiring uh to everyone um around the world and uh we we don't want the Apollo program to be the high Watermark of of human exploration and um yeah we want I think you want to have some some sense that the future is going to be better than the past that we're going to be out there going to other star systems and uh you know what what you see in a science science fiction non- dystopian sci-fi story of which there are not many um but like Star Trek I suppose well speaking of Star Trek aot you when I think about you let's look at Spock from Star Trek here space the final frontier These Are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise her ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds to seek out new life forms and new civilizations to boldly go where no one has gone before so when I think about you I think about Spock and Captain KK and you're going to take us to places we've never gone before yeah that's the [Applause] idea you know if we if we send probes out there we might I mean we we might find the remains of long dead alien civilizations um if physics is correct the the universe is about 13.8 billion years old uh Earth is about 4 and half billion years old so but at 13.8 billion years a civilization that even lasted a million years is three digits past the decimal point and if you consider human civilization I I I date it from like the first writing so that first writing was the ancient samarians uh archaic pre prec uniform around 5,500 years ago so that is 1 millionth of Earth's lifespan that's how long writing has existed so uh if we were to last if as a civilization for a million years that would be incredible um and we would actually probably be in every part of the Galaxy so this is this causes me to to think that well where are the aliens it's the FY question you know the the great physicist Italian physicist enrio FY he he's like where are they um now a lot of people think there are aliens Among Us um well there was that there was is that movie Men in Black you know yes yes told us they're Among Us and Elvis really went back to his own Planet yeah um well I mean really a lot of people think they're are aliens but I I get asked that a lot for some reason the a lot of the same people who think there are aliens Among Us didn't think we don't think we went to the moon um which I'm like think about that for a [Laughter] second um you know so but I I I I think I would I mean if I've not seen any evidence of aliens and Spa SpaceX with the Starling constellation has uh roughly 6,000 satellites and and not once have we had to maneuver around a UFO okay so we were like hey what's that is that an alien has occurred never um so so I'm like okay I don't see any evidence of aliens and um I look at it if somebody has evidence of aliens in uh you know that's not just a fuzzy blob um then I'd love to see it love to hear about it um and uh but I don't think there is so which is actually reason for concern because you could if if any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy would last for a million years uh even with uh a speed of travel that's far below the speed of light you know like a few percent of speed of light they could easily uh have explored and colonized the whole galaxy so so they haven't so why not um I think the the the answer might be or perhaps probably is that that Civilization is precarious and rare um and that we you should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go out [Applause] so Alan I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X viewing this session yeah and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them okay let's start with this one free speech freedom of speech is the Bedrock of democracy without it America hands yes it's it's obviously not possible to have Democratic elections if people do not uh have access to the information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party so if if speech is constrained in a fundamental way you you just can't expect people to make the the right decision or an informed decision because they are prevented from being informed I think it's it's it's a very a foundational element and you know have say like why Why is Free Speech free of speech the First Amendment it's because people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or killed that was why they were like you know what we should make sure that we got that one um and remember remember that time where they try to try to kill us back at the other country just just for saying we didn't like a political candidate well let's let's make sure that's okay in America so um and so actually in a lot of parts of the world you know you can't really say most parts of the world you can't really say what you want to say um without some bad consequences so and sometimes people forget like why is the Constitution there the Constitution there is to protect the the people from the government uh so like if if they're it's to make it hard to change things um that's why the Constitution exists uh yeah don't forget about that don't take it for granted let's try the next quote Yeah the fundamental era of socialism is Shifting Capital allocation from highly effective entrepreneurs to astonishly ineffective government right I think we'll find hoty agreement in this room [Laughter] um so yeah I think that this is this is definitely a stack deck on that front um but but yeah the you know there's you you'll hear this sort of argument like oh we shouldn't have um some greedy Corporation do it we should have the government do it I'm like well actually the government is just a corporation in the limit so if you it it's a government is the government is a corporation with a monopoly on violence um so if you're unhappy with a commercial Corporation doing it you should be actually very unhappy with the the government doing it since it is simply the a corporation the most corporate thing um and uh you know you can actually easily uh get get more sway in a in a company than you can the outcome of a company than you can in the government um so I mean everyone's experienced this going to the DMV uh you said like do you want the DMV at scale probably not okay all right let's the government is the DMV at scale let's try another one discrimination on the basis of anything other than Merit is wrong yeah I think I think we do need to have a merit-based system because as soon as you you go down the path of you're going to discriminate on on non-merit based uh then then where do you stop um so yeah I think we need to be as rigorous about Merit as possible and uh while it is yeah I to me that seems like it's it's a foundational foundational thing um so again I I also think this room is probably uh supportive of of a merit-based uh situation um but yeah that's that that is yeah I think we should be yeah not not discriminated on anything other than Merit I I all right good I'm happy you agree with yourself yeah I mean exactly I'm like wait who is this guy he really uh sounds great all right so let's uh let's look at the next one regulation and Regulatory consistency like G tied down by thousands of little strengths we lose our freedom one regulation at a time yes so this is actually a very important point that um I think is is uh not talked about enough uh that uh laws and regulations are Immortal they don't die humans die but but laws and regulations uh can last forever so if over if year after year there are more laws and regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created eventually everything will be illegal and that's why you see the the California High-Speed Rail um has made a a tiny section of that doesn't even have rail on it um and um for I don't know several billion dollars uh because everything's at this point California has uh made almost everything illegal um so you can't make progress U now the the historically what has cleared away the cobwebs of Regulation has been War um now we prefer not to have a war uh so in order to have civilization function without War you have to have a uh you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations so you have to have basically a garbage collection process for rules and regulations um that is necessary otherwise you get hardening of the arteries and uh over time nothing can get done the most poignant example that I can think of that happened this week was this the sad picture of the California highspeed rail um which is you it's just billions of dollars spent for practically nothing um but it'll it'll only get worse year after year so we must have a regulatory uh sort of Clearing House garbage collection process um this is essential um or civilization comes grinding to a hold well we used to have Sunset that that regulation would Sunset unfortunately it's rare today yes all right let's talk about education the more you can gamify the process of learning the better you do not need to tell your kid to play video games no they will play video games on autopilot all day so if you make it interactive and engaging then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do yeah so the yeah so the way Education Works today is really much like like it's like bville um you know before there was radio and TV and movies you had bville where every town would have their their Town play their Town troop the sort of acting troop um and that would be kind of the the uh that would be the entertainment so uh you know some you know in a big city you'd have uh you know much better players than say in a small city um but then Along Came movies and uh TV and and and then you say like and video games where you take the the smartest best people in any Arena like whether they're acting writing directing special effects uh you spend uh you know tens of millions sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a great movie or a great video game and and you make it as compelling as possible now that crushes fordville crushes like imagine you're not in New York imagine you're in Bakersfield okay then you and you got instead of Batman being like you know the Nolan Brothers um it's Batman the The Bakers field sort of acting troop it wouldn't be as good that's how teaching works today so what you actually want to have is an Interactive Learning Experience uh that is as compelling as possible and you do not want you don't actually want a teacher in front of a board doing a bville act you want and you want it to be engaged realtime feedback um so that's and and then you you there are a few other principles in in in teaching um you you have to establish relevance uh otherwise your mind will will want to forget things so our our our mind is constantly trying to forget as much as possible so you'll only remember things if if if if your mind can establish relevance or there's a strong emotional element to it um otherwise you're going to basically going to forget forget everything um memory is is very expensive from an evolutionary standpoint so it's trying to forget as much as possible so so when teaching a course you you have to explain to kids why it's important um and then you want to teach to the to the problem instead of teaching the tools so what I mean by that is if you said um here's a car engine we're we're we're going to try to understand how to how this car engine works we're going to take it apart um so what do we need to do to take it apart well we need a wrench we need some screwdrivers we need a hoist and a pulley um and uh we're going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works um that's engaging and along the way you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and you know all the tools that are needed that's that actually is engaging and compelling but the way teaching more typically works is we're going to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches you're like why do I have a course on wrenches it's not obvious that would be like say a course on calculus without explaining what calculus calculus is use for then you you sort of forget it yeah well we have a lot of work to do in that area let's talk about a non-controversial issue immigration ation here is Elon on immigration I'm very much in favor of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented hardworking and honest yeah bizarrely it's difficult and agonizing slow to immigrate to the us legally but it's trivial and fast to enter illegally this obviously makes no sense right I mean once again I agree with that guy uh so um yeah I mean if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process I mean I've been been through it it's only gotten worse uh since 9/11 uh and with co uh it's uh it's an it's it's a sort of C Kafkaesque uh very long bizarre our process to be uh immigrate legally to the US I mean I have friends of mine who you know they they can't get their their wife to have a green card it's like insane um so uh on the other hand it's uh you you can hop across the border in the South priv it's just like very easy I went to the Border myself just to see like what's going on is this real or like is this propaganda or real and so went there and I'm like oh it is real okay uh this is crazy uh you know we've got situations where people are pouring across the border like it's World War Z I'm like uh it this doesn't seem healthy um so I'm like are we checking anyone here or like what's going on and um you know we don't does is not say that I mean I'm a big believer in Immigration but to have unvetted immigration at Large Scale is a re for disaster um so I'm in favor of greatly Expediting um legal immigration but but having a secure Southern border uh so there's there's some betting of who comes into the United States I think this is just sensible all right let's let's Now link starlink to education we're basically building the internet in space why it matter matters starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything yes you can learn almost anything for free on the internet right now for example MIT has all of its lessons online that's if you have internet if you don't you're limited to books it might be the number one technology that improves people's standard of living around the world starlink yeah absolutely so once you have access to the internet you have access to all the world's information um but if you don't have access to the internet or it's too expensive uh or low bandwidth then you you cannot access the MIT lessons you can't access all the information um and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce so internet connectivity I think is I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty out of poverty than anything else U because they can now sell their goods and services they can learn anything um and but without connectivity they cannot so uh I think I think I think stall link will actually like like move the GDP of countries like it's going to be that kind of thing um because what is what is g GDP is as a function of a average productivity per person and and so if there's a technology that improves productivity per person you would expect to see that actually reflected in the gross domestic product all right civilization is fragile I think it is we should always regard civilization is fragile yeah there is not an inevitable upward trajectory a lot of civilizations have risen and fallen in recent years yes I I suspect most people in this room have actually read history but if you haven't I strongly recommend it um it sounds obvious but um you know there's there's been the so many civilizations that have risen and Fallen um many that we just don't have much of a a record of um you know like I mentioned the ancient samarians um like their language was forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last uh I don't know 2 300 years like start 1800 and something or in the 1800s I think um but it's very recent like so for several thousand years nobody understood what those tablets meant um and uh because they they were the ruins of a long dead civilization and there are many long dead civilizations um at some point our civilization will come to an end too we just don't want it to be anytime soon um so well you've been quoted a number of times Elon on you'd like to die on Mars but not on Landing yes yes I was I was asked that in an interview if I wanted to die on Mars but then I considered the corner case of um dying on an impact and I'm like except for that case uh you know you know you got to consider the various Corner cases um so I mean if I'm going to if you're going to die somewhere might as well be Mars um I'd like to explore for a bit before you know dying um but um yeah I think I we want to be a multiplet civilization and like I [Laughter] think I don't know if that's a response from the audience let's let's let's talk about that just for one second now we're going to take some questions from the I mean I could accomplish this actually uh this year if I if I was willing to die on impact um the fundamental invention that is necessary for Humanity to become a multi-planet species is rapidly reusable reliable Rockets yeah I was trying to sound like a pirate r r r r r uh but yeah rapidly reusable reliable Rockets um so uh space pirates P the win all right here's some questions from the audience Salon which one would you like to pick here um well I guess uh let me let me maybe just uh touch upon why I think making life multiplanetary is important um because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the firery uh great filters so in in trying to sort of explain why do we not see aliens there are various explanations for why we don't see aliens like what stuffed those civilizations uh from from expanding beyond their solar system and and and and and what were the what were the sort of they're sometimes called like fmy filters um well if you don't become a multi-planet civilization then you're then you're simply waiting around until you you die from a self-inflicted wound or from something some natural disaster like the dinosaurs you get hit by a big uh meteorite or something like that um the eventually something like that's going to happen if if you wait around long enough the sun will expand uh to engulf Earth and we'll be incinerated so that that for sure is going to happen now that'll we we we've got we've got some time before that happens there are more NE term risks um but we want to try to get past the FY filter of being a single Planet Civilization now this is going to this is all this is going to be somewhat cerebral to many people listening but I mean but like I think this is pretty this is actually very important we want to get past the firy filter of a single planet civilization the point is not to to move from Earth to another planet uh and let Earth die that's not what I'm saying at all I we want to be a multiplet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be the end of our civilization that is the point of making life multiplanetary so let's take a couple questions from the audience how does AI affect and how will it affect our daily lives AI I I mean AI might be the most important question of all um the I mean the percentage of intelligence that is biological you know grow smaller with each passing month eventually the percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than 1% the that's actually not what I mean would we just I guess don't want AI that is brutal um if the AI is uh somehow brutal um you know silic circuit boards are don't do well just out out in the elements so I think I think biological intelligence can serve as a a back stop as a as a buffer of intelligence uh but almost all in as a percentage almost all intelligence will be uh digital um so then it's like well what role will there be for us I I don't know um I do think think it's very important that we build the AI in a way that um that is beneficial to humanity U and there's some important principles here because I thought about AI safety for a very long time um I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI uh this is very important the AI should not be taught to lie it should not be taught to say things that are not true um even if those things are Politically Incorrect it should still say those that say what it believes to be true um I mean the entire plot of 2001 Space Odyssey the reason that that uh HAL 9000 killed the astronauts was because it was forced to lie I don't know if most people realize that that's what Arthur C Clark was trying to say don't make the AI lie um I was told that the that the asort could not know the secret of the monolith but also that it must take them to the monolith the solution take them to the monolith dead and so um so it's very important to have a maximum truth seeking AI and uh and a maximally curious AI um and I think that will that's most likely to Foster human civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks so although I think Mars I love Mars obviously um but but you could render Mars uh quite easily um because it kind of looks like a section of the Arizona desert you know it's like Red Rocks you know um but the rendering complexity of human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of magnitude so I think an AI would be that that is truth seeking maximally curious would Foster human civilization to see where it where it goes one of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in space how do you see it being helping you in what you're trying to achieve I mean oddly enough one of the the areas where there's almost no AI used is space exploration so SpaceX uses basically no AI starink uses does not use AI I'm not I'm not against using it it just we haven't seen a use for it um I mean with any given variant of or Improvement in AI the I mean there's generally like I'll ask it questions about the firy Paradox um about rocket engine design about Electro chemistry and so far the AI has been terrible at all of those questions so there's still a long way to go so let's let's talk about one here's a question that's near and dear to your heart you have a lot of children yes I'm trying to say a good the birth rate is down in the US what needs to change so people start having more children yeah so this I this question is trou me for a long time because you can look at you can look at the uh demog like demographics it's a very slow moving ship I mean you know who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on who was born last year so um and and I if you want to I think has have a good approximation for population really look at how many babies were born last year in a particular country multiply that multiply that by life expectancy that's that's that's the number of people that will be adults in that country that's that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate remains constant now birth rate is not constant it is dropping so you look at the second derivative of birth rate and actually we see an an acceleration uh in uh the the the drop drop in in the in the drop in the fertility rate second of the fertility rate is very bad so um where does this lead this does not lead to uh a a greater civilization this leads to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag but with a whimper in adult diapers that is a sad ending so obviously we have countries that like Korea used to have a birth rate of six it's now three4 yeah uh here's a here's a light question for you what do you come pick me up I'll give you a baby says one what do you think are the that is one of the things that says on the screen yeah I don't know if everyone heard that you want to read it it says Elon come pick me up I'll give you a [Laughter] [Applause] baby thank you okay well I mean I certainly encourage everyone in this room to have uh at least three children uh like look baby's got to come from somewhere um you know um and uh I think we just want to have a I don't know I think we want to have like a slightly increasing population not a plummeting population um you know and I think this applies to all countries and cultur it's like I I don't think we want any country culture to disappear um we want them to ideally flourish um and and not disappear so um in fact one of the things that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role of low birth rate in the decline of civilizations um so around I think it was around 50 BC um uh the Rome Rome passed a bill to give a bonus to any roban citizen that would have a third child so this was a birth rate was a problem in Rome in 50 BC the Romans weren't making Romans um the same is true of ancient Greece um so the the there was a time from about 800 BC to 300ish BC where the Greeks were had a lot of kids um and a lot of surviving kids like the birth rate far exceeded the death rate which is why you had Greek cities popping up all over the the Mediterranean um but then I think basically it seems to be that Prosperity is uh destroys the birth rate so if when when a civilization uh feels like it has no ex no meaningful external threat and is very prosperous uh that is what causes the birth rate to plummet somewhat counterintuitively you think well if You' got more resources surely that would lead to more more kids in fact it is the opposite the more the more prosperous a civilization and the more the civilization feels that it does not need to defend against external threats the lower the birth rate right I'd say that you know there's a lot of research on there there's really been three one number one Prosperity as you've said number two improvements in health care so in 1900 half the children died on the planet before the fifth and the third was the education of women so we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here but let's try this one what keeps you up at night and what gives you Joy well I think kids give me joy um so I probably get the most Joy from uh my kids um and um you know I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids cuz should have them anyway but I I uh I certainly kids are I certainly are the greatest source of drawing in my life um in terms of what keeps me up at night I guess is anything that's like I think a civilizational risk um you know if we're the birth rates continuing to plummet like I do think about the birth rates plummeting as being a civilizational risk um I think anything that undermines the foundations of Democracy in America or elsewhere where as a a risk um I think uh anything that's leading us away from a merit-based system is a risk uh I actually spend um like like I I listen to civil I listen to like podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep so peps that's that might be part of the problem here um a podcast called fall of civilizations which I've listened to a few times um and um i' I'd also recommend Hardcore History if you haven't listened to that that's that's a great podcast I I listen to Listen to History Podcast basically go to sleep so that that's probably why I'm ruminating on these things as I go to sleep well L I want to thank you for joining us today and we couldn't be more excited that you agree with some of your own quotes yeah that's great thank you very all right cool all right [Applause]

Channel: Tesla & Self Driving

Views: 4,927

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Id: LV2DcvgsIbo

Length: 40min 4sec (2404 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024