Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit

thank you all for uh sticking around this afternoon we had some great conversations and we're hoping to have another great one uh I it is my pleasure an honor or privilege really to have this conversation about the future uh with two gentlemen who know uh probably more about it than most uh the fellow all the way to my right to your left does not need any introduction Elon Musk uh you all know from Tesla and SpaceX of course from Solar City um Sam Alman I would say you don't need too much introduction either but I'm going to give it to you just in case you don't uh he runs ycombinator ycombinator has investments in over a thousand companies at this point they're investing in about 250 companies every single year those companies collectively are worth

about $65 billion dollar in total that's with a b and to give you just a a sort of a sense of the the kind of names we're talking about we're talking about Airbnb Dropbox stripe zenitz instacart Etc so both both uh folks uh with an amazing pedigree and an amazing sense of what's going on here's where I want to start the conversation with both of you and I think we're going to probably go to outer space very quickly um but we're going to try to keep it uh on Earth at least for the moment when you think about Innovation and you think about where we are going to be 10 15 20 years and what to invest in and what to make I'm going to make it hard for you Elon if you took Tesla out of it took Solar City out of it took SpaceX out of it and you said I could go

start a new company tomorrow it would be what it would be in what area where would you start thinking about well I think I think there's some uh fairly like there's a fairly obvious opportunity in electric aircraft um because all transport will Electrify over time with the exception of rockets um ironically um and um you know but but um I there's I mean there's I think there there's two areas which I mean they're fraught with issues but uh you know it's one of those things where if you if you don't do something maybe not doing something is worse like on the AI front or um on uh genetics you know so like the like the the those are the two things I think besides sustainable transport the internet um and making life multiplanetary uh rewriting genetics uh

and uh AI uh the latter two are the ones that can most change uh Destiny of humanity um but but they're they're really dodgy so I mean maybe I'd try to do something in one of those two areas but they're yeah fro with difficulty Elizabeth Holmes was here earlier spoke during uh the lunch hour do you think about genetics and Longevity and trying to sort of avoid your friend Larry pagee is investing in a business hoping to end death I I don't I mean the the I mean I'm not actually a huge proponent of longevity I mean I do think that um having a good life for longer is better like you you'd want to uh address the you know the things that that happen to you when when you're older um like dementia and so forth th those are pretty important um but um I'm not

I'm not sure it's sort of actually you know want to do that want to get into the genetics thing but it is something that's going to fundamentally change uh humanity and um uh along with AI so you don't want to live forever so that you can actually get to Mars I definitely don't want to live forever how how many years do you want to live um I don't know 100 good ones 100 good ones or 100 more good ones you're 44 um I mean 100 good ones in total I think is probably fine and maybe a bit longer um Sam what where where would you put your money you're you're the investor here well I mean we we try to invest in a very broad range of technology so um we funded an electric airplane or funding electric airplane company um we've done AI companies we've done uh how

we the electric airplane by the way I think it should work I think it like it makes it it makes sense the math should work um I think I I actually I I no huge surprise but I'll I'll agree with Elon on those two areas I think if you could pick uh two things that I'm not already working really hard on um uh AI having ai go in the positive direction which I really think it can and I I think thinking about sort of genetic technology genetic technology um I I made it unfair for you because I I said we had to take Solar City out and we had to take the cars out so we didn't get to really talk about energy but I imagine how big how big how big a thing do you think energy all in and when you think about both your Investments and what you're doing is something

that is one of the things that you need to tackle well I think sustainable energy is the most important problem that we face this Century um that's like a known difficult thing that we have to solve um like if if we if we continue to rely on burning hydrocarbons it the future is going to be quite bad and the vast majority of the scientific establishment believes that and the evidence I think is well I mean anyone with a scientific uh background is um you know unequivocal so um so so we got to solve sustainable energy uh I'm a big fan of solar because we got this big uh Fusion ball in the sky um called the Sun and TOS up every day so if we can you know use solar energy plus batteries we can actually have a complete solution for sustainable energy gener

generation and then we need to use in a sustainable way which is uh you know where where you need the electric transport um yeah so the thing I would add I I think um getting the cost of sustainable energy Down super low is probably uh you know short of AI like the most important thing we can do for sort of quality of life of the poorest half of the world I think that uh you know every time I I look into this it's it's really amazing how much the cost of energy and the quality of life correlate what about nuclear energy you have you have some investments in nuclear energy yeah I mean what I've always said is I think the end state of the world is a combination of nuclear and solar um probably 8020 one way or the other sort of terrestrial based nuclear

I I think Fusion is likely to work at some point in the next couple of decades and and that's a really big deal uh I think that it's good to have a backup option uh it's good to have two sources um but you know like it's all sort of fusion when you think about it yeah I I I mean I'm big I mean I think Fusion I think it's definitely possible to make fusion work um the but I think the and I used to be a big fan of of like having of that as the long-term energy source um but I'm inclined to think like indirect Fusion uh from the Sun essentially is going to be the primary source and then to some degree there will be uh Fusion reactors for you know maybe whatever yeah if you're really far north or really far south or something what about the risks of of nuclear

energy a fusion a fusion yeah I assume there's some risk there's no risk not really zero I'm an idiot I don't uh no um no mean with Fusion the difficulty is keeping it going uh not uh you know with with with fision uh you you have some meltdown risk although there's you know there's new technology on the fion front that makes meltdown risk extremely low um but um but with Fusion the great difficulty is is keeping the reaction from is keeping it the fire from going out it it's quite hard to sustain a fusion reaction uh unless you have something very big like the sun and you have the sun has gravitational confinement of the fusion reaction um so since you you can't do gravitational confinement on Earth you have to do some sort of uh electromagnetic confinement

one form or another uh or or a kinetic confinement by slamming things into each other um so it's it's quite tricky to prevent a fusion explosion from not immediately extinguishing got it so Fusion is like uh um I mean probably what you do is just repeat it every second or whatever so I mean just just a sort of you know I Fusion is like when you when you take uh say two hydrogen atoms or or two hydrogen Isotopes technically and slam them together and form helium that's that's fusion and then vision is like when you've got um like a heavy atom that is decaying at a at a you know relatively like a noticeable rate like uranium or plutonium and decays into smaller um atoms then uh that that's that's Vision okay I didn't do so well in science so we're going

to try to uh move along but you recently said that you wanted to Nuke Mars um I I didn't really understand then you guys in the back were doing some science talk about how nuking Mars would work uh yeah um yeah so so nuking Mars I I I sort of was a little flippant about that um I think it's a really decent idea thank you thank you um so yeah the what is really getting at but it's hard to you know convey that in like 30 seconds you know on on The Late Show with s was was that the the sun is a a nuclear explosion a fusion explosion that's what the sun is it's an ongoing Fusion explosion so if you wanted to uh add energy to Mars like warm up Mars the really the source of almost all energy in the universe is fusion um you know even fision is um originally

there was fusion and then that that that then later resulted in fishion um but what I was really talking about is creating two little Suns uh two pulsing Suns above the North and South Pole of Mars that would warm the the poles up enough so that the Frozen CO2 would would gasify and densify the atmosphere some of the water would also um heat up and and you'd have sort of water more water vapor and um CO2 in the in the Martian atmosphere which in that case is good because the the CO2 ends up warming warming Mars up and so you get a positive um sort of reaction like it's a positive cycle of of warming on Mars like you want to warm Mars up but you don't want to warm Earth up you know so why would you ever want to live on Mars um it looks like a great adventure

to me Beyond The Adventure do you actually both of you you you're investing in stuff uh that hopefully one day will go to Mars nothing for Mars but excuse me I nothing for Mars but I but I hope El Longos I think that would be cool but is that just for one person tell what what's going to happen no really I want to yeah well I mean the the Mars thing is is really like if you say what is going to be really important to the preservation of uh of civilization or Life as we know it more than just you know Humanity because of course we bring Life as we know it to Mars um and that there's no life that we can detect on the surface of Mars there may be some Subterranean bacterial life but there's it's on on the surface there there isn't anything um so this would

be the extension of life to another planet um or Life as we know it to another planet um and um I think would be make a huge difference to the prob lifespan of human civilization and um and Life as we know it so it's sort of like an insurance policy a life insurance policy for Life collectively and um you know so it's yeah probable because you because you think global warming what do you what do you think is going to happen here that's I don't want to be clear this is this is a I mean I I think it's important that we become a multiplet species not a single planet species but on another planet um so this is if if we it's like really it's like what kind of future do you want to have do you want to have a future Where We Are Forever confined to one planet

or one where we are out there exploring the stars and and on on many planets and I think the the latter one is far more exciting and inspiring because the former is basically waiting around until some some Extinction event so because eventually there will be one um and um it might be quite far in the future but it also might not be far in the future um so there's so there's the there's really two main reasons I think to make life multiplanetary and to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars one is the defensive reason to to ensure that the light of Consciousness as we know it is not extinguished uh or or lasts much longer and the second is that it would be an an amazing adventure that uh that we could all enjoy uh vicariously uh if not uh personally

I think it's really uh important to establish multiplanetary life I agree with with that I think my concern is that the uh I think the AI question is likely to become pressing uh and important to deal with before we can establish a full Colony on Mars that's true you guys and I think even if not then the AI can like go to Mars on a laser beam the AI goes does that mean it's like justs itself there yeah I mean it's very hard to send through space but the AI is going to go like 20 minutes you know on a laser beam it's easy do you guys believe in uh life forms outside of Earth you think there are I I mean I think there's there's quite a high chance of microbial life um that's there's a much that then as you get more advanced in life that there's less and

less likelihood of of um like sophisticated life but you don't think do you think there's sophist you think there aliens out there that we can talk to you mean as opposed to like bacteria yeah yeah um there's a great onion article recently about like you know uh like like NASA should only hold a press conference if they find aliens that we can talk [Laughter] to um but but I I think so um I mean it's it's an interesting Confluence of events like it's not just that there has to be life intelligent life that evolves somewhere but that that life has to last for a long time for us to be Co for us to exist at the same time as that um so what it suggests is there's this great questions called the like sort of the firmy Paradox like where are the aliens like

if there are so many planets out there um and the universe is almost 14 billion years old why why aren't the aliens everywhere um and um this is a one of the most perplexing questions um because um you know you could basically bicycle to Alpa centor in a few hundred thousand years like meaning at that's at bicycle speed so it's sort of like you know uh in 100 million years like even at a very slow speed you could completely blanket the Galaxy so why why not where are they it's very hard for me to get now um well we were we were talking in the back and we've had this conversation before you please weigh in on this and I think it's a thought experiment that you have suggested that we are all collectively right now uh living in a simulation what does that

mean um yeah it's it's a probabilistic thing um so they really if you look at uh at say the advancement of video games uh from say 40 years ago when we started out with pong and you had like you know rectangles Bing a rectangle to each other um and uh and now we've got photorealistic 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously or 3D games with millions of people playing simultaneously um that are just getting better now we've got uh virtual reality headsets so you can just put it on and it feels like you're right there um you'll have um haptic feedback meaning force feedback uh sticks so you can actually pick up something and feel like you're picking up something like you know have haptic gloves um and if if you extrapolate that advancement

um at at any rate at all like if you say okay let's say it's it slows down by a factor of 100 starting right now okay so then then then I mean the video games will be distinguishable from reality in let's say you know 200 years instead of 20 years or something like that uh but you don't think that we're in a game right now okay well that's this is this like we all somebody has a joystick somewhere else in some other you know where I'm going with it certainly doesn't feel like that I mean I don't I don't I don't think I'm being played by somebody in a video game but then people in video games don't generally think that I I certainly think if you talk to people who use the latest virtual reality equipment in sort of a big space where they sort of map like

benches in the space to benches in the game and the environment you know they have this experience when they do that for the first time and they take it off and then they just fre freeze for 10 seconds and and you can and then you talk to them and it's clear that like they their belief that this is actual reality has been shaken because they were so convinced in virtual reality that that was real and so if I can take this off like why aren't there other layers I also think it ties interestingly back to to the fmy Paradox yeah um exactly you know if if it is a simulation sort of that would be a pretty good answer for why there are no aliens how far are we away from sort of virtual reality being a thing all of us sort of live in to some degree we would

go to this conference we would go to this conference uh from our VR sets I mean I do think there there's still something to actually really being there in person um that that we probably won't lose for for a long time hopefully never uh but um I mean with with what uh Oculus and valve are coming out with um and I believe some of that that like the first VR headsets are doe out um early next year yeah like in the next several months um and and the demos that that I've seen and I think Sam's probably seen too are incredibly compelling um and there is that strange feeling because you you you put the headset on in like a very nondescript Bland room and and you you put the headset on and suddenly you're in anywhere like you could be yeah you know I got this

demo where they would like blow air on you when you like got near a cliff Edge and when you walk near a fire they would turn on a heater and you don't see any of this cuz you're just wearing it and then and it's it's really quite quite compelling um I want to talk about something else that's compelling which is Tesla it's really nice talk about the X it's an SUV um it's an SUV but here's what I was going to say $132,000 how many people really going to buy this thing um yeah so the the the F the first cars that are produced are fully the sort of fully optioned version so it's not like a base price of you know 132,000 it's um and we'll have a version that's still expensive on the expensive side but before any incentives would be about 75k next year um and

um you know with incentives and whatnot it's you know maybe 65 so it's it's it's still expensive but it's not as crazy as 132 um the and and then in in a couple years we should have the uh model 3 um and that'll be starting price of um $35,000 so it's a smaller car but it's you know um a lot more affordable okay so for the Tesla uh sort of real efficient AOS who follow you on Twitter you need to you need to answer one thing which is last week somebody tweeted at you I think about the X and then you put out a tweet that mentioned uh the Y and the three and then you deleted the Tweet yes this and everybody wants to know why you deleted the tweet and what the Tweet actually said um I no I think I think it was it just said something like the there'll be the

model 3 and the model y um and that one of them will have like a faling door which is like pretty obviously the model y um so um the but I I I deleted that and like I don't know a dozen other tweets because I S it had like kind of a rambling Twitter history um but it was had no significance the delete has no significance like I don't think deleting a tweet like makes it go away from the Internet or something so why why delete the tweet I just didn't like what the way my Twitter history looked it was uh it was like too rambling you've invested in Twitter I'm I'm in Twitter in Tesla yeah you own a Tesla yeah make the case for those who are out there you I make it harder because he has to do it now why what what is this going to become in your mind you sure

you don't want him to answer yeah we know what he's going to say look I mean I think as most people who own one think it's the best car like out there uh I had a roadster before a Tesla Roadster which was not the best car um but the model S really is like it's just it's the best car on the market and I think that uh people think of this like existing car companies uh but actually this is like a software company with a car attached to it and it's you know you just like you sort of point and click you like point the wheel somewhere you push the thing down and it just kind of gets there it doesn't make noise it like it's very reliable the software actually works it's the only car with good software so I think people really like it now yeah it's like really

expensive still but uh I think uh well I'm confident that a mass Market Tesla will do very well and I also think the other electric cars I've driven feel like many years behind right uh you talked about this being a software company do you think of yourself as a software company I think we're software and a hardware company um but but the software component does become increasingly important um so you got to get both right um because it's you know it's a holistic product experience but um uh it it softwares increasingly the you know an increasing proportion of the problem particularly as you get to autonomy um and um yeah so so there is a view I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory that you are building autonomous functionality and other driverless

like functionality into the car without advertising that it's in there and that one day you going to flip a switch and the car is going to start just driving um well uh no not quite like that but we are going to upload new software soon and and we this is not actually a secret or anything um we we have version seven of our software which turns on um Highway autopilot so the car will be able to steer by itself on on highways or or any kind of um any kind of road that doesn't have really steep sharp curve curves on it um and um and then also it'll steer quite well in in traffic so those are the two scenarios where it'll it's think going to be quite good at steering um and and and we'll that that's in public beta right now so we have um I don't know 600

or 700 uh Tesla drivers owners that are um testing the uh aut steer software and and yeah go ahead I think full self-driving cars and not Tesla specifically just in general are are likely to get here much more quickly than people realize yeah I absolutely you ask most people they'd still say it's 10 to 20 years away uh and I actually think we'll have sort of like full point too autonomous driving uh in a in a few years it won't be uncomon few years like two or three years three or four maybe know better I agree I think that's something on the on the two to three year time frame is likely for for it to be technologically I mean you you'll be able to demonstrate it um but it you won't be able to go to fully autonomous until you get reg regulatory approval

so there's there's a there's a time difference between when it is technologically possible um in a general sense um you know so that you know not not just like in a very tightly mapped situation like say Mountain View or paloalto right but in the general sense of like you know can it can it do point to point virtually anywhere right um I think that's that's only you know two to three years away um but but then approval of from Regulators of of uh having it be autonomous is anywhere from I don't know one to 5 years after that depending upon the location because The regul Regulators have to be convinced that it is substantial I think they'll they'll want to see that it's significantly more uh sign significantly safer than than cars that are driven by people

I want to open it up in about 5 minutes so I just have a couple more questions uh to get to you and so if you guys have a question in the audience uh get your shot on goal in just a second I want to talk about entrepreneurship because both of you are entrepreneurs you invest in them you are one and you think about this a lot uh your old pal Peter teal likes to say that he would not invest in somebody who's over the age of 30 years old that that it should be the cut off you're 44 now he's invested in you yeah I guess make some exception but you may be the exception to the rule as some as somebody who invests in companies every day do you think there's a cut off there's a lot of people out here who are over the age of 30 are we done uh I mean we've said

this before but when we've looked at our data uh the the mean age of entrepreneurs we fund is just around 29 or 30 um so there's obviously lots of over 30 entrepreneurs that we fund um some of which have gone on to create multi-billion dollar companies so I think certainly you can't say it's impossible for people over 30 to create companies that's that's ridiculous uh and we plan to continue to invest in people of all ages um the correlation that we've noticed is that uh if you look at the really successful companies we've had the multi-billion dollar companies the the average for those average age for those Founders does skew significantly younger but the success rate of founders of you know this binary is the company a success or not excuse older than

30 so you know younger entrepreneurs I think tend to take bigger risks uh maybe they're willing to work on these very longtime Horizon projects but that's the only correlation we see I think it would be a crazy strategy to say I'm never going to invest in anyone over 30 yeah no I mean I think I think it's I don't think Peter meant that either yeah I mean you you can definitely start a company at any age and be successful I mean it's really just question of like do you you know do you have a good idea are you working really hard are you able to attract a great team and motivate the team um and that uh I mean that that's sort of really what what matters but you've had multiple ideas and there's there's another view by the way which is that you can only

really have one great idea right that everybody sort of has maybe maybe one great idea it's not really the idea you know I mean like there's that old saying it's 1% inspiration I I think and 99% postp spiration I think it's generally true I mean a lot of times like companies start out with with with uh an idea that's actually wrong um but they they adapt uh quickly enough to get it to something that that's right right um and I can say like at the beginning of Tesla we started out with uh we started the company with two false premises like that would turn out to be like really dumb um uh one was that uh we'd be able to uh license the drivetrain uh technology from a company called AC propulsion in Southern California and that it would just work that didn't

that totally didn't work um and then we also thought we'd be able to adapt the Lotus Elise chassis at low cost um and be able to essentially put the AC propulsion drivetrain technology in a Lotus at leas chassis and then just build that quickly and um and sell it and that it would that that would be okay um but but like I said the AC propulsion technology did not lend itself to uh any any kind of cost-effective reliable car um it was okay for like a small prototype but not not for a commercial product and and the uh and then the Lotus Elise um that that ended up worse than if we had designed a car from from the beginning um because we ended up uh changing like 96% of the components in the car um and invalidating all of the crash results and all the safety

stuff the car ended up being 30% heavier had to be longer um and it ended up being like like if you if you want if you had a house in mind and instead of actually building that house from scratch you got some existing house and ended up knocking everything except one wall in the basement out um and and it would have been better to just build the house from the beginning the the house you wanted so so so basically Tesla was started on the basis of two dumb ideas um and um but we managed to you know it was a tough one to overcome those two two issues but we we managed to get get past them that's so that's I think the more important thing is like start somewhere and then you know really be prepared to question your assumptions fix what you did wrong and

uh adapt to reality how did you run two companies at the same time Jack dorsy is about to take this on in a meaningful way what is what does a day in the life of Elon Musk actually look like yeah I wouldn't recommend running two companies uh this is um it really it decreases your freedom um quite a lot so um and and I'll tell you what so my day is probably a bit different than people think it is I me most of my time is actually spent on um engineering and design so that's probably I don't know like 70% of my time um like press stuff like this is maybe two or 3% of my time it's really really tiny um and I'm going to reduce it even further it's probably like 1% of my time so uh real quick and then we'll go to the audience politics I want to ask you two

political questions one is innovation in politics when when do you think there'll ever be a day where we actually vote on our phone um we stupidly seem to still go and vote uh you know in our local District often times at a local school and I also wanted to get your sense of uh who out there you may or may not like right now in terms of what you guys do and who who you think might do the best all right I'll take the first question Elon can answer the second um Trump's amazing uh I I think that yes we will someday vote on our phones I think it it like and it will have a significant impact because it'll really change people who vote so I think that may take a while because there are a lot of people who don't want to see the electorate change but uh you

know over a 20year time frame I always try to think about things over these sort of you know 10 or 20 year time frames I think you can get so caught up in the what's happening this month or next year are we in a bubble are we buying at a low tick or a high tick but but eventually it's going to happen and I take soless in that anyway Elon on Donald Trump yeah he asked you um I mean and I don't really have uh strong feelings except that I you know hopefully Trump doesn't foret the nomination of you know the Republican party that's because I think that's um yeah that wouldn't be good um so but I mean bar Diller said he would move out of the country what about you really no I would move I mean I think like at most he would get the Republican nomination but

I think that was still be a bit embarrassing so um I think that could happen yeah um you think it will happen it could it won't surprise me if it does yeah um I honestly don't have strong feelings about the do you get involved in politics um I get involved in politics to the as little as possible yeah there sometime I have there's some amount that I have to get involved in um mostly because SpaceX has to battle Boeing and locked um you know for National Security and and civil space launch contra s so if we don't if we don't battle them then you know then they will we'll lose how corrupt is that whole thing yeah um well I mean the the I mean actually would say that on on balance I guess it's it's not that corrupt because if if it was corrupt then SpaceX

would have no chance um because SpaceX um I mean it's got it's gotten a bit bigger these days but it was very tiny um when when we won our first govern contract and if if it had been like deeply corrupt then we would not have won anything um so you know I think you know I think actually at the the the greater the level of visibility politically the the the less corruption occurs so um I think there's actually probably like the least corruption at the presidential level than at the Senate level in the house and then that there can be a bit more corruption at the state level U it's like basically how much attention are people paying that that that defines how much corruption occurs right um yeah you know perhaps and we'll open up to but it got me thinking

the only real big critique of some of your businesses is that they are subsidized to some degree by the government could these businesses succeed without government help um yeah absolutely the the the um and I should at some point I should probably write a rebuttal because there was like nonsensical LA Times article from which a lot of this stems um because what what the LA Times article did was add up um all incentives that Tesla has received and all inent incentives that Tesla will receive so like over a 30-year period and made it made it sound like a big number um but it's you know um like if somebody's earning $50,000 a year you don't say you don't call them a millionaire because over the next 20 years they will cumulatively earn a million do but

that's effectively what that article uh did um the incentives I think for for Tesla and Solar City what they really do is balance out the um the the the actual and de facto incentives that carbon producing um activities have so and I don't think they actually balance it out so the carbon producing activities still sort of overwhelm um the incentives that electric cars and solar receivers I mean for example there's a 20% um tax incentive for stripper oil well um like and the the incentive for solar is currently 30% but dropping to 10% uh in two years right so the you know two years the incentive for solar power will be half that of a stripper oil well right so you know uh and and SpaceX made it in in in spite of boing lock receiving a billion dollar plus

uh subsidy for the launch activities so I think in the case of SpaceX it was sort of success in spite of incentives uh and in the case of Solar City and Tesla it was the incentives were you know moderately helpful but not not the deciding factor they they're they're Catalyst they made things happen a little FAS than they would otherwise happen but um you know you look at something like the like the there's a $7,500 tax credit for uh EVS um Okay so that ends up being a 10% uh discount that the consumer receives for buying the car it's it's not like night and day difference okay we got a lot of people uh who are standing and we want to get to all the questions we're going to sort of try to do this rapid fire so I'd ask you to keep your question short and

these guys are going to keep their answers short uh as well at least we're going to Hope goad hi my name is uh Bruce Gman I'm a private investor in Toronto Canada and Elon if you're not happy with the next election you're more than welcome to come back to Canada um question is about artificial intelligence like any good good new technology people always fear the change and things that can go wrong I was wondering if Sam and Elon could share with us their positive vision of ai's impact on our coming life right we didn't even get to AI in this whole conversation yeah I I think look there is a really positive Vision here right I think there are the science fiction version is either that we enslave it or it enslaves us but there's this uh Happy symbiotic

Vision which I don't think is the default case but what we should work towards I think already um humans and AI are Co evolving and no one's paid attention to this yet but I don't think there's any human left that understands all of how Google search results are ranked on that first page it really is machine learning algorithm so when we search on Google it's an AI deciding what we should see um when a dating site matches two people together there's a machine learning algorithm that no human understands how it works that is getting people together that then have babies and so in in effect you know you have this like machine learning algorithm breeding humans and so really I mean you do um and so there's this and then you know those people like work on

the algorithms later and so I think the happy vision of the future is sort of humans in Ai and a symbiotic relationship distributed AI where it sort of empowers a lot of different individuals not this single AI that kind of governs everything that we all do that's you know a million times smarter a million times smarter than any other entity so I think that's what we should work towards I agree with what Sam said um I mean we are effectively already um a human machine Collective symbiote um like there's like we're like a like a giant cyborg um that that's actually what Society is today um you know but but I'm going to sort of obviously I mean have an affinity for the human portion of that cyborg Collective um and um I think I do think we need to be careful

about the development of AI and make sure it is ultimately beneficial to humanity that it's uh that that the future is good question over here okay uh so not too long ago oh my name is Jessica sing by the way but not too long ago on the nightly show with Larry Wilmore they had Bill n the Science Guy on there discussing the new uh Mars Discovery and the other P panelists basically said that our society doesn't care about the scientific discoveries of NASA and how does uh Innovation uh what does that mean in a society that only values the results like the final products like a car or like finally going to space and not really valuing the process proc of getting there well I mean I do I do think that there is I'm not sure I agree with that I me I think we

do value Discovery and and new things um and and learning about the Universe um I mean there was quite a bit of attention paid to the discovery of of water flowing on Mars um I mean I'd certainly say that it should be more but um I think it's okay I think it's not bad I think we're I think we're better off than than that the show would suggest okay yeah okay we're going to try to get everybody up there if we can so go ahead question for Elon I I understand that the hyperloop was inspired by your opinions about California's High-Speed Rail uh and could you share those opinions as well as a bit about the hyperloop um yeah just um if if if we're to have a um some new form of Transport in California which I think is would be good to have then we want to we

want to Aspire to have something that is um Cutting Edge technology um and um when when I was reading about the highspeed rail plan um it's it's a lot of money for something which isn't obviously compelling relative to a car or a plane um in terms of the time it would take to complete the journey um and and it will will settle California taxpayers with a pretty significant amount of money that they got to pay so um so it's like if you pay if you pay a high price you should have a a great outcome like that should be the sensible thing um and that that doesn't seem to be what what is happening from what I can tell um and so I was trying to think well what what would be the the fastest way you could get from say LA to San Francisco or cities in between um

and um uh ended up mentioning that I had the an idea actually had a toour not unlike this and then and then discovered my initial idea didn't work and then kept iterating um with a with a bunch of other people and uh came up with a hyperloop so that's sort of where where it actually it finally did work from a technical standpoint um and now there are some companies pursuing that which is awesome and I hope we see some I hope we see it come to fruition um SpaceX is is um doing a a hyperloop student comp ition um that um where where uh teams will compete to see who can make the best pod um and um and so we're doing a sort of a mile long uh hyperloop uh section uh in La um just right near SpaceX really whone technically but LA County um and um and so I think

that's going to be pretty exciting to see what the students can come up with and here can come up with the most advanced pod design um and uh I I think we're going to set it so that like like like the winner would be who can get their pod to go the fastest within a on M section and like then have like a big crash area at the end um like so if the pod doesn't slow down in time can sort of get into the crash area you know I think that'll be quite an exciting competition we had a couple more seconds we'll grab it thank you hello my name is Bish I'm a computer science student at Stanford and so far west majority of startups we heard here today or the ones we hear on the news are brilliant Innovations on business models that are supported by technology but

on the other hand the ones that are based on true Technical Innovations are kind of limited that we have a few examples here I want to ask Sam why do you think that might be the case and as a followup to that to Elon do you think you'll be able to successfully build Tesla or SpaceX if there if they were your first Ventures and if you were looking funding for them out there so I I I think that a lot of people talk about how you know no one's working on anything interesting we're all just doing software the world is like really shitty it's getting worse it's the end of progress and I've never agreed with this I think so two-part answer one I I actually think we're on an incredible pace of innovation what's happening as what happens historically is that

when there's a great opportunity sort of talent sashes around and finds that and there's been incredible progress in software in the last couple of decades there will be more and so a lot of talented people are choosing to work on it but that doesn't mean we're not making press it just means this one area is like transforming the world incredibly quickly people are doing other things as well as you mentioned and you know at y combinator we fund companies doing a lot of things here's the issue the Press loves to write about the software companies and they have very little interest in writing about the other stuff and so as an outsider you would say well there's only software um but that just doesn't reflect reality you know we fund companies doing all

sorts of things and I think we love funding Tech we love funding technological innovation on a long time scale the Press does not love covering it um and also I think there's nothing wrong with working on software um yeah I think for SpaceX and Tesla are probably not the the ideal companies to have as the first uh thing um I mean generally because like um if something is capital intensive um it's really hard to get going um because is it true that you totally ran out of money supporting those two companies yeah wow so I guess that would not have been a good first no um I mean the the thought I had in the beginning was um I'm like I'm not really an investor I just like basically invest in the companies that I help create and I thought you know coming out

of PayPal um I sort of I said I thought I'd invest like half the money in SpaceX and Tesla and Solar City and um and then I still have the other half left over except that doesn't really work out cuz then the recession of 2008 and 2009 came along and it was a choice of either invest everything um or the companies would definitely die so it's like if I invest everything then they might live um and if I don't invest everything then they're definitely going to die so ended up investing any investing everything and it was real tight actually um in fact like the the Tesla financing round at the end of 2008 um I remember quite well because that we we closed that financing round on the last hour of the last day that was possible it was 6:00 p.

m.

Christmas Eve 2008 um and we would have gone bankrupt like 2 days after Christmas if we hadn't closed that round um yeah that was hard okay uh we got to wrap up final question for both of you but I'm going to start with Elon with this uh your pal Larry Page once said that uh rather than give all of his money to charity he would prefer to give all of his money to you he might have changed his mind so my question for both of you is where do you want to where who would you give all of your money to or what would you give all of your money to um well I mean my expectation is uh I mean I I want to sort of continue the um the path of establishing a self-sustaining City on Mars I think that's an important thing that needs to happen um and um and then also sustainable

energy sustainable transport uh and then education uh and um Pediatric Healthcare those are like the areas that I mean that's essentially where all all my money is going sort of the good thing about why combinator is I get to pour all of my money back into the Technologies I believe in uh so I I would keep doing that and Larry Page will give your money to you uh Elon Musk Sam Sam Alman thank you guys