Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit

[Music] she a man who needs no introduction but uh welcome thanks for being here number one on the Vanity Fair New establishment list is that the highest honor you've ever had of course that's right the nobels are announced you're doing an announcement tomorrow and the next day is a Nobel Prize so if if you get all three that's a great Trifecta let's talk about your announcement tomorrow yeah what is it you're going to announce I'm glad you asked um well uh I I think I can give maybe uh one clue which is that one of the things is already there um and people don't realize it so we just need to turn it on yeah wow cool and it'll be part of a new car okay I used to be a journalist I used to be good at this um yeah I I it's um it'll be it'll be a different

it'll be different from the current one uh the some part of I announce will be different from things in the past obviously it's an announcement um but uh I can't say it's it's we're not going to talk about the model 3 um or the model X the model 3 would be the $35,000 uh electric vehicle you're going to talk about something that's labeled D yeah D and then there's another thing which is um actually would have said the other thing except it would have been too obvious and that's the reason I didn't say now I can't say what the letter is because okay and what does d stand for um I think the internet is very good at guessing these things so they're they understand directionally it's it's directionally correct but um the magnitude is uh not well appreciated

yet and the magnitude of the something else too yeah um that's the really big one the something else I kind of got myself in trouble by because I you know we we had the model s and the X and then just for fun we try to trademark the model e um and and then then Ford suit us um or said they were going to Su us so we had to change it to the model 3 so it's s3x you know um totally different uh and um uh so I kind of I guess when I say that that we're about to unveil the D and something else then it's uh I kind of dug my own grave on that front yeah yeah well we look forward to why in the world are you doing this I mean what's impelling you to make an electric special car I think it's important that we accelerate the Advent of a sustainable transport future

so it's it it's better if we move towards electric cars sooner rather than later um and then we can get away from burning oil and obviously that needs to be paired with sustainable generation of power um that's where solar City comes in and um but in order for us in order for Humanity to have a good future the century we have to figure out a way to sustainably produce and consume um energy and uh that's what Tesla and Solar City are trying to be helpful uh in that regard um so that's that's really the the purpose of it it's not it's not as though I think that there's a need for another car company uh there's plenty of you know good car companies very competitive industry um but but there is a need to show that electric cars can be uh better than gasoline

cars otherwise people will continue to buy gasoline cars when you say better uh I'm going to push you back to where you didn't want to go which is what you're announcing better means that it would be faster and stronger than a gas car which we think electric cars cannot be yeah um will'll be bigger and faster oh cool um yeah can I have one I can't wait for that quot to be out there yeah it's about to unveil the D it's bigger and faster yeah I know there have been a lot of jokes that Cara swisser started today that yeah I know we have to steer away conference called All Things D you know yeah um uh why did you give away or open up the intellectual property oh um the patter yeah yeah to we sort of Open Source pents in order to accelerate the Advent of electric

vehicles that's the main reason I think people think um that maybe there was some competitive reason or or or that that this would um somehow be helpful to Tesla you know because um more people would enter electric cars and somehow that would be you know Rising tide lift but actually I think I think the open sourcing of patents does slightly impair our competitive uh position um on balance but I I'm hopeful that it generates enough Goodwill to overcome that uh competitive impairment but um I mean I came to the conclusion at least on a personal level that patents were kind of like buying a lottery ticket to a lawsuit um you know and so why would you want to do that um what drove you into the electric car our business was it really sustainability for the

planet or was it just the intellectual curiosity of it all actually so if if if you go back to like when I was first thinking about electric cars was in college um and it was really more from the standpoint uh of the the need to transition to to some uh transport means that was s sustainable independent whether there was environmental impact or not because if if we're burning oil you know to move and that's not a renewable resource then um then independent of any environmental impact we must find some alternative or there will be economic collapse um so and civilization would would sort of crumble because we have to or revert you know so the so that that was actually originally why I was very interested in it is just because it's it I mean I think you

know from a physics standpoint it's really obviously the way to go is electric motors I mean kind of crazy to do something else honestly um and and then the the environmental thing grew over time and became it became evident that the environmental impact was quite significant because we're putting so much carbon into the atmosphere that were fundamentally changing the chemical makeup of of Earth's atmosphere and then and and the oceans too because because of the CO2 that gets uh absorbed into the into the water and creates carbonic acid so um if if we don't take corrective action uh we that that the probability of of a catastrophe will increase over time eventually there's like certainty of of a catastrophic outcome and the longer it takes us to to make

that transition the greater the probability of something bad happening um and uh so you know so that when I think of Tesla what's the fundamental good that Tesla can achieve it would be to accelerate the Advent of electric vehicles perhaps by you know for fortunate a decade or something like that because it it'll happen anyway independent got even Tesla was not not around so that's I would say that that's a really fundamental good and since we're making cars I mean it seems like we should try to make really good cars um and uh and you know maybe make the buying buying experience a lot more pleasant there's a Peter teal line as you know about you we were promised flying cars but we got 140 characters uh do you think that other innovators people not like

yourself aren't really shooting as high as they should be when you're doing things from you know space shots to electric cars do you think there should be flying cars um yeah okay yeah I'm am I missing something um gosh I think that would be fun don't you I'm not sure I mean I think I think there should be vertical takeover Landing supersonic Air transport yeah that that's obviously should be the case we had that 30 years ago and now we don't meaning suic sure yeah no it's kind of innovation for big things has actually slowed down it seems is that true I think whenever you have a large industry that is a monopoly or duopoly um the forcing function for Innovation is weak um because uh Innovation tends to come from new entrance to an industry and if the

barriers are like Tesla into the auto model yeah yeah um when there are huge Capital barriers to entry then it's very difficult for new entrance to enter that that industry it's like being in a forest of giant redwoods um and in that in that situation The Innovation is is weak because if you sort of it's I think it's fairly easy to understand this because if you're say the a senior executive in that company or CEO let's say um if you do something incremental uh you very unlikely to be fired um if you do something bold and it doesn't work out you're very likely to be fired um so that's then they do incremental things you mentioned a moment ago uh the environmental sustainability thing that's really big that you worry about your other big thing that you

worry about is sort of machines getting out of control explain that or the artificial intelligence Singularity yeah I don't think most people understand just how quickly machine intelligence is advancing it's much faster than almost anyone realizes even within Silicon Valley and certainly outside Silicon Valley people really have no idea um so why is that dangerous I mean if if there's if there's a super intelligent particularly if it's engaged in recursive self-improvement if there's some digital super intelligence um and its optimization or utility function um is something that's detrimental to humanity then it will have a very bad effect um you know it could be just something like getting rid of spam email or something and it's like concludes well

the best way to get R spam is to get rid of humans you know but uh why would we lose sour of spam I I know we've all watched Cal in 2001 but why would we lose control over our machines there no data point showing that that that our connection to machine has ever been loosened uh actually I think the thing to do would be to plot the progress of digital intelligence versus time and and then to to maybe curve fit or extrapolate that progress uh and see where that leads um but you're talking about machines that are not just intelligent but have intentionality is that right they have the intention of their utility function um which we programmed in right yes okay but it can have unen unintended consequences um is that uh propelling no pun intended your uh

Mars mission ideas no I think it's quite it's more likely than not that if if there's some digital super intelligence apocalypse scenario um it would probably follow people to Mars um not necessarily because because of that utility function if it simply has utility function that is arbitrarily confined to Earth it it would be totally fine doing that I mean it's this is um like it's just it's a so what what is uh let's get to the Mars mission why you feel that is something we should be aiming at I think the reason for M there there's two main reasons for Ms or becoming a multiplanetary um I think one one is the defense of reason it's life insurance for Life as a whole um and there there's some value to to having that um you know in terms of a small percentage

of our economic output like let's say half a percent or maybe even less of our economic output to ensure that that the light of Consciousness As We Know know it propagates into the future um to for a much longer period of time um and uh you know so there's that that defensive reason um and and this is the first time in 4 and a half billion years in the since Earth you know was first formed that it's been possible for life to move to another planet to become multiplanetary um and that window may be open for a long time or it may be open for a short time I'm actually quite an optimistic person um so I'm hopeing that will be open for a long time but maybe it'll be open for a short time in which case we should take action now and and not delay um um you've

been a fan of science fiction books uh have they actually influenced you sure I I'll just say The other reason which I actually find personally more motivating with respect to Mars uh which is that um it would just be the greatest Adventure uh ever um and very exciting and I think we need things in life that are exciting and inspiring it can't just be about solving some awful problem um there have to be re reasons to get up in the morning and I was talking about the books you've read and the science fiction I noticed you're a science fiction F do you think maybe you've read too much science fiction maybe have that's certainly certainly possible um so the the uh yeah I mean where we are right now is we've I think at on the SpaceX front we've made evolutionary

but not revolutionary progress we're hoping to make revolutionary progress in the coming years um but the key break that we aim for was or they were aiming for is to be able to uh have the the the rocket booster come back and land and be able to refly it again why is that important because that's not the way we've been doing it right yeah it's been Expendable Rockets up till now really except for the space shuttle was partly reusable um but but it was extremely difficult to refurbish for flight you needed 10,000 people needed to work 9 months to refurbish this SP shuttle um so what we really need is uh rapid and complete reusability uh like an aircraft or a car or really any mode of Transport is besides Rockets is um reusable you know Horse bicycle you

can think of almost anything um but imagine if that mode of Transport was not reusable very unfortunate in the case of the horse um and but but even like in cars like if you could use a car once um and you have to buy a new car every time you took a journey odsa you would not buy many cars um because it would be very expensive so reusability essentially U opens the door for reducing the cost of space flight by a factor of 100 or more and uh if you uh do this how much of it will be government funded in a way aren't you under a lot of contracts with government yeah in the beginning there was no government um I funded SpaceX uh entirely with the proceeds from PayPal um uh and but and we got off S first government contract about five or six years after starting

the company from NASA um and um but I should say about NASA's maybe a quarter of our flights uh 34s are commercial but the way we have been doing innovation in this country especially starting with world War II has always been a combination of government private Enterprise universities and that is now dissipated the government is not doing as much basic research do you think that's going to be a problem for the United States um well I I think I think it govern us quite a lot um that I'm not exactly sure whether we're at the right number for basic research I mean I'm a fan of research so i' probably I'd be in favor of spending more money on on that all allocating more resour resources to to to basic research um but um but I think the government's doing

doing quite a bit I mean NASA is doing doing a lot of things we've obviously got the The Rovers on Mars um we've got the Hub things like the Hubble telescope the upcoming James Webb Telescope uh there planetary probes uh and Earth Science missions launching all the time so NASA is doing doing quite a lot actually what other big things like electric cars space shots whatever uh do you dream of well I think it's face and cars a lot obviously um we've eliminated flying cars so well I'm not I mean I I'm I'm not sure about the flying cars I not that's not say I don't think there should be flying cars I mean but if the sky was full of cars flying all over the place and it was you it would affect how this how things look it would affect the skyline and and uh

it would be noisier um and there would be a greater probability of something falling in your head yes right um good arguments you know those are those are not good things on the other hand um that you could be able to go from one place to another faster but I think actually if at least for If you eliminate the choke points in cities then there's really not that much traffic outside of the CH points so you look at sort of in Suburban streets you don't see a lot of uh I mean you don't the traffic doesn't doesn't choke things um it's really on the highways and major arteries and it's because the the the cities grew way bigger than the major a and how would we fix that tunnels tunnels what about autonomously driving cars would that help that would help certainly

yeahh I'm going to open it up but I have one frivolous question while they bring the lights up everybody so far today has been touting how much they love Silicon Valley the HBO show and you said some bad things about it why don't you like like it um well first of all I I should say that the I mean the article was not very accurate that was written it was just one article which was it was simply not an accurate article um so I the I I I thought it was okay um the but I think like Mike Judge did an amazing job with office base like that's one of my favorite movies ever um and he may be here so be nice great he was here a few minutes ago no problem um anyway so so a movie like office space just really nailed it um I don't think Silicon Valley the show quite

Nails it it's not it's not quite it's not quite right uh so that's you know that that's my objection to it it doesn't it doesn't quite get it right in my opinion but I've heard that the later episodes are better I saw the first two so yes UC Berkeley hi um I used to work in large scale renewable energy mostly solar and I was wondering that given all the the release of the patents uh of the batteries and and and and all the knowledge on small scale Renewables like Solar City if uh if um is there uh something coming about like large renewable uh energy storage from the from all the batteries uh patents in in Tesla what Tesla is going to do a stationary storage of you know in a very large scale way because it's it's very important to pair battery packs with

solar power and and for wind it's even more important uh so with with the gigafactory that we're creating in Nevada we're going to create uh many well probably tens of gwatt hours per year of stationary storage um on the battery front so that yeah there's a light coming for sure hi my name is Tina I'm Mar from China so my questions is relevant to China Market how would you in your perspectives how would you forecast about the electric vehicles the demand in China and how's the Tesla strategies in the coming year uh yeah sure I think things seem to going you know fairly well in in China we've had a very enthusiastic response and um yeah I think I think longterm it seems likely that China would be the biggest market for Tesla um so uh yeah I'm really really

optimistic about things over there is it going to be bigger than the North America it seems likely that um it you know it would likely be bigger than North America yeah in the long term and how about the government regulations and the local competitors there um the government's been pretty good I mean there's there is certainly um in terms of the incentive structure it does favor local production but overall it's um you know I I think it's not been too too much of an issue um the government's been been great so far yeah thank you uh hi I'm Manu I'm a sophore at Stanford and U all of your work has been uh bringing uh people from Place A to B in the in the fastest and the most environmentally friendly uh manner there's also another kind of research happening

in the valley where people are trying to avoid Transportation at all we call it virtual reality right so I can be in my dor and I can see you speaking with the same level of contact on my Oculus Rift as I am here right now taking the calra or the Tesla or even a SpaceX rocket in the future uh how do you think will virtual reality tie in the future of Transportation which you are working on thank you well maybe we're in a simulation right now yeah yeah yeah [Laughter] seriously um some feels like that um yeah I mean I think it is going to from what I've heard of IUS Rift and and some of the other immersive technologies that it's quite transformative uh you really feel like you're there um and and then when you come out of it it feels like reality isn't

real um so I think we'll see probably less physical movement in the future as a result of the virtual reality stuff um yeah and when we come out of what we're here now into this virtual reality we'll think it's real I mean it's like well I mean there's some interesting things here on the virtual reality front um and I mean just on the whole notion of a simulation which is that if if you just if you extrapolate into the future and say well how good let's say will video games be in in 100 or 200 or 1,000 years from now if if there's continued Improvement um and you know you're in a full body haptic suit with a sort of surround vision and you know you it's it's it becomes Beyond a certain resolution indistinguishable from reality um if and and there will

likely to be there likely to be Millions maybe maybe billions of such simulations so then what are the odds that we're actually in base reality isn't it one in billions is it I mean gives I can give the counter argument but I'd rather you give the counter argument uh it obviously this feels real but but it it it may I mean it seems unlikely to be real uh my name is Danielle I'm an architect uh from paloalto I just completed a net zero passive house and I'm now a fellow at the Stanford Business School and I'm working with a group of students on a project to um come up with the most innovative ways to solve big problems in cities and we've identified Detroit as our prime target two questions uh what do you see as city-wide Innovation um and since women

don't ask as we're taught I'm going to ask would you come down to Stanford and bring M storm on this with us um this may sound Tri but I I think I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration um so I mean if you look at a city you have you look at I can you have all these apartment buildings and Office Buildings and there are many levels like they're you know be like an average of in Manhattan I don't know what is an average of like 30 stories or something like that but then you've got a street which is one story this is an obvious issue like you have a 30 to1 ratio of you know so you should have multi-layered highways yeah underground stacked up yeah and you can have tunnels to the tunnels don't have to follow the the buildings they

can they can be they can go diagonally through the basement yeah yeah and you can have as many levels as you want M so it's really just the cost of building the tunnels um and um but really it's tunnel is a hole in the ground like how hard can it really be I mean just so it seems like if if some Ur put their effort into building tunnels you know effectively be transformative to cities around the world um I'll certainly consider coming giving a talk I mean I'm in paloalto every week so certain be open to it sure um what other things besides you know tunnels hyper Loops you've talked about other things that are great visions that could transform a daily what we call reality which I assume is reality for the moment um yeah I mean it's with within cities

it's sort of tunnels tunnels and tunnels and tubes uh and I mean for longdistance travel I really think that the vertical tequ of Landing electric supersonic aircraft is the way to go um and um I think it's it's very doable uh so that that that would be the way to go for long distance transation like for for if you're going more than like 500 Miles because then you have any to any uh you solve the any to any problem of a long distance for shorter distances because you have a time to climb and a time to descend uh penalty below 500 Miles um aircraft are not as good um so um that's why I think sort of some sort of evacu evacuated tube is is a better way to to travel what is an evacuated tube well you know just something where you've reduced the air density

so the drag is dramatically reduced then it's like it's as though you got got teleported to altitude right um and you can grow much faster um and and not have to have the climb and descend issues hi I'm Lawrence I'm a sophomore at Stanford and I run a music startup um we all know that you have all those really crazy ideas in the best way possible uh but how do you come up with those ideas could you tell me more about your creative process and also uh once you have those great ideas how do you go about uh capitalizing uh those really ambitious ideas if you have very few limited Financial Resources well I think the the great thing about sort of software or anything which just involves uh intellectual capital of a capital of you and you friends you and a

few friends is that you can just do it so that's why you know doing some sort of internet thing or software thing is is great as an initial um company to create that's why it's zip2 and PayPal they they gave me the capital to attempt to do more Capital intense activities um I mean in as far as idea generation I think um when I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint like from a first principal standpoint what would be the best way to accomplish something um and then pursue that um so and that's also a good way to determine if there's a if if something's far from its Optimum um and um like on on rockets for example um one could say oh you know that you could Reason by analogy and say the Rocket's going to cost a certain amount because

that's what prior Rockets have cost or you can say well what is a rocket made of what the material constituents what are those M what do they weigh what what's the cost per unit mass and that that sets the limit ASM totically for what a rocket can be so if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape then you can uh achieve a much better outcome that's the first principles approach um and I think also just combining um ideas from different Industries is really helpful for Innovation so you what what have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other Industries that's um I think also a great source of ideas um but but you usually just struggle on a solution and um you try try a bunch of things

some of them don't work and some of them and you most of them don't work and occasionally one does you mentioned the startup of PayPal which is a great Innovation that happened in sort of how we pay for things that seems to me an area in which it hasn't been as much subsequent Innovation other than Bitcoin as it should be in other words quickly transferring money especially to people you don't know or whatever uh is to Me Maybe I'm Wrong far more difficult than it seems like it should be are you somewhat disappointed with the way PayPal then proceeded or are you disappointed with the lack of innovation in the digital currency and and um environment yeah Pap has definitely I mean it hasn't moved much since from when when it was sort of um bought by eBay

um the the longterm Vision that I had for PayPal or sort of in in in in sort of Finance was to to to well it sounds a bit strange like to to convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous uh insecure databases to one database or well not one database but maybe there'd be like a few more um the the money is just a number in a database that's what it is um and it's primarily an information mechanism for labor allocation and the current databases are not very efficient like there you know there are these old Legacy main frames that don't talk to each other very well have post security and uh only do their and do bash processing once a day are you glad PayPal is being spun off it's probably the right move and what would you do with it um well

I think I think I convert it into more of a full service financial institution so you just you you want to do um all the things that uh a consumer you want to have like all the financial services that somebody needs in one place seamlessly integrated together and easy to use um and I think really really care about the consumer I think a lot of banks don't seem to care that much about the customer so um I I think there's an opportunity to be like a really good bank effectively but but but much more than what people think of it do you think Bitcoin will be disruptive in that way I mean now it's a speculative currency will it be something that will be what normal consumers will use and will disrupt the banking industry my opinion B point is that I mean I

think Bitcoin is probably a good thing um but it's it's essentially uh it its main thing thing will be I this probably get quoted here and there but the it it it's it's I think it's primarily going to be a means of of doing illegal transactions um but that's not necessarily entirely bad CU you know you know some things should be maybe shouldn't be illegal U so um but the combination of Silk Road and Bitcoin will save us well it will be used for for legal and illegal transactions otherwise it would have no value as a use of for for legal transaction because you have to have a legal to Illegal Bridge yeah um I don't own any Bitcoin by way we uh I let you get the last word sir I promise it'll be fast you on Bob shiky from Tom Reuters India just launched

a uh a mission to Mars $75 million to get that thing was it as Astro Teller said a miracle or is there something fundamental about the Indian space industry that allowed them to do a mission like that for so cheap and if so is there something that we can pick up and learn from that I think it's a very impressive Mission um given that it was executed by um a government entity that's like really really impressive um I mean impressive no matter who's doing but from a c standpoint impressive because it's being done by a government entity um ultimately we have to be able to do missions to Mars for much less than that um otherwise it'll be impossible to establish a self-sustaining civilization on Mars um you because we'll have to transport millions of tons

of cargo millions of people um and the the cost of moving to Mars has to be affordable otherwise people won't be able to go uh so it has to ultimately come down by couple orders of magnitude from from that level sub million sub a million dollars then a couple orders of magnitude I'd say below well below a million yeah Elon Musk great innovator thank you very much and good luck tomorrow we'll we'll we'll be looking to see what was right under our nose uh when you announce it tomorrow sir right good thank you [Music]