Saudi-US Investment Forum May 13, 2025 On stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum, Musk lays out his vision of a world transformed by "tens of billions" of humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, AI and abundant energy.
On stage at the Saudi-US Investment Forum, Musk lays out his vision of a world transformed by "tens of billions" of humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, AI and abundant energy.
Transcript Interviewer
Now, I'm sure we can do a better welcome than that to Elon Musk in Saudi Arabia. There you go. That's the spirit.
Interviewer
Elon, my dear friend, we're honored to have President Trump. We're honored under the sponsorship and guidance of his Royal Highness to celebrate a U.S. saudi and a Saudi U. S relationship that is 92 years old about how we move from an oil based economy to an innovation based economy powered by wonderful technologies that definitely you're one of the pioneers in this industry. We just showed to his Royal Highness some of your optimus robots.
Interviewer
And to President Trump. Let's talk about that. Tell me about them.
Yes. So we just showed several of our Tesla optimus robots to his Highness and President Trump and I think they were very impressed. In fact, one of our robots did the Trump dance, which I think was pretty cool.
Interviewer
At ymca. Yeah, yeah.
To ymca. So, yeah, robots can dance, they can walk around, they can interact. I think we're headed to a radically different world. I think a good world, an interesting world. My prediction actually for humanoid robots is that ultimately there will be tens of billions. I think everyone will want to have their personal robot. You can think of it like as though you had your own personal C3PO or R2D2. But even better, then who wouldn't want to have their own personal C3PO? R2D2. That would be pretty great. And I also think it unlocks an immense amount of economic potential because when you think about what is the output of an economy, it is productivity per capita times population per capita. Once you have humanoid robots, the actual economic output potential is tremendous. It's really unlimited. Potentially we could have an economy 10 times the size of the current global economy where no one wants for anything. Sometimes in AI they talk about universal basic income. I think it's actually going to be universal high income where anyone can have any goods or services that they want. You know, a science fiction book recommendation that I have, which I think is probably the best envisioning of an AI future, is the culture books by Ian Banks. Very highly recommended for a non dystopian view of the future. Now, there obviously are some risks, you know, which illustrate perhaps if we don't do this right, you know, you could have like a James Cameron sort of movie, you know, Terminator. We don't want that one. But having sort of a Star Trek future would be great where we're out there exploring the stars, discovering the nature of the universe and a level of prosperity and hopefully happiness that we can't quite imagine yet. So I'm very excited about the future and very glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Interviewer
It's our absolute pleasure. And His Royal Highness was talking to you about his vision and his dream to increase productivity for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and power up the region and the whole world with robotics, but also on robo taxis. So how are we doing on robo taxis?
Yeah. So really you can think of a car or future cars as being robots on four wheels. And you know, I think it would be very exciting to have autonomous vehicles here in the Kingdom.
Interviewer
You heard it here from Elon. He's bringing his robo taxi to the Kingdom. Yes, he has another announcement that he.
Yes, exactly. So. And I'd also like to thank the Kingdom for approving Starlink for maritime and aviation use. Thank you.
Interviewer
Maritime and aviation. There you go. There you go.
So, yeah, so you're going to bring
Interviewer
us robots to help us increase our productivity. Robotaxis to make sure that our cars and assets turn, to turn into a cash generating unit.
Interviewer
And Starlink, Starlink to reform our aviation and maritime.
Interviewer
Talk about xai.
Absolutely. And, but I want to mention also something that may be worth considering is tunnels, the Boring company. I have this company called the Boring Company, which sounds kind of boring, but it's, it's, it literally bores tunnels and actually tunnels in order to solve traffic, you really need to go 3D with roads. And by using tunnels you can essentially create like a wormhole, like a warp tunnel from one part of a city to another and alleviate traffic. And we've actually already done this proof of concept in Vegas. So there are working tunnels in Las Vegas that you can use where that will just, it feels like teleporting from one part of Vegas to another. So I always say that, you know, my joke is like tunnels are underappreciated. You know, it's a bit of a, not always a hit, but so. Yeah, and then XAI is just trying to solve general purpose artificial intelligence. The goal with XAI is to have a maximally truth seeking AI. And it's, it's important to be maximally truth seeking AI in order to understand the universe. So the, the goal of XAI is understand the universe to understand, you know, you know, what, what is out there? Where's the universe going? Where did it come from? What questions? In fact, I think maybe the biggest thing is what questions do we not know to ask? Once you know the question, the answer is usually the easy part. So the goal of Xai is to help understand the universe and yeah, that's the goal and help people answer any questions along the way, of course. But I mean, that's my philosophy. My philosophy is one of curiosity, just trying to understand the nature of reality.
Interviewer
So I know you had a long day, but we also have the honorable president and his royal Highness hitting the stage soon. So this is a historic day, a partnership about how we could join hands together as we have joined hands in the past 92 years on building a factor based economy to help the world and power up 20% of the energy mix, which is very critical today to the AI Intelligence age, the digital age, and how we have reformed. And with the intelligence age and we could not be more appreciative of having a lifetime partner and a friend like you. Elon, to the kingdom.
Interviewer
Joining hands on.