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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future
- iMuzz 10y agoQuestion/Answer I found interesting: Sama> How should someone figure out how they should be useful? Elon> Whatever this thing is you are trying to create.. What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?
- milkytron 10y agoCertainly very interesting, in fact I wrote this down when I heard it. And if you look at the projects he's working on (Renewable energy, cars able to powered by renewable energy, and preserving life outside of Earth), they all affect a great portion of humanity, and have a very large affect.
- soufron 10y agoAffect like how? As of today they're useless, except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.
- marvin 10y agoTesla's energy storage enables people to use solar energy at night, without the process being a big hassle. If it gets cheap enough, it will make solar power competitive with fossil power in most scenarios. Currently, the battery installations are a cost-competitive alternative to fossil ways of covering peak load. Calling it useless is probably a stretch. Ditto with Tesla's cars; they aren't a drop-in replacement for gasoline cars in all scenarios but I've heard more than one Tesla owner say that they will never buy a gas-powered car again. So obviously that implies greater utility for the person in question than any current gas-powered car.
- soufron 10y agoYou're kind of right. Let's say they find the right uses for existing tech that's not being used as it should.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoAre Tesla's energy storage solutions available anywhere outside their vehicles?
- dv_dt 10y agoYes. Tesla Powerwall, a home battery. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall
- jsprogrammer 10y agoI don't think those are planned to ship until 2018.
- dv_dt 10y ago"During the first quarter of 2016, Tesla delivered over 25 MWh of energy storage to customers on four continents. Over 2,500 Powerwalls and nearly 100 Powerpacks were delivered in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.[33]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall I don't know if those were still pilot program devices or if they've hit some level of regular production. 2500 units is still a good start.
- intended 10y agoSo what happens to the batteries when they go bad or old?
- collinmanderson 10y agoYes, likely you'd need to get all-new batteries every 10 years[1] or so. (And likely recycle the old ones.) The good news is that batteries are getting about 8% more efficient every year (price per kwh) [2]. So 10 years from now batteries will be 1.08^10 = ~2.15x as efficient [3]. So when you replace them, they'll cost half as much for the same amount of energy storage (and probably half the space too). It's basically Moore's law for batteries except slower. [1] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall https://www.tesla.com/powerwall [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already-probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/ https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-alread... [3] or is it 1/(.92^10)? That would be 2.3x
- milkytron 10y agoI suppose I should have wrote "will affect". If we end up colonizing Mars, or even getting one person to land on Mars, I think Space X will have been involved in creating competition in the aerospace industry at the least. My point was that his ideas are ones that have potential for huge amounts of change. Whether or not we will see that change is another matter.
- tempestn 10y agoSpaceX could also end up having a huge effect on the availability and affordability of high speed internet access.
- jklinger410 10y ago>except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before. This is enough, no? The same with Space-X...
- Applejinx 10y agoHe is quite correct that societies can go backwards. There are many scenarios in which we would have 'the tech' and then end up abandoning and losing it. One simple example would be if one corporation profited more by wrecking 'the tech' of another and blocking its adoption, than the other could profit by furthering it. When it all comes down to money you get those suboptimal outcomes, and in the end somebody cashed in epically, but things were not made. I'm pleased Elon gets this, but it's a chilling thought. We don't have to have MORE stuff, internets, communications etc. just because of Moore's Law, just because it's possible. We can also have progressively less because it's in someone's interest for it to be less.
- michaelhoney 10y agoYes. Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...
- RealityVoid 10y agoI find this false. Tesla is mainly a electric car company, not an autonomous car company. Other companies have the same class of capabilities in the market, it's just that Tesla has the good will of the people. I like Tesla, but calling it an autonomous car company is ridiculous.
- the8472 10y agothat's just utilitarianism in action
- fchollet 10y agoThe equation should have per-subject weights to modulate the "how many people" part. For instance, if my app helps Mr. Musk be 10% more productive, that's more impactful than helping Mr. Smith be 10% more productive.
- tscizzle 10y agoI assume the equation he's talking about already propagates the value to the "leaves", where if the app is boosting a person's productivity, and that person's productivity increases value for a group of people, then it's that final group of people's increased value that is counted toward the original total. And there could be more than 2 layers before you quantify the value without recursing any deeper, of course.
- metaphorm 10y agoabsurd hero worship. I like Elon Musk just fine, but you're fawning over him. How do you propose we nominate "great persons" for your "equation" anyway?
- i2shar 10y agoThe weights would be different based on who's assigning them.
- Whitestrake 10y agoHypothetically, this is unnecessary. Assuming that a 10% increase in productivity causes a 10% increase in the impact on people (either in quality or quantity), 10% of Mr. Musk's impact may be greater in absolute terms than 10% of Mr. Smith's. One may debate whether 10% productivity = 10% impact, but if that increase is attributed back to you, there's no need to artificially manipulate the equation.
- piedradura 10y agoI would add another multiplicative factor: the probability that you have success in what you are trying to achieve, if that probability is near zero you effort will be in vain.
- metaphorm 10y agoyou should read some Taleb on this subject. ignoring low probability outcomes is not a good risk/success model.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoI ask as someone who is vaguely familiar with Taleb's ideas but didn't read the book: That is a really fascinating point, especially considering this is literally a case where you are "betting your (future) life" on the low probability outcome event. I mean, what is your hedge in that case? Does Taleb talk about that too?
- piedradura 10y agoThe problem with low probability outcome events is that when you repeat the same experiment many times that event can happen with high probability.
- metaphorm 10y agoI think you should just read the book(s). They're very well written and enlightening.
- tim333 10y agoI guess a hedge in that case would be to try to arrange things so they come out OK if you miss the goal. Like if you want to be president aim for the fail case being a successful lesser politician. Not sure what Taleb says.
- spaceknarf 10y agoTaleb investment advice: put almost all of your savings in super stable investments, like treasuries. Use the rest to bet on unicorn startups, or highly leveraged options (as long as those options have a limited downside and an unlimited upside!). I'm not quite sure how to apply this to one's career.
- Paul_S 10y agoWhat about all the people working in marketing, software patent lawyers, drug dealers? You want them to quit their jobs? --- Let me make my point in a less obtuse way. Most people make decisions about their careers based on opportunity and maximising profit. No one becomes a footballer to make the world a better place. This would all be fine as long as the capitalist market rewarded choices that make the world a better place. Obviously it does not and it's not the fault of a footballer that we as a civilisation choose to channel our available resources their way and not towards frivolous play like space exploration. If anyone ever figures out a way to make the free market choose the greater good they will win all the Nobel prizes forever (we won't need Nobel prizes after that).
- leesalminen 10y ago'Tis an interesting point. > Drug dealers Perhaps drug dealers (and their suppliers) can implement testing, QA and proper labeling. I'm not totally sure about software patent lawyers. But, deep down, my gut says that if software patent law wasn't to crappy, perhaps the occupation would be perceived in a better light. Maybe they could push for reform from the inside? On the whole, I think every industry can do some introspection on how they can affect more people for the betterment of society. It would do us all some good.
- Paul_S 10y agoLet me make my point in a less obtuse way. Most people make decisions about their careers based on opportunity and maximising profit. No one becomes a footballer to make the world a better place. This would all be fine as long as the capitalist market rewarded choices that make the world a better place. Obviously it does not and it's not the fault of a footballer that we as a civilisation choose to channel our available resources their way and not towards frivolous play like space exploration. If anyone ever figures out a way to make the free market choose the greater good they will win all the Nobel prizes forever (we won't need Nobel prizes after that).
- karmelapple 10y ago
- erjjones 10y ago> What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect? Translation: The change of something being useful, profitable, or beneficial multiplied by the potential target audience. IMO - What a great measure to determine the scale ability of an idea.
- babyrainbow 10y ago> utility delta I get a feeling that this phrase is going to be popular among Elon fanboys.
- purplelobster 10y agoWouldn't a better formula be the expected value of the outcome: utility delta * #people * probability of success?
- idlewords 10y agoI am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.
- firasd 10y agoWhile we're at it, these are great interviews and I'm glad they're being created and published, and I'd appreciate if the series was available as a podcast... I only noticed this new interview because I happened to be on HN right now.
- jwuphysics 10y agoI searched on my podcast app, and found an RSS feed that has the three existing episodes. Who would have known that YC has a SoundCloud account? https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:246829364/sounds.rss https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:24682936...
- kcorbitt 10y agoPodcasts are also great because they let you save something now and listen to it later (in the car, doing chores, etc.). I'm really interested in listening to this, but by tomorrow when I'm doing something that is amenable to listening in the background I'll probably have forgotten it exists. If I could add "How to Build the Future" to a listening queue I'd certainly be more likely to get around to it!
- etendue 10y agoHow would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?
- milkytron 10y agoI'm not sure if you would consider this meaningful, but if you have software development skills, either developing applications that can be used to solve problems in genetics, or that save the time of those working on solving those problems.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y agoI'm not sure you would. I mean, I'm sure you could somehow, but at this point so much of what needs to be done is basic research, and really can be done well in that context. There aren't many things that are ready to leave the context of a research lab and into commercialization. We've got some notable disasters with Theranos, and even the YC funded Taxa (glowing plant - that was a farce from the get-go, but they're doing some potentially interesting stuff now). As far as education, it's not something you can learn by yourself, it just isn't. Most of the methods in a biological wet lab are very far from standardized and need a great deal of troubleshooting. Most post-docs in a new lab spend a couple months just trying to get basic stuff working that they've done dozens of times before. It's hard. You need people around you with experience and perspective, and doctorate programs are likely the only place you're going to get that kind of training. I think there are a lot of people that want to approach biology with a CS mindset, especially the people interested in synthetic biology, but that rarely bears fruit. It could get to that place eventually, but there's a lot of ground to cover. In that sense I agree with Elon that, despite the huge impact genetic engineering could have, it's not the next thing because we're not ready yet. There's still too much that's fundamental to biological problems that we simply don't understand, and solving things in one species usually doesn't translate very far across taxa.
- srunni 10y ago> Most of the methods in a biological wet lab are very far from standardized and need a great deal of troubleshooting. Most post-docs in a new lab spend a couple months just trying to get basic stuff working that they've done dozens of times before. Having had experience with syn bio in grad school and trying to reconcile the empirical (biology) and first principles (CS/math) approaches, I've been thinking a lot lately about how to streamline the troubleshooting process for picking up and optimizing wet lab methods. I'd love to chat - my email's in my profile.
- astazangasta 10y agoOf course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our economic lives around feudal holdovers like land titles. Who gives a shit if Elon Musk can connect his brain to the Internet and live forever as a sentient AI, while the rest of humanity drinks ditch water and lives small, dull lives?
- loopdoend 10y agoI agree with your sentiment but I think the extremely aggressive tone of your post ruined any chance you had of swaying potential anarcho-sympathizers.
- yyyuuu 10y agoI don't know why you are being downvoted. You put forward a valid point. Perhaps the fanboys here could understand the desperation most of the world still lives in, even today!!!
- paradite 10y agoHe might have a valid point but the point is off-topic. Here the context is technology, not politics or economic policies.
- petra 10y agoNot really. Many discussions here are about politics and economic policies, which btw are important forces for some enterpreneurs to be aware of.
- paradite 10y agoApologies. What I mean is the interview's context is technology (what you would expect from YC and Elon Musk). Hence, his answer to the questions would naturally be about technology rather than other important aspects of human civilization.
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- soufron 10y agoSince when did entrepreneurs decided to speak in scifi-bullshit? "We have a digital tertiary self in the form of out email capabilities, our computers, phones, applications." And also, arrogant to the point of being funny? "Interviewer: Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?Elon: Mostly not." LOL.
- friendlygrammar 10y agoYou realize that Elon talking about scifi shit is one of the primary drivers of Tesla stock not tanking? Investors love that crap. I still love the dude though.
- soufron 10y agoI kind of like him too. But it's still scifi BS :D Funny that investors actually like it.
- Pfhreak 10y ago> Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs? > Elon: Mostly not. Is this arrogant? I get asked all the time whether a masters in computer science is useful for someone who wants to be a dev. In general, no, a bachelors degree is fine. Maybe you feel the reverse is the problem, that he's suggesting that some people do need a PhD to be useful? I think there are people and some disciplines for whom getting a PhD greatly expands their ability to contribute. "Mostly not." Seems like a fair statement to me?
- RodericDay 10y agoElon Musk isn't the kind of person I thought he was. > "Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[116] > Musk is a self-described American exceptionalist and nationalist, describing himself as "nauseatingly pro-American". According to Musk, the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth", describing it as "the greatest force for good of any country that's ever been". Musk believes outright that there "would not be democracy in the world if not for the United States" > Musk has directly contributed to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been accused of holding [skeptical] positions regarding climate change.[121]" I thought he was like John Carmack or something, but at the end of the day he's mostly a sales guy with big dreams. The self-taught rocket engineer stuff is mostly self-promotion.
- LordHumungous 10y ago>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.
- samstave 10y agoSeems to work for him though...
- muninn_ 10y agoSeems like it's working though? Why not redefine what a CEO's role is? Just a though here no arguing intended. :)
- cfreeman 10y agoWell he is technically the CTO of SpaceX.
- LordHumungous 10y agoSeems like it's not working, since his companies are hemorrhaging money.
- rantanplan 10y agoWe're just used to CEOs having only a decorative role, who can be replaced in an instant. So much so that when we see a CEO actually working/engaging with the actual product/service, they seem like a peculiar and rare specimen.
- duaneb 10y agoI would not characterize many CEOs as being "a decorative role, who can be replaced in an instant". Leading may not be hands-on engineering and design (at least, you hope!), but it's certainly FAR from decorative.
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- tehchromic 10y agoWhat's interesting about a savant is how they can end up defined by what they don't see. I have nothing but respect for Elon, however I think he is working on the wrong problems. That's not his fault and he is most definitely making his best effort. However he's the paragon of a paradigm of a European culture which is as unsustainable as it is powerful.
- hx87 10y agoSo what are the right problems to work on, and what paradigms are more sustainable than European culture?
- Plough_Jogger 10y agoAlso, worth noting that he was born in South Africa.
- tehchromic 10y agoA perfect example of unsustainable European cultural paradigm!
- tehchromic 10y agoI am not sure that all European cultural paradigms are unsustainable, but I said that the one Elon is working under seems to me to be. I think Elon is doing the best he can working on the problems that are available for him to work on. To me, one wrong problem is anything that perpetuates the automobile/road system as is. I think the whole thing needs to be completely rebuilt. To me the enormity of our problems from a sustainability standpoint are so great that anything but a massive mobilization and shift in our way of life is arranging deck chairs on the titanic. I think that religion was a science of mobilizing public opinion, and I think science has replaced it, and has yet to do as good a job, and has yet to recognize that fact. I think the right problem is how to manage mass social/cultural change in a very brief period of time. I'll say again, Elon is doing a fantastic job within the paradigm of our current industrialized cultural norms, which says that we can keep on with business as usual and make some adjustments to our systems ... but I think it's not enough by an order of magnitude, and so that's why I think minds like Elon's should be working on manufacturing a social/cultural reality that prepares us for a huge change in lifestyle. To me that's a problem of social engineering, same as religion, and same as building a company, and Elon excels at it.
- mattbeckman 10y agoHaving watched a good number of Elon Musk interviews, I wish more interviewers would ask more direct questions. Asking Elon general questions usually results in fairly similar responses to what you have heard before or read in his biography.
- choxi 10y agoI'm curious -- what would you ask him?
- wott 10y agoHow to build reliable stuff on time? But the answer might be shorter.
- iamcreasy 10y agoI have one. He has always said the chances of SpaceX succeeding was very slim - but at what point(after any particular technical achievement) he realized the this might work out.
- Already__Taken 10y agoI'm fairly sure i've heard this answer and it would be after that falcon 1 launch that would have bankrupted the company if it blew up.
- iamcreasy 10y agoWasn't Falcon 1 a test bed for Falcon 9? I remember one when Tom Mueller called Elon Musk to say the a full length Merlin burn was completed without melting the engine. That was a big milestone. I am pretty sure there have multiple of this yahoo moments successively - that made him believe that SpaceX will be able to succeed.
- amai 10y agoI would ask him, if he is still using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall .
- aantix 10y agoWhy does Elon continuously talk about AI as if it's taking over the world? At this point, Siri can barely understand me saying the word 'salad'. Slow down Elon... slow down..
- railorsi 10y ago> Siri
- byebyetech 10y agoI guess Kurzweil and Elon spend some time on WhatsApp. But since Elon thinks in terms of first principles. He probably has this reasoning: 1. Are the any laws of physics that stop us from creating AI ? Answer is No. Nature already built it so its possible. 2. Is it possible to improve AI significantly ? Yes, because if we can build AI, AI can build better AI. 3. How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years. 4. Is it good idea to start worrying about it now? Sure why not.
- tedmiston 10y agoNot to mention recent advancements in deep learning / machine learning with neural nets. It seems like that field has really proliferated over the past 5ish years. (I'm not sure what breakthrough specifically has led to all this, but we have TensorFlow, Torch, etc.)
- astrange 10y agoIf you've checked out recent papers in machine translation with deep learning, they're about as good as current products with supposedly just a week of unsupervised training. So it's really going places. Of course, the demos (http://104.131.78.120 http://104.131.78.120) fail all the time because they haven't done the work to feed in the whole internet and handle proper names and stuff.
- marcosdumay 10y agoI guess the entire cognitive dissonance com from this line: > How soon can it happen? Since the trend is exponential. It can happen within 100 years. Some people think "well, it's likely to happen within 100 years -> it's up to us to be prepared". Other people think "well, it's unlikely to happen within 10 years -> it's not worth it to begin to prepare". I don't even know if one of those is wrong!
- spectrum1234 10y agoIs this the Tesla factory in the background?
- Etheryte 10y agoYes, but it's not the new large one.
- kstenerud 10y agoIt always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have thought that the technologists were above such petty envy. We're here to improve humanity's lot, aren't we?
- guelo 10y agoAu contraire, people that know the technology and industry can see through the PR much more clearly.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoBullshit. Two of the three items on the GP's list have already been done and complainers seem to be in denial about that. Startup industry is a great place to find tons of PR bullshit though, so I wonder if this isn't people projecting their own guilt...
- hueving 10y agoOnly one has been done, building rockets. It's not safe to say he paved the way for the electric car revolution since there hasn't been one.
- varjag 10y agoI dunno. There are more Teslas than Fords around here. Perhaps the revolution is not evenly distributed.
- astazangasta 10y agoThe income is not evenly distributed.
- aantix 10y agoWhy do they discuss the speed of the line? Isn't the finalized output a much more useful metric? (e.g. one car per hour)? If there's a ton of work done at the various checkpoints, the pace is slow but maybe the length of the line isn't very far?
- Nanite 10y agoIt seemed to me the question was asked in the context of some closing small talk, and got a very Musk answer :) as far as I know, the Tesla assembly lines have nowhere near the amount of robotics of the much larger volume lines of for instance Honda, so very slow by those standards.
- mikeyouse 10y agoI toured the GM Lansing Delta Township assembly plant a few years ago where they make mid-size SUVs like the GMC Acadia, Buick Enclave, and Chevy Traverse. At the time, with a ton of robotic welders, sleds, etc. they were running 3 shifts and turning out 60 cars/hour. Last year, Tesla sold 50,000 cars. It would take the Delta plant roughly a month to make that many. GM has ~15 equivalent plants worldwide. I love Tesla and am glad to see the NUMMI plant up and running again, but even their most ambitious sales plans for the next 10 years pale in comparison to business as usual for the major manufacturers. edit Curiosity got the better of me, so I looked up the 2015 sales figures for those 3 vehicles from that one plant. Acadia: 96,393; Traverse: 119,945; Enclave: 62,081. So roughly 280,000 SUVs produced at the one assembly plant last year without much fanfare.
- OrwellianChild 10y agoA better comparison might have been NUMMI's production capacity in it's prime as a joint GM/Toyota plant. They were producing about 26k vehicles/month (312k/year) until May 2010. [1] Apples to oranges - a Carolla is not a Model X - but interesting datum nonetheless. [1] http://ww.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=125229157 http://ww.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyI...
- messel 10y agoThis was a bunch of fun. Notes: Be useful, that's fine, no need to alter the world drastically. Big Next shifts: AI & Genetic Modification (oh and a faster connection to our minds) High probability of failure, not a problem. Tesla, Space X. Push the ball forward. Democratization of AI is a best possible outcome (direct connection, we are the AI)
- daveguy 10y ago> Be useful, that's fine, no need to alter the world drastically. More specifically: if you make a minor improvement that affects a lot of people (improve video streaming) it is just as good as a major improvement that drastically affects a few people (curing an extremely rare disease). It's the area under the curve that matters. The best would obviously be a large effect over a large number of people, but minor improvements can be very useful.
- misterbishop 10y agoHow to build the future: Take $5B in public subsidy for boondoggle technologies, and then tell everyone you're fiscally conservative. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...
- Applejinx 10y agoYou see, you've already lost me because nearly everything worthwhile has been funded by public sector money, notably space and the Internet. To my mind, claiming to be 'fiscally conservative' may be a good tactical claim as a CEO of rapidly expanding publically held companies, but in practical terms it's a terrible idea. If Elon is turning public money into technology, I'm enthusiastic about that. I'm sure there are ways to nationalize his industry if it proves necessary. Better that, than privatizing things: that's a recipe for bad answers and a untimely demise due to market forces. Maybe I don't want AI, electric cars, and space travel to die because some hedge fund needed immediate profits the very next quarter.
- misterbishop 10y agoTwo points for your consideration: #1: We clearly have the resources to publicly invest in innovative technologies like electric cars, AI and space travel. So why must these investments go directly into the hands of a few individuals to make all the final decisions (and who have bad habits of not paying their workers btw)? Why can't we make these investments through democratically accountable teams, perhaps via some academic mechanism? #2: When you make a risky investment as an individual in a startup, you expect to get a commensurate return on that investment if the startup becomes successful in the marketplace. Why don't the collective investments of the public in Musk's ventures come back to citizens in a kind of public dividend?
- Applejinx 10y ago#1: It's seed money with which Elon is raising mind-boggling amounts of investor money, using his celebrity as a lever. I consider it a hack, but it's an effective one. Also, being the public face of a decision isn't the same thing as making the decision. So far, I like the results being produced. #2: Got me there with colonizing Mars: that will be rich-only. However, proliferation of electric cars combined with breakthroughs in energy storage combined with local solar power can end up as a VERY big public dividend: effectively, it becomes possible to invest in technology that drastically reduces the self-sustaining costs and carbon footprint of the individual. Combine that with growing your own food and you're your own little generation ship: it's a drastic change from traditional labor/capital society, because you can set up your little 'life capsule' and then spend your days doing whatever, perhaps working on OpenAI :) And if it's good enough for Elon it's good enough for everybody else: imagine if not just megacorporations but ordinary citizens were subsidized to convert to this battery-pack-based, solar-powered energy consumption model. We could use plain human self-interest to drive widespread adoption of tech that would reduce the catastrophic swerve into a far more chaotic and destructive global climate. I'd call that a public dividend, worldwide.
- cinquemb 10y ago"But we're extremely bandwidth-constrained in that interface between the cortex and that tertiary digital form of yourself. And helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be, I think, very important in the future as well. Yeah." After working and consulting with labs while building/hacking software/hardware for neural interfaces and seeing where the field is now, I have very little hope. Too much bureaucracy, and too much (darpa) money going after red queens races (lets not even get started at all the private/nih money flowing into some labs funding even more technologically incompetent PI's) at least in neuroimaging, and companies lining up to get MIT postdocs to peddle their latest and greatest toys. I even had to find someone willing to write my grant and go through the submission process for an abstract (not even the full proposal) for DARPA-BAA-16-33, because despite calling for "BTO seeks unconventional approaches that are outside the mainstream, challenge assumptions, and have the potential to radically change established practice, lead to extraordinary outcomes, and create entirely new fields.", apparently an email submission is just not ok despite having co authored in this area and currently designing BCI related hardware and software in the open in my free time compared to a lot of newly minted assoc. profs struggling to get their matlab scripts (that someone else probably wrote years ago) to run on cluster their uni just spend 10's of millions on again this year expanding, forget understanding how any of the machines from which data is collected (and can barely analyze themselves) actually work… Yeah… semonga berhasil ;)
- tedmiston 10y agoBy that, he's referring to the brain-computer interface [0], right? Or is it broader than that? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain–computer_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain–computer_interface
- cinquemb 10y agoI assume so, but very general/handwavy with his wording, rather than on potential specific applications (of potential future mainstream use), which would help. I think most people on this forum would be interested in how such can be related to gaming, but I know researchers that who be interested in cheaper/as or more accurate mapping (think "realtime" volumetric [mni-brain like] relative powermaps calc'd from beamforming/dsp on n-electrode arrays along the scalp at x sampling rates, and canceling out influences in the impedances due to rotational moments in the head [prob using gyros/3-axis accelerometers] and potential moisture build up along the scalp) for as much a 2-3 hours of scan time on a fmri/meg now, as well as being able to collect more data outside of the "lab" (and other brain states as well).
- the_common_man 10y agoTIL that OpenAI was founded by Sam and Elon. Should get my resume polished :-)
- metamet 10y agoI'm just here for the free energy drinks and VMware backpacks.
- chorkpop 10y agoHe also exploits people because he's "building the future." He is an evil capitalist with a cult of personality and doesn't deserve the worship he gets.
- clydethefrog 10y agoThe problem with Musk is that he's managed to garner a cult of personality for being a perfect representation of an issue that has been plaguing the high tech industry for years. For decades the public has been contributing (through taxes) to the creation of the entire research and development/high tech industry, an industry that wouldn't have been created otherwise since it creates long-term profit at the expense of short-term profit (which isn't expedient to capital), an industry that requires immense collaboration among society, a society which has been contributing its social intelligence since the beginning of society itself, yet what do the people get for all this? Nothing. The public work is looted and privatized, then we are forced to buy back the products we created so a few capitalists can profit. Again, the production is collective yet its product is appropriated privately.
- chorkpop 10y agoYes, we should be able to go to space and have electric cars and ALSO improve living conditions for people. But one of those doesn't affect white guys in the tech industry.
- throw_away_777 10y agoI would say that I have benefited greatly from tech products or companies such as search, youtube, facebook, and amazon, just to name a few. Companies are not charities, they exist to make profit, often by providing useful services to their customers.
- jomamaxx 10y ago"yet what do the people get for all this" Nothing? They get massive consumer surpluses. They get cars, fridges, air travel, tv, entertainment, healthcare - better, faster, cheaper (except the later). Anyone who is able to hold a job and have an income in the Western World sees their material lives improve radically. It is a lie to say 'the capitalists win'. Consumers get far more of the surpluses than any other group.
- sama 10y agoSome HN commenters never cease to amaze with their negativity...
- forgetsusername 10y agoThis site is overwhelmingly supportive of Mr. Musk and his enterprises. Does everyone have to be?
- clydethefrog 10y agoYes, the people behind this site are also responsible for this interview so it's bad PR if the comments are critical. Check an archive of this thread, a lot of negative comments got removed.
- chc 10y agoAre you sure you're thinking of HN? The top comment on any article about Tesla here is usually someone saying "Whatever this article is about is old news and also a bad idea and also doesn't work, and BTW Tesla is losing money hand-over-fist."
- thomaskcr 10y agoAny company can build an electric car and lose money while doing it. The question isn't whether he can build a cool electric car, he clearly can. I really question the position he has put himself in financially. - He used Tesla stock to secure loans he used to purchase his stake in Solar City, the decision to purchase Solar City is at least in part driven by the fact that Elon Musk IS Tesla, without him at the helm it would be a problem and if he got margin called it would affect Tesla since he would lose a significant amount of his shares. There is no Tesla boardmember/major shareholder that doesn't have a conflict of interest for this issue. - His companies buy each other's bonds, they're basically just moving money around and building a larger house of cards - if one company goes down at this point I really don't see how it wouldn't have significant reprecussions for the others. This is especially problematic when it comes to Space X which is privately owned and its deep connection to his public companies. - It seems that if I took a big pile of money in my yard and lit it on fire, Elon would probably want to compete there (and do it better than me). All of his companies are very capital intensive and he is very leveraged at this point and has a lot of people tied to his fate - him not being focused on any one business makes this a bigger problem. And here's my biggest Elon problem: - He is a walking PR campaign. Why do we barely know any of the higher level engineers at Space X or Tesla? He is splitting his time between multiple companies, I find it impossible to believe he is involved in every engineering breakthrough at all of these companies and yet I have honestly never once heard him give credit to any of his management or engineering team. That last one is the worst for me. I don't think he's a great person and it's annoying seeing everyone fawning over him like he's Elon Kardashian for tech people. The fact an almost universal complaint at his companies is that people are undercompensated and overworked further reinforces my personal opinion he doesn't value the work of other people.
- d_burfoot 10y agoGads, what a terrible background for an interview.
- arca_vorago 10y agoGive the people with ideas funding and the future will happen. Instead what has been happening is the uber-elite have been hoarding their money and not putting it back into the economy. This is how to delay the future. To me the future is welcomed with a guarded mentality, in that for all the benifits purported to follow it, but the reality is that as we progress technologically we are going to create a new wealth schism in the people of the world the blowback of that will come back one day and bite us. If we can push the future and lessen income inequality and increase the wealth, not of investors, but average people, that is the way forward.
- merpnderp 10y agoFrom the buzz, I thought VC's were funding every 18 year old with a wild idea. Is it really hard to get serious work funded due to a lack of available capital?
- dwaltrip 10y agoThey are funding every easily digestible, consumer friendly app that has a trendy design. This is a small subset of all interesting and worthwhile ideas.
- kelvin0 10y agoGreat interview, I'm always really interested in hearing what entrepreneurs like Musk have to say. However, none of the interviews ever seem to delve into the personal aspects of his life. I would love to have Elon go through a typical day and explain how achieves some balance in his life and what that looks like for him. Being a husband, a father and a friend must be quite challenging and I would love to hear more about how he views his life in general.
- weinzierl 10y agoHe gives us a glimpse into his life in the interview: At Tesla his time is spent "almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture." At Tesla he is "in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory." He spends "basically half a day at OpenAI most weeks"
- firasd 10y agoI think he says something about spending time with his kids, etc in this Recode interview (don't remember clearly though) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4
- weinzierl 10y agoBesides the part about the importance of being useful and how to be useful I find the following answer most interesting: > So it's not that I think that the risk is that the AI would develop a will of its own right off the bat. I think the concern is that someone may use it in a way that is bad. Or even if they weren't going to use it in a way that's bad but somebody could take it from them and use it in a way that's bad, that, I think, is quite a big danger. So I think we must have democratization of AI technology to make it widely available. And that's the reason that obviously you, me, and the rest of the team created OpenAI was to help spread out AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few.
- hbt 10y agoWhat amazes me about Elon is the level of self control, discipline, perseverance, resilience, willpower etc. He's not the only one playing the game so effectively at that level but to me, he exemplifies rational behavior. I wish more entrepreneurs like Page or Bezos were in the public eye as much as Musk. I believe those traits are common to achieve your goals.
- Havoc 10y agoPlus he is a pretty mediocre public speaker...yet puts himself out there & makes an impact
- kiddico 10y agoThat's one of the reasons I love watching his public speaking events (like the tesla model reveals). Yeah, there's a good bit of production involved, but it usually feels like when a buddy is showing you something really cool that he made.
- vlunkr 10y agoHe also appeared in an episode The Simpsons. His acting was awful, but he did put himself out there.
- taneq 10y agoWas he appearing as himself? If so his acting would by definition have been perfect. :P
- sjdchid 10y agoIMO bad amateur acting often involves people reciting lines in a weird stilted way instead of just talking normally. I don't know how to act like someone else, but I can act like myself at least.
- falsestprophet 10y agoHe is a captivating public speaker. He accessibly expresses new ideas of considerable importance and complexity. What else do you want from him? SpaceX doesn't need Vince Offer.
- zxcvvcxz 10y agoSome choice quotes: "Do you think people who want to be useful should get a PhD?" "Umm... Mostly not." "Sometimes it [technology] gets worse... In '69 we were able to go to the moon.. Then the space shuttle could only take people to LEO, then the space shuttle retired... That trends to zero. People think technology automatically gets better every year but it actually doesn't, it gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better... By itself if people don't work on it technology will decline. We look at Rome and how they were able to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing, and they forgot how to do all of those things. Entropy is not on your side." "I know a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time doing media and business-y things... But 80% of my time is spent on engineering and design." "A very long time ago you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every pieces of engineering that went into it and I don't think many people get that about you." "What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."
- gregpilling 10y agoThat was the statement that was most impactful to me. "What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."
- faragon 10y agoI like very much how humble and how easy and crystal clear are his responses.
- ravenstine 10y agoI like the things that Elon Musk has done and tried, but what irritates me are all the sycophants in the media who think he's a genius wizard rather than a smart entrepreneur and don't take some of his claims with a grain of salt.
- 35bge57dtjku 10y agoAre any of his claims even original? It's not like needing to spread humans to other planets is original, yet it seems like everyone's worshiping him over such statements as though it's a new idea.
- mrfusion 10y agoUmm so there's no way to read the full transcript?
- nojvek 10y agoI wonder why the transcript is linked from scribd. It makes me download their app and doesn't even open the document. Why can't this just be good old HTML than a scribd walled garden? A horrible interface with ads shoved on your face.
- endgame 10y agoI think YC funded scribed at some point, and I can't for the life of me work out why.
- djcooley 10y agoI have all the respect in the world for what Mr. Musk has accomplished, but it has come at an amazing cost to the people around him. He is worshiped from afar but reviled by many the closer you get to his inner circle. Go read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." The question I always ask myself with the people who move mountains is what cost did that progress come at? What would someone's spouse, kids, friends, etc. say about the person?
- pj_mukh 10y agoFor the record, that book and its stories need to be taken with a grain of salt. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/597982078374817794 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/597982078374817794 Not saying Musk's accounts of the events are perfectly truthful either. Great book though!
- _RPM 10y agoPeople that worship another person generally aren't well informed. For example, people look at Elon Musk like he's a pop culture icon -- I see people talking about him on my news feed all the time, yet these people aren't even technical. It's just a way for someone to identify to some type of group. Oh look what Elon's doing, he's so great. My reaction is, why are you sharing press articles about this person? Does it make you feel better about yourself?
- justinpombrio 10y agoWould you prefer that our celebrities were less accomplished, or just that we didn't have celebrities at all?
- _RPM 10y agoI have no preference, and frankly, I'm in no position to know what's best for anyone else besides myself.
- ceejayoz 10y agoDoes it make you feel better about yourself to shit on someone who's excited about electric cars and space travel even if they're not particularly technical?
- huuu 10y agoLately I'm very concerned about my posture. Now I'm watching two people who both have a bad posture like me (hunchback, forward head). And I'm sure this is becoming a problem in the 'read from a screen all day' age. So the future of better interfaces (with your brain) Elon is talking about might be also much better for our health.
- dpc_pw 10y agoRelevant: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-06/how-elon-musk-used-broken-marketplace-play-us-all http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-06/how-elon-musk-used-... According to this, the answer to "How to Build the Future" is "make the story big, and get free money from government". Note: I have not fact-checked it or anything. Just find it interesting and relevant, so don't expect me to argue about it, and don't flag me as a troll.
- CptJamesCook 10y agoAnother way to phrase this is: If you take on big enough challenges that are important enough to America (and humanity), the government will rightfully help fund your quest.
- lutorm 10y agoI literally have no idea what they're talking about. SpaceX is providing the US government with cargo supply services at a fraction of the cost of previous alternatives and that's "free money from the government"? Read all about it: http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-releases-cots-final-report http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-releases-cots-final-report
- meric 10y agoThat article complains about the incestuous relationship between SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX. It has a point - SpaceX and Tesla using government support to keep SolarCity afloat. Zero hedge isn't always right, but they do provide alternative view points rarely seen elsewhere.
- pikachu_is_cool 10y agoThis interview was pretty dry to me. It almost seemed rehearsed, as if Elon requested the questions go like this. They only scratched the surface of a bunch of general "big picture" subjects that anyone whose paying attention right now would already know about.
- dolguldur 10y agoIf I would pray I'd pray for Elon. He's been such a source of inspiration to me. He's so brave in carrying his burden. May the fruits of his work prosper soon. Then he can take a break.
- edmundhuber 10y agoParadromics (https://paradromics.com https://paradromics.com) is working on full-bandwidth neural interfaces.
- kkotak 10y agoI don't know what you guys will do without Elon Musk. He's truly a gift to you all.
- madeupaccount 10y agoHe looks fat
- sctb 10y agoWe've banned this account, of course. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TbobbyZ 10y agoHe's gained weight, look at his gut. Also, does he sleep? Look at his eyes. I would bet money he works 60+ hours a week.
- ReedJessen 10y ago"Humans are so slow... exactly..."- Elon Musk Pretty sure Elon is a creature from outside of our simulation who has injected himself into our reality to teach us how to play the game better.
- taneq 10y agoThat would explain how he works 27 hours a day. The game's paused when he's not logged in. :P
- johnloeber 10y agoI am surprised that YC would make this page so remarkably mobile-unfriendly. I don't have the time to listen to the interview, I just want to read the transcript. They could have just pasted it in a reader-friendly format, but instead it's in an annoying Scribd applet. I don't want to sign up for their service or download the app, not to mention that it's a terrible mobile reader anyway. This was very disappointing.
- sneak 10y agoYeah, kudos to Scribd for perhaps the maximum LOC codebase for "how to make plain text completely fucking unusable". There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.
- thaumaturgy 10y ago...and copy-pasting it into a text editor gives you an unintelligible wall of text, and copy-pasting it into LibreOffice causes it to hang. Ha, that's actually kind of impressive, in a really perverse sort of way. I'm so glad Scribd is helping with the effort to carve the open web into a series of uncooperative fiefdoms.
- thaumaturgy 10y agoOK, I was able to clean it up into plain text and post it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP Used the $$ selector in Chrome to find Scribd's .ff0 elements, copied them into SublimeText, did some regex work to clean out the tags (a span element for every line? with absolute positioning? Really Scribd?), and then exploited the fact that paragraphs got jammed together with no whitespace between the last punctuation and the beginning of the next paragraph to use a regex to auto-break the paragraphs. Not pretty, but should be readable.
- suraj_sindhia 10y agoThank you very much.
- 10y ago
- rpedela 10y agoI would be far more interested in how to build a successful business. Everyone asks Elon about his big ideas, but how do you turn those big ideas into reality, specifically? I have never seen anyone ask him those questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Jessica Livingston because that was the primary topic. A missed opportunity in my opinion. I hope the rest of the interviews are more about the nuts and bolts of how to build a successful business. EDIT Ask him about the early days at PayPal. What are the lessons he learned that he applied to Tesla and SpaceX? What worked for PayPal but not the other companies and why?
- contingencies 10y agoThe way I see it PayPal essentially helped an established incumbent monopoly (US credit card companies) with issues at the time maintain and extend its global relevance, lock down domination of cross-border consumer payments, meaningfully extend US intelligence sector surveillance, and continue to fuck the little guy. Only Europe and China are building a resistance now, 15 years later. That you have 5 or 10 rich people coming out of that little cash-cow who feel like publicly playing god with humanity's future or that they deserve some kind of respect for the 'achievement' is pathetic. Any number of people could have built that better, or with morals. If they had any sense they'd be ashamed at what they've done, and how it has seemingly irrevocably crumbled in to bigcorp screw-the-customer service mode. Besides, we all know the real e-vehicle revolution has already happened, right here in China.
- pkinsky 10y agoWhen you say resistance, you mean 'implementing a locally controlled version of the problematic US-controlled system they're resisting', right?
- contingencies 10y agoThat would be the cynical (and probably realistic) interpretation, however because both the European (most of Europe, nearby countries) and Chinese network (nodes across much of the world, particularly Asia) are relatively internationally distributed (and thereby subject to multiple bureaucracies) they are somewhat less prone to centralized interference/monitoring. Further, neither region has as bad a record as the US in using financial systems for aggressive political gain.
- hristov 10y agoGreat now I have a mental image of Usain Bolt sprinting next to a Tesla production line with a wrench in hand trying to tighten a bolt.
- ksashikumar 10y agoAnybody know why the first approach to Mars is 20 light minutes? Musk mentioned that the fastest approach to Mars is 4 light minutes!
- djokkataja 10y agoEarth is 8 light minutes from the sun, Mars is 12 light minutes from the sun. So when Earth and Mars are closest to each other, they're 4 light minutes away from each other, and when they're farthest from each other (on opposite sides of the sun), they're 20 light minutes away from each other.
- Herodotus38 10y agoApologies if this has already been answered but I couldn't find it in the comments below: does anyone know the date of this interview? EDIT: Figured it out. Probably June or July as he mentions OpenAI was 6 months old and it was founded in December 2015.
- adamzerner 10y agoIf you're somewhat familiar with Elon's thoughts and ideas, this interview probably won't teach you anything new.
- chipz 10y agois it just me or this interview is kinda unprepared? the questions that sama asks, the way that musk answer & the way that interview stop. But overall, I enjoy this series, kudos!
- unboxed_type 10y agoThanks alot for sharing this!
- codecamper 10y agoElon says we must be careful to get AI right. However, the value of his company is already based on the premise of self driving cars. Self driving cars will cause a pretty massive shift in the world. I'm all for it & really think that most people suck at driving. However... I have a hard time following his advice of getting AI right while is plan is to profit immensely from AI. Maybe his moral compass is telling him that AI will cause problems, but better to have a seat at the table once the oncoming deluge hits.
- rhaps0dy 10y agoThe term AI has two somewhat separate meanings and you're equivocating. Which is unsurprising, given that Musk himself is not saying anything to separate them. Anyways. The AI we must be careful with is "strong AI", that is, human level in all or most intellectual endeavours. The AI he will profit with is "weak AI", or the current and foreseeable AI technology. We don't need to be careful with that one, but not as much. It is industrial-equipment level of careful. Strong AI needs nuclear ICBM levels of careful, maybe even more.
- mcv 10y agoStrong AI is fantasy AI in my opinion. We're not interested in creating artificial well-rounded humans, we're interested in automating specific, complicated tasks. Like driving a car. And in some ways, AI is already better than us at driving cars; less accidents, always perfect attention, etc. But AI without a real purpose but that can think and feel the way we do? I see no reason why anyone would put that in charge of ICBMs.
- keyle 10y ago"Most of my time is spent designing things". Woah that hit home. I wish I could run a business without businessy things. How do you find the right people?! I'm a really good tech guy and designer. I can whip up anything, I've just never found the right person to sell it and deal with other humans.
- Ericson2314 10y agoPlanet diversification and renewable energy are good priorities, and that not doing them narrows future options dramatically, but the other things on this list are pure sci-fi fandom. Cyborgs and whatnot will probably come around eventually bit I see no reason to hasten them. I'd like to fix our current problems before these things make them more intractable: - inequality - workaholism of upper classes skewing culture - degredidation of biodiversity worldwide If we move to Mars let's make this planet a temple. 50% earth surface no humans or something.
- djokkataja 10y agoCyborgs are desirable because they solve the "control problem" of AGI. Essentially, if you create a superintelligent AI, how do you make sure it doesn't outwit you and all other humans in order to do terrible things? There aren't any plausible methods that I'm aware of to accomplish that goal. So you sidestep it by not making any AI that's more intelligent than humans. Unfortunately there also aren't good ways to make sure that no one makes AI that's more intelligent than humans (plus arguably superintelligent AI could be an extremely good thing if it doesn't turn into Skynet). So the remaining obvious option is increasing human intelligence at the same time as we improve AI -- or even better, merge humans and AI together.
- Ericson2314 10y agoSo, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em :)
- joe563323 10y agoIts sad that Elon does not have confidence on immortality. He is even thing about dying.
- feralmoan 10y agoThis was a lot less insightful than I was hoping for. I understand he's naval gazing on the 'human condition' from a billion dollar vantage and trying to rationalize investment in his personal academic fetishes... but really? The world is burning and he's pontificating an ego expression of 1950's atomic age. No 1% left behind. Ridiculous.
- jernfrost 10y agoI think it was interesting his comment about how he really isn't working like a CEO: "Yeah. I think a lot of people think I'm kind of a business person or something, which is fine. Business is fine. But really it's like at SpaceX, Gwynne Shotwell is Chief Operating Officer. She manages legal, finance, sales, and general business activity. And then my time is almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture." This seems very similar to Steve Jobs who said he became CEO so that nobody could tell him what he could or couldn't work on. But like Elon Musk he seemed most interested in creating things and not really running the business. I think this is a clue to successful business. If you got leaders like that you retain focus on good products rather than getting caught up in optimizing financials without a strong focus on actually building quality stuff people want or need.
- vmk7 10y agocan the thought of delta times the number of people be applied in the area of food ?