The Exchanges

Q described just sparks a question for me, which is that If this becomes democratized, if this gets in the hands of so many people, then does the path from wild idea, moonshot idea to production become much quicker and then also much more democratized? We don't have many invention houses like X in the world. So are you worried maybe that you're going to have a little bit more competition?

A Exactly the opposite. The world is not going to run out of problems And the fundamental goal of X is to get a bunch of people together to work on those problems as efficiently as possible. The more people can work towards solving humanity's problems, the better off we'll be. So I hope it does democratize things. I'm watching it currently start to democratize things, and I'm super excited about that. I would also say, so there's democratize in the sense of more people can be at the starting gate and doing that work. It is also lifting us and, and, uh, people like us up in our ability to reach out even better to partners. And so we're now helping aquaculture experts in Norway in a way that 10 years ago, I'm not sure we could even have imagined. We're helping on, in the electric grid in Chile in ways that I just described to you. And so they're getting this same benefit. They're being lifted up by this technology as we are able to share it with them.

AI assessment note: “Exactly the opposite. The world is not going to run out of problems”

Q not sitting here saying, Astro, we gotta, this stuff is about to turn us into paperclips. Not the point at all. The point is, philosophically, do we have a point where we say, maybe we don't want to develop those things? And if we don't, That's fine. And that's, you know, one answer, but I'm curious if you actually think that there is a place where we do say no.

A Yes. I'm sure such a line exists. I argue by the time we've gotten to that line, it will already be too late. So this is actually me agreeing with you. I think way before that line, we should be saying, what are we doing? How are we doing it? And can we put intelligence into the things in the world around us in ways that benefit humanity and how, as we're doing that, Even if our vision is really well honed to be in that positive for humanity, can we be on the lookout for downsides and get ahead of them? Because I don't want to ever get to that line. And I really think if we get to that line and then some half of humanity says, okay, we're out, the other half of the humanity is just going to keep going. So I think we need to be worried and thoughtful and, and responsible about these things starting now, not starting when we get to that line.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I'm sure such a line exists. I argue by the time we've gotten”

Q Loon, which was, was, is these balloons that are supposed to beam internet down to everyone, no matter where you are. Now, I'm curious, like, people now, if they think about accessible internet, they immediately go to Starlink. How did Loon, which was, you know, a great idea early on, sort of, I don't know, is it right to say, but I think lose ground to Elon Musk and Starlink?

A First of all, I mean, so, Loon was a goal Could we make a worldwide stratospheric layer of balloons? They're like cell towers, but floating at 65,000 feet that we're talking to each other in an ad hoc mesh network and beaming LTE or five G to the ground so that people in rural communities around the world, particularly the people who don't have good internet connection, all of a sudden would. Very inspiring. And it took a long time. We built it. It was working. We were beaming LTE and five G 200 of thousands of people in multiple countries. We couldn't figure out how to get the business to close with the, um, the owners of the spectrum that we had to work through in those different companies. So we turned it off. It made us very sad. Um, Starlink is a cool company, but they're solving a different problem. There's a, Fixed amount of bandwidth you can land when you beam something from a satellite in any one region. So it works very well in rural places, but you couldn't have like a huge number of them parked very close together. So that wasn't really the goal that Loon was trying to solve. But let me tell you a sort of fun side story. It was crushing for all of X for us to kill Loon. It had gone on to be another bet. It was really one of the inspiring things that had come from us. And so it made everyone really sad. For us to stop doing it. And we have this saying at X, we're ver…

AI assessment note: “Starlink is a cool company, but they're solving a different problem.”

Q Okay. And then, uh, we also had someone yell out carbon sequestration. I think that was what it was. Yes. Okay. He's not correcting me. So thoughts on that?

A Yes. We have done a bunch of interesting work in carbon sequestration in green hydrogen. We're doing explorations in lots of other parts of the space. Um, we're excited about the possibility for making much lower carbon footprint. Cement. So I can't tell you that we've absolutely cleaned any of these problems off yet, but these are spaces that we're excited about. And, and by the way, spaces where inverse design can be really helpful because these tend to be large machines, chemistry problems, electromechanical problems. They have sort of a lot of the, the techno economics of these things are really unforgiving. Ultimately, The number of dollars it costs for you to sequester a ton of carbon is like the only thing that really matters at the end of the day. Green hydrogen, of course, everyone will take it, but the number of dollars per kilogram is just going to determine, because it's a commodity, whether people buy it or not. And so trying to come up with something very different, but also have an eye on the sort of long term, like, The Rust Belt engineering side of this work, the project finance side of this work, what would this really be at scale? Because it's, it's actually kind of easy to make any of these things look great in the lab. It's having that sanity check on top, um, What is this really going to be at scale? Would this actually change the world? You know, we had t…

AI assessment note: “We have done a bunch of interesting work in carbon sequestration in green hydrogen.”

Q It's a very interesting process. I'm curious. Most people who are listening to this are not in the position to take moon shots. You must hear this all the time. Is there anything from your process they could put into place inside their companies that might help them achieve those 10 X moments that you're going for?

A For sure. Um, I would actually argue what I just described is the most efficient you can be in trying to find something new. And even if you've pre-decided You know, you're working on flying cars or whatever that is. Inside of your effort, there are lots of things that you might be thinking. Should it be gas powered? Should it be batteries? How many propellers are we going to have? There are going to be lots of things for you to figure out over time. What should the airframe be shaped like? And so there are lots of risks to take, lots of discoveries to have. And for each of them, you can do exactly what I just said. So one of the things that we say at X is if you're starting out on a journey, I know it's no fun to kill your ideas. I get that. But let's say for argument's sake that the idea you have isn't going to make it. Would you like to find out now for one dollar or find out three years for now for like ten million dollars? And everyone of course says, well, I guess I'd like to find out now for a dollar. Great. Or welcome to X. Thank you for working on the propellers or the time machine or whatever it is you're working on. How are we going to do this? Are we going to be intellectually honest or intellectually dishonest about our discovery process? You're like, oh, I guess intellectually honest, Astro. We all know in our hearts what to do. What I just described is not rocket…

AI assessment note: “for each of them, you can do exactly what I just said.”

Q I mean, you have, I think it's an often cited statistic, but one in 10 AI researchers saying there's a chance that it could effectively turn civilization into paper clips. So my question to you is when we create such powerful technology, With the capacity for good, but also the capacity for bad. What calculation do you think needs to go through our head before we decide to move forward?

A Again, this is a very big conversation, so we may have to come at it from a couple of different directions, but artificial intelligence number one is algebra on steroids. Just so we're clear. It is a very big field of study. And when you get out of microscope and you like look down inside the computer, you cannot find the AI in there anywhere. It's just math. And sort of depending on how you measure it, humans have been working on artificial intelligence by that name for 70 years, and it has been making progress over the last about 70 years. So it's not like we were at zero and then there was like a huge step function. The plane that flew you here flew itself almost the entire way using artificial intelligence, and we all rely on artificial intelligence every day, whether we realize it or not. So This is not to say no to your question, but just maybe for us to set the table that this is not like the lights just got switched on, or we're sitting there by the light switch wondering whether to turn them on. Do I think that things are picking up speed? Yes, but this is part of a much longer narrative, and I think that we need to be really thoughtful about what, how, as we develop any technology, Can we get the most benefit out of that technology? And at the same time, as wisely as possible, see potential downsides from that technology and then find ways to mitigate against them or …

AI assessment note: “this is not like we're sitting there by the light switch wondering whether to turn them on”