The Exchanges

Q Maybe let's start way back. I mean, when you were, this is a room full of 18 to 25 year olds, um, that skews younger because the founder set is younger and younger. Uh, can you put yourself back into their shoes when, you know, you were 1819, you know, learning to code, uh, even coming up with a first idea for ZIP-II. What was that like for you?

A Yeah, back in 95, I, I was faced with a choice of either do, uh, you know, grad studies, PhD at Stanford, uh, in, in, uh, material science, actually working on ultracapacitors for potential use in electric vehicles, essentially trying to solve the range problem for electric vehicles, uh, or Uh, try to do something in this thing that most people had never heard of called the internet. And, um, I talked to my professor who was, uh, Bill Nix in the material science department and, uh, said like, um, can I defer for the quarter? Uh, because this will probably fail and then I'll need to come back to college. And, um, and then he said, this is probably the last conversation we'll have. Uh, and he was right. Um, so, but I, I thought things would most likely fail, not that they would most likely succeed. Um, and, um, and then in 95, I wrote, uh, Basically, I think the first or close to the first maps directions, uh, internet white pages and yellow pages on the internet. Um, I just wrote, I just wrote that personally and didn't even use web server. I just read the port directly because I, um, couldn't afford, uh, and I couldn't afford a T one, uh, The original office was on Sherman Avenue in Palo Alto. Uh, there was like an ISP on the floor below. So I drilled a hole through the floor and just, uh, ran a land cable directly to the ISP. Um, and, um, yeah, uh, my brother joined me and ano…

AI assessment note: “back in 95, I, I was faced with a choice”

Q the curve, who are in your circle. Like, you know, How should people approach that? Like, what has worked for you, and what would you pass on, like, you know, to, to X, to your children? Like, you know, what do you tell them when you're like, you need to make your way in this world? You know, here's how to construct a reality that is predictive from first principles.

A Well, the, the tools of physics are incredibly helpful, uh, to, to, um, understand and make progress in any field. Um, first principles means just, obviously just means, you know, break things down to the fundamental axiomatic elements that are most likely to be true, and then reason up from there as cogently as possible, as opposed to reasoning by analysis or metaphor. Um, And then it just, simple things like, like thinking in the limit, like if you extrapolate, you know, minimize this thing or maximize that thing, thinking in the limit is, is very, very helpful. Um, I'd use all the tools of physics. Um, they, they, they apply to any field. Um, this is like a superpower actually. Um, so you can take, say, take for example, like rockets, you can say, well, how, how much should a rocket, rocket cost? Um, the typical approach to how, to, that people would take how much rocket should cost is they would look historically at what the cost of rockets are. And assume that any new rocket must be somewhat similar to the prior cost of rocket. A first principles approach would be you, you look at the materials that the rocket is comprised of. So if that's aluminum, copper, carbon fiber, uh, steel, whatever the case may be, um, and say what, what, how much does that rocket weigh and, and what are the constituent elements and how much do they weigh? What is the material price per kilogram o…

AI assessment note: “break things down to the fundamental axiomatic elements that are most likely to be true”

Q We haven't talked about Neuralink at all yet, but I'm curious, you know, you're working on closing the input and output gap between humans and machines. How critical is that to AGI, ASI, and you know, once that link is made, can we not only read, but also write?

A The Neuralink is not necessary to solve digital superintelligence. That'll happen before Neuralink is at scale, but Uh, what, what Neuralink can effectively do is solve the, um, the input output bandwidth constraints, especially our output bandwidth is very low. The, the out, the, the sustained output of a human over the course of a day is less than one bit per second. So it's, you know, 86,400 seconds in a day, um, and it's extremely rare for a human to output more than that number of symbols per day. So, um, certainly for several days in a row. Uh, so You, you really, um, with, with a, with a neural link interface, you can massively increase your output bandwidth and your input bandwidth, um, input being right to, you have to do right operations to the brain. Um, we, um, we, we have now five humans who have received the Uh, the, the kind of the read, uh, where it's reading signals, and you've got people with, with ALS who, um, really have no, they're, they're tetraplegics, but they, they can now communicate at, with, um, Similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body, um, and control their computer and phone, uh, which is pretty cool. And then, um, I think in the next six to 12 months, we'll be doing our first implants for vision, where even if somebody's completely blind, um, uh, we can, we can write directly to, um, the, uh, the visual cortex. Um, and, and we've…

AI assessment note: “The Neuralink is not necessary to solve digital superintelligence.”

Q Um, and, um, Is it true that you're planning a robot army of a sort?

A Whether we do it or, or, or, you know, whether Tesla does it, you know, Tesla works closely with XAI. Um, like, if you've seen how many humanoid robot startups are there, like, it's like, I think Jensen Bong was on stage with a lot, with a massive number of robots, you know, robots from different companies. I think there was like a dozen different humanoid robots. So, I mean, I guess, you know, part of what I've been fighting, and maybe what has slowed me down somewhat, is that I'm a, I'm a little, I don't want, I don't want to make Terminator real, you know. So, I've been sort of, I guess, at least until recent years, dragging my feet on, on AI and, and humanoid robotics. And then I sort of come to the realization, it's happening, whether I do it or not. So, You got really two choices. Particip, you can either be a spectator or a participant. It's like, well, I guess I'd rather be a participant than a spectator. Um, so now it's, you know, pedal to the metal on humanoid robots and, um, digital super intelligence.

AI assessment note: “so now it's, you know, pedal to the metal on humanoid robots”

Q Probably throughout that period, a lot of people were saying, you know, Elon is a software guy. Why is he working on hardware? Why would you, yeah, why would he choose to work on this? Right?

A So you can look at the, like the, cause there's still the, you know, the press of that time is still online. You can just search it. And, and they kept calling me internet guy. Um, so like internet guy, AKA fool is attempting to build a rocket company. Um, so, um, You know, um, that we, we got ridiculed quite a lot. Um, and it, it does sound pretty absurd. Like, internet guy starts Rocket Company. Doesn't sound like a recipe for success, frankly. So I didn't hold it against him. I was like, yeah, you know, admittedly it does sound improbable, and I agree that it's improbable. Um, but fortunately the fourth launch worked, and, um, And, uh, and NASA awarded us, uh, a contract to resupply the space station, uh, and I think that was, like, maybe, I don't know, December, 22nd, or it was like right before Christmas, um, because even the fourth launch working wasn't enough to succeed. You know, NASA also needed, we also needed a big contract to keep us alive, so, um, So I got, I got that call from like the, the, the NASA, NASA team. And I literally, they said, we're, we're awarding you one of the contracts to resupply the space station. I like literally blurted out. I love you guys, which is not normally, you know, what they hear. Um, cause it's usually pretty, you know, sober, but I was like, man, this is a company saver. And then, uh, we, we closed the Tesla financing round. On the …

AI assessment note: “they kept calling me internet guy. Um, so like internet guy, AKA fool”

Q of the world, the, you know, the corporate world, like the world at large that does not understand what's happening with AI, they're going to look to the people in this room, uh, for exactly that. It sounds like, well, you know, what are some of the tangible lessons? It sounds like one of them is don't give up board control or be careful about have a really good lawyer.

A Uh, I guess for the first, my first startup, the, the big, the, the, really the mistake was having too much, uh, shareholder and board control from legacy media companies who then necessarily see things through the lens of legacy media and, uh, that they'll kind of make you do things that seem sensible to them, but, but aren't, really don't make sense with the new technology. Um, I, I know, I should point out that I, that I, um, I didn't actually at first intend to start a company. I, like I tried to get a job at Netscape. Um, I sent my resume into Netscape and Mark Hendrickson knows about this. Um, and, uh, but I don't think he ever saw my resume and then nobody responded. So, uh, and then I tried hanging out in the lobby of Netscape to see if I could like bump into someone, but I was like too shy to talk and talk to anyone. So I'm like, man, this is ridiculous. So I'll just write stuff for myself and see how it goes. So it wasn't actually from the standpoint of like, I want to start a company. I just want to be part of building, you know, the internet, uh, in some way. Um, and, um, and since I couldn't get a job at an internet company, I had to start an internet company. Anyway, the, yeah, yeah. I mean, from an, AI will so profoundly change the future. It's difficult to fathom, um, how much, but, You know, the economy, assuming we don't, things don't go awry, and like AI does…

AI assessment note: “mistake was having too much, uh, shareholder and board control from legacy media companies”