Longish interview. Space stuff up front. Tesla stuff starts at about 5:53. Solar City at 9:13, and 12:04.
Optimistic about trip to Mars. A cheap car battery will be “harder”, but look for results in 2 or 3 years.
Interesting/sobering comments on artificial intelligence at 15:00. Totally baffles money-talk hostesses with his cautionary stance on AI.
I’m pleasantly surprised by his take on AI. We’re asking for trouble in several technological fields. We’re basically monkeys hammering on rocks in several areas (biotech, nanontech, AI, etc.). We have zero idea of what the consequences are – we’re just doing it because we can and because there’s money to be made.
Really interesting that he has no idea why we’re working on AI. No one does. People work on it because they want to be God and because they want to earn fame and moolah (animal instincts). All of our history is about fighting and beating down competitors and we want to create one? A true AI system would surely diagnose a problem when it sees it. And what if the problem is Homo Sapiens Sapiens?
I’m also pleasantly surprised that he acknowledges he will die. 17:35. I know he’s done some stuff with Ray Kurzweil, who thinks he’ll never die. I’m glad he isn’t that delusional.
Musk seems so refreshingly sane. Rare in the human species generally, more so in a CEO.
I’m very surprised that he hadn’t heard about Phinergy, unless he was joking.
I do like the guy. Can’t think of another CEO I can say that about. He seems genuinely not much concerned about his image, but instead doing good. There was a time long ago when I though the Libertarian virtue was doing well by doing genuine good – boy was I naive! So it’s indeed refreshing to see someone who seems to honor that ethic.
Agree on the AI thoughts above, and by Musk. Google recently predicted that human-style reasoning will come to computers in a matter of a couple of decades. Combined with China’s Skynet…. not necessarily a happy outcome.
Elon Musk’s temporary inarticulation regarding AI may have been because he was caught off guard on the topic at that particular cheerleader venue.
One former CEO who very deeply and intelligently considered the implications of the full development of AI had the time to write out his answer, thus providing a far more expansive analysis of the downsides. Former CEO of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, explains the risks to human society in “The Future Does Not Need Us”:
http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
[Aside: Back in 2000 this was a “raging controversy” on the Internet. Ray Kurzweil as the advocate for the Singularity. And Bill Joy going, “hey, wait a minute what about…. x, y and z”. Kurzweil has never satisfactorily answered, at least to my satisfaction, why he wants to live forever on a planet where Homo Sapiens becomes a slave to its creations.]
“Next extinction event, whether it be natural or man made”… Elon Musk seems like a remarkable straight forward guy with a decent moral compass. I wish we had more like him in big businesses.