Elon Musk talks robots, starships, and the future of AI during a virtual guest appearance at the 8th Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference, which kicked off on Tuesday in Riyadh. We listened to the entire interview, so you don't have to. Here's the breakdown.
Musk appeared live on a massive drop screen from the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center, located in the heart of the Saudi Arabian capital, to answer questions posed by American entrepreneur, futurist, and engineer, Dr. Peter Diamandis.
Diamandis, who attended the event in person, is the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit that hosts public competitions to encourage technological development.
In typical Musk fashion, the tech billionaire first mentioned the US election but was quickly steered away from political talk to predicting the future capabilities of AI.
The conversation began asking Musk whether he still believed ‘Godfather of AI’ Geoffrey Hinton’s 80/20 stance on the dangers of AI towards humanity.
Musk’s outlook was slightly improved, stating there was an 80-90% chance AI’s future impact will be “most likely great, and a 10-20% it goes bad.”
Musk said he believes that AI capabilities are increasing at a rate of 100x a year, predicting that even in four years, the world can expect AI to be 10,000x better than it is today.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder further noted he thinks AI “will be able to do anything any human can do possible within the next year or two,” and that by 2028, AI will have the ability “to do what all humans can” as a collective 8 billion population.
"Assuming we are in the good path of AI, we’ll be on a path of abundance, anyone will be able to have any goods and services they want, and the marginal cost will be extremely low," Musk said.
Robot population will outpace humans
Switching gears, the tech mogul said he believes “there will be way more humanoid robots than there are people" by the year 2040.
“In 25 years there will be at least 10 billion humanoid robots,” Musk predicted. “The biggest product of any kind ever,” he said, to be produced by Tesla, of course.
Musk said he was optimistic about timing and pricing, expecting the robots to be sold at a “low price point,” costing “$20 to $25 thousand for a robot that can do anything.”
Navigating by myself pic.twitter.com/CeFSqCcy5I
undefined Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) October 17, 2024
Tesla’s Optimus Prime robot starts limited production next year, and then should be in volume production in 2026, he said.
When asked what he worries about most for the future, Musk acknowledged AI as a “significant existential threat” but explained that he believes the most significant threat facing humanity “is the decline of the global population and collapsing birth rates.”
“That’s the biggest problem that countries need to solve. If you don’t make humans there is no humanity. And all the policies in the world don’t matter,” Musk said.
On AI training and safety
To counter the possibility of dystopian outcomes, Musk touted the virtues of creating a “maximum truth-seeking AI," one of which is currently being built at his tech start-up xAI.
“AI safety may seem obvious, but it's not what I am seeing produced,” Musk said, adding that AI frontier models are instead "being trained to be politically correct, which is a problem."
In the San Francisco Bay area, the AI models have taken on the philosophy of the people around them, Musk said, labeling them “woke and nihilistic.”
“Build an AI that loves humanity, that’s why I created xAI. An AI that aspirationally loves humanity and seeks the best interest of humanity going forward,” he said.
Musk also predicted that eventually, all countries will have their own AI clusters over time, but for now, Musk said frontier models are very difficult to run and only a few companies in the world currently possess the technical skills needed to train them.
Countdown and liftoff of Falcon 9 pic.twitter.com/MFsv3J3BSY
undefined SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 26, 2024
Musk's mission to Mars
When it cames to technological advancements for his own companies, Musk had a more optimistic outlook.
Regarding SpaceX, Musk said he expects to launch a spaceship to Mars in just over two years, as part of his grand Mars colonization plan..
“We’ll send the first uncrewed starship to Mars, and of that works out well, we’ll send humans about 2 years after that,” he said.
Musk said the biggest obstacle facing tech companies today is overregulation. "It takes longer to get a permit to than to actually send the rocket," he pointed out.
“Unless we do something to scale back overregulation, the slow strangulation from overregulation, if we don’t push back on that, it will eventually become illegal to do almost any large project and we will not get to Mars,” he said.
No hands or feet needed
On Tesla’s recent Cybercab rollout, Musk explained that autonomy is already here.
He said Tesla will have unsupervised full self-driving taxi’s working in the US by the middle of next year, rolling out in Californias and then Texas.
“All cars will drive themselves, this is a no brainer,” Musk said.
Tesla’s autonomous vehicles will “exceed human safety levels by next year, with only a software update,” he said, adding that by the end of 2026, production on Cybercabs with “no steering wheel or pedals” is expected to start.
“And, they’ll get to where they're going 10 times safer than human driven cars. Which will save more than a million human lives per year,” Musk said.
The Tesla CEO said he plans to have to 9.5 million of them on the road by next year, with the eventually goal of 100 million.
According to the discussion, autonomous robotic taxis are predicted to make Tesla a $5 trillion dollar company, while the two spoke about Optimus Prime robots propelling Tesla to be a $25 trillion company.
“It’s not even clear what money means in the future,” Musk mused, citing his expectations for a post-capitalist society.
“On the bright side heading into an age of abundance, it won’t be a case of universal basic income, but a case of universal high income the most likely outcome,” he said.
Future Investment Initiative (FII)
FII is a non-profit, economic global think tank of industry leaders whose primary focus is on four critical areas – artificial intelligence and robotics, education, healthcare, and sustainability – and their future impact on humanity.
Tuesday's “Infinite Horizons: Investing Today, Shaping Tomorrow” event aims to bring together “today’s greatest minds to share their global perspectives, unlocking new frontiers for human advancement and impactful innovation,” the FII stated in its brochure.
Other big-name speakers this year include President and CIO of Alphabet & Google Ruth Porat, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, and sustainability leader, Columbia University Professor and author Jeffrey Sachs.
Subject matter at the conference ranged from investing in women, digital growth, and global supply chains to economic forecasts, aerospace development, and AI.
The FII event runs through Thursday, October 31st.
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