Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, sat down with Chris Anderson, head of TED, for an interview this week in which his love for humanity shone brightly. In that interview, Elon Musk talked about his recent offer to Twitter, Tesla and how it almost went bankrupt, the Optimus bot, and Tesla’s full self-driving suite, but more importantly, he opened up a bit about his perspective .
Anderson was also able to interview Elon Musk the day before the Giga Texas event, and he noted that he did so just in case Elon couldn’t make it to the TED Talk. Before sharing the brief preview of an eight-minute clip, Anderson detailed his experience at Giga Texas and pointed out that the machine building machine was mind-blowing.
“To be honest, what I saw there was overwhelming. This is Elon Musk’s famous machine building machine, and in his view, the secret to a sustainable future isn’t just making an electric car. A system is emerging that produces large numbers of electric cars at a margin so they can fund further growth.”
In the eight-minute clip, Anderson focused on the challenges of full self-driving and why Tesla was finding it difficult to predict its progress.
“I mean, what really got me, and I think it’s going to get a lot of other people, is that in self-driving there are so many false dawns where you think you have the problem under control and then, no, it turns out you just hit a ceiling.”
The lesson Elon Musk and Tesla realized is that solving the full self-driving problem requires solving real-world AI.
“To properly solve full self-driving, you have to solve real-world AI. Which road networks should be worked with? The designs work with a biological neural network, our brain, and with vision, our eyes. So to make it work with computers, you basically need to solve real-world AI and vision.
“We need cameras and silicon neural networks to have self-driving work for a system designed for eyes and biological neural networks. I think putting it that way, it’s pretty obvious that the only way to solve full self-driving is to solve real-world AI and sophisticated vision.”
In the TED Talks interview, Elon Musk also spoke about his goals with Twitter and what he would like to see. He explained his definition of freedom of speech.
Funding secured and the SEC
Elon also said that the real reason he settled with the SEC on the tweet with secured funding was because the banks metaphorically put a gun to Tesla’s head.
“With Tesla, the financing was actually secured at the time. I want to make that clear. In fact, this may be a good opportunity to clarify. Funding was indeed secured.”
He added that he had no respect for the SEC in this situation, but stressed that the people who worked for the SEC itself were not the focus of his lack of respect. The SEC, Elon Musk said, knew the funding was secured, but continued the active public scrutiny despite knowing full well that the funding was secured, and this took place during one of Tesla’s most intense periods of time the line between failure and failure was massive success.
“The SEC knew the funding was secured but still conducted an active public investigation. At the time, Tesla was in a precarious financial situation and I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to a settlement with the SEC, the banks would stop providing working capital and Tesla would go bankrupt immediately.
“So that’s like putting a gun to your kid’s head. I was forced to illegally give in to the SEC. Those bastards. And now it looks like I lied, when in fact I didn’t lie. I had to admit that I lied to save Tesla’s life and that’s the only reason.”
His love for humanity
Elon’s love for humanity was evident in his response to a question about his own children and family. Anderson asked what the future would be like for Little X – what the world he will grow up in will be like. Elon pointed out that his son will grow up in a very digital future.
“A very different world to the one I grew up in, that’s for sure. But I think we want to do our absolute best to make sure that the future is bright for all children and that the future is something to look forward to without feeling sad.
“You know, you want to get up in the morning looking forward to the future and we should fight for the things that make us excited about the future. The future cannot be one miserable thing after another; solve one sad problem after another. There must be things that excite you – for example that you want to live. These things are very important. We should have more of it.”
The head of TED Talks pointed out that the future isn’t a done deal, but that there’s a chance it could be terrible. However, Elon sees a path to an exciting future both on Earth and Mars and even in our minds with artificial intelligence. Anderson asked
“Do you really believe, in your deepest heart, that you are helping to create this exciting future for X and for others?”
Elon replied,
“I’m trying my best to do this. I love humanity and I think we should fight for a good future for humanity. I think we should be optimistic about the future and fight to make that optimistic future a reality.”
I found the TED Talks interview quite inspiring. I think humanity has a great champion in Elon. Although we are flawed as a species (we have war, hate, fear and poverty), we also have goodness. We have love, kindness, emotional connections, and the ability to transcend the darkness within each of us if we choose to do so. And I think Elon sees that too. After all, it was Elon Musk who once advised me to believe in good when I was going through a dark time in my life. I think that was not only the nicest but also the best advice I’ve ever received.
You can watch the full TED Talks interview replay with Elon Musk here.
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