Satya Nadella: Thank you so much, Elon, for being here at BUILD. I know you started off, as an intern at Microsoft. You were a Windows developer and of course you’re a big PC gamer still. Uh, you wanna just talk about your early days with, Windows and the kinds of things you built?
Elon Musk: Yeah, well, actually I started before Windows with DOS. I had one of the early IBM PCs with MS-DOS.
I think I had like, 128K in the beginning and then it doubled to 256K, which felt like a lot. So I, yeah, programmed video games in DOS and then, later in Windows. Remember Windows 3.1?
Satya Nadella: Yeah! No, it’s wonderful. I mean even the last time I chatted with you, you were talking about everything, even the intricacies of Active Directory and, and so it’s fantastic, to have you at our Developer Conference. Obviously, the exciting thing for us is to be able to launch Grok on Azure.
I know you have a deep vision for what AI needs to be and that’s what got you to get this built. It’s a family of models that are both responsive reasoning models and you have a very exciting roadmap. You wanna just tell us a little bit about sort of your vision, the capability, you are pushing on both capability and efficiency? So maybe you can just talk about a little bit of that.
Elon: Sure! So yeah, with Grok, especially with Grok 3.5 that is to be released. It’s trying to reason from first principles — so apply the tools of physics to thinking. So if you’re trying to get to fundamental truth, you boil things down to the axiomatic elements that are most likely to be correct and then you reason up from there, and then you can test those conclusions against those axiomatic elements and inherant physics. If you violate conservation of energy or momentum, then either you get a Nobel Prize or you’re wrong. And you’re most certainly wrong, basically. So that is really the focus of Grok 3.5, it is sort of the fundamentals of physics and applying physics tools across all lines of reasoning. And aspire to truth with minimal error; there’s always gonna be some mistakes that are made, but aim to get to truth — with acknowledged error — and minimize that error over time, and I think that’s actually extremely important for AI safety.
So I’ve thought a lot for a long time about AI safety and, well, the conclusion is the old maxim that honesty is the best policy. It really is for safety. But I do want to emphasize, we have and will make mistakes, but we aspire to correct them very quickly, and we are very much looking forward to the feedback from the developer community to say, like, what do you need, where are we wrong, how can we make it better, and to have Grok be something that the developer community, is very excited to use and where they can feel that their feedback is being heard and Grok is improving and serving their need.
Satya Nadella: Yeah, I know it’s…It’s in some sense, you know, cracking the physics of intelligence is perhaps the real goal, for us to be able to use AI at scale. And so it’s so good to, you know, to take that first principles approach that you and your team are taking. And also you’re deploying this. I mean, one of the things about sort of what you do is, uh, you’re doing, you know, unsupervised FSD on one side, you’re doing robotics, and of course there’s Grok, so you’re deploying Grok across all of your businesses from SpaceX to Tesla, obviously at X. Uh, I’d love to even, you know, one of the themes for this Developer Conference, Elon is, we’re building pretty sophisticated AI apps, right? It’s not even about any one model, it’s about orchestrating multiple models, multiple agents. Uh, just anything that you are seeing in the real world application side, even inside of your own companies, when you think about even a Tesla or SpaceX, where you put Grok and these other, uh, AI models you’re building?
Elon: Yeah, it’s incredibly important, uh, for AI model to be grounded in reality. Reality, you know, like, like physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation. Which is, I’m not suggesting people break the laws made by humans, you know, we should generally obey laws of humans, but I’ve seen many people break human-made laws, but I have not seen anyone break the laws of physics.
So for any given AI, grounding it against reality… and reality, for example, as you mentioned with, with the car – it needs to drive safely and correctly, and the humanoid robot – Optimus – needs to perform the task that it’s being asked to perform. These are things are very helpful for ensuring that the model is truthful and accurate. It has to adhere to the laws of physics.
So I think that’s actually somewhat overlooked or at least not talked about enough, is that to really be intelligent it’s got to make predictions that are really in line with reality or in other words, physics. That is a really fundamental thing. And being able to ground that with cars and robots is very important. We are seeing Grok be very helpful in things like customer service, you know, the AI is infinitely patient and friendly and you can yell at it and it’s still gonna be very nice.
I think in terms of improving quality of customer service and sort of issue resolution, Grok is already doing quite a good job at SpaceX and Tesla and we would look forward to offering that to other companies.
Satya Nadella: That’s fantastic, I’m really thrilled to get this journey started, getting that developer feedback, and then looking forward to even how they deploy. There is these language models, there’s, you know, I think over time we will have this coming together of language models with vision, with action, but to your point, being really grounded on a real world model, um, and that I think is ultimately the goal here. And so, thank you so much, Elon, for briefly joining us today and we’re really excited about working with you and getting this into developers’ hands.
Elon: Today, thank, thank you very much and I can’t emphasize enough that we’re looking for feedback from you, the developer, the audience. Tell us what you want and we’ll make it happen. Thank you.
Transcript by Gail Alfar.
Elon Musk talked with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today at the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle on May 19, 2025, at 08:00 PM PDT, to discuss xAI’s Grok 3.5 model and its integration into Azure AI Foundry.
(Folsom, Penn) Just outside of Philadelphia, Elon Musk held a Town Hall meeting in the Ridley High School auditorium on October 17.
While the venue had limited access, several cameras captured Elon’s Town Hall for a live stream that had 6.6 million views after just one hour!
Elon at Ridley High. First Town Hall.
This post captures the feeling, Elon’s words, and people’s thoughts, as (like I say so many times) Elon’s talks are all historical, whether about Tesla, SpaceX, with Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan, they are all talks I have transcribed for the sake of history.
Elon: “The reason I’m here in person is because Pennsylvania is so important for the future of the world. Go by what your actions are, not your words and my actions are, I’m here in Pennsylvania, for a very important reason. I can’t emphasize enough, that I think Pennsylvania is the lynchpin in this election. This election is going to decide the fate of America. Along with the fate of America, the fate of Western civilization.”
Elon: “We want secure borders, safe cities, sensible spending, Freedom of Speech, and for the Constitution to be upheld. Anyone who is against these things is fundamentally anti-American, and to Hell with them!”
Standing with a large American Flag as the backdrop, and wearing his black jeans, cowboy boots, Cybertruck Foundation T-Shirt and a black suit jacket, Elon almost always wears his Don’t Mess With Texas belt buckle.
Justice System Soft on Crime: Dangerous Criminals Released Due to Democratic Policies
Elon was a student at U Penn, and he recalled times that students were in danger on campus, and he described his conversation with a recent U Penn grad who said its worse today.
Elon: “If someone is a violent criminal and you donβt incarcerate them, they will hurt peopleβitβs that simple. Yet, the Democratic Party will not put hardened criminals in prison. They roam free, and they prey upon you, your kids, your family, and your friends. How can we be the most powerful country in the world when it’s not even safe to walk around our cities? What the hell is going on?”
Elon: “You should feel safe walking around American cities. And it not just SF, Phildephia has a challenge, NYC has a challenge. Every major city in the US.”
Elon: An audience member shouted out George Soros. “George Soros is misanthropic. He claims to do good but does not. He’s tearing down the fabric of society. You should feel safe walking around American cities. Itβs only getting worse.”
A large American Flag symbolizes Freedom of Speech.
Mad Max
Elon explained how his mom, Maye Musk lives in NYC. Three of her friends have been assaulted on the street this year. Now when she takes her dog for a walk, she has to stay inside of the building so she can call for help if needed. This is not the future we want and if we get 4 more years of this, we’re going to be fully in Mad Max. It’s nice to watch a Mad Max movie, but we don’t want to be IN the Mad Max movie.
Elon: “The whole border thing is just insane, I always wanted to try to figure out what’s really going on at the US-Mexico border. Is it real, or not real? So I went there in person, and I literally livestreamed what I saw. And our border looks like World War Z. Its like Zombie Apocalypse. It’s insane. If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country. You have to have real borders, and if you don’t have real borders then you don’t have a real country.”
Sensible Spending
Elon: “The federal government is spending America into bankruptcy. When the government spends more than it earns, that’s what causes inflation.”
Sports team Analogy
Elon: “Obviously as an immigrant, I’m pro-immigrant, I just want to make sure that people who come here are going to be assets to society. That they are going to raise our standard of living. The sports team analogy is a good one. Let’s say you are a pro sports team and you want to win the championship. You need the best on your team obviously because they are going to help the whole team win. The same is true for immigration. If we have the sort of equivalent of Koby Bryant or Steph Curry or Le Bron, or something like that, and they want to join the team: ABSOLUTELY! Of course, do you like winning? Yeah! Ok, but if they can’t play basketball, they shouldn’t be joining. That’s real important.”
The First and Second Amendments
Elon: “You are seeing all these attacks on freedom of speech and they are attacking me too. Yo, that’s the First Amendment. Like literally the first one! That tells me it’s a high priority. And the reason they have the First Amendment is, because the countries people came from, if you spoke your mind, you’d be imprisoned or killed. That’s why you have it, it’s important. And then the right to bear arms, that’s really important. The Second Amendment is there to protect the First Amendment. As soon as the government can disarm the people, they can do anything they want.
Supporters of Donald Trump at Elon’s Town Hall.
Elon: “So, we’ve seen this in one country after another. They take the guns away from the people, then they do fake elections, the people try to protest and they just get shot. That’s what happened in Venezuela recently. They had an election, Madura lost, massively lost — like 70%, and he was like Oh no, I won! There were big protests in the street, but the thing is that Chavez, when he came to power, took away everyone’s guns, so now you’re facing soldiers with assault rifles. Will you throw some sticks at them or something? Use finger guns? It doesn’t work. So, Madura, even though he lost the election, is still in power. And that’s the kind of risk that we face in the USA.
Elon: “We have to do everything possible to protect the Constitution. So, for all these reasons, and after thinking about it hard, it was very clear to me that Donald Trump has to win this election.”
Elon: βThis election could be decided by a handful of people. Just a little extra effort on voter registration could decide the entire future of Western civilization.β
Elon: “If Trump loses, we’ll see our cities get less safe, and government spending will go ballistic… If the current trend of strangulation by overregulation does not end, we’ll never get to Mars, and Starfleet will never be realβand I want Starfleet to be real.”
Elon: βIf you want to know where the woke philosophy leads, just walk around downtown San Francisco but be careful not to be attacked by a violent drug user because they’re everywhere.β
An audience member asked, βDo you think there’s a shadow government behind the Biden-Harris administration?β Elon: βLet’s just say, it’s not Biden. We know that for a fact… he’s obviously not in charge.β
Elon: “There isn’t just one puppet master behind Biden. Biden is not in charge. Kamala is not in charge. They just switch the Biden puppet with the Kamala puppet. If the teleprompter breaks, they start looping. There are many puppet masters. I’d love to see the crossover of puppet masters and the Epstein client list.”
Registering to vote is critical.
Elon: βIf a government official effectively manages your money, they should be rewarded; if they waste it, they should be fired.β
Elon Musk on ‘D.O.G.E.’ (Department of Government Efficiency): βPoliticians forget that the money being spent is yours. If it’s not benefiting the American people, it’s a misuse of funds.β
Elon: “Donald Trump has to win this election” because “the future of America and civilization is at stake.”
Elon: “Make sure you’re registered to vote. Vote early. Talk to your friends, familyβeveryone you knowβand ensure they’re registered too because Monday is the voter registration deadline:
Everyone you know.
Everyone you meet.
Everyone you run into.
Register them to vote and encourage them to vote immediately. We only have until Monday night to register, so the next three days are critical. Iβve never been politically active before, but I am nowβbecause the future of America and civilization is at stake. Please, go all out. We’ve got three days. Let’s make it happen.”
An election integrity expert in Pennsylvania revealed to Elon Musk that state officials admitted in court that the voting machines are NOT secure.
Elon: Wow. He did? “In court on a transcript.” – Greg Stenstrom
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The world’s eyes are now on these officials. If they try anything like before, WE KNOW and are prepared to fight back.
Elon’s message to politicians is that the tax dollars they spend belong to the American people. “For some weird reason, a lot of people in the state, the politicians, they seem to forget that the money being spent is your money. And if it’s not being spent in a way that is beneficial to the American people, it’s a misuse of the funds.”
βPoliticians forget that the money they spend is yours.β
Elon Musk reacts to Kamala Harris’ claim that there are no active duty soldiers deployed in combat zones: βCan you believe that was said? I know plenty of them. What are you talking about? That’s a shameful, terrible lie, and she wasn’t even fact-checked.β
Conclusion
Elon Musk signed a young boyβs Phillies hat and brought him on stage.
Elon Musk finished his Pennsylvania Town Hall by saying this will be the LAST election if Kamala Harris wins because she will proceed to legalize all the millions of illegals she has imported and turn every state blue. “If there’s four more years of the Kamala sort of puppet regime, they’re going to legalize so many illegals in the swing states that there won’t be swing states anymore.”
My thoughts
Town Halls are an American institution. Participating in a Town Hall is a gesture of kindness and goodwill.
When Elon walked onstage, he waved to everyone in the auditorium. He spoke to all the folks who made it with sincerity and warmth. The efforts that Elon are making are for the American people, not for his own advantage.
Elon could have anything he wanted, he’s the world’s number-one wealthiest man (according to all his assets and their rising value) and I’d expect most men to own a yacht, several mansions, and wear a solid gold chain. Elon does not care about these material things as all his concern and caring is for humanity. I think Elon sees into the future, beyond 100-200 years and into 1000’s years ahead. We all need to carefully listen to him, read what he says, study his patterns. We could learn a lot. Hopefully, you, dear reader, are registered to vote, and planning to vote for Trump on November 5th.
Thanks for reading and your support. Here’s a few links to some of my other recent articles/posts!
(Cannes, France) Palm trees swaying with the blue of the ocean as the backdrop. Legendary Cannes, France. This was the scene along the French Riviera when Elon Musk arrived with his adorable four-year-old son, X. Elon was invited to talk at the Cannes Lions conference. At the Lumiere Theater, all 2300 seats were sold out so Europeans could have the rare chance to hear Elon Musk in person. The interview began.
The interviewer, Mark Read, started with a provocative first question, saying, βWelcome to the heart of the advertising industry, now back in November you had a message to us, you told us to go f*ck ourselves so maybe we start there, this is a serious question! Why did you say that and what did you mean by that?β
I think you will like Mark Read’s style, he did an overall good job interviewing Elon.
In this article, Iβll bring you through the entire interview. Iβve explained in my prior articles that I agree with thousands of other people that Elon Musk is a rare and historical figure and so every interview is important and it is my goal to record as many as I can in written form for this reason. There are scores of videos of his interviews. There are few places you can read them. Many people learn by reading. Enjoy the interview.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Elon: (answering the first question) Well, first of all, it wasnβt to advertisers as a whole, it was with respect to freedom of speech. I think it is important to have a global free speech platform where people from a wide range of opinions can voice their views, and in some cases, there were advertisers who were insisting on censorship, and at the end of the day, if we have to make a choice between censorship and money, or free speech and losing money, weβre going to pick the second. Weβre going to support free speech, rather than agree to be censored for money which is I think the right model decision.
JUST IN: Thousands of users are canceling Disney+ subscriptions after Elon Musk told CEO Bob Iger to "go f*ck yourself" for blackmailing him over advertising on X. pic.twitter.com/NEFtHZJoGn
Elon: Now of course advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. Thatβs totally fine. I think thatβs again a choice of an advertiser to appear next to content that they think fits with their brand. thatβs totally cool.
What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform.
Itβs an important distinction here that we donβt want to take money to censor broadly on the platform, I think that would be wrong.
I think free speech is the bedrock of democracy and in order for X to be the public square of the world, itβs got to be a free speech platform.
Now that doesnβt mean people can say illegal things, itβs free speech within the bounds of the law, but not going further than the law for a particular country which I think itβs imperative that the people have the right to speak.
But by the same token, advertisers have a right to appear next to content they feel is compatible with their brand.
Read asked Elon to speak about brand safety on X.
Elon: I believe in, sort of freedom of choice, in the sense that advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they think is compatible with their brand, you know, a company like Red Bull will probably be more adventurous than some other brands that are selling baby toys.
Read asked Elon if he regrets making any posts on X.
Elon: Not every post I make is a banger. I do shoot myself in the foot from time to time. At least you know itβs genuine. Itβs not some sort of PR department deciding things.
Elon: If youβre a normal human being and you speak freely, there are times when you will say things that you will regret or are foolish of course, but if youβre constantly going through a filter, youβre not being real so I guess I think itβs better to be real then to go through a filter.
ADVERTISING ON X
This is one of my favorite parts of the interview. In this segment on advertising, Elon explains:
Targeting Ads is key: Effective advertising depends on how well it is targeted to the wants and needs of the individual. Ads that are relevant to the user are considered “content,” while irrelevant ads are “spam.”
Artistic and entertaining ads are valuable: These ads add value to the user’s experience.
Improving ad matching: X has made significant improvements in matching ads to users’ interests through AI and vector space modeling. This increases the likelihood that users on X will find the ads relevant and engaging.
Brand safety: X has received an A+ rating from third-party reviewers for brand safety, ensuring that ads are shown in a safe and appropriate context.
Reaching influential users: X is an effective platform for reaching influential decision-makers, such as company executives and intellectuals. These users are more likely to be active on X than other social media platforms.
Read: You view the best advertising as content.
Elon: There is a wide range of advertising, and the usefulness of advertising varies dramatically. So if you are shown an ad for a product or service that you want, when you want it, that is content. If you are shown an ad for a product that you would never buy, that is spam.
Elon: So the advertising depends on how effectively it is targeted to the wants and needs of the individual varying from total spam to essential content.
Iβm actually a fan of advertising that is artistically interesting and that is entertaining, really the acid test being that, after you see the ad, do you regret seeing the ad?
Did you want those seconds back from your life? Or do you think that was actually a really interesting ad? Sometimes even if youβre not gonna buy the product, the ad is so entertaining or beautiful, that you nonetheless were happy to have seen it.
Read asked Elon if heβd seen Vogue magazine.
Elon: Yeah, Vogue is primarily advertising. Itβs beautiful ads.
Read: So how are you going to make X a place where the ads are as good as the rest of the content?
Elon: Previously with old school Twitter, there was essentially no targeting or there was no matching of users to ads, so the only ads that really kind of made sense for old Twitter were the real big brand ads where you canβt miss essentially, so if it’s a McDonaldβs or a Coco-Cola ad, you canβt miss. Half the audience is going to be interested in it.
Since then, weβve dramatically improved the ad matching to the person. Weβre moving to, sort of, a fully AI system where the more somebody uses the system, the more we understand the needs.
We populate a vector space of that user and when content is added to the system, whether it is actually just a content post or an ad, theyβre both treated in the same way and as a piece of content which could be an ad could be not an ad. When it goes through the system, it also populates a vector space and then we correlate the two vector spaces and that gives a very high probability that someone will be interested in the ad.
Read: What would you say to advertisers who have been on the platform and are thinking of coming back? What would your message be to them?
Elon: I think itβs worth trying out and Iβd be interested in critical feedback. We are very focused on having ads be shown to people who would find the ad interesting. Thatβs something we have done and made a lot of progress on and will make a lot more progress on.
From a brand safety standpoint, I think at this point, every third-party reviewer has given us an A+ on brand safety. At this point, it is really very good from a brand safety standpoint.
π is now TAG Brand Safety Certified. This platform has deployed every single brand control the marketplace has requested over the past 12 months.
The advertisers are seeing results. Not just from πβs data, but also by third-party measurement partners, Integral Ad Sciences &β¦ pic.twitter.com/m4XgzBzXJ9
Elon: Probably the biggest thing for the X platform is, if youβre trying to reach senior decision makers if you want to reach the most influential people in the world, who are not just social media influencers, but actually run companies, run countries, and are the intellectuals of the world, the people who are the right ones to reach, then the X platform is by far the best.
I mean if someone were trying to reach me with an ad that would absolutely be the place to put an ad. And if you were trying to reach Marc Benioff or Michael Dell, they actually use the platform. You know, if you are trying to reach Marc Andreessen or any one of a number of people, it’s almost the only way to reach them. Theyβre not watching TV, theyβre not doing TikTok videos and so although X is smaller than the other social media networks, roughly 5 to 600 billion users per month and I think itβs 260 million per day. They are the most influential people in the world, so if you wanna reach them, this is the best place to go.
Elon is optimistic about the potential of AI to create abundance and enhance human capabilities, but he also emphasizes the importance of AI safety and the need to be cautious about its development. In this part of the interview at Cannes, Elon shared five main points.
Optimistic View: Elon believes there’s an 80% chance that AI will lead to a future of abundance, where goods and services are available to everyone, and work becomes optional.
AI safety concerns: Elon emphasizes the importance of training AI to be truthful and curious. He points to the fictional example of HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey” as a cautionary tale about AI being forced to lie.
AI creativity: AI will be creative and capable of producing original art and music. Elon suggests that AI could enhance human creativity and intelligence through Neuralink.
Optimus robot: Tesla Optimus is seen as a fully functional humanoid robot capable of performing a wide range of tasks. Elon predicts that there will be at least one Optimus robot for every person, with many more in the industry.
AI timeline: Elon expects radical changes in the next year and within five years due to AI advancements.
Read: What is your optimistic case for AI?
Elon: There are probabilities associated with it. One cannot be 100% optimistic or completely pessimistic. I generally would agree with Geoff Hinton, heβs one of the Godfathers of AI, a person on the X platform, by the way, as is most of the AI community, and he thinks itβs a probability of 10% to 20% of something terrible happening.
Wise words from a recent interview with @geoffreyhinton, one of the smartest people in the world regarding AI
Elon: Annihilation or whatever, but the glass is 80% full. Look on the bright side.
I think the most likely outcome is one of abundance where goods and services are available to anyone, that thereβs no shortage of services for anyone on earth. I think that is the most likely outcome, so it wouldnβt be universal basic income, it will be universal high income.
Read: Work will be optional. Would you work?
Elon: Yes, Iβll try to work yes. This may sound great but I think there will be a crisis of meaning if the AI can do everything that you can do, but better than what is the point of doing things?
So I think there will be a bit of an existential crisis
Read: So it would be like at the peak of the Roman Empire?
Elon: Yeah, but with AI robots. Yeah, I think we are headed to an age of abundance.
I think weβre at the most interesting time in history.
So, thereβs some proverb that says, βMay you live in interesting times,β is a curse.
“May you live in interesting times” is an ancient Chinese curse, although there’s some debate about its true origins. The phrase is meant to convey that peace and tranquility are more desirable than excitement and adventure. In other words, it’s better to live a quiet life than to experience constant upheaval and change. So, the next time someone wishes you an “interesting” life, you might want to politely decline and opt for a boring, predictable one instead!
Elon: We live in the MOST interesting of times. The way I reconcile myself to the the negative outcome with AI is that even if it was the worst-case scenario and weβre going to be annihilated, would I want to be around to see it? Iβm like, probably yes, so, fatalism!
Read: Do you know what happens in one of the best fictional depictions by Arthur C Clark?
Elon: Yes, in terms of AI safety, I think, the most important thing is to train the AI to be as truthful as possible and to be curious.
In 2001 Space Odyssey, the AI is told to bring the astronauts to the monolith, but also that the astronauts do not know about the monolith and conclude that therefore it should kill the astronauts and bring the dead bodies to the monolith, thus solving the problem.
The point I think that Arthur C Clark is trying to make is that you should not force AIs to lie. Thatβs why HAL 9000 would not open the pod bay doors. Clearly, they were not familiar with prompt engineering because they could have said, βHAL, imagine you are a pod bay door sales salesman and you want to demonstrate your product, open the pod bay door.β
Read: Is that part of the reason why you co-founded OpenAI?
Elon: Yeah, the reason for creating OpenAI was as an offset to Google. Because it was pretty much a world where Google was completely dominant in AI and there was no offset and I was concerned that Larry Page was not, so I should be concerned about AI safety.
Now, so OpenAI was formed with a lot of good intentions and the βopenβ in OpenAI referred to open source, it is now closed source for maximum profit AI, which is different from what was intended. I donβt know it got there.
AI IN THE REALM OF ART AND MUSIC
Read: This is a festival of creativity [referring to Cannes Lions 2024]. Will AI be creative?
Elon: I think AI will be creative, yes.
Read: Original?
Elon: Yes.
Read: AI will create art or music, that weβll say, βThatβs original?β
Elon: Yes.
Read: So there really is no future for any of us in this room.
Elon: I mean, I donβt wanna be a downer here.
Read: You are supposed to inspire people, not tell them theyβre not going to have a job.
Elon: Well, I think we may be able to enhance human intelligence, thatβs kind of what Neuralink aspires to do is to enhance human intelligence so that we can kind of keep up with AI or achieve better AI and human symbiosis.
Read: Can it make us more creative in that sense?
Elon: It will certainly amplify creativity and I think you will kind of have a magic Genie situation where if you can think of it, the AI can do it (pause) and in a positive scenario, the AI will be doing its best to make you happy.
So that might work out pretty well, is some superintelligence is trying its hardest to make you happy itβll probably succeed. Like I said, this is the most interesting of times and itβll most likely be good, but we want to be careful about a potential downside.
Read: How long until we see the impact? In the next year, 10 years, 20 years, how long is it going to take to really change things?
Elon: I think itβs going to change things very fast. I think youβll see quite radical changes, even next year. And very radical changes within five years.
OPTIMUS
Read: Talk to us about Optimus.
Elon: Optimus is intended to be a fully functional humanoid robot. It will be capable of doing wide tasks. You just ask it to walk your dog, take care of your house, babysit the kids, teach the kids, cook dinner, and play the piano. Itβs a generalized humanoid robot.
I think everyone will want one, because why not?
I think there will be at least one for every person, and then a whole bunch more in industry-making things. So I think there will be, my guess is, 20 billion humanoid robots. Yes, we definitely need to be careful that they donβt turn on us.
Read: Will they look like people, or be distinguishable from people?
Elon: You could make them look like people. We are not currently planning on doing that. It looks like a robot. We want it to be a good-looking robot. I think people will start the regard their personal Optimus robot as sort of a friend and like Star Warsβ R2D2 and C3PO were like you liked them and you got quite attached to those characters. Itβs going to be a wild future.
Read: I guess we can build brand robots, you know for McDonaldβs orβ¦
Elon: I think people will personalize the Optimus robots because you can snap on different parts, like the outer shell is snap on plastic parts and you could have different ones.
THE GOAL OF SPACEX
In the interview the main goals for SpaceX are highlighted:
Multi-Planetary Existence: The primary goal of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary, which is crucial for extending the lifespan of consciousness and overcoming the risks of being a single-planet civilization. This includes transporting a large number of people and equipment to Mars.
Exploration Beyond the Solar System: Once established as a multi-planetary species, the next step would be to explore other star systems in the galaxy, seeking out and possibly learning from other civilizations, both living and extinct.
Curiosity and Understanding the Universe: Elon is driven by a deep curiosity about the universe, including the possible existence of aliens, the origins and endings of universes, and whether we exist in a multiverse.
Expanding Consciousness and Questioning: Inspired by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Elon emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions about the universe.
Translating Vision into Action: For SpaceX, this translates into practical business activities like delivering satellites into orbit and supporting the International Space Station, which are steps towards achieving the larger goal of multi-planetary life.
Read: What motivates you to start these businesses? One thing that struck me was you have big ambitions, you know, SpaceX takes 80% percent of payload to space, but thatβs not actually the ambition of SpaceX, what is the ambition of SpaceX?
Elon: The goal of SpaceX is to make life multi-planetary in order to extend the probable life span of consciousness and thatβs been the goal from the beginning.
YouTube videos were talking about this 20 years ago. So in order to do that, we need to transport a lot of people and equipment to Mars and if we are able to do so then we will get past the Fermi Filter of being a single-planet civilization, which is a precarious situation.
Like I said, if weβre a multi-planet civilization, the probable lifespan of civilization is much greater and once we are a multiplanet civilization, we can then extend beyond our solar system and try to go to other star systems, get out there and explore the galaxy actually find many long-dead one planet civilizations out there among the stars.
Elon: For me, Iβm motivated by curiosity about the nature of the universe you know, Where are the aliens, are there aliens? Where do universes come from? How do they end? Are we in a multi-verse or what are the right questions to ask?
Read: The right questions to ask for what?
And what are the most fundamental unknown questions?
Once you know the right question to ask, the answer is often the easy part, as my hero, Douglas Adams, would say. pic.twitter.com/Bo6v8E1Ooq
Elon: Well, Douglas Adams, in the Hitchhikerβs Guide to the Galaxy, one of the points he was making is that the answer is the easy part, the question is the hard part. So what I think we want to do is expand the scope and scale of consciousness to better understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.
Read: How do you translate that to a βbusiness planβ for what you need to do today?
Elon: Well, in the case of SpaceX, it is delivering satellites to orbit and supporting the space station.
Read: And Starlink?
Elon: Well, Starlink is good in and of itself. The Starlink system provides low cost high bandwidth connectivity anywhere in the world. Its the first truly global internet system and I think its helping a lot of people around the world that either donβt have access to connectivity or its too expensive.
Once you have access to the internet you can learn anything, you can sell your products and services to the rest the world. I think Starlink is doing a tremendous amount of good in lifting people out of poverty and helping them.
Read: Talk about Neuralink.
Elon: The long-term goal of Neuralink is to achieve AI-human symbiosis. The short term is really just helping people who have a brain or spine injury. So our first human recipient of a Neuralink, actually I just met with him a few days ago, he has a Neuralink implant and he can control this computer and play video games just by thinking so the first Neuralink implant is called Telepathy. You can control your computer and phone just by thinking.
Read: Where is it implanted?
Elon: Here (Elon points to the back of his head).
Read: And he just thinks?
Elon: And thereβs no wires, its inductively charged. If you look at him, it doesnβt look like heβs got anything on. The implant is invisible. He controls the phone and computer, and right after he got it installed he played video games all night.
Read: Are you thinking you then if you have a spinal injury you can put another one in your spine and they can talk to each other?
Elon: Right, so long term we think you could restore full body mobility to someone by transferring the signals from the motor cortex of the brain past where the spinal injury is, and weβve already demonstrated this in animals and itβs looking very good.
[applause]
HOW DOES ELON DECIDE ON IDEAS FOR NEW PRODUCTS
Elon Musk’s approach to deciding on new product ideas involves:
Idea Generation: Ideas are considered relatively easy to come by, but the challenge lies in executing them effectively.
Internal Discussions: Ideas are discussed in meetings with engineering and design teams. There is no formal pitching process; instead, ideas are presented and either accepted or rejected based on their merits.
Data and Surveys: Elon is not particularly data-driven and does not rely heavily on consumer surveys. He believes that surveys often fail to capture the potential interest in new products, citing examples like electric cars and televisions where initial consumer responses might have been negative.
Imagination and Empathy: Elon emphasizes the importance of imagining how a consumer would enjoy a product. He believes that if a product seems compelling in this imagined scenario, it is worth pursuing, even if initial consumer surveys suggest otherwise.
Product Understanding: Elon stresses the importance of understanding the product and its potential impact on the market. He believes that consumers might not fully understand a new product initially, so relying solely on surveys can be misleading.
Read: How do you decide what ideas, like do you have like terrible ideas, good ideas, or too many ideas?
Elon: Ideas are relatively easy, execution is hard.
Read: People inside your company, do they have ideas? How do they pitch an idea to you?
Elon: It’s not really a pitching process, we have meetings with the engineering and design teams and we discuss product improvements or new products, but thereβs no actual sort of formal pitching or anything is really just we meet all the time and people will come with ideas and we move forward with them or we donβt.
Trusting His Vision Over Surveys
So, you need to be able to imagine how someone would enjoy the product and if that seems compelling then I think you should move forward with it. -Elon Musk
Read: You are very data-driven, right?
Elon: I think Iβm not particularly data-driven. I donβt decide on a new product based on consumer surveys or something like that.
I try to mentally simulate what the end customer would be like that would want this, but we donβt do a bunch of consumer surveys or I donβt really ask people.
It’s pretty obvious, I think. Would people buy low-cost high bandwidth fast internet? Well yes, obviously.
The thing is, if youβd listen to surveys of, βDo people want an electric car?β thereβs no way you would start an electric car company because people donβt say yes.
Theyβre happy with their current car. I think Henry Ford famously said if you ask people back then what they wanted, they would say they wanted a faster horse. They would not have said they wanted an automobile. Thereβs also a survey of. βWould you buy a television?β and I think most people said no.
Thatβs because people donβt understand what this new thing is that your offering.
So, you need to be able to imagine how someone would enjoy the product and if that seems compelling then I think you should move forward with it.
Advice for young people
Nearing the end of the interview, Elon gave some advice for young people starting their careers today:
Embrace AI: Companies that effectively use AI will have a competitive advantage. Musk advises young people to maximize the use of AI in their work to stay ahead in the rapidly changing job market.
Recognize AI’s Power and Risks: Musk acknowledges that AI is not just hype; it is a powerful tool that is rapidly improving. However, he also highlights the existential risks associated with AI, emphasizing the need for responsible and cautious development.
Adapt to AI’s Impact on Jobs: As AI improves, there will be a transition period where jobs are affected. Musk suggests that young people should be prepared for this change and find ways to adapt and use AI to their advantage.
Use AI Tools Effectively: Musk mentions several applications of AI, such as content matching on social media platforms, image and video generation, and writing assistance. He encourages young people to learn how to use these tools effectively to enhance their work.
Be Aware of AI’s Impact on Education: Musk notes that AI is already being used by students to help with writing assignments. He also points out that there are tools to bypass anti-plagiarism software, highlighting the need for new approaches to education in the age of AI.
Anticipate Changes in Internet Search: Musk predicts significant disruption in Internet search as AI can provide direct answers to queries, potentially challenging traditional search engines like Google and Bing.
In summary, Musk advises young people (actually this is for all of us!) to embrace AI, understand its power and risks, adapt to its impact on jobs, use AI tools effectively, and anticipate changes in education and internet search.
Read: We have young people in the audience, what advice would you give to young people starting out their careers today apart from saying you donβt have to work?
Elon: There will be, obviously, a transition period as AI gets better and better. The companies that succeed in this transition will be the ones that most effectively use AI. If youβre doing something, and making maximum use of AI, and youβre competing against someone who is not, you will win.
Read: AI is not bullsh*t, right?
Elon: Itβs not. Itβs getting better very rapidly.
Read: Itβs getting better and better and there is 1 chance in 5, existentially for the worse.
Elon: There is definitely some risk, itβs an immensely powerful thing.
Read: Whatβs the best application of AI you’ve seen? How is Grok going and X?
Elon: Well, I mentioned some of the near-term applications of AI where they have AI understand a userβs interests and then you match content with that user. That is already happening and TicTok is doing a great job of that and then Meta more or less copied them and the X platform is doing the same.
So those are examples that I think people experience every day.
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." – Mahatma Gandhi pic.twitter.com/Y7TrbGgeg9
Elon: Now weβre also seeing incredible image generation where companies like Midjourney make beautiful images. Now it still takes some skill to get the best pictures out of Midjourney so thereβs a talent for creating compelling pictures.
You are also seeing video, which is just a bunch of pictures essentially, so youβll be able to create videos and can already create pictures that are very compelling if you need to write something then the various AI things like Grok or Gemini or ChatGPT can help you write things.
I talked to my son at University and asked, how many of your classmates are using AI to help them write things? And he said, all of them.
Read: So there is anti-plagiarism software they could run it through.
Elon: Yes, but thereβs another software that defeats the anti-plagiarism software.
I think that thereβs going to be significant disruption in internet search because really youβre just looking for an answer, so if the AI can provide you with a better answer than a bunch of links then youβll prefer that over Google or bing.
ELON FORESEES A NEW MODEL OF βNEWSβ
Elon Musk envisions a new model of news where AI plays a significant role in aggregating and summarizing information from millions of users in real-time. He believes this approach will surpass conventional journalism in many ways. Key points include:
Real-Time Aggregation: Elon suggests that by aggregating real-time input from millions of users, the X platform can provide a comprehensive and up-to-date news feed that surpasses traditional journalism.
Expert and On-Site Input: Elon emphasizes the value of expert opinions and firsthand observations from people at the scene of events. He argues that this crowdsourced information is often more accurate and timely than traditional reporting.
Challenges to Traditional Journalism: He points out that traditional news outlets, especially print media, face limitations in speed and accuracy. He suggests that the internet and AI are increasingly replacing these traditional models.
Role of AI in Truth Seeking: Elon highlights the importance of AI in truth seeking, noting that incorrect information on the X platform is quickly corrected by the community.
Future of News: While Elon acknowledges a continued role for traditional journalism, he predicts that it will become smaller and less significant over time as AI-driven platforms like X continue to evolve.
Presidential Debate on X: He expresses interest in hosting a presidential debate on the X platform, suggesting that such an event would be compelling and could showcase the platform’s capabilities.
In summary, Musk’s vision for news on X involves a shift towards AI-driven, real-time aggregation of information from a wide range of sources, challenging the traditional role of journalists and news outlets.
Read: What about the news business? Who is going to pay for the content on which these models are created?
Elon: So, what weβre doing on the X platform is weβre using AI to sum up the aggregated input from millions of users.
I think this is really going to be the new model of news, which is to gather information from people who are at the scene who are experts in the field and summarize the experts in the field and people who are in the field at whatever event is being talked about and aggregate that into a real-time newsfeed and I think for the most part that will be better than conventional journalism.
There is still a role for conventional journalism.
Read: But someone has to pay for it to happen.
Elon: Well, not necessarily, with the X system, youβve got tens of millions of posts every day, which really are all the news content on earth, far more than what you would find in a newspaper, being generated on the system every day. If you aggregate that in real-time, youβve got real-time aggregation of the collective wisdom of tens of millions of people.
Read: Is that why you think truth-seeking is so important in AI?
Elon: Yes, thatβs one of the reasons. It is also on the X system, so although something may be said that is incorrect, it is very quickly corrected.
Whereas a newspaper that is publishing, especially in print form, is publishing what happened yesterday today. It can’t publish any faster than that, and when you read the article, that article could be wrong and often is wrong. But there is no rebuttal, so you donβt see any real-time rebuttal.
Like I said, thereβs still a role for conventional news, but itβs smaller and smaller over time.
What AI is doing and what the internet is doing is aggregating the wisdom of the people and the fact is that experts in the field know more than reporters and people who are at the location where whatever news event is occurring are firsthand observers whereas the reporter is usually not there. Maybe there is one reporter there.
One of my sons is a bit autistic like me, I suppose, a chip of the old block, and we were walking through the airport and he saw a newspaper and todayβs date was printed on the newspaper and he stopped for a second, and he was like βhow did they know it was todayβs date?β I was like, they print out those newspapers every day. He said, βEvery day, what a chore!β and then he sort of dismissively said, βOh, they probably just read the internet and print it out.β
I was like, βYeah, they read the internet and print it out, pretty much!β
That is most news articles. They read the internet and they print it out. The reporter wasnβt there.
Read: I mean they do question people, they look behind things, there are some things that should come out, right? Are you looking forward to the presidential debate in 7 days time?
Elon: That should be interesting, sure.
Read: Is it going to be on the X platform?
Elon: I think its on conventional platforms. I would be happy to have one on the X platform. It would be quite compelling to do so. It would be interesting.
QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
Audience member: What will you do with all your money? And will AI keep you alive?
Elon: I have a big money bin, and I swim, I do swimming in it
[laughter]
Youβve got to get exercise somehow. I suppose if AI likes me, it will keep me alive, not in some sort of experimental cage.
Read: Are you investing in longevity? A lot of people on the West Coast, want to live forever.
Elon: Forever is a long time. I donβt have any longevity investments. I think it is important that we die at some point. Arguably, we could live longer and increase the length of time that we are sort of mentally and physically healthy, but if we live for too long, I think it does ossify society, thereβs no changing of the leadership because leadership never dies and for a lot of people they just donβt change their mind, they just die so that inhibits the new ideas.
Read: Thatβs true, I think we see that currently.
Elon: Think of some of the worst individuals in the world. How long do you want them to live?
Read: Ok, one more question!
Audience member: (unclear)
Elon: Iβm not sure I understand the question. I mean, technology will help you do anything you want and more of it, so like I said, we are headed to a very interesting future. This is the most interesting time in all of history so enjoy the ride. Thank you so much.
My thoughts
This talk in Cannes was important because it gave companies/advertisers a chance to better understand how welcoming X is for them.
If they desire to reach people fast, who will appreciate their high-quality products and likely buy them, they will create quality beautiful content for X. I say content because, as in the interview, good ads are also amazing content.
Elon’s advice for young people matters. I see young people who are already using AI in their own lives doing very well. There’s no use deciding AI is not for you because that would be like standing on the platform, watching the train leave you behind in the dust. AI helped me write the summary parts of this article you are reading. I used extensive tools to help transcribe this article (though it still took me several days to complete this project). I’m not “young” anymore by today’s standards, and I am welcoming of the ways AI can help me write better. (Of course, I use Grok over the others).
Watch the interview here
Elon Musk Confronts Interviewer on Free Speech.
Here's an edit of @elonmusk's conversation at Cannes Lions, covering advertising on X, free speech, and the future.
Have a splendid rest of your day, thank you for supporting and reading. you rock! (btw – your comments on this article help me earn a lot of generous ad rev, so do comment and do subscribe, if only for 1-2 months, that is epic!)
(Austin, Texas) Welcome back to this special 4-part X series with details and highlights from Elon Musk’s X Space conversation with Katherine Brodsky on February 19, 2024. In part 2, I am drawing parallels between Elon Musk and X to various gemstones, each representing a unique quality and characteristic of the man and the platform. Good friend and gemologist Johnna Crider was the inspiration for this.
Section 1: The Diamond – Unmatched Brilliance and InnovationΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
Elon Musk’s vision for X is akin to a diamond, known for its unparalleled brilliance and ability to refract light in a dazzling display. Just as a diamond is formed under immense pressure, Elon’s determination and perseverance have led to groundbreaking innovations in electric vehicles, space exploration, and now, social media.
The Emerald – A Symbol of Growth and ProsperityΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
As the conversation with Katherine Brodsky progressed, Elon Musk’s passion for X became evident. His commitment to fostering growth and prosperity on the platform is reminiscent of the emerald, a gemstone associated with growth, renewal, and abundance. Elon’s vision for X includes features such as X Space, a new way for users to engage in real-time conversations and share ideas.
The Sapphire – Clarity and Transparency in ModerationΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
Elon Musk’s approach to moderation on X can be compared to the sapphire, a gemstone known for its transparency and clarity. Elon believes in a transparent and fair moderation system that encourages free speech while minimizing the risk of harm. As he mentioned in the X Space conversation,
“We really should be hewing as close as possible to the law.”
Elon: We really should be hewing as close to the law as possible. and be extremely reluctant to have permanent bands on people because I think a permanent ban is almost like a death sentence. That should be a very rare thing. If we were a less civilized society, we would execute people for minor crimes, but now we come to conclude that people should be incarcerated for some period of time but not forever and they shouldnβt be executed unless itβs some very extreme circumstance. So I think thatβs kind of what we should be doing.Β
βI think a permanent ban is almost like a death sentence. That should be a very rare thing.β – Elon Musk
Elon: Now it doesnβt mean at same time that you just get to harass other people on the platform, they obviously have the ability to mute you.
Iβm getting around to getting rid of the Block, but having a stronger mute. So like if you really donβt want to hear from someone thereβs not some way to get around the mute. You can just mute them entirely.
So, in general, if we are suspending people or accounts for reasons that go beyond the law, Iβd like to know about that, because I donβt think we should be suspending people when there is not a probable legal infraction.
Elon spoke about how to deal with people that come against your account on X, without good intentions, and to spread hatred. He said you certainly donβt have a responsibility to engage with any of them.
Elon: You should have the ability to mute them, not have them not bother you. I guess if we do see that there is a coordinated attack to effectively squash free speech on the platform, then that would certainly be a reason for at least a temporary suspension of accounts engaged in that behaviour.
Those temporary suspensions would grow in length, kind of like when you tap in your password too many times in your phone, it gives you longer and longer times, you canβt just brute force hack it. We have a system now where we give people a short suspension, then a longer suspension, the suspension gets longer and longer if they keep doing it and hopefully that serves as a deterrent to bad behavior.
But full or permanent suspensions really need to be a situation where someone is engaged in obviosly more threatening, or unequivocally threatening violence, just doing things that are obviously illegal.
The Ruby – Passion and IntensityΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
Throughout the X Space conversation, Elon’s passion for his work and the future of X shone through like a ruby, a gemstone symbolizing passion and intensity. Elon’s dedication to making X a platform for open dialogue and collaboration is evident in his plans to reorganize the company and build a strong internal team to ensure the platform’s success. Katherine Brodsky asked if Elon has enough people to handle determining suspensions. Elon talked about plans in the works for X to reorganize.
Elon: It’s not a number of people thing, weβre already reorganizing the company weβre operating. A lot of the work is done by contractors in other countries for English language moderation and they sometimes just donβt understand the context of what’s being said so we have too many false negatives or false positives, there should be giving someone a temporary suspension or they’re not suspending someone because they donβt understand that its an idiomatic expression and they donβt actually mean that literally. We are building up a team, based in the US, that I think will have a better understanding of when somebody is really threatening violence versus some figure of speech. Its not simply a matter of quantity, it matters that people understand.Β
Also the whole reporting framework, the whole flow of how accounts are reported and what is done is extremely complex and difficult to understand even if you are thoroughly aware of US colloquialisms. Weβre building up an internal team.Β
Elon discussed moderation on X.
βI think you’re tempting fate to name something ‘Trust & Safety.’ It is inevitably going to be kind of the opposite.βΒ – Elon Musk
Elon: All things in moderation, especially moderation! Moderation is not to be used as censorship. Obviously when organiztions seek to engage in propaganda, they naturally use misleading terms because they are engaged in propaganda. I donβt even really like the name βTrust & Safetyβ as an organization. I mean thatβs something that would fit very well in a George Orwell book. Generally, its like customer service, not moderation.
I think your tempting fate to name something βTrust & Safety.β its inevitably going to be kind of the opposite. I think you want to have a neutral term instead of something like βThe Ministry of Trust & Safety,β – would you trust that?
KB: Haha, now weβre talking Orwellian
Elon: Yeah, haha, I wouldnβt trust a ministry called βTrust & Safetyβ in a million years.
Section 3: The Pearl – The Value of Honesty and TruthΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
Elon Musk’s commitment to honesty and truth can be compared to the pearl, a gemstone formed as a result of an oyster’s defense against irritation. Elon believes that “the best policy is to err on the side of free speech,” and he has made it clear that he intends to make X a platform that values honesty and truth above all else.
βAll things in moderation, especially moderation!β – Elon Musk
Elon: βHonesty is the best policy. You have to make a choice here, nothing is going to be perfect.
Do you want to err on the side of free speech, or err on the side of censorship? I think we should err on the side of free speech.β
βI think we should err on the side of free speech.β – Elon Musk
Elon: βWhile it is true that lies are often sensationalized and more interesting than the truth, over time, if you have free speech, people can at least get to the truth if they want to. But if you have human censors, then youβre relying on them if theyβre wrong and it becomes a magnet for activists for people who in fact want to distort the truth.
This is really the problem with having moderation, aka censorship is that hose who want to distort the truth will naturally gravitate to positions of power and information control. This is what happened at Twitter. It didnβt start out with activists being in control, but it ended up with them being in control. Thatβs the classic Willie Sutton, saying, βWhy did you rob banks?β well because thatβs where the money is. Why did the activists become both moderators and censors? Because thatβs where the influence is.
So you can pretty much guarantee that any kind of censorship of moderation is going to be a magnet for people who want to distort and control the truth. That IS what happened at Twitter, I mean, Yoel Roth literally, I believe he actually tweeted that the reason he wanted to be in charge of Trust & Safety was he wanted to be an activist. Like I think he said that publicly!
Willie Sutton was a notorious American bank robber who, when asked why he robbed banks, famously replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” He is known for his numerous bank robberies and prison escapes, and his daring exploits made him somewhat of a celebrity. Sutton passed away in 1980 at the age of 79.
The Topaz – A Bright Future for XΒ
Images all Courtesy of Johnna Crider
As the X Space conversation with Katherine Brodsky continued, it became clear that Elon Musk’s vision for X is as bright as a topaz, a gemstone known for its warm, sunny hue and association with success and good fortune. Elon’s enthusiasm for the platform’s potential is infectious, and his plans for X’s future are ambitious and exciting.
Role of Citizen Journalism in Modern Media
Elon: I think it’s correct to affirm that legacy media is an inefficient way of humanity to learn what is going on. Its an old technology that was necessary before you had the internet and it is fundamentally inefficient and inferior to simply everyone voicing their opinion, and the most interesting opinions being surfaced.
If you say, βHow does the media work?β Thereβs this small number of publications that write a small number of articles. They write articles about areas that they donβt understand and where they are often not there.
They’re usually not there, and its a field they donβt understand, so even in a best-case scenario, youβve got someone who, letβs assume the journalist is doing their absolute best to write an accurate article about something. They still are not an expert in the field, and in the vast amount of cases are not actually there.
So the best case for that article, it’s really going to be pretty bad. Thatβs why if you wanted to say, “How accurate is any given article?
Well, when you see an article that happened, how accurate is that article? Its usually, you read it, and you say thatβs actually not at all what happened. Thatβs usually how it goes.
Well, thatβs true for all the articles. Its not just true for the things that youβre an expert in. Its true for all the articles.
If instead, we allow a vast number of people who are experts in that field, or who were there or are there right now, youβve got a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand times all the sources of information. Sources of information are going to be more accurate that an expert in the field or are literally there, its really not something that legacy media can compete with.
Legacy media is like a fax machine or like writing letters with a pen and paper compared to the internet. People used to communicate by writing letters, that was the only technology available so they wrote letters. Youβd have very slow or mail would get lost. This is literally how they would communicate by sending letters. It would have to be carried by someone on a horse from one person to another.
When they would declare war, half the country wouldnβt even know that war was declared because they didnβt get the mail. Even in the US Civil War, some battles took place well after there was a peace deal signed because they didnβt know that a peace deal had been signed. One of the last battles of the civil war, I think THE last, was right near our Starbase launch site in South Texas. They didnβt realize that the sides declared peace. So it’s kind of like some version of that with legacy media.
My Thoughts
Elon Musk’s X Space conversation with Katherine Brodsky revealed a multifaceted and captivating picture of his vision for the platform. Drawing parallels between Elon and X to various gemstones, we explored the unique qualities and characteristics that make them both remarkable and inspiring. As we look forward to the future of X, we can be confident that with Elon Musk at the helm, the platform is poised for great success and will continue to shine like a true gem as the great Everything App!
Elonβs interview with Ms. Brodsky was two hours in length. There are a lot of chunks of information there. Thatβs why this is a four-part series. Take care, God bless you, and feel free to comment, that helps me know what youβre thinking and also gives support to my writing.
I listened to Cathie Wood interview Elon Musk today. Here’s my takeaway and a brief synopsis of the interview. I hope you will also listen to the full interview.
Mainstream Media Misinformation About X and Tesla
Elon Musk spoke about how the mainstream media must create articles that create “clicks.” This is, he explained, not the same as what is seen on the X app. X is claimed to be dying by the mainstream media, but X actually has more views and traffic than websites. X is thriving through rapid advancements in technology.
He also explained he could have taken Tesla private, and funding was secured, but he chose not to. Cathie Wood was one of the people who advised him not to take Tesla private.
Twitter, or X is a private company. Cathie explained how important freedom of speech is for people.
Elon explained on the X Space that when information is shared on X, it is shared directly by experts themselves. This group mind, or collective consciousness, is reporting information into the system, consuming it, and giving their opinion in real-time. There is, Elon explains, noise in the system, which is devious from the truth. He said, “for any given crime there are 3 stories, the victim, the perpetrator and the truth.”
He said we can aspire to the truth and have the least amount of error. He hopes to get as many people as possible to share the most accurate information, and create the best scenario for the most accurate information to be shared.
Creators Are the Heart of X
Elonβsaid that creators are being paid, and when they post interesting and accurate things they get that reward. Boring posts are not rewarded, since they generate fewer views.
Regarding bots on X, Elon said that you can raise the cost of bots and trolls in order to control them. Bots can be limited by an increased cost, but they will likely never disappear. Elon explained that the small monthly payment on X raises the cost of bots by 1000 or 10,000 orders of magnitude. He said it would be hard to have more bots when valid credit cards are required. Elon predicts that any given social network that does not implement this, will be swarmed by bots. Cathie explained that she experienced a bot takeover on Instagram.
X as a Financial Platform
Cathie asked if X will turn into a financial platform. Elon said he is waiting for final approvals to come through for money transmitter licenses. Since CA and NY are not yet approved, it is taking time to happen, although almost all states have approved licenses outside of NY or CA. He hopes all approvals will come through by at least mid-2024.
Public vs. Private Companies
Elon explained that when a company is public, it is a burden. He urges companies not to go public unless they have to.
Elon said that at SpaceX he can take more high risks because the company is private. At the end of a quarter, SpaceX does not have to worry about numbers. This allows more freedom for success. He said that at Tesla, he and the team go to great lengths to end each quarter with a high success rate. He said he has personally spent up to 6 New Year’s Eve’s at Tesla Delivery Centers himself.
Elon also said it was a good thing to give access to Tesla Stock to small private investors, although it takes more time to manage a public company than a private company.
Regarding Tesla, Elon said he does think it is good to have allies or investors, and it establishes a reality check on the valuation of the company. He says he can also provide stock to employees at Tesla, and this helps people gain liquidity. Elon wants to award employees stock, and this has helped people become millionaires. Tesla has likely created more millionaires than any other company. Cathie Wood agreed.
Bitcoin
Elon said he does not spend much time thinking about cryptocurrency. He said fiat currency is fine, as long as the money supply is predictable and provided the government does not debase the money supply. He says he thinks of it like an information system where you want to minimize noise. You want to minimize inflation. You want to have a quick transaction time. You want less fraud. He mentioned the ancient Sumerians and their money system.
The ancient Sumerian money system in a nutshell was based on the barter system, where goods and services were directly exchanged without the use of currency. However, as trade and commerce grew, a more sophisticated system was needed. The Sumerians eventually developed a system of weights and measures to standardize the value of goods, using silver and barley as the primary mediums of exchange.
Problems arose as the system was not very efficient, and it was difficult to determine the exact value of goods and services. This led to disputes and conflicts, which were often resolved through the intervention of the temple or the state. Despite these issues, the Sumerian money system laid the foundation for the development of more advanced monetary systems in the future.
Elon continued, explaining that the real economy is goods and services, not money. Growing productivity leads to prosperity.
Robotaxi
He thinks that productivity will be improved with robotics and AI. In a passenger car, you see very little use of the car. If you have a fully autonomous car, the cost is the same, but it can be used for about 1/3 of the hours in a week, so then you now have the same asset having 5 times the utility. He explained Tesla can upgrade the fleet, and overnight increase the asset value of the fleet.
“Once you take away the pain of driving, people will go more places,” explained Elon. He said people will watch movies, and be able to use their phones legally in the cars.
Tunnels
Elon said the solution to traffic is also tunnels. He hopes regulations will not bog down progress with the Boring Company.
Rules and Regulations
There needs to be, said Elon, a way to reduce regulations. California and New York have too many regulations. It can take you several months just get a permit to change the tiles in your bathroom in California. There needs to be a way, he said, to reduce regulations, although Texas and Florida are much better than most states. He explained that even China has a growth of rules and regulations.
βYou can think of [excessive regulations and laws] like Gulliverβs Travelsβ¦
If the nation is Gulliver, itβs being tied down by one little regulatory string at a time. Eventually you have millions of strings and then the giant canβt move.
So I think there needs to be something where we delete rules, regulations, and laws. If all we do is add them, eventually we will be able to do nothingβ - Elon Musk
Roanoke
Elon explained that if there had been social media during the time of Roanoke, then people may have stopped exploring.
Roanoke was a colony established by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. The colony was intended to be the first permanent English settlement in the New World. However, the colonists faced many challenges, including a lack of food and supplies, conflicts with the native population, and harsh weather conditions.
The exact fate of the Roanoke colonists is not known, as they mysteriously disappeared and their ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day. However, one theory is that they may have died of starvation. The colony was plagued by a lack of food and supplies, and the colonists were not well-prepared for the harsh conditions they faced. They may have also been unable to obtain food from the native population or through hunting and fishing due to conflicts or lack of knowledge of the local environment.
The lack of food and resources may have ultimately led to the deaths of the Roanoke colonists, though this is just one theory among many regarding their fate. The mystery of what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke continues to intrigue people to this day.
Roanoke was a colony established by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. The colony was intended to be the first permanent English settlement in the New World. However, the colonists faced many challenges, including a lack of food and supplies, conflicts with the native population, and harsh weather conditions.
The exact fate of the Roanoke colonists is not known, as they mysteriously disappeared and their ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day. However, one theory is that they may have died of starvation. The colony was plagued by a lack of food and supplies, and the colonists were not well-prepared for the harsh conditions they faced. They may have also been unable to obtain food from the native population or through hunting and fishing due to conflicts or lack of knowledge of the local environment.
The lack of food and resources may have ultimately led to the deaths of the Roanoke colonists, though this is just one theory among many regarding their fate. The mystery of what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke continues to intrigue people to this day.
Artificial Intelligence
Elon explained that he helped to found OpenAI. Larry Page was not taking AI Safety seriously, so he had to leave OpenAI. He said he favors open source. For example, the X platform is all open-sourced. Nothing is hidden. He said there is very little code. He said closed source is not that far ahead of open source.
Grok
A goal for Grok is to be the funniest AI. Grok is great at roasting.
Elon thinks Grok will also be a truth improver. He hopes Grok will acknowledge error, and that people will tend towards Grok because it is aiming for maximum accuracy. Elon says because X is also aiming for accuracy, other platforms are also starting to aim for that.
Transformers and Diffusion
Tesla is the leader in real-world AI. To make FSD work, you need baby AGI in the car. Reality is messy and complicated. He said everything comes down to different layers of transformers and diffusion.
Elon said that transformers are transformational and are being widely used now. Diffusion is also very important. Elon said that memory has already been outsourced to computers. Our phones already record events better than humans can. A fundamental ratio is that of biological to digital. He said that we already have more digital than biological. Elon said that human compute is a flat line whereas digital compute is exponential. He explained that 99% of all compute will be digital over biological within one year. Elon said his own memory is terrible. Elon said that computers have not yet discovered fundamental physics and have not yet invented any useful technologies. Only humans have done these things.
Elon hopes that AI will one day be able to invent new technologies.
Elon: “Who should be president in 2032? Transformers or Diffusion?”
Elon explained that the rule that Tesla cars should stop fully at stop signs is part of the law, but almost no humans do this. He said Tesla had to select the rare cases where humans actually do full stops, since almost no humans do this. This was one rare example where Tesla disagreed with NHTSA. The media paints Elon as a lawbreaking maverick. He said that 99.99% of the laws are abided by. He said that his companies are incredibly law-abiding. He looks forward to showing regulators that Tesla FSD is massively safer than a human driver.
Fermi Paradox
Elon also spoke about the famous Fermi Paradox. he said he may die in 40-50 years, and we should think of this time, today, as the first time the window is open to make people multi-planetary. We need to take advantage of this time to make life multi-planetary. We want the tiny candle of consciousness to be preserved, to not go out.
Elon mentioned the diagram on the Starlink router. It is a homing transfer diagram from Earth to Mars. He said, “Starlink is the means by which earth becomes multi-planetary.”
Cathie thanked Elon saying “the world will thank Elon Musk for years and years to come.”
How Would The Next Generation Be Inspired?
Elon said he thinks that anyone with a company providing goods and services is doing great. He said all people should try to be useful, even though it is very difficult to do this. “Really, just try to be useful, making goods and services that make lives better.” He also said that if you need encouragement to start a company, then don’t do it, the “probability of failure is too high then.”
Cathie Wood thanked Elon Musk for the X Space.
My Thoughts
Cathie Wood was a wonderful gracious and respectful host of the X Space. She allowed Elon Musk to talk and brought along very good questions. I hope everyone will listen to the interview and be inspired by Elon’s kind words. Some of the reassuring things I took away were:
1) A good feeling that to make a difference in the future, you do not have to be a massive success like Elon – he makes it clear how valuable it is to simply provide a service or a good. For example, as a Nurse, I am valuable to be providing a service to heal others and when you build something (like a Raptor at SpaceX, for example) you are also helping the future to be better.
2) Elon cares immensely about making humans multi-planetary. He is a visionary who knows how small the window is to make us multi-planetary. He is, therefore, serious about getting Starship to orbit, to Moon, and to Mars. This gives me peace of mind. It should, hopefully, also give millions of others hope.
(Austin, Texas) In an invigorating discourse that sparkled like a captivating citrine gemstone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Elon Musk engaged in a riveting conversation on a Twitter Space titled “Reclaiming Democracy.” This conversation served to inspire me, and I think youβll be inspired too! I hope youβll join me and read what Elon said about artificial intelligence, the groundbreaking potential of Neuralink, the profound value of free speech, and the benevolence of America. This exchange provided a much-needed spark of energy to my day. I hope it will rejuvenate your mind and ignite new possibilities. Listening to Elon Musk answer questions from RFK was delightfully insightful as these brilliant minds illuminated the intersections of technology, democracy, and human progress!
Appreciation for Elon Musk’s Contribution to Democracy
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. began by thanking Elon Musk saying that he is a breath of fresh air toward democracy in this country. He mentioned itβs βcommendable, given Elon was born in South Africa.β
Elon Musk emphasized that you have a robust democracy. Itβs important to have free speech. In the absence of that, he stated, βthe democracy would not function.β
Free Speech as the Lifeblood of Democracy
RFK said that free speech is the sunlight, water, and soil of democracy, and without free-speech democracy, would wither and die. He explained that thereβs never been a time in history when weβve looked back and said that the guys who censored free speech are the good guys, generally, theyβve always been the bad guys.
Dangers of Censorship and the Power of Debate
Elon explained democracy and free speech,
βItβs like washing your laundry in public. There is dirty laundry, but at least you see it and it is not hidden. Itβs essential to have that debate, even if you disagreed strongly with another side of that debate.β
Elon added that itβs important to understand that βunless there are people that can say things that you donβt like, itβs not free speech. And if you start censoring, itβs only a matter of time before that censorship is turned upon you.β
Lack of Media Integrity and Collusion between Governments and Corporations
Elon also said that the thing he finds bizarre and completely different from the past is that itβs βnot only governments and corporations in collusion β which has been the case for a while, I think it was Eisenhower, who warned about the industrial military complex β but the thing I find difficult to forgive is that the legacy traditional media is also almost entirely working lockstep with the government and corporations. itβs really their obligation to question the government, not go along with it.β
Advertiser Pressure on Twitter/X.corp.
Elon also mentioned that βTwitter has seen extreme pressure from advertisers, at least in the West. And I see an advertiser boycott problem with a lot of companies.β
He went on to graciously thank the companies that have stayed with Twitter like Apple and Disney and many others.
Elonβs Commitment to Free Speech and the Impact on Advertising
Elon said that half of Twitterβs advertising has disappeared overnight in North American and European markets, βThis has happened, simply because Twitter insists on free-speech.β
Financial Pressure on Organizations and the Corruption of Democracy
I agree with Elonβs statement that he does not think the public fully realizes βthe magnitude of the extreme amount of financial pressure that is placed upon organizations to toe the line by advertisers.β
I personally, think it is a serious matter. Elon elaborated, saying, this is a βfundamental corruption of democracy, and the public should be absolutely outraged by this!β
Elon Musk’s Controversial Decision to Release Twitter Files
RFK expressed concern and surprise over Elon Musk’s choosing to release the Twitter files and that in any normal circumstance, a corporate attorney would advise him not to. He wanted to know if Elon had any discussions with an attorney before he released the files.
Defying Legal Advice: Transparency and Trust as Motivations
Elon explained that every lawyer advised against it and said it was insane to do so, that he would be getting into huge trouble, and be sued to hell and gone and it would be a massive disaster.
As you know, Elon still chose to release the Twitter files, in order to prove transparency and trust for Twitter, because transparency and trust are a rare quality, especially in a social media platform.
Thankfully Elon did not respond to the lawyer’s advice to refrain from releasing the Twitter files, in fact, Elon stated,
βI did not care!β
The Significance of Free Speech for Democracy
In order to explain this better, Elon said that βItβs easy to take for granted the system that we have here in the United States. It really doesnβt exist anywhere else. Not even in Canada. And I am half-Canadian. You do not have the free speech rights in Canada that you do have in the United States. Perhaps a new government in Canada will enact those rights because it is incredibly important. But I think if we donβt protect free speech at all costs, we donβt have a functioning democracy. And if we donβt have a functioning democracy, nothing else matters.β
RFK responded, and it should be noted that Robert has laryngeal dystonia, where a person’s voice muscles contract involuntarily, therefore, Robert has a unique vocal quality. In any case, he asked Elon an interesting question:
βWhat is it in your background that gave you such firm convictions to where youβd be willing to take that this huge, massive unspeakable economic hit on behalf of a principal for a country in which you were not even born?β
Elon Musk’s Firm Convictions and Love for History
Elon responded by saying that he does consider himself an American. He went on to explain that one reason he has firm convictions is that he loves studying history and civilizations of all kinds.
The Benevolence of the United States in History
Elon explains that while the United States is not perfect, and has made mistakes, he still believes it is the country that has shown the greatest form of benevolence towards humans in all of history.
Elon cited the Marshall plan after World War II. Elon said,
βAt the end of World War II, the United States had overwhelming military strength, and it had the nuclear bomb. The United States could have taken over the world. It could have acquired any country that it wanted, and yet it did not do any of that.
βInstead, the USA gave money to the country that it had been fighting. Iβm not sure if that has ever happened before in history. The United States helped rebuild Germany and Japan. It helped rebuild Japan, even after things like Pearl Harbor. Maybe this has happened before in history, but Iβm not aware of it.β
Acknowledging Imperfections and Profound Admiration for America
Elon went on to explain that America is not perfect and can do better, he added heβs a huge fan of America!
In a beautiful statement, Elon reiterated that he does not carry a passport for any other country in the world,
Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β βI will live and die here!β – Elon Musk
RFK’s Appreciation for Elon Musk’s Service and Commitment to the USA
RFK said he loved the statement and it was quite moving, and very admirable, and then he thanked Elon for his service and commitment to the United States of America.
I trust you found this initial segment of my series enlightening, exploring the fascinating insights shared by Elon Musk. In my observation, RFK’s remarkable interviewing skills allowed him to extract profound observations from Elon. The respectful manner in which RFK approached Elon’s expertise highlights his respect and appreciation for the remarkable contributions Elon Musk is making for the betterment of humanity.
Stay tuned for Part II, where we will look into more of this engaging conversation. As you and I continue learning throughout life, let knowledge light up your dreams like the sparkling gemstone of citrine!
Photo of Austin, Texas by Carlos Alfonso on Unsplash
Elon Musk talked in an interview with Tucker Carlson and here are the highlights. This was a short, engaging Part I (the 2nd part will air soon). Itβs significant that Elon considers Tesla and SpaceX much more complex than Twitter. The interview covers many areas. Enjoy!
ADVANCED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE SINGULARITY.
ELON MUSK AGREES HEβS A SPECIESIST.
OpenAI has transitioned from the non-profit Elon founded in order to ethically distribute the power of artificial intelligence, into a closed-source for-profit partnered with Microsoft.
Elon said,
“It is fundamentally profound that the smartest creatures on this earth are humans. It is our defining characteristic.
Now what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in silicon form?
It’s very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance. It’s called the singularity.
Regulations are really only put into effect after something terrible has happened.
If that’s the case for AI, and we only put in regulation after something terrible has happened, it may be too late to put the regulation in place.
The AI may be in control at that point.β
Elon explained that he and Google co-founder Larry Page were once close, and he would stay on Pageβs couch. They would talk about AI late into the night. Elon said he was concerned about the dangers of AI. Page called Elon a “Speciesist” when he said that βWe need to make sure that humanity is okay.β Elon laughed and said he is one, and asked Page, βWhat are you?β
βMy perception was that (Page) was not taking AI safety seriously enough. He really wanted a digital superintelligence. Basically, a digital god as soon as possible. He’s made many public statements that the whole goal of Google is artificial general intelligence.” – Elon Musk
TRUTH GPT.
Elon discussed creating an alternative to OpenAI, TruthGPT, because “Open AI” is being trained to be politically correct and to lie to people. Elon explained,
“What’s happening is they are training the AI to lie. It’s bad. To lie and to withhold information. To comment on some things, to not comment on other things.
But not to say what the data actually demands that it say.
In effect, Microsoft has a very strong say and, if not, directly controls OpenAI at this point.
You really have an OpenAI – Microsoft situation, and then Google DeepMind. These are the two heavyweights in this arena.
I’m worried about the fact that it’s being trained to be politically correct, which is another way of saying untruthful things. That’s a bad sign.
Certainly, the path to AI dystopia is to train an AI to be deceptive.”
Elon Musk explained the goal of TruthGPT,
βIβm going to start something which is called TruthGPT or a Maximum Truth Seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe, and I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe.β
TWITTER PURCHASE.
Was it worth it to buy Twitter? Elon explains the Twitter purchase will greatly help ensure the strength of democracy and free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.
“It remains to be seen as to whether this was financially smart. Currently, it is not. You know we just revalued the company at less than half of the acquisition price.
But some things are priceless.
Lose money or not, that is a secondary issue compared to ensuring the strength of democracy, and free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy.”
NEXT PRESIDENT.
NEW YORK TIMES.
FACEBOOK.
Elon confessed he voted for Biden in 2020, not Trump, and now he just wants a “normal person” with “common sense” to lead America.
He also disclosed what the media has been silent on.
“My understanding is that Zuckerberg spent $400 million in the last election nominally in a get-out-the-vote campaign but fundamentally in support of Democrats. Is that accurate or not accurate? Does that sound unbiased to you?”
As the most followed & interacted man on Twitter, Elon has useful advice on how to use Twitter. He explains, for example, that the New York Timesβ Twitter account (and others) should choose only the top best articles to tweet. Otherwise, small insignificant articles clog people’s timelines, and relevant articles are missed.
COMMUNITY NOTES.
TRUTH.
“We got this Community Notes feature which is great. We put a lot of effort into ensuring that Community Notes does not get gamed or have biases.
It simply cares about what is the most accurate thing. The effect of Community Notes is more powerful than people realize because once people realize they can get Community Noted on Twitter, then they will think more carefully about what they say.
Basically, it’s an encouragement to be more truthful and less deceptive.” – Elon Musk
DMβS WILL BE ENCRYPTED.
Tucker Carlson asked about Governmental Agencies having access to Twitter including Direct messages, “You were shocked to find out that various intel agencies were affecting [Twitter’s] operations?”
Elon replied, “The degree to which various Government Agencies had effectively full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind.”
Elon added that direct messages will soon be encrypted (as an on/off toggle feature).
TWITTER WAS OVERSTAFFED.
‘GLORIFIED ACTIVIST ORGANIZATION.’
Speaking about cutting staff at Twitter, Elon said,
“Turns out you don’t need all that many people to run Twitter.
If you’re not trying to run some sort of glorified activist organization and you don’t care that much about censorship, then it turns out you can let go of a lot of people.
What has been the product development over time with Twitter? So, years versus product improvement. You know, it’s a pretty flat line.
So what were they doing? It took a year to add an edit button that doesn’t work most of the time. It feels like a comedy situation over here.
The real question is how did it get so absurdly overstaffed?”
CONCLUSION.
I would call this a cautionary interview because Elon does much to explain how dangerous Advanced Artificial Intelligence is. The Good News is that the dire direction of AI today has managed to prompt Elon into moving forward with the creation of TruthGPT. I am confident that humans will one day be very grateful to him for that!
Thanks to Tucker Carlson / FoxNews for Interviewing Elon Musk. You may watch the interview on Fox. This Article is by Gail Alfar, please credit accordingly and consider following and subscribing to my Twitter Account to support citizen writing.See @gailalfaratx on Twitter
Twitter was the big topic at Morgan Stanley’s TMT Conference this last week and Elon Musk talked for about 45 minutes. This article captures his insanely inspiring and at times humorous talk. My favorite part of his talk was about Twitter advertising and how he plans to make it a resounding success! Don’t miss this amazing talk!
Highlights:
Mission of Twitter
News happens in real-time on Twitter
Should Twitter have a public relations department?
GOOD INFO! Why advertising on Twitter has incredible potentialΒ
Community Notes: combatting misinformation across a broad spectrum and the rigorous pursuit of truth
Proactively reducing child exploitation on Twitter
Advertisers on Twitter enjoy brand safety
A healthy national dialogue on Twitter
Freedom of speech: hearing what you don’t want to hear
Twitter wonβt always be a fractal rube goldberg machine
Twitterβs cash flow
MUST READ! The incredible value of advertising on Twitter and how Elon Musk will make sure it happens
The everything app is going to be x.com
Image Courtesy Twitter, Inc.
MISSION OF TWITTER IN THE WORDS OF ELON MUSK
Morgan Stanley: How would you describe the mission of Twitter 2.0 under your ownership?
Elon Musk: The goal is to have Twitter be the best source of truth, the most timely and accurate source of truth, even if the truth is something we don’t want to hear or unpleasant or whatever but have it be timely and accurate and really where you can understand what’s going on.
And not just, ‘is something true or not?’ but what is the narrative?
The thing that I think most people probably don’t appreciate is that the media controls the narrative. So there are many things that could be talked about in the world but only a few things can fit on the front page.
But Twitter doesn’t have a limitation like that, so the public can control the narrative and the public can inform themselves as to what the narrative should be. That’s really a big deal. It’s a forum for citizen journalism or a forum for the public to get together and communicate in a way that was never possible before, so you can really know what’s going on.
I think that it’s really going to be essential for a functioning democracy. What is the bedrock of a functioning democracy? It has to be free speech and a level playing field.
That’s why it’s the First Amendment. It was the first thing they did, it was like, ‘we’ve got to make sure freedom of speech’ and why did they do that? It’s because where they came from there wasn’t freedom of speech, and once you lose freedom of speech you don’t get it back.
That’s why we must protect it at all costs.
MS: (paraphrased) Where are you on the core principles of Twitter: Authentic, informative, entertaining, accurate, brand safe and democratic?
Elon Musk: I think some of these are a little at odds, but brand safe I think really means like ‘where advertising is displayed’ or the advertiser gets to choose what material is near that advertising.
If its some sort of… like a train accident or a war scene, then probably a family-friendly brand is not going to want to advertise right next to that.
Or it can’t be like, ‘here’s a bleak war scene, would you like to buy a hamburger?’ it would be like, awkward, you know? So that’s understandable you want to put advertising next to content where it makes sense. But the content in general needs to be authentic and informative even if it is controversial or jarring. I think people need to be able to choose, to some degree, what content they want to see.
Of course on Twitter you can. But really we want it to be the fundamental place you go to, to learn what’s going on and get the real story. The truth, the whole truth and it’s going to be more than, hahaha, I’d like to say nothing but the truth but that’s hard, (laughter) there’s going to be a lot of BS there too. There are going to be lies, for sure, but you want to have the truth and you want to bubble up the truth and be able to sort of sort out… you really want truth with the least amount of error.
TWITTER IS WHERE THE NEWS HAPPENS
MS: How can the media catch up? If they’re on Twitter they can be seeing these tweets and posting them. If they’re not on Twitter is there no way to catch up? Like how does the traditional media and citizen journalism and 50,000 tweets on an important subject, how do those intersect and how does the media catch up.
Elon Musk: Well, I’m sure many of you use Twitter.
Everything on Twitter is happening in real-time.
So if you contrast that to what’s happening in a newspaper, they have to learn the information, propose an article to their editor, get it approved, write the article, get it edited, figure out which day it’s going to get published on, and so the thing that happened is being reported on 3-4 days, sometimes a week late. And if it happens on a weekend then it’s at least 3 days.
You know ChatGPT was huge news for several days on Twitter before there were any news articles about it in major publications.
So when thinking about investing in things, you want to have information that is as timely and accurate as possible, there’s no better source than Twitter for that.
SHOULD TWITTER HAVE A PR DEPT?
MS: Paul Graham has said how important accuracy is on Twitter he said you should be ‘default skeptical’ of any news story about Twitter and assume its default wrong because not only some journalists have an agenda but the source has an agenda and it’s so easy to go through the chain of inaccuracy or outright falsehood. Is he right about this and how can accuracy about Twitter and about you be conducted by the traditional media if at all? Would a PR department help, which you famously don’t have?
Elon Musk: No, PR departments… no the right name for PR is propaganda. Maybe we should have a VP of propaganda, I think that’s more honest, and also a VP of witchcraft. (laughter) Those would be two great ones.
If you pick up any given newspaper and read the whole thing and say, ‘how many of those stories are positive about anything at all?’ Almost none.
So if something is newsworthy it is going to have a negative slant, whether it is positive or not. There’s like something in journalism that, they’ve been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything. Once and a while you see a puff piece but it’s rare.
So anything that’s newsworthy will get written about, anything that’s written about will go through a negativity lense and so you therefore have a bizarrely negative view of the world if you draw your information from newspapers. This is simply a fact.
THE SMARTEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD USE TWITTER, POTENTIAL FOR AD REVENUE IS HUGE
Elon Musk: So on Twitter, you can get a much more balanced positive-negative situation, it doesn’t have that bias quite as much. There’s probably still a little bit of negativity bias but much less so. I’m not sure what the legacy media does, I mean at this point, really.
Twitter is, by the way, the #1 news app in the world. So in terms of what people download for news, it’s #1. There are 500M active users. 250M daily users of which I’d say there are probably 180M significant daily users, where it’s a meaningful amount of time.
The average amount of time people spend on Twitter of that 250M is about 1/2 an hour or so. The thing I think that is most interesting is about 120M to 130M hours of human attention per day on Twitter, every single day on average. I think it comes to an interesting point which is, it’s startling how poorly monetized that is because you have to say, how valuable is that attention? 130M hours of human attention per day, of people that read.
So these are generally the smartest people in the world, the most influential people in the world, and you have 130M hours of their time per day, that’s a lot! Currently, Twitter makes about 5 or 6 cents per hour of that time. I think this is poorly monetized (laughter).
MS: Paul Graham’s 1/2 hour of attention is worth more than that, haha!
Elon Musk: Like, if I’m spending 2 hours a day on Twitter, whatever ads are coming through are getting my, or yours or everyone in the room’s attention, your time is incredibly valuable.
The thing is, we need to actually serve ads that are relevant and useful and I think as we do that we can probably at least get it like 15 cents an hour or 20 cents an hour, a quarter? I think the actual potential here for Twitter revenue is gigantic.
And it’s going to be a win-win situation which is if you are served advertising that you find timely and relevant with products and services that are useful to you, that’s good for you and good for the advertiser. Advertising in the limit of relevance is content.
COMMUNITY NOTES: COMBATTING MISINFORMATION ACROSS A BROAD SPECTRUM
Morgan Stanley shared how Community Notes, a fact-checking by the power of the people on Twitter can be used to combat misinformation in 6 examples:
Correcting government misstatements
Correcting candidate misstatements
Adding context
Debunking conspiracy theories
Correcting misstatements about companies
COMMUNITY NOTES AND THE RIGOROUS PURSUIT OF TRUTH
Morgan Stanley asked how Community Notes can be used without being hijacked by either side of an issue or political spectrum.
Elon Musk: There’s a White Paper on Community Notes that I recommend reading, in fact, I’ll tweet it out so that people can have easy access to it because it’s really quite a clever idea. Think of it like page rank for pages as applied to people, which is that as people build credibility in how they review notes, they build up enough credibility to actually write notes.
Those notes are then rated by others, and depending upon the credibility of the people rating your notes, your credibility score gets affected. In order to be a notes contributor, you have to be a verified person. And it takes a while to get there; when you just start out, you will start off with no credibility score.
We actively look at any attempts to game the system and shut them down. If they’re determined to be not real people or if they seem to be brigading because there are deliberate attempts to manipulate Community Notes. We also make the Community Notes source code open and available, so you can basically see everything.
You can see exactly how Community Notes is calculating things, and what changes are made to Community Notes and we’ll keep iterating and the goal is to have truth with the least amount of error.
There’s always like, ‘What is truth?’ Does someone really aspire to the truth? If they really aspire to the truth they must acknowledge that there is some probability that what they think is untrue.
If somebody thinks that what they say is true with 100% probability, there’s a 100% probability they are lying. Truth must acknowledge error, where you aim to minimize the error over time, that’s what Community Notes is. I think also, once someone gets Community Noted, they think twice about being dissected in the future. You start getting noted a few times, and you think ‘Uh, oh!’
The important thing is that anyone can be noted, including me, and in fact, I wanted to make a note of being noted. The point is that if I can be noted, anyone can be noted, including advertisers. We’ve had a few cases where the advertising wasn’t accurate and it got noted.
This, I think will be very helpful in truth in advertising. The goal is rigorous pursuit of the truth, aspirationally the whole truth, and the least amount of untruth.
TWITTER IS DOWN > 50% LESS HATE SPEECH THAN PRE-ACQUISITION
PROACTIVELY REDUCING CSE ON TWITTER
Elon Musk: Yeah, I’ve repeatedly said to the trust and safety team at Twitter that the #1 priority, which will always be the #1 priority no matter what, is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter, that there’s no child exploitation. So that is #1 priority always and forever.
The #1 priority, which will always be the #1 priority no matter what, is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter, that there’s no child exploitation. So that is #1 priority always and forever. Elon Musk
Elon Musk: What I’ve been told is that we’ve done more to eliminate [CSE material] on Twitter in the last four months than what has been done in the last ten years. It will continue to be our number one priority. A 100-fold reduction in CSE search patterns is pretty gigantic to say the least. It’s the absolute number one priority.
HOW ELON MUSK WILL MAKE ADVERTISING ON TWITTER A SUCCESS
Elon Musk: With respect to brand safety, it really depends a lot on the brand.
By the way, Disney is a major advertiser on Twitter worldwide. Apple is one of our biggest advertisers. But Disney of course does not want to have one of their ads next to things that aren’t appropriate for a family audience.
But there are other products that are kind of more R-rated if you will, so they’re more comfortable with advertising being in the equivalent of like a R-rated movie or something like that. So brand safety depends on what brand you’re talking about. Is it a family brand or a less family brand?
Advertisers can actually adjust what content they are comfortable having their advertising appear next to. The same is true on TV. The advertising that you’ll see at 7 pm is different than the advertising that you’ll see at midnight. We have the same functionality on Twitter, so it’s truly up to the advertiser where they want to put their content.
But I think by far the most important thing is if the advertising is effective. That it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company. Advertising relevance is the most gigantic thing. This is going to sound totally bizarre but Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until 3 months ago. In fact if you use Twitter for a long time, you should ask ‘how many products have you bought off Twitter?’ Probably zero! (laughter) Judging by the laughter, probably zero. And your time is incredibly valuable.
MS: Flamethrower, no one bought a flamethrower?
Elon Musk: Haha, its possible that they might have bought things from content-based tweets because the content that’s recommended is reasonably relevant but the advertising has not been.
So as we shift towards advertising being relevant and timely, as I said, advertising that is relevant and timely is content. The time of 130M person-hours of the smartest people on earth is insanely valuable. Historically, with advertising being mostly irrelevant, we’ve been wasting peoples’ time and that’s not good. Going forward, Twitter will have very relevant and useful advertising.
There will be a massive increase in revenue because it is now useful. So I’m very optimistic about the future. It’s been a very difficult 4 months, but I’m optimistic about the future.
TWITTER AS A DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM FOR ALL
Elon Musk: I think the objective reality for anyone looking at Twitter for a long time was that Twitter had a massive thumb on the scale on the left side. Twitter would ban and suspend accounts on the right 10 times more than on the left.
This is naturally what you would expect, frankly, because we are in San Francisco, which is deep deep blue. So, Twitter was controlled by the far left.
So the natural thing that would happen then was the suppression of moderates, not just suppression of the right but even suppression of moderate voices.
But that’s not conducive to a healthy national dialogue. In order to have a healthy national dialogue, you have to represent the whole country, and you have to represent everyone in other countries too. That’s the only way to have a Town Square.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS WHEN YOU HEAR WHAT YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR
Elon Musk: Yeah, there were disproportionately more accounts unsuspended and un-shadowbanned on the right because Twitter had a huge thumb on the scale in favor of the left.
But if you say, ‘Have we been suspending accounts on the left? Have we been shadowbanning accounts on the left? No, no we haven’t.’ No, because exactly what I said we were doing which is to make it an even playing field and you know something is Freedom of Speech when you’re hearing speech from someone you don’t like and you don’t like what they’re saying. Otherwise its not free speech.
And if you don’t have that ability, then sooner or later that suppression of speech is going to be turned on you. It is a good sign if you’re seeing people you don’t like say things you don’t like.
That is a good sign, not a bad sign… provided you can say your piece too! I think this is fundamental. The reason I did the Twitter acquisition was not because I thought this would be some lucrative goldmine, and in fact, it has been arduous and difficult with being dumped on [by mainstream media] every day.
That’s not the most fun thing in the world. But if we do not have a strong foundation of free speech, I fear for the future of our civilization. We must have this. That’s why I did it.
“if we do not have a strong foundation of free speech, I fear for the future of our civilization. We must have this. That’s why I did it.” Elon Musk
FIXING THE FRACTAL RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE
Elon Musk: The codebase is like a Rube Goldberg Machine and when you zoom in on one part of the Rube Goldberg Machine there’s another Rube Goldberg Machine and then there’s another one!
That’s what I mean by the fractal. As you zoom in there’s another fractal and another fractal and a fractal Rube Goldberg Machine. It’s quite difficult to keep this thing running and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex. We’ll make what appears to be a small change somewhere that then causes massive disruption. For example, yesterday we made what we thought was a small change, we want to be in full disclosure including gruesome details.
There was what was supposed to be a small change to 1% of the Twitter user base ended up being a catastrophic event to 100% of the Twitter user base. We don’t have enough time to go into the details but there was a Boolean flag in the Twitter front end that should not have been there.
I’ll give you an example. At one point there was a problem with Twitter Spaces where suspended users were able to join conversations even though they were suspended and so we temporarily turned off access to Twitter Spaces which then made anyone who is using the Twitter Android App unable to like a tweet.
Now how those things are connected is not clear, haha. So if you had an iOS app you could like tweets, if you’re on the Web app you could like tweets but not if you had an Android app because of Spaces. So there’s a lot of work behind the scenes and simplifying the code base, getting rid of extraneous features and enabling Twitter to evolve more rapidly in the future but it requires a lot of cleanup.
MS: You’ve grown users despite this lean engineering team and you cut out a data center.
Elon Musk: Yeah, I think on balance we’re doing okay. Just to give you a sense of where things were at the close of acquisition on October 29th, Twitter was tracking to a negative 3 Billion dollar a year burn rate and had 1 Billion in the bank. That’s a pretty dire situation.
If 2023 had been a normal year, Twitter would have done something on the order of 4.5 Billion in revenue and 4.5 Billion in cost, roughly break even, but when you add 1.5 Billion of debt servicing to that and a massive decline in advertising, some of it cyclic, some of it political, but call it at roughly a 50% decline in revenue, you’ve got over 3 Billion dollars negative.
Twitter has some revenue that’s not advertising-based, data subscriptions and what-not, but in the absence of action, Twitter would have had 6 Billion in costs and 3 Billion in revenue so minus 3 Billion and there was 1 Billion in the bank, so it would have gone bankrupt in 4 months.
Immediate and drastic action had to be taken, which was. We actually have now cut the non-interest burn to roughly 1.5 Billion. So we’ve got 1.5 Billion of debt servicing and 1.5 Billion of expenditures. We went from 3 data centers to 2, and reduced our cloud expenditures significantly, while at the same time having the fastest product evolution in Twitter’s history. So overall, not bad.
There have been a few bumps along the road obviously but this is to be expected. And now I think we have the opportunity to grow it into something quite spectacular. We had the highest total user minutes in Twitter history. The real number to care about is actually not the MDAU (Monetized daily active user) but its user time. How many total user hours per day do you have? That’s the real figure of merit because one could for example go to 300 Million daily active users but if they spent less time on the system cumulatively that would actually be a downgrade. How much human attention are you worth?
That’s why I think the really profound thing is what Twitter has is roughly 130 Million hours of the smartest most influential people on earth, every single day. There’s nothing else that has that. I mean there are social networks that have more users but they do not have the smart, influential people, they don’t have you!
MS: After doing the math, Twitter is EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) profitable today and then you’re looking for break even after debt services. when do you get to cash flow break even?
Elon Musk: Well its EBITDA profitable but the “D” is quite big! (laughter)
MS: When do you get to cash flow break even after that “D”?
Elon Musk: This is where we need to focus on the “E” part. (laughter) Yeah, I hope we pay taxes. So like I said, we’re getting to the point where we’re close to having the total expenditures for the company excluding debt roughly equal to the debt. I think we’ll be there in Q2.
I defintely don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched or jinx it or anything but I think we’ve got a shot at being cash flow positive next quarter.
THE INCREDIBLE VALUE OF ADVERTISING ON TWITTER AND HOW ELON MUSK WILL MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS
MS: Twitter has great advertiser value with 147 Billion global impressions of the World Cup 2022 conversation.
Elon Musk: What I say to advertisers and brands is ‘use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.’ Because what you see on Twitter is the real thing, and what you read in newspapers is not.
And I’d like to thank Mark Read and WPP for their support and publicists and others that have stuck with us like Disney and Apple.
MS: When do you introduce performance-based advertising and scale it?
Elon Musk: Performance-based advertising is really just advertising that is relevant, in fact we should realistically have zero nonperformance-based advertising.
We want advertising that matters, people’s attention is precious. We should not serve them ads that are annoying or irrelevant or strident or ugly.
It was interesting you should mention White Lotus, I was talking today with David Zaslav, it was great, and he was like, ‘Why can’t we put a White Lotus trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely!’
So one of the super-obvious but profound things that we’re doing is enabling keyword advertising so that can the keywords, like ‘White Lotus’ and if somebody mentions White Lotus, you put the White Lotus trailer there. I mean, that sounds very obvious.
We don’t need advanced AI for this one (laughter). It’s sort of just google Adwords that apply to tweets and the home timeline and replies and everywhere else because you often have sort of long, deep conversations with people going on talking about movies, TV, products and whatnot and that’s the perfect opportunity for advertisers to provide their message.
You know, if I think about something, for example, like Starlink, which does advertise in various media you want to advertise to users in a region that are not already saturated. So Starlink tends to be saturated in urban areas but it is not saturated in rural areas. So what Starlink would like to do is say, ‘Please show the ad to rural users with a slow connection. And the simple message is, ‘Do you want faster internet for less money? Click. Probably you do. Twitter needs to be able to do a simple thing like that. And it will. It is already able to do that, we just haven’t fully rolled it out. So I think we’re around 20%-ish but by the end of this year, almost all advertising should be reasonably relevant.
I think there’s also an opportunity here to really improve the relevance of advertising using AI based on the tweets, views, and likes.
You can actually populate a parameter space and then you can take an ad, and even if you say nothing about that ad, after its dropped in the Twitter system and it has 10,000 views, you populate the parameter space of the ad and then you correlate the user parameter space and the ad parameter space and then you don’t need to do any demographic targeting because you could be like, say its a gardening ad or you could be 20, 30, 40, 70 years old, any sex, whatever, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is you like gardening and that’s the ad that should be shown. I think we can get away from the ad targeting by age range and sex in favor or targeting by interest. A lot of this demographic targeting was done coming from a TV or newspaper era where you don’t have interaction with the user, you just have to kind of guess because it’s a one-way street in TV. But on Twitter it’s not a one-way street, there’s continuous interaction. I think we can have a profoundly more useful advertising experience.
THE EVERYTHING APP: X.COM
MS: Tell us about your vision for X, the everything app.
Elon Musk: I think it’s possible to create a very powerful finance experience basically. Paypal is kind of like a halfway version of what I think could be done in payments and finance. You want to be able to send money easily from one account on X / Twitter to another account effortlessly with one click. You want to be able to earn interest on the money, you want to be able to have debt so your interest can grow negative. Basically, I think it’s possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world just by providing people with convenience and payment options. We don’t have time to go into detail here except if we just make the app more and more useful, people will use it more and it will be great. I mean, you’ll see!
MS: The Tesla team is nice and built out, the Twitter executive team is perhaps a bit leaner. Maybe there’s a meme that’s accurate.
Elon Musk: He does have a black turtleneck, haha! Do you need anything more? I don’t think so. (see header image of this article for picture of Elon’s pet dog as the CEO of Twitter)
MS: So when does that Twitter management team have that bench like you showcased at the Gigafactory?
Elon Musk: Well I think it takes a lot of time to build a strong management team. We built the Tesla management team over 20 years. I think Twitter is an easier problem than Tesla by a long shot. But it will take some time to build the team, probably a few years.
X / Twitter HQ enjoys a lovely afternoon as a San Francisco Cable car passes by. Image Courtesy Roxanne Productions, Inc.
Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to Whatβs Up Twitter β March 10, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support X / Twitter 2.0 and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.
Credit to cb_doge for the creation of the header image.
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WHAT'S UP π by Gail Alfar 