Name: Elon Musk : How to Build the Future
Uploaded: 2025-03-18T05:01:47.000Z
Duration: 19 min 33 s
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So, we want to spend the time today talking about your view of the future and what people should work on.

So, to start off, could you tell us, you famously said when you were younger there were five problems that you thought were most important for you to work on.

If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on be?

Well, first of all, I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that's a good thing.

Like, it doesn't have to change the world.

Like, you know, if you're doing something that has high value to people, and frankly, even if it's something, if it's like just a little game or, you know, some improvement in photo sharing or something, if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, that's, I mean, I think that's fine.

Like, stuff doesn't need to change the world just to be good.

But, you know, in terms of things that I think are most likely to affect the future of humanity, I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near term that's likely to affect humanity.

So it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way.

That is something that, if you could look at the crystal ball and see the future, you would like that outcome.

Because it is something that could go wrong, as we've talked about many times.

And so we really need to make sure it goes right.

That's, I think, AI, working on AI and making sure it's a great future.

That's the most important thing, I think, right now.

Then, obviously, anything to do with genetics.

If you can actually solve genetic diseases, if you can prevent dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that, with genetic reprogramming, that would be wonderful.

So I think genetics might be the sort of second most important item.

I think having a high bandwidth interface to the brain.

We have a digital tertiary self in the form of our email capabilities, like computers, phones, applications.

But we're extremely bandwidth constrained in that interface between the cortex and that tertiary digital form of yourself.

And helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be, I think, very important for the future as well.

So one of the, I think, most common questions I hear ambitious young people ask is, I want to be the next Elon Musk.

Obviously, the next Elon Musk will work on very different things than you did.

But what have you done or what did you do when you were younger that you think sort of set you up to have a big impact?

Well, I think, first of all, I should say that I did not expect to be involved in all these things.

So the five things that I thought about at the time in college, quite a long time ago, 25 years ago, you know, making life multi-planetary, accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, the internet, broadly speaking, and then genetics and AI.

I think I didn't expect to be involved in all of those things.

Actually, at the time in college, I sort of thought helping with electrification of cars was how I would start out.

And that's actually what I worked on as an intern was advanced ultracapacitors to see if there would be a breakthrough relative to batteries for energy storage in cars.

And then when I came out to go to Stanford, that's what I was going to be doing my grad studies on was working on advanced energy storage technologies for electric cars.

And then I put that on hold to start an internet company in 95 because there does seem to be like a time for particular technologies when they're at a steep point in the inflection curve.

And I didn't want to do a PhD at Stanford and watch it all happen.

And I wasn't entirely certain that the technology I'd be working on would actually succeed.

You can get a doctorate on many things that ultimately do not have a practical bearing on the world.

And I really was just trying to be useful.

What can I do that would actually be useful?

Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?

How should someone figure out how they can be most useful?

Whatever this thing is that you're trying to create, what would be the utility delta compared to the current state-of-the-art times how many people it would affect?

So that's why I think having something that makes a big difference but affects a small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes even a small difference but affects a vast number of people.

Like the area under the curve would actually be roughly similar for those two things.

So it's actually really about just trying to be useful.

When you're trying to estimate probability of success, so you say this thing will be really useful, good area under the curve, I guess to use the example of SpaceX, when you made the go decision that you were actually going to do that, this was kind of a very crazy thing at the time.

But I kind of agreed with them that it was quite crazy.

Crazy if the objective was to achieve the best risk-adjusted return, starting a rocket company is insane.

I'd simply come to the conclusion that if something didn't happen to improve rocket technology, we'd be stuck on Earth forever.

And the big aerospace companies had just had no interest in radical innovation.

All they wanted to do was try to make their old technology slightly better every year.

And in fact, sometimes it would actually get worse.

And particularly in rockets, it's pretty bad.

In 69, we were able to go to the moon with a Saturn V.

And then the space shuttle could only take people to low Earth orbit.

I mean, that trend is basically trends to zero.

People sometimes think technology just automatically gets better every year.

It only gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better.

That's how any technology actually gets better.

And by itself, technology, if people don't work on it, actually will decline.

I mean, you can look at the history of civilizations, many civilizations, and look at, say, ancient Egypt where they were able to build these incredible pyramids.

And then they basically forgot how to build pyramids.

So we look at Rome and how they were able to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing.

And they forgot how to do all of those things.

And there are many such examples in history.

So I think we should always bear in mind that entropy is not on your side.

One thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something is crazy.

Or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea?

Or where do you get the internal strength to do that?

Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly.

So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear.

But there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of the fear.

People shouldn't think, well, I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it.

You'd have to do something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear.

So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?

Actually, something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree.

If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.

So when starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%.

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Elon Musk : How to Build the Future

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