Elon Musk interviewed by The Economist's editor on AI, geopolitics, and Europe
The Economist's editor interviews Elon Musk at Tesla Gigafactory.
Summary
Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, sits down with Elon Musk at Tesla Gigafactory to probe his views on artificial intelligence, humanoid robotics, geopolitics, and European politics. Musk predicts AI will exceed the sum of all human intelligence within five years and that by 2036 money itself may be largely irrelevant due to an era of "amazing abundance" driven by AI and robots. He proposes that leading AI companies — including Chinese firms — should hold regular calls and allow competitors a week or two of early access to test new frontier models for safety risks before release, citing the recent situation with Anthropic's Opus model (flagged by Amazon to the White House over cybersecurity risks) as an example of how this could work. The conversation becomes heated when Musk defends his support for European populist parties and his social media posts about the UK, including his claim that civil war in Britain is "inevitable," which the interviewer strongly disputes, arguing Musk is painting an inaccurate and dangerous picture of Europe to his 240 million followers.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the next ten years
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Elon Musk, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having us here at Tesla Giga. It is really hard to introduce you without using superlatives. You are doing, I think, more to build the future than literally anybody alive right now.
Elon Musk: I'm doing a lot of building in general. I'm a builder, I suppose. I just like building things. I run around building things all day long.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You pioneered electric vehicles, you revolutionized space travel, you've got a cutting-edge AI model, humanoid robots. Can we start this conversation by you putting all of this together? Tell me what the world's going to be like in, let's say, ten years if you succeed.
Elon Musk: Ten years — so we're talking 2036. Hopefully we'll both be around. Probably. Most likely, we will be. It's hard to imagine a future where there's not an overwhelming amount of artificial intelligence. In ten years, I would expect artificial intelligence to be far greater than the sum of human intelligence. Far greater. In fact, I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: In five years?
Elon Musk: Roughly five years is my guess. There really won't be anything that AI can't do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?
Elon Musk: The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of. This may sound preposterous, but well, here we are in 2026 — let's see where we stand in 2036. Now, of course, there are things that could derail this, like a massive global thermonuclear war or something like that. But assuming there's not a World War III, I think we're headed for an age of amazing abundance. This is a message of optimism and excitement about the future.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We'll talk about the abundance in a second, but just on a very prosaic matter — how are your companies going to be making money? In the SpaceX IPO prospectus, it looked as though the overwhelming amount of revenue would be coming from AI, from Grok. It won't be transporting things to space as SpaceX is now doing. What will your companies be doing in ten years, and how will they make money?
Elon Musk: You can really think of the economy as digital and physical intelligence. What we have right now advancing very rapidly is digital intelligence with AI — it seems that almost with every passing week there are more AI breakthroughs. It can do something amazing that it couldn't do before. But it's still somewhat confined to the digital realm. It doesn't have end effectors. You need the end effectors in the form of humanoid robotics. You need lots of bots. And then you can go from intelligence manifesting itself only digitally to shaping atoms. What is an economy? An economy is the production of goods and provision of services. If you have vast numbers of robots with vast amounts of digital intelligence, you have a quasi-infinite economy. The future is going to be very, very different from the past. There's no analogy or metaphor that I think illustrates the magnitude of change we're going to experience.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I understand that, and I'm also trying to figure out what that world would look like. But in some ways you have —
Elon Musk: It's going to be a pretty incredible —
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, and we'll also do — there were some risks too. We'll come to those. But just on how you make money, because in the end people are buying your shares because they expect you to make money.
Elon Musk: I'll make another prediction. Money won't matter in 2036.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I'm not sure that the people who bought your shares think that money won't matter in 2036.
Elon Musk: What do you want money for? Goods and services. You want money for food, housing, transport, entertainment. Well, if that is so abundant — if the robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume — what do you need money for in that case?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But you're creating these robots. Are you then selling them? Are you selling humanoid robots, or are you producing goods and services with the humanoid robots that you control?
Elon Musk: I think it would be an exercise in vanity for me to think that I would be controlling a super-genius AI that is vastly smarter than me. What we can and should try to do is make sure that the AI has good values, that it cares about humanity, and that it wants us to be happy and prosper. I think it probably will be. My biological neural net tells me that the most important thing for AI safety is to be maximally truth-seeking and curious. If that's the case, I think it will foster humanity.
AI surpassing human intelligence — risks and acceptance
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So let's unpack that. You're saying humans will no longer be in control in ten years' time.
Elon Musk: I think it is unlikely. In the same way that if the difference in intelligence between AI and humans is vastly greater than the difference in intelligence between AI and chimpanzees, it's hard to imagine that the chimpanzees would be in charge. We are an evolved form of chimpanzee. It wasn't that long ago that we were swinging through the trees, eating bananas in the jungle. And we still eat bananas, by the way. And we still, you know, sometimes swing through trees as well.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, sometimes swing through trees. It's kind of fun.
Elon Musk: It's sort of reminiscent of the past. For old time's sake, swing through the trees once in a while. Probably there should be more swinging through trees. I bet it's way more fun than people think.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I'm definitely with you on swinging through trees. But I'm really struck listening to you say this now, because I've been listening to a bunch of things you've said over the years. Ten years ago, you were on a podcast — I think it was with Neil deGrasse Tyson — and you said that the thing that terrified you most was rapid recursive self-improvement in AIs. And it really stuck with me. You said that we will just be the pet Labradors at best.
Elon Musk: Well, Labradors are pretty happy creatures. That's my experience.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And in 2023 you called for a slowdown in AI because you were worried about it.
Elon Musk: Well, I signed on as one of many — like 500 people. I was just one of many signatories on that thing.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think even last year you said — I don't know where it was, Ted Cruz's podcast — you said there was a ten to twenty percent chance of killer robots wiping out humanity. So you sounded worried then. Now you seem very relaxed about it. Have you changed your view?
Elon Musk: I still think there's a risk associated with AI and robots. It's not zero. I guess I've come to a philosophical conclusion to look on the bright side. I can't see any way to really stop this incredible momentum of AI and robots. And at times I sort of think, well, perhaps even if there was a stop button, we probably shouldn't press it, because the most likely outcome is incredible abundance for all.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That's what I thought, actually. It struck me that now you seem to have decided it's inevitable — let's hope for the best and go for the ride.
Elon Musk: Yeah. Pretty much. Let's enjoy the ride. That's my philosophy at this point, because there seems to be just inexorable progress in AI and robots. Even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn't.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think there's still a ten to twenty percent chance that killer robots mean the end of humanity? That's a high P-doom, as they say.
Elon Musk: Well, in the long run we're all dead, of course. According to the standard model of physics, the end of the universe is a long, boring, thin, gray soup of gradual cooling — the heat death of the universe, it's called. So if the heat death of the universe is in fact the outcome for our reality, then it really is all about the journey, because the destination is terrible.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Ten years is not very — yeah, I get that, but that could be a long way ahead. And if it's ten to twenty percent in ten years, would you go into one of your rockets if you thought there was a ten to twenty percent chance of it blowing up and killing you?
Elon Musk: Yes, but let's say there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing we can try to do is minimize the probability of the bad outcome. But trying to stop the intelligence in robots — for the longest time I declined to participate in AI, or created OpenAI as essentially a counterweight to Google, because at the time they had more or less a monopoly on AI. Then Anthropic spun out of OpenAI. And if anything, it seems like my actions have actually accelerated AI. I wasn't really aiming to accelerate AI, but in creating OpenAI and then having Anthropic spin out of that — and now Anthropic is currently a leader in AI — these actions have resulted in knock-on effects that accelerated AI, which wasn't really my intention. So it just seems like all roads lead to acceleration of AI. And then I'm like, okay, well, you can just sort of be sad about it, or join the club, I suppose.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, you've certainly joined the club. You've definitely joined the club and very successfully. But what about trying to minimize the risks? A number of the other leaders of model makers have been pushing for different ways to try and minimize the risks. Just last week Demis Hassabis came out with a proposal for a public-private regulator. You said it was a good starting point for discussions, I think. Do you think you guys should be working more actively to get something in place to control the risks, or do you think that's impossible too?
AI safety coordination between companies
Elon Musk: My recommendation to Demis — because I talked to him for a few hours before he published his piece — was that the most immediate thing we could do is have the leading AI companies at least just meet, or have some sort of call once every few weeks, and discuss any safety and security issues. And that before a breakthrough frontier model is released — something that is far more intelligent than anything that already exists — there's an opportunity for the various competing AI companies to test that model for any harmful effects, and to be able to recommend pausing to address some of these security issues. I think that's the easy, quick thing we can do, and it can evolve to more than that over time. I think that would be a smart move.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why haven't you done that yet? I mean, there's like five of you, right? Everyone knows the first names — Dario, Demis, Sam. You don't all like each other very much. You're also all competing. You all want to be first.
Elon Musk: That's where I think the competitors can keep each other honest. It's quite difficult for someone in the government who doesn't have a deep technical understanding and isn't driving the frontier of AI to know whether something should be released or not. However, the competitors — given sort of a week or two to review a new model — can highlight issues. And all the competitors have an incentive to keep the others honest.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have enough trust between you to do that? I mean, you don't much like each other. Wouldn't Sam Altman just think you're going to nick all his ideas if you did that?
Elon Musk: We're just talking about — honestly, I think as little as a week is all that would be needed for private testing. It's not to hand over the AI. It's just to test it via an API or something. I think that would probably be a good thing to do.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But have you proposed this? I mean, you could presumably organize that.
Elon Musk: I proposed it to Demis. And I guess I'll talk to Dario about it too. There's also, of course, some very competent Chinese AI companies that are very good. The new Kimi model —
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Kimi K3, yeah, the one that came out last week. It's almost as good as Claude, right?
Elon Musk: Well, I think realistically Claude is still clearly the smartest model. Anyone realistically would say that's still the case. But the Kimi model is getting quite close to Claude. Now, Anthropic had Opus — from which Claude is derived — I think they had that ready in February. So they've got what they call — I don't know what they're called, but Opus 2 or Claude 6 or something much better than what they had in February. They almost certainly have that right now, and they could release it at any time.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Just before we get on to releasing — how do you think about the Chinese models and the geopolitics of it? Are you worried about the Chinese catching up and getting ahead?
China, AI compute, and geopolitics
Elon Musk: Given that the Chinese AI companies are doing as well as they are with a relatively small amount of compute, it seems that if they had a lot of compute, there's a good chance they would be the leaders. And at some point they probably will have a lot of compute.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So they will, ergo, be the leaders.
Elon Musk: There's a good chance they are the leaders at some point. You can think of the constraints on AI as essentially electricity and AI chips. And then for physical AI, the robots. China's also got some very good robot companies. In fact, they have these robot sporting events — I don't know if you've seen some of them.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, I have. I saw them the last time I was in Beijing.
Elon Musk: And they have this sort of boxing match or fighting match with the robots, which is quite entertaining. I saw some video of a robot that got its head knocked off and kept fighting even with its head knocked off. It looked pretty funny. I think the robot battles are going to be quite entertaining to watch. China is very strong on robots, very strong on digital AI, and if you look at electricity production — AI is a function of whatever the limiting factor is, whether it's chips or electricity. China has far more electricity than the United States. In fact, China has more electricity than the United States, Europe, and India combined already. And my guess is China gets to four times the electricity production of the US, which is roughly proportionate to the population.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What should the US government do about this? If you have an authoritarian regime far ahead in the most powerful technology, that's presumably a little alarming. Clearly what the US government's been trying to do is with the export controls and so forth, keep China back. Do you think they should ban the use of Kimi K3, for example?
Elon Musk: Well, the US government can pass some law that prevents US companies from using Chinese models, but they can't stop the rest of the world from using them. The US government doesn't have authority over China or the rest of the world.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think they should stop US companies from using them? There's talk of that right now.
Elon Musk: I don't think that helps. That won't stop China from being the leader in AI. For digital intelligence it comes down to how much AI compute you have — how many chips do you have and how much power do you have? How much electricity? The constraint right now I think is actually slightly more on power and cooling than it is on AI chips, because the power demands of the AI chips are very, very high. The electrical demand is very high.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That's why you're thinking of orbital data centers, presumably.
Elon Musk: The constraint for AI chips not being turned on outside of China is electricity — power and cooling and the electrical equipment. The rate at which AI chips are being made exceeds the rate at which new electricity is coming online outside of China. In China, the constraint is chips. And China is also becoming much more efficient at using the chips that they have — that's one of the striking things about Kimi K3, right, how efficiently they use them. And China is also, I think, closer than most people realize to solving the lithography problem, which would enable them to make AI chips at very large volumes. The current constraint is electricity outside of China. In China, the constraint is chips. Once we address the power constraint with AI data centers in space, then the constraint will once again be chips outside of China.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That suggests to me that you need China and the US to work together if you're going to have some overall safety constraints. If you're going to try — you suggested the five leading companies —
Elon Musk: It should probably include the Chinese companies that are doing frontier AI models too.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think the governments need to be involved?
Elon Musk: My recommendation would be that if some of the leading companies in AI say that a new model is very dangerous, then they should inform the government. And if a new model is very dangerous and the company producing that model is not taking steps to address the danger, then they should alert the government to take action to limit the release of that model. That could be action by the Chinese government or action by the US government. It's really just the US government and the Chinese government that have the power to take action here.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But people would be worried about relying on a group of model builders to decide whether to do this. If you look at what the US government has done with Opus — they stepped in because they were worried about the cybersecurity risks, using the threat of export controls to prevent the widespread release of that model. I find it hard to see how governments will not want to keep that power — that they ultimately decide whether or not it gets released.
Elon Musk: I think they should keep that power. But it wasn't as though someone in the government figured out that Opus had some scary cybersecurity risks. It was Amazon. Amazon highlighted this and Amazon called the White House.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you'd have a system where the model makers would check each other's work, and if there was something that worried them, you'd tell the government, and the government would then decide —
Elon Musk: And if that company was not doing anything to address that risk, then that would be the moment for government to step in and take action — which is literally what just occurred with Opus.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And you think this needs to happen soon?
Elon Musk: I think it'd be good to do that immediately, really. Yeah.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, that's what people keep telling me — we have to get some kind of system in the next six months because of the pace at which the models are improving.
Elon Musk: Yeah, six months is a long time.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you think shorter than that?
Elon Musk: There are so many AI breakthrough announcements, sometimes multiple per day. How many were there last week?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: A lot.
Elon Musk: I lost track.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So you basically — whether it's Demis' proposal or others — you need to get together and get this set up kind of now, it sounds like you're telling me.
Elon Musk: Yeah. I would recommend that we at least have some sort of informal weekly or bi-weekly call, and that there's maybe a week or two weeks of early access by competitors. This is why I think the incentives work — competing companies are likely to understand if something is a security risk, and they're not going to be shy about highlighting that their competitors' models should be delayed in release. That's the structure that works quite well. And if this is sort of how it works with the Motion Picture Association — it's an industry group that decides how movies should be rated, whether they're appropriate for young children or not — and that seems to have worked quite well. And then you really just ask the government to intervene if a company is doing something very dangerous and refuses to take action to reduce the danger.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think this is workable? You guys don't much like each other and you don't much trust each other. You're insulting each other on social media constantly. Do you think you can do that with people that you dislike, where there seems to be such personal vitriol between some of these leaders?
Elon Musk: I'm not a fan of Sam Altman because — if you started a nonprofit that was meant to be an open-source AI company, owned by the world, and it somehow got turned into an $800 billion for-profit company with closed source, I think you'd be like, "Well, wait a second. That's the exact opposite of what I donated the money for." That's my issue. I think it's a legitimate one. And then Dario is also not a fan of Sam Altman — in fact, the reason the Anthropic team left OpenAI is because they didn't trust Sam Altman. Otherwise Anthropic wouldn't exist. They would still be at OpenAI. I think Dario is a very principled person. He cares about things a lot. He cares about the future of the world, and everyone I've met at Anthropic has seemed well-intentioned. No one set off my evil detector. The road to hell is mostly paved with bad intentions — there are a few well-intentioned paving stones in there, so we don't want to be complacent. But at the end of the day, if we have to talk, we'll talk. We can set aside our personal differences for the good of the world.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, that's a very good thing for the rest of us to hear.
AI and jobs displacement
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we turn to one other risk that people worry about? Particularly ordinary Americans, where AI has become incredibly unpopular — 75% of people are worried about it. I think they worry about their jobs. Dario has said famously that 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs will be gone within a few years. You're building humanoid robots.
Elon Musk: Dario did dig his own grave here regarding Opus, because he said Opus is super scary and terrifying — and also, by the way, we're going to release it. And then people are like, what do you mean? I think probably in the future he'll choose his words differently. If you terrify everyone and then say, "Oh, we're releasing this terrifying thing," people will obviously be alarmed about that. You've literally told them to be scared and then you release the scary thing, so they will be scared. That is natural.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I certainly don't want you to alarm people, but I do think there is a really important debate about how quickly and to what degree AI displaces people from jobs. Because as you say, if within ten years there's more artificial intelligence than any human intelligence, and you are ahead of everyone in this country on powering humanoid robots — that's also going to be factory work. Are you closer to Dario in your sense of the pace at which jobs are going to be displaced?
Elon Musk: I do think it's going to be a bumpy road. AI will be able to do any job better than any person can do that job. And that will be true very quickly of jobs that are digital — really anything that involves a person at a computer or on a phone. AI will be able to do all of that very soon. For software engineering, we already have a situation where AI is better than at least 90% of professional software engineers at writing software. And it really is getting to the point where it'll be better than 99%, and then it'll get to the point where there's just no way to compete. It'll get to what I call Stockfish level. Stockfish is the chess program that will easily beat Magnus Carlsen or anyone at chess, even running on a small computer. I suspect you could probably run Stockfish on your phone and beat Magnus Carlsen. That's how good it is at chess. And that's how good AI will be at writing software.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And beyond software?
Elon Musk: That applies to everything.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Everything. But for physical jobs, for assembly jobs — you will also need the capability in humanoid robots, which so far isn't there yet, is it?
Elon Musk: Right, so that's why I said digital AI and then physically manifested AI in the form of robots, where the robot is more or less an end effector with some amount of local intelligence, but managed by a large AI model. And I've said many times I think work is going to be optional. Maybe a good comparison would be gardening. You don't have to garden. You don't have to grow vegetables in your garden. You can go to the store and there are going to be pristine vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your garden and they will actually be less perfect. Your tomato is not going to be as plump and juicy as the ones at the store. They'll look a little artisanal. But if you go to a friend's house and they make dinner with vegetables from their garden, it's a nice touch. That's what work is going to be like.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I get that. In that world I would be hopeless because I can't garden to save my life, but I get the idea. People still like playing chess with each other even though every computer is better. But let's just think about the politics of this. Because it sounds like you're describing a world where within ten years pretty much every job can be done better by an intelligence. And you're seeing huge returns to this intelligence — to people like you. You're the wealthiest man in the world. What about people who lose their jobs, who are displaced, who may go off and garden — how are they going to live? And what kind of — it sounds to me like —
Elon Musk: There'll be universal high income.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But where is the revenue coming from? I'm an economist. If you just issue checks, you're going to have inflation.
Elon Musk: A lot of what we're trying to think about — these things were relevant in the past, they will not be relevant in the future. Inflation is simply the ratio of money to goods and services. So if the goods and services output increases dramatically — if it increases a thousand percent — you can increase the money supply. Provided the creation of that money is less than the rate at which goods and services increase, you actually have deflation. So I'll make a prediction: deflation will be the issue, not inflation. Because as the output of goods and services increases, if it increases faster than money supply, you will have deflation.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I'm actually perfectly willing to believe that. You may well be right. But I'm really hung up on how we get from the current polarized, angry, fearful politics we have now to this nirvana. You can paint a picture where people are so scared by this that they essentially try to stop it. Maybe they can't, but you get nationalization, a far-left government, exorbitant tax increases, the economy crumbles because people are so worried about a future which does sound quite scary as you describe it. So how do you handle the politics now?
Elon Musk: Honestly, even intraday, I've gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI. I'm not going to be Panglossian and say everything's wonderful with no risk. I'm saying there is some risk.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I guess I'm trying to be more sort of small-bore and practical and think about what can be done now to limit those risks. You gave a very strong argument for what you and your fellow model makers could do. What should the government do? Should you be paying more tax to fund more transfer programs? Do you need to pay more tax? Do you have much higher taxes on capital so that you fund some kind of universal income? Otherwise, what do people live off?
Elon Musk: I do pay a lot of tax. In fact, I set a record for the most amount of taxes ever paid by a human.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: That's also because you're the world's richest man.
Elon Musk: Well, even before that. My guess is that I will pay many trillions in tax, and I'm fine with that. But I don't think in the future, when money's less relevant, taxation also becomes somewhat irrelevant.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What about giving people a sense that they have a share in the upside? Giving people shares in SpaceX and Tesla — there's a lot of talk about this right now.
Elon Musk: Well, one of the reasons I took SpaceX public is so that the public could participate — they could own a piece of SpaceX. As a private company, we're very limited in the number of shareholders we're allowed to have before going public. As a public company, we can have millions of shareholders.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you think there should be distribution of shares — like the Alaska wealth fund — could you imagine a world where a share of your equity goes to ordinary Americans?
Elon Musk: Well, in the taxes that I pay — for my stock options, I pay 40% income tax on a national basis, and then because I spend about 30% of my time in California, I pay roughly a third of the California state taxes, which is around 15%. So I pay about 45% in taxes. And then when I die, there'll be another roughly 45% that will be taxed. So at the end of the day I'll probably have a quarter of whatever I have. But the only thing it gives me is that for some period of time I would have control of the direction of the companies. Until the AI is so smart that it's in charge — at that point, controlling companies won't really matter.
Concentration of power and corporate control
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, let's talk about that, because I think one of the other things that worries people about the direction we're heading in — and I'm going to caricature it — is that people think the direction of the world is being shaped by a very small number of incredibly powerful people, and you are right at the top of that list.
Elon Musk: But what is different from the past? When wasn't that the case?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree — it was ever thus. But as you've described very vividly, it's an incredibly rapid change. So let's start with control of your company, which you definitely have now. After the IPO you basically have 80-odd percent of voting shares, and as I understand it you can only be removed by a vote of shares which you yourself control. So tell me if I'm wrong, but I think you can go crazy.
Elon Musk: Alphabet is controlled by Larry and Sergey. Mark Zuckerberg has control of Meta. And Mark is trying very hard on the AI front — I think he released one last week. I think Meta will be one of the AI companies.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But is it sensible for one person to have so much control over a company?
Elon Musk: I really just need to make sure that I can focus on the long term — by long term I just mean five to ten years. One of the challenges with being a public company is the pressure to have great results every single quarter, and not really invest in things that may only pay off in five to ten years. In the case of SpaceX, I want to extend consciousness beyond Earth and have a growing civilization on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system. I think ultimately this would have a very high return on investment, but in the short term we'll be spending all this money on a moon base or a Mars base, and people are like, "Well, you missed your earnings this quarter because you spent too much on Mars." And I'm like, "Yes — by the way, that was in the S1 prospectus and it's literally listed as a thing we will do." But they still get grumpy about these things. They say, "Well, your gross margin would be this and it's actually slightly worse," and then the short sellers all descend upon you. I just need some way to say, "Listen, we're going to focus on five to ten year or longer time horizon investments. This will depress our short-term earnings, but the long-term view —" and there are many investors that do take a long-term view. In fact, I'm a big fan of the retail investors. On balance they have very long-term views. But for portfolio managers, it's understandable why they put so much pressure on quarterly earnings — their compensation and whether they get promoted is dependent on how their portfolio does, and they only have a few years to make these decisions. Since they're under pressure to have immediate returns, they then put companies under pressure to have immediate returns.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What about key-man risk? What happens — heaven forbid — if you get run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow? You have total control over these companies. Do you have a plan for how they would progress without you?
Elon Musk: I think they would actually do very well for several years. There's a clear road map — or space map, I should say — for SpaceX. And there's a road map for Tesla literally. If you look at Apple after Steve Jobs — Steve Jobs had a strategic vision and a bunch of products that he had ideas for, and Apple has done very well. But when you don't have a creative genius like Steve Jobs, what Apple's missing are the incredible breakthrough products. They make amazing phones, great computers, but Apple hasn't come up with a Steve Jobs-level breakthrough product.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So by analogy, that's what you bring to all of your companies. You mentioned Mars — most people think of you as the man who wants to create a colony on Mars so we have a multi-planetary civilization. But now you seem more focused on AI and what AI will do in the next ten years, and you sound much more excited about using the moon as a base from which to pop out orbital AI satellites. Have you shifted your attention away from Mars?
Mars, space, and the future of consciousness
Elon Musk: I'm interested in the set of actions that propagate consciousness into the future to the maximum degree possible — so that the future light cone of consciousness is as big as we can make it. There's an exciting future where there's a spacefaring civilization out there among the stars, and the great things envisioned in the non-dystopian sci-fi books and movies become real one day. I sort of want the Star Trek, Star Wars future. Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in the theater, by the way.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Really?
Elon Musk: It probably had a profound effect on me. I was, I think, six years old, and it blew my mind. I was like, "This is the greatest thing I've ever seen."
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Has your life been about making that happen?
Elon Musk: Yeah. I didn't think it would be when I was young, but my life feels somewhat surreal. I can't believe these things are actually happening. I sometimes believe in simulation theory — where it's like, the things I'm doing are so preposterous that it's hard to believe they're real. I mean, we've got Starship, which is the largest, most powerful flying object ever made. And we intend to launch that more than once per hour.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I know. I read that. And people can quibble about how quickly it happens, but I think based on your track record, we should assume it will happen at some point.
Elon Musk: It will happen.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I'm just struck that the whole evolution of AI and the capabilities of these models is in and of itself so mind-blowing.
Elon Musk: It's pretty much happening as I thought it would.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Is it? Oh, that's interesting.
Elon Musk: And not just me — many people predicted this. Ray Kurzweil's predictions have been remarkably accurate.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, the singularity. Approaching.
Starlink, Ukraine, and geopolitical power
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let's go back more immediately to the here and now. We've talked about concentration of control in your companies. You also have, through Starlink, incredible geopolitical power. I'm one of your customers.
Elon Musk: Thank you.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Excellent product. But without Starlink, the Ukrainians would have been in serious trouble.
Elon Musk: The Ukrainian government has publicly thanked Starlink many times for being instrumental in defending Ukraine.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And you recently decided to prevent the Russians in the occupied territories from having access to Starlink.
Elon Musk: Well, we were never at any point selling Starlink to Russians. But they were grabbing it — they were using it. They essentially got Starlink units that they ordered through Ukraine and then smuggled them into eastern Ukraine where the Russians are, and were then using them in some cases for attacks. In order to address this, we worked with the Ukrainian government to create a white list of approved Starlink terminals. Now, this has some downsides because a whole bunch of people who were just innocent users of Starlink and just trying to access the internet for work or for education now don't have Starlink.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: These are geopolitical decisions of consequence. How do you feel about having that power? You could determine the outcome of wars. How does that feel, and is it right that you should have that power?
Elon Musk: I'm not sure we're determining the ultimate outcome of the war in Ukraine. I do hope that there's some sort of peace agreement reached soon, because for two or three years now the border has barely moved, and every day there are lots of people dying at the front line. I think there's a lot of wishful thinking — people saying Russia should completely withdraw, etc. But this is not realistic. There really needs to be some peace that is pragmatic. What would be terrible is if there's another three years of people dying senselessly at the front lines. You have to think about how you explain to the children of the men that are dying at the front lines — on the Russian side too, by the way, they're being conscripted and sent there. I'm offended by fancy diplomats who have seven-course dinners in luxurious places while people are dying at the front lines, and who pontificate about how Russia should withdraw — but Russia's not going to withdraw. So there really needs to be an accepted peace along those lines.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And do you think it's your responsibility to play a role in tipping the scales towards what you see as the right way to peace?
Elon Musk: I've been advocating peace for a long time. I posted a few years ago that there really needs to be some concession here to Russia. This is not me being pro-Russia. I'm just being pragmatic — or people will die for years with nothing achieved. And that is exactly what happened.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: The Ukrainians are doing pretty well right now with that incredible drone capacity hitting inside Russia, and the general consensus is that the balance of the war is shifting. But my point is not so much about what —
Elon Musk: They're not going to retake those territories. It is not going to happen.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: My interest is really on whether you think — given that through Starlink you have incredible power, whether it's appropriate that you should wield it. It's quite rare that an individual actor has such power by turning on and off a capability to shape conflict.
Elon Musk: Is there something you think I should do differently?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I mean, I think you were right to support Ukraine. I think the Russian aggression was, for many, many reasons, an appalling aggression. And I think that was an important thing that you did.
Elon Musk: I did a very deep dive into the background of that conflict to understand exactly what was going on. I'm reminded of the old adage that there are no angels in war.
DOGE, domestic politics, and government spending
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It's a similar tone, I think, about domestic politics, where you've played a big role. You spent a lot of money on Donald Trump's re-election. After the election you got very actively involved through DOGE, you tried to cut a lot of spending and reshape the government. How do you feel that it wasn't hugely successful in the sense that there wasn't nearly as much spending cut as you tried? As you look back on that, do you regret getting so involved in politics?
Elon Musk: I think I got a little too involved in politics, got carried away, frankly. The goal with the DOGE stuff was to try to do something about the deficit, which is massive. The interest payments exceed the amount of money spent on the Department of Defense. If you add up all the money spent on what is now the Department of War and intelligence in the US, that is smaller than the interest payments on the debt. So we need to take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. I got a lot of flak for this, obviously. But people don't understand just how simple it was for the DOGE team to approve payments. We just asked to have the contact information of the recipients, or some evidence that money was going to its intended purpose. But over and over we were told, "Oh, we need to wire money for some sort of important cause in Africa." And we're like, "Okay, but the wiring instructions are to Deloitte & Touche in Washington, DC, not to Africa. So we would like to send the money to Africa. Can you please connect us with the recipients so we can send them the money directly?" And then we'd get silence.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I have no doubt that there's a lot of waste in the US government. I think probably —
Elon Musk: Much worse than anyone could possibly imagine.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But I think there is a fair criticism that the way you shut down a whole bunch of programs probably — in fact, certainly — caused unnecessary suffering. I mean —
Elon Musk: No.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No? You don't buy that at all?
Elon Musk: It caused a lot of complaining.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You don't buy the idea that anybody — to put it really crudely and simply — any kid in Africa died because of the suddenness with which —
Elon Musk: Zero.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I just don't think that's right. I've had people reporting in Africa —
Elon Musk: How many NGOs are there that could step in? There are literally tens of thousands of NGOs.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, but not everyone functions as fast as you do. If funding is cut off for antiretrovirals overnight and it just stops, then people will die when they don't have access to them.
Elon Musk: No — only if they cannot get funding for that. The Gates Foundation has $50 billion. What about that? What about any one of a number of organizations? MacKenzie Bezos gave $50 billion. What about that?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But in many of these countries, USAID was the biggest funder.
Elon Musk: USAID was a political organization.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It may also have been that, but it was the biggest funder of health care systems. I am very sure that there's —
Elon Musk: It was funding regime change.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And there may well be benefits from having changed the system.
Elon Musk: The funding was not stopped. It was moved to the State Department.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It was stopped. There were huge numbers of things shut down in Africa that were health-related.
Elon Musk: These claims are false. They're nonsense. But obviously, when funding is stopped for fraudulent organizations or for something, do you think they're going to say, "Please keep funding the fraud"? Or do you think they're going to come up with a sad story that sounds sympathetic in order to get the funding restored? Obviously it would be the latter, and that's exactly what they did. But zero died because —
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, that's what I would take issue with. I think you can — I actually have a lot of sympathy for the change of the aid regime that the US under the Trump administration has precipitated. However, I think the pace and the suddenness with which it happened will almost certainly have caused unnecessary suffering and deaths. And I think both of those could have been —
Elon Musk: That's totally false.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay. Well —
Elon Musk: Obviously false, because the amount of funding we're talking about is far less than what can be supported by a foundation like the Gates Foundation or MacKenzie Bezos's foundation. She's given away tens of billions of dollars. The Gates Foundation has tens of billions of dollars. They are capable of acting very quickly. And if they didn't, I would say they're equally responsible.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I see. Okay. Fair point.
Elon Musk: Zero people. Obviously.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Hear you loud and clear. Domestically, you stepped away from those efforts. It was hard to do what you were trying to do. But this administration has gone in directions that I suspect you were not expecting two and a half years ago.
Elon Musk: I'm not going to agree with everything any administration does.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you disappointed by this administration?
Elon Musk: No. I think this administration on balance is excellent. No administration is perfect, but it's vastly better than the alternative.
Europe, immigration, and social media influence
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Can we talk about Europe? A place that you are very focused on. You support not just the populist right, but the far right — in fact, very fringe parties in some countries.
Elon Musk: I support the normal people.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Okay.
Elon Musk: What do you call the far right falsely?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You think it's the normal person. Okay.
Elon Musk: Literally, you could go back ten or fifteen years and these policies were completely normal. In fact, one of the tricks I think is quite funny is to take a speech from Obama or Hillary and then go to someone who's on what I call the lunatic left and say, "What do you think of the speech by Trump?" And they're like, "Oh wow, he's the worst person ever." Actually, that was a speech by Obama. Or actually, that was a speech by Hillary.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree that the center of gravity in this country has shifted. Certainly the Democratic Party shifted to the left. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people like Rupert Lowe.
Elon Musk: It's actually just normal people. And here are the principles — tell me which of these sound terrible. That we should have secure borders, that we should have safe cities, that we should have sensible spending. Which of those three are far-right fringe?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I would like to just admonish you and the media for the absurd characterization of the far right. It is false and misleading and nonsense. Please keep this part in.
Elon Musk: We'll keep all of this in. But let me push back on that, because you have — close to 250 million followers on X. You say things like — quote — "Civil war in Britain is inevitable. Just a question of when."
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes.
Elon Musk: I mean, when were you last in the UK?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: A few years ago.
Elon Musk: Exactly. So I live there. I'm there the whole time. That is nonsense.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You live in a cloistered existence.
Elon Musk: No, I don't, actually. And the numbers also disprove what you say.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: What numbers?
Elon Musk: All the numbers about crime. London is a much safer city than any city in the United States. Violent crime in the UK is not where you think it is. In fact, it's coming down. You have painted — and because you have so many followers, so many Americans believe it — a view that Europe and the UK are kind of overrun with terrifying Muslim immigrants, that there's rape on every corner, a sort of civilizational destruction.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I haven't said any of those things.
Elon Musk: Well, you said "Civil war in Britain is inevitable."
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yes, if current trends continue, it is.
Elon Musk: Why?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, if you have a large and growing, rapidly growing group of people whose beliefs are antithetical to Western beliefs, at some point there will be a reckoning. They will try to implement their views, and those who oppose it will oppose it, and that's what you call civil war. And obviously this is the trend. And you absolutely do live in a cloistered existence. If you'd like, we can go on a tour of Britain.
Elon Musk: Sure. I'd be very happy to come on a tour of Britain.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: And you will see for yourself.
Elon Musk: I've been to the country literally a hundred times.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But when was the last time?
Elon Musk: Like literally a few years ago.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You know why this exercises me? Because you have really shaped opinion about the UK, and so many Americans I come across have been — I just had one the other day — along the order of, "Oh, London's such a dangerous place. How can you — there are grooming gangs everywhere, there's violence everywhere." This is a picture that people get from things that you post or that are posted on X. And for example, you were posting for 48 hours that citizen vigilante film, which paints a dystopian — I've watched it. I watched it yesterday. It's not a very good movie. But it also paints a dystopian picture of Europe, and it glorifies vigilante violence. It glorifies the murdering of a Muslim immigrant family. I honestly think that it is irresponsible for you to put that up on X.
Elon Musk: I think it's a movie, and it's worth watching.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You're clearly suggesting Europe is a dystopian place and you —
Elon Musk: Yes. And why aren't you doing more to fight censorship in Europe? Why aren't you? You don't seem to be doing anything to fight censorship in Europe.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think there are issues with —
Elon Musk: People are in prison in the UK for social media posts. Do you think that's appropriate?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No. I mean, we've written editorials against it. But I don't think my point is with the UK —
Elon Musk: That's the kind of thing that I think is bad.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I agree with you. But I don't think you have to glorify vigilante violence and post the things that you are doing and paint an entirely inaccurate picture of Europe. I don't think that's what you have to do.
Elon Musk: I think it is accurate.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We should do a tour of the UK.
Elon Musk: Yes.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: The UK has actually been very good at integrating immigrants. It's very effective at doing that. There are problems — I'm the first to admit that there are problems.
Elon Musk: Yes, there are major problems.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: There are problems, but it really is not what you are describing or suggesting to your 240 million followers it is. And I think there's a problem.
Elon Musk: I think I'm spot on.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We'll have to —
Elon Musk: That's why you have freedom of speech.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You're not just saying you have every right to say what you want. You're saying you are right about Europe. And I really don't think you are.
Elon Musk: I think I am.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think you will find that most people in Europe don't think you're right about it. But let's come to that. Why do you focus on this? Because on the one hand, you know, we started this conversation and you described this extraordinary, transformative, civilization-changing stuff that's happening in the next ten years. And yet you're also an ongoing participant in what some would call the worst kind of tribalism on social media. How does that fit? They're two very different views of the world.
Elon Musk: I don't think they're inconsistent.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why do you do the latter one, the tribalism? People say that you're a racist. People say there are all kinds of things about you, which I'm sure you would disagree with. I just don't understand what is the motivation for doing that.
Elon Musk: My partner is half Indian, and I have four children with her. One of them was named after a famous Indian physicist. So I would say I'm not racist. And if you look at the people employed at my companies, we have senior executives of all races. I don't think there's any racism there.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Are you anti-Muslim?
Elon Musk: I'm against having people come to a country with antithetical views. I'm against that. I'm against rape and murder. I'm against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we've come to accept in the West. And I think it's a crying shame that the traditional media don't recognize this.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: First of all, I think you hugely exaggerate the challenges that Europe faces. Secondly, in areas I completely agree with you — I think the constraints on freedom of speech in the UK in certain areas are problematic. What worries me is that the people you are supporting are really quite vile people in some areas. Like some members of the AfD — Alice Weidel, whom I've met, is a perfectly thoughtful person. But in her party are some real neo-Nazis, some really awful people. And your blanket support of this kind of party with 240 million followers means that you have a power in Europe that I think perhaps you don't realize the scale of impact you have.
Elon Musk: I hope I'm having a big impact.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But why? Why should you be able to shape European politics? You don't even live there.
Elon Musk: I think of it as the West collectively.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But do you see why this makes people think that this man, who has all this power — he's the world's richest man — thinks he has a right to influence our politics? It's why people loathe you. Some people do loathe you.
Elon Musk: Yes, some people do. And that's probably true. I don't care. But the fact that a quarter billion people follow me — I think a lot more people actually like me than don't. And I think a lot more people hate you and the media far more than you realize. Do you realize the media is despised? The favorable view of journalists is like 15%.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: In the United States.
Elon Musk: The shoe is on the other foot. They hate you far more than they hate me.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think there is certainly a loss of trust in journalism. I think in part there have been mistakes by journalists and journalism — I totally acknowledge that. But I also think that the kind of polarized environment, particularly on social media, fostered by the kinds of things you are pushing on X actually helps this. Makes it worse.
Elon Musk: I don't think so. I think you're the problem — the media. And speaking of loathing, you are loathed far more than I am. And you don't seem to even realize that.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think very few people know who I am relative to you, so I don't think I play in the same game.
Elon Musk: Collectively. You're hated. Do you even know that? You probably don't.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I like to think that I'm aware of my own personal shortcomings and The Economist's shortcomings and our worldview shortcomings. But what we stand for, as you know, is liberal values — traditional classical liberal values — where we worry about concentrations of power and we believe in the individual and the dignity of the individual, and individual freedom. I firmly believe that, and I have long thought that you were a classical liberal. But when I read what you post on your feed, I sometimes wonder whether you really do believe in that.
Elon Musk: I literally said I believe in safe cities, secure borders, and sensible spending with respect to government. That doesn't make me right-wing at all.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Does the US or do European countries score better on those?
Elon Musk: The US is better.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: No. Safe cities — much more dangerous in the US than the UK. Sensible spending — bigger deficit here, out of control, you failed to reduce it. Secure borders — now under the Trump administration, I agree with you, before not. But on two out of three, unequivocally, Europe is in a better place. Yet you seem to paint a picture of Europe being a hellhole.
Elon Musk: I don't think Europe's a hellhole. When did I ever say that?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, the picture you paint of Europe — you say civil war in Britain is inevitable, and you basically proselytize for this Citizen Vigilante film, which really does paint Europe as a hellhole. It starts with ominous music and it says "Europe."
Elon Musk: Well, there was out-of-control rape and murder.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: It's more dangerous in this country than it is in Europe.
Elon Musk: Where there is danger in this country is because we fail to incarcerate repeat violent offenders. If somebody gets arrested 50 times for violent crimes, eventually they're going to kill somebody. So you either incarcerate them or people will die.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I think the prevalence of guns has quite a lot to do with it too. This is a much more dangerous country. Murder rates are much higher in large part because there are so many guns.
Elon Musk: Let me give you an interesting number. There are more people that die in Europe from heat deaths than people that die from gun deaths in America. Why aren't you writing an article about air conditioning?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, we've done several on air conditioning, and we had on our cover last week a whole long piece about why the —
Elon Musk: Pro-regulation?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Yeah, we're very pro-regulation.
Elon Musk: Okay, good.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Very pro-regulation. You should read us. I think you have a view of The Economist that is not entirely accurate. So I will — you come look at England, start reading The Economist, and I will stand corrected on my criticism of you in this area.
Elon Musk: There are many parts of Britain and Europe which are not safe. You can't just walk around.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: But there are far more in this country. Far more.
Elon Musk: I don't think so.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: All right, let's get my fact-checkers to check then.
Elon Musk: I don't think that's true.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Let's move on from this because I think I've got a sense of why you're doing what you're doing.
Elon Musk: The question is not whether America is perfect. The question is: does Europe have a serious and growing problem?
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Which is more dangerous — that's where we started this.
Elon Musk: Europe has a serious and growing problem. I'm not going to say that the United States has no problems. Of course it does. But we should all try to address these issues.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: We can agree on that. We should all try to address the problems. My point was simply that I think you exaggerate the scale of Europe's problem, and that —
Elon Musk: I think people are asleep at the switch and do not realize the magnitude of the issue.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I also think that your interventions, however well-intentioned they may be, risk making Europe's problem a lot worse. Because you are putting your support behind people who are proto-authoritarians — who are not trying simply to ensure better integration of Muslims or to secure the borders, but who have very clear fascist tendencies. And you will cause huge divisions within Europe.
Elon Musk: I think what you're saying is total fiction. I'm simply saying that Europe has to have secure borders, and not let in vast numbers of people with views that are antithetical to the accepted views in Europe, and where there will not be some level of safe cultural integration. This is simply common sense.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: If all you are saying is Europe should have secure borders, I completely agree with you. Then I have misunderstood what your interventions have been on social media, because that is not the conclusion I would draw having seen what the people you are supporting are doing. But if that's your goal, I share your goal that Europe should have secure borders. I think that's perfectly agreeable.
Elon Musk: And let me explain what the fundamental forcing function is for why the borders are not secure. When you have a welfare state that provides substantial benefits to anyone who comes there, you create a very powerful economic forcing function for anyone who is below that standard of living to come to Europe. It is an obvious, powerful driving force. People will come there if their standard of living from what they get in Europe is above where they are elsewhere in the world. It's very basic incentive structure.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don't disagree. Economic conditions and economic influences determine a lot of migration. I think asylum is a separate issue, but you're absolutely right — there are pressures for migration. However, there are other things you haven't focused on, which is that migration brings a lot of benefits. And it particularly does so in a continent like Europe, which is a rapidly aging continent. So we can agree that completely uncontrolled borders are a bad idea. But I think Europe benefits from having immigration — controlled immigration. It brings —
Elon Musk: Yes, I'm in favor of immigration. Obviously I'd be hypocritical if I wasn't, since I am an immigrant to the United States. I'm in favor of immigration if the person immigrating is going to be a productive member of society, if they're going to be honest, and if they're not going to mistreat people in the country they're going to.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I can agree on all of those. But I think Europe does better on that than you give it credit for. That's where we disagree. But let's move on. Tell me — what do you think people get most wrong about you?
What people get wrong about Elon Musk
Elon Musk: Well, you just got a whole bunch of things wrong about me. Pretty much everything in the last twenty minutes is all wrong.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: So I got the political side of you most wrong.
Elon Musk: Yeah, my political views are centrist. They're not far right. And frankly, calling it far right I think is an insult to history, an insult to many peoples, and it is an outrageous falsehood. It's completely absurd. I literally have stated my position clearly: there need to be secure borders, and if there's an influx of immigrants, they need to be people who will agree with Western ideals, with Western values. And if there's a long-term growth of people who do not — or in some cases are adamantly opposed to — Western values, you are setting yourself up for civil war. This is obvious. A child can see this. But this is not a right-wing view. I'm simply stating reality.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, I think we can both agree that evidence will be able to decide which of us is more or less right. And we will find evidence for both of our views in different parts of Europe. The question is what the overall picture is.
Elon Musk: I'm very good at predicting the future. I'm not perfect, but my batting average is very high for a human. But this does have somewhat of a Cassandra effect, where people don't believe that what I'm saying is likely to be true. I can see into the future with a higher probability of success than most people — not perfectly, but with a higher probability. And including things that people believe to be counterintuitive. I'm not saying I'm always right. I certainly am not. But my batting average is very good. And this does have a Cassandra effect where people don't realize that what I'm saying will come to pass. Maybe not exactly in the timing I thought, but it will come to pass. History will write the verdict. But I think you will see that very little of what I've said is inaccurate, and a supermajority of what I've said is very accurate and will come to pass — unless there's some change in direction.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Do you have higher confidence in your expectations of the future for AI — the first part of our conversation — or the latter part, the political part?
Elon Musk: AI is digital superintelligence — it's called the singularity, like a black hole, because you don't know what's going to happen after that. It sort of sucks in everything. So in terms of the really big macro effects, AI and robots will really dominate everything on a time scale that is less than ten years.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Which probably renders this other stuff that we've been talking about less important and less relevant.
Elon Musk: The AI and robotics revolution will happen sooner than civil war in Britain. I would say civil war in Britain is probably twenty years away. And the AI robot singularity is ten years away.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: Well, hopefully these benign all-powerful AIs will prevent such outcomes.
Elon Musk: They probably will.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: I don't agree with everything you say, but it's always absolutely fascinating to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed.
Elon Musk: You're welcome. I'm not boring.
Zanny Minton Beddoes: You're definitely not boring.