(Austin, Texas) Elon Musk, Peter Diamandis, and Dave Blundin discussed the path to amazing abundance. I’ll help break down what might interest you the most in a series of pieces this weekend. Since humanity will soon face a shift in how to find meaning, I think you’ll like this a lot!
Key topics include:
- AI and Abundance: The role of AGI and humanoid robots (Optimus) in creating universal high income and potentially “saturating all human desire,” along with the risk of social unrest.
- Energy: Solar power is the foundation for a Type-II Kardashev scale civilization, and Musk views energy as the future currency. He emphasizes the potential of batteries (Tesla Megapacks) to double the US energy throughput and highlights China’s dominance in solar capacity.
- Space: Scaling Starship launches to build space-based solar and AI infrastructure (100 gigawatts a year of solar-powered AI satellites) and the future of orbital data centers.
- Education: The rising value of entrepreneurship over traditional college degrees, and using AI (Grok) for personalized, individualized education.
The talk starts with Elon telling Peter Diamandis that his relentless optimism is always a breath of fresh air. Peter states he wants to share that with a lot of people and Elon replies, “Yeah, I think they need it. I hope you’re right. And you might be right. Actually, I’m increasingly thinking that you are right”.
Peter D.: Abundance for all. Yeah, that’s the goal. Shall we?
And an epic conversation begins! The discussion centers on the profound societal impacts of advanced AI, robotics, and automation. Peter Diamandis raises the question of how humanity can move toward universal high income (a future of radical abundance where goods, services, and needs are met without traditional work) while avoiding widespread social unrest.
Elon Musk responds provocatively, predicting that society will likely experience both — universal high income and significant social unrest. He explains this stems from the extremely rapid pace of change: AI and robots will eliminate most jobs, saturate material desires, and decouple survival from work, leaving people “scared shitless” by the upheaval.
The group explores the darker side of this abundance which is a potential “WALL-E future” where humans become unchallenged couch potatoes, losing purpose because jobs (and externally imposed challenges) no longer matter.
They note that most people struggle to self-generate meaningful challenges without structure, though Elon himself thrives by constantly starting new ambitious ventures (like space exploration and energy).
This leads Dave Blundin to ask whether Elon’s optimism has improved recently compared to a year or two ago. I like how Blundin has subtly switched the conversation to a longer-term perspective.
Elon Musk then replies:
“Well, I think if you reframe things in terms of progress bar, like speaking of challenges. Progress towards a Kardashev 2 scale civilization.”
This reframing shifts the focus from short-term fears to humanity’s grand, multi-generational arc, which is harnessing planetary-scale energy (Kardashev Type 2) as the ultimate challenge and measure of meaningful progress in an age of abundance.
Kardashev Scale, Energy as Currency
Elon: Well, I think if you reframe things in terms of progress bar, like speaking of challenges. Progress towards a Kardashev 2 scale civilization.
Peter D.: Sure.
Elon: Well, let’s say the aspiration capturing all—
Peter D.: The energy from the sun’s output.
Elon: Well, let’s even have a humbler aspiration than that. If we say that our goal is to even get a millionth of the sun’s energy, that would be more than a thousand times as much energy as could possibly be produced on Earth.
So about a half a billionth of the sun’s energy reaches Earth. So you’d have to go up three orders of magnitude from that just to get to a millionth. So we’re very, very, very far from even having a billionth of the sun’s energy harnessed in any way.
So a reasonable goal would be try to get to a millionth. And if you try to get to a millionth or a thousandth, 0.1%—that’s such an enormous—there’s not sure what metaphor we would use here because a hill to climb is not a big enough metaphor. But gravity well to escape and hello, gravity well. Exactly.
So if you try to get to a millionth of the sun’s energy or a thousandth of sun’s energy—like now, these are very, very difficult.
Peter D.: Tasks and energy is the inner loop for everything right now.
Elon: Yeah. I think the future currency will essentially just be wattage.
Peter D.: I was thinking, is it the ability of a person to control energy and compute or just energy? I mean, the two translate obviously.
Elon: Just like honest energy. Yeah, like basically how much power is being turned into work of some kind. Right. Intelligence or matter manipulation.
Peter D.: So that’s your next big project is going to be energy. You’re going to go back to solar, your solar system?
Elon: You can expand from there and say, okay, what about even getting somewhere on a Kardashev 3 scale, meaning galaxy level.
Peter D.: Now we’re talking. Now we’re back to Star Trek.
Elon: Yeah, expand horizons here.
Peter D.: Yes.
Elon: Well, there isn’t even a horizon because you’re not on our planet.
Peter D.: So we talk about—
Elon: So we’ve seen galaxy, mind.
Peter D.: We’re in 11.5 million square foot, three pentagons right here in this building. You think in a reasonably large scale.
Elon: What is magnitude?
Peter D.: Yeah.
Elon: So, I mean, from a challenge standpoint, I guess the civilizational challenge will be how do you climb the orders of magnitude in energy harnessed.
The Path to Radical Abundance
Peter D.: But we’re going back to—why are you optimistic right now? I mean, when people think about the challenges ahead, I think we’re going to end up with abundance in the long run.
Elon: It’s beyond abundance, beyond what people possibly could think of as abundance. Like the AI, actually. AI and robots. The limit will saturate all human desire.
whatsuptesla.com 
[…] Read Part 1 Here! […]
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