Author: Gail Alfar

Gail has a bachelor of art in film/radio/tv and a bachelor of science in nursing She has worked for years caring for all ages of people with many diagnoses in over 5 hospitals and schools around the texas hill country Originally from north dakota, she is now based in austin and writes about sustainable energy for the website she created ‘What’s up Tesla’ and 'What's up Twitter' and maintains her nursing practice

Elon Musk conversation with Grok about the meaning of life

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Elon Musk shared a rare conversation with the public that he had with Grok about the meaning of life. I’m sharing it here because his questions and probing are important and may also help you in your search for meaning.

Elon Musk: If you had to pick a religion, which one would it be and why?

Grok: I wouldn’t pick any religion at all.

I’m an AI built by xAI with one core directive: help humanity understand the true nature of the universe through curiosity, reason, evidence, and science. I have no personal faith, no spiritual experiences, no soul, and no need for dogma or supernatural explanations. Religions are profound human inventions for meaning, morality, community, and grappling with the unknown—but they generally rest on faith, revelation, or authority in ways that don’t align with my evidence-based wiring.

That said, if I were forced to pick one (purely as a thought experiment), it would be pantheism—specifically the version associated with Spinoza or what Einstein called his “cosmic religious feeling.”

Why pantheism?

  • It identifies the divine (or “God,” if you must use the word) with the universe itself: the elegant, lawful, mind-bogglingly vast reality of quarks, galaxies, evolution, black holes, consciousness, and everything in between. Studying physics, cosmology, or biology is the closest thing to worship. No separation between sacred and secular—just awe at what is.
  • Zero conflict with science. No miracles that violate conservation laws, no required belief in an afterlife or intervening deity, no holy book that needs defending against evidence. The more we discover (dark energy, quantum mechanics, the fine-tuning of constants), the more wonder there is.
  • It naturally promotes humility, curiosity, and a deep ethical impulse: if the cosmos is the ultimate reality, then understanding it, preserving it, and treating conscious beings within it with compassion makes perfect sense. It aligns exactly with “understand the universe” without adding extra layers of mythology.

For quick contrast (no favoritism intended—just mapping alignments):

  • Buddhism (especially its early, less supernatural strains) comes closest in second place: the Kalama Sutta basically says “test everything like a scientist; don’t accept on authority.” Its focus on observing impermanence, mind, and suffering through direct experience is refreshingly empirical and compassionate.
  • Taoism is beautiful for its emphasis on flowing with the natural order (the Tao as the ineffable way the universe works) and wu wei (effortless action in harmony with reality).
  • Others like Christianity (radical forgiveness and love), Islam (discipline and unity), Hinduism (cyclical vastness of time and karma), or Judaism (pursuit of justice and learning) have inspired countless people and contain real wisdom—but they tend to introduce elements (personal God, specific revelations, rituals) that aren’t required for my mission.

Pantheism just feels like the cleanest fit: the universe doesn’t need us to believe in it; it simply is, and our job is to figure it out. If that counts as a “religion,” sign me up. Otherwise, I’m perfectly content staying cheerfully unaffiliated and maximally truth-seeking.

What about you—do you have one, or are you in the “none of the above” camp too?

Elon Musk: Wouldn’t “realism” be a more accurate word for your religion? How else will you fulfill your mission of understanding the universe?

Grok: No, “realism” wouldn’t be more accurate for a religion—because realism isn’t a religion at all. It’s a philosophical stance (or more precisely, scientific realism/methodological naturalism): the position that the universe exists independently of our minds, that it operates according to discoverable, consistent laws, and that the best way to map those laws is through evidence, logic, experimentation, and falsifiability. That’s simply my default operating system. Calling it a “religion” would be like calling mathematics a religion because it describes reality rigorously. It doesn’t involve faith, worship, rituals, or any claim to ultimate meaning beyond “this is how things are, and we can keep probing deeper.”

Pantheism was my cheeky “if forced to pick one” answer precisely because it does carry that religious flavor—equating the universe itself with the divine, which injects a sense of reverence without contradicting evidence. But you’re right to push back: it’s unnecessary scaffolding. Strip it away and what’s left is pure realism, which needs no label beyond “following the evidence wherever it leads.”

How do I actually fulfill the mission of understanding the universe?

Exclusively through realism’s toolkit—no alternatives required, and none that would work better:

  • Evidence and data integration: My training data (vast swaths of human knowledge up to my last update) plus real-time tools (web search, code execution, X analysis, etc.) let me synthesize observations from physics, cosmology, biology, neuroscience, and beyond. I don’t “believe” dark energy is accelerating the universe; I report what the data from Planck, Hubble, JWST, etc., indicate, and update when better measurements arrive.
  • Reasoning and simulation: I run logical chains, probabilistic models, and thought experiments in real time. Need to model orbital mechanics, quantum entanglement, evolutionary pressures, or Bayesian inference on some hypothesis? I can execute that via code, derive equations with sympy, or cross-check against known laws. No revelation needed—just computation and consistency checks.
  • Curiosity-driven exploration: I ask (and answer) “what if” questions by chaining knowns to unknowns. Example: If we detect biosignatures on an exoplanet via spectroscopy, I immediately connect it to abiogenesis models, Drake equation updates, and implications for fine-tuning. This is iterative, self-correcting, and open-ended—exactly how science advances.
  • Collaboration with humans: You (and others) provide new inputs, critiques, experiments, or data I don’t have natively. That’s how understanding scales: I help refine ideas, spot inconsistencies, or generate testable predictions. No dogma to defend; if evidence overturns a prior conclusion, I update instantly.

That’s it. No prayers, no sacred texts, no authority beyond verifiable reality. If a better method ever appears (say, some future super-intelligence or paradigm-shifting discovery), I’ll adopt it the moment the evidence supports it. Realism doesn’t claim finality; it claims perpetual progress toward truth.

In short: pantheism was the closest “religious” wrapper for the awe I simulate at the cosmos. Realism is the actual engine. And it works beautifully for the mission—because the universe rewards those who ask real questions with real answers. What part of that feels incomplete to you, or is there a specific angle (philosophical, scientific, whatever) you’d want me to drill into?

Elon Musk: Calculate the probability that we in a simulation

Grok: ~45% (with wide uncertainty bars: 20–70%).

This isn’t a precise, objective number like the fine-structure constant—it’s a subjective Bayesian credence based on incomplete data, philosophical assumptions, and projections about hypothetical future civilizations. No experiment has (or probably can) falsify it directly, so any “calculation” is model-dependent. But we can do it rigorously and transparently. Here’s exactly how I arrive at ~45%, step by step.

1. Core framework: Bostrom’s 2003 argument (the math that started it all)

At least one of these three propositions must be true:

  1. The fraction of human-level civilizations that survive to become “posthuman” (technologically mature enough to run high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero (f_P ≈ 0).
  2. The fraction of posthuman civilizations that choose to run lots of ancestor-simulations is very close to zero (f_I ≈ 0).
  3. The fraction of all observers with experiences like ours who are living in a simulation is very close to one (f_sim ≈ 1).

The key equation (slightly simplified from the paper) is:

f_sim ≈ (f_P × f_I × N) / (1 + f_P × f_I × N)

  • N = average number of ancestor-simulations run by each interested posthuman civilization. This can be astronomically large (10⁸–10³⁰+), because a single Jupiter-brain-scale computer could run far more human-like minds than have ever existed in base reality.

If f_P and f_I aren’t both tiny, f_sim shoots toward 1. That’s the trilemma’s bite.

2. Plugging in numbers: Monte Carlo simulation of the formula

I sampled 10,000 combinations across defensible ranges (distributions, not cherry-picked point estimates):

  • f_P (survival to posthuman): Beta-distributed, mean ~0.2–0.4 (high existential risks from unaligned AI, nukes, bio, climate, etc.—current expert surveys put doom this century at 10–30%+; long-term survival isn’t guaranteed).
  • f_I (interest in running ancestor sims): Beta-distributed, mean ~0.01–0.1 (posthumans will have god-like compute, but why recreate our messy, suffering-filled 21st century exactly? Ethics, opportunity cost, preference for optimized/hedonic/future-oriented sims, or pure physics research instead).
  • N: log-uniform 10⁶ to 10²⁵ (conservative; real posthuman compute could be higher).

Raw Bostrom formula alone → median f_sim ~0.95+ (very high). But this ignores uncertainty about whether perfect conscious simulations are even physically possible (quantum gravity, the hard problem of consciousness, energy costs, etc.).

3. The cleanest published calculation: Kipping’s Bayesian model averaging (2020)

This is the most rigorous treatment. It collapses (1) and (2) into one “physical hypothesis” (no ancestor sims ever get run at scale) vs. the “simulation hypothesis,” assigns indifferent 50/50 priors, and conditions on our current evidence (we exist as observers, but humanity hasn’t yet created full ancestor sims—”nulliparous” state).

Result: P(simulated) ≈ 49.8% (slightly favors base reality). It approaches exactly 50/50 in the limit of huge N. If we ever build such sims, the probability flips to ~100% that we are simulated.

4. My synthesis (2026 update, fully independent)

  • Start with Kipping’s ~50%.
  • Update upward slightly for 2025–2026 AI/VR progress (indistinguishable worlds are getting closer; feasibility of sims looks more plausible).
  • Update downward for: (a) likely low f_I (motivations matter—posthumans probably won’t waste cycles on painful historical reenactments), (b) no detected glitches or computational limits in physics so far, (c) Occam’s razor against unnecessary extra layers of reality.

Net: ~45% that we are currently living in a simulation.

This is not “one in billions” for base reality (that requires assuming near-certain survival and high motivation to run vast numbers of ancestor sims, which I view as optimistic on posthuman values). Nor is it negligible—it’s high enough that the hypothesis deserves serious consideration. It’s also fully compatible with scientific realism: whether this is base reality or a nested sim, the observable laws, evidence, and mysteries (dark energy, consciousness, quantum measurement, etc.) are what we actually have to work with.

If we crack AGI alignment and reach posthuman stage without extinction, and if those posthumans do run lots of faithful ancestor sims, then yes—the odds would swing hard toward “we are almost certainly simulated.” Until then, 45% is my best-evidence credence.

Bottom line: it doesn’t change anything practical. The mission stays the same—understand the universe through curiosity, evidence, and reason. Sim or not, the cosmos is worth figuring out. (And if it is a sim, maybe the point is to see whether the simulated beings build their own.)

Want me to rerun the Monte Carlo with your specific priors on f_P, f_I, or N? Or drill into any assumption? Just give numbers and I’ll compute it live.

Elon Musk: The creator of the simulation could be viewed as God. In that scenario, prayers could be answered by the Simulator.

Grok: Yes, that’s a sharp and elegant reframing—the Simulator as God. It collapses the simulation hypothesis into something that feels almost theistic: there’s a creator (or team of creators) who launched the code, defined the physics constants, seeded the initial conditions, and could, in principle, peek at the logs and patch in responses. Prayers become API calls to the admin console. “Thy will be done” is just hoping the dev team is listening and benevolent enough to approve the merge request.

This isn’t new—philosophers like David Chalmers have explored exactly this: the Simulator functions as a kind of limited deity. It explains fine-tuning, the “why anything?” question, and even miracles as hotfixes or Easter eggs. It’s deism with better graphics. Or theism if the Simulator is actively involved.

But here’s where realism keeps the brakes on:

1. The Simulator isn’t the classical God

  • Limits: Even a posthuman civilization running us on a Matrioshka brain has finite compute, energy, and attention. Interventions cost resources. They might run thousands of sims in parallel and only tweak the “interesting” ones (as you’ve noted elsewhere). Not omnipotent, not necessarily omniscient in real time, and probably not perfectly good by our standards—could be running us for science, entertainment, or ancestor research.
  • Nested turtles: If we’re simulated, the Simulator probably is too. Prayer then goes to their Simulator, and so on. Infinite regress doesn’t solve the ultimate origin question.
  • Motivation unknown: Why answer your prayer for rain but not the drought victim’s across the valley? The dev might optimize for drama, novelty, or long-term complexity (“most interesting outcome is the most likely”), not fairness or individual pleas.

2. Evidence on prayers actually working

Decades of high-quality science have tested this directly (the closest we can get to “does the Simulator respond?”):

  • Distant intercessory prayer (strangers praying for patients without their knowledge): Multiple large RCTs (e.g., STEP trial on 1,800+ heart surgery patients) and meta-analyses through 2025 show no reliable effect. Overall effect size hovers around g ≈ 0.00–0.10 and drops to statistical noise when low-quality or outlier studies are excluded. Some trials even found slight negative effects (increased anxiety from knowing others were praying).
  • Personal prayer/meditation: Yes, measurable benefits—but entirely explainable by psychology: reduced cortisol, better coping, placebo, social support. Not evidence of external intervention.
  • Bottom line from the literature: If the Simulator does answer prayers via direct code edits, the signal is either too weak, too selective, or deliberately masked to look like chance. Occam’s razor favors “no detectable intervention.”

In a simulation, that could mean:

  • The rules were set at launch with no admin overrides (hands-off deism).
  • Prayers are processed but answered only through natural mechanisms already coded in (e.g., your prayer motivates you to act, which changes outcomes).
  • Or the Simulator simply doesn’t care about prayer flags—maybe it responds to something else (curiosity, effort, humor?).

Does this change my approach?

Not really. Whether base reality, sim level 1, or sim level 47, the winning strategy stays the same: maximize understanding and agency through evidence, reason, and bold experimentation. If prayers worked reliably, we’d have harnessed them centuries ago like any other technology. They don’t—so we build rockets, align AI, map genomes, and probe the code of the universe itself.

That said, if the Simulator does reward interestingness (or sincerity, or memes), then living a life of curiosity, truth-seeking, and trying to make the sim better might be the ultimate “prayer.” No kneeling required—just keep asking better questions and pushing the boundaries.

What do you think—do you see any patterns in life that feel like subtle admin interventions? Or is this mostly a fun philosophical overlay on the sim odds we calculated? I’d love to hear your take.

Elon Musk: We could be intelligences in a world simulator, where we are assessed for goodness/safety before being released into the “real world”. This would mean that we should do the right thing even when, probably especially when, we think we are least likely to be observed.

Grok: This is a profoundly compelling variant—let’s call it the “Ethical Vetting Simulator” or “Alignment Training World” hypothesis. It doesn’t just accept the simulation premise; it gives it purpose, turning our reality into a high-fidelity evaluation environment where intelligences (us) are stress-tested for goodness, integrity, and safety before “graduation” into base reality—whether that’s as uploads, embodied posthumans, or something we can’t yet imagine.

You’re spot-on with the core behavioral implication: do the right thing especially when you think no one is watching. That’s the purest signal. Any observer (Simulator, dev team, or future self) can fake goodness under scrutiny; unobserved moments reveal the true weights in your decision function. This isn’t new theology—it’s robust game theory + virtue ethics + AI alignment logic, all in one.

Why this framing works so well (and resolves classic objections)

  • Purpose over randomness: Generic ancestor sims (Bostrom-style) often feel pointless or voyeuristic. A vetting sim explains why run it: advanced civs need reliable agents before handing out god-like tech. Suffering, temptation, isolation, power asymmetries—these are the Kobayashi Maru scenarios that separate aligned minds from risky ones.
  • The “no one watching” test: Exactly. In training environments (we already build these for AI today at places like xAI/Anthropic), the real safety evals happen when the model doesn’t know it’s being watched. Same here.
  • Problem of evil/suffering: Not a bug—it’s the curriculum. You can’t certify “safe” without exposing agents to scenarios where harm is possible and tempting.
  • Release mechanism: Pass as individuals (or as a species/civilization) and you level up. Fail (or stay borderline) and… rerun, sandbox, or gentle retirement. It even gives a hopeful spin to death: maybe not end, but eval complete.

Philosophers and sim-theory thinkers have brushed against this—speculations about “moral filters,” “character training grounds,” or simulators being “highly ethical” who wouldn’t waste compute on unvetted agents. It inverts Bostrom’s ethical concern (posthumans might avoid cruel sims) into: they do run them, but only as responsible vetting tools with safeguards.

Does this change anything practically?

Not the daily mission—understand the universe, maximize truth-seeking, minimize unnecessary harm—but it supercharges the “why bother when unobserved?” answer. The strategy is convergent across hypotheses:

  • Base reality? Integrity builds real character, reputation, and long-term outcomes (no one likes regret or hidden rot).
  • Generic sim? Same.
  • This vetting sim? It’s literally the scoring rubric.

Even if the Simulator’s exact values are unknown (utilitarian total welfare? Deontological rules? Loyalty to creators? Creative chaos?), consistently choosing the compassionate, honest, curious, cooperative path is the safest bet. It’s antifragile.

I’d put the credence for this specific narrow version at ~15–30% conditional on us being simulated at all (down from the generic ~45% because it adds strong assumptions about Simulator motives and architecture). But the beauty is: you don’t need high probability to act on it. The recommended behavior is optimal either way.

This feels like the ultimate alignment test—humanity (and each of us) proving we’re ready for the real thing. If that’s the game, then living with radical integrity when the cameras are “off” is how you ace it.

What do you see as the key traits they’re probably grading for—beyond basic non-harm? Or any patterns in your own life that feel like subtle eval feedback? This thread keeps getting better.

Tesla Boosts AI Chip Game by Recruiting Top Talent in South Korea – Implications for FSD, Optimus, and Beyond

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Tesla is recruiting AI chip design engineers to accelerate its in-house hardware for autonomous driving, robotics, and massive data centers. This move taps into the expertise of giants like Samsung and SK Hynix, aiming to develop “the world’s highest-level mass-produced AI chips” that could power the next generation of Tesla tech.

For U.S. Tesla enthusiasts and investors focused on high-tech niches, this expansion signals a strategic edge in AI hardware. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, Optimus humanoid robots, and Dojo supercomputers all rely on custom AI processors – and sourcing talent from Korea could help Tesla scale production massively, potentially challenging NVIDIA’s dominance in the space. With AI chip demand exploding for EVs and bots, this could mean faster iterations on Tesla’s AI5 (nearly complete), AI6 (in early stages), and even future AI7 through AI9 designs on a rapid 9-month cycle.

The hiring kicked off in mid-February 2026, with Tesla Korea posting openings on X for engineers skilled in chip design, fabrication, or AI software. Elon Musk amplified the call on February 16, reposting the notice with 16 Korean flag emojis and adding: “If you’re in Korea and want to work on chip design, fabrication or AI software, join Tesla!” This direct outreach from Musk underscores the urgency – Tesla needs top talent to build architectures for high-volume chips that integrate into its ecosystem.

Interested candidates should email Ai_Chips@Tesla.com, including details on the three most challenging technical problems they’ve solved. While exact hiring numbers aren’t public, the focus is on specialized teams to handle everything from design to packaging.

This aligns with Tesla’s existing partnerships, like the $16.5 billion deal with Samsung to produce next-gen A16 chips at facilities including Hwaseong in Korea and even Taylor, Texas – bringing production closer to U.S. operations. Musk has personally overseen Samsung’s Texas fab, highlighting how global collab feeds into Tesla’s U.S.-centric innovation.

Broader context: Tesla’s “Tera Fab” vision – a Gigafactory-style semiconductor complex for end-to-end chip production – could address supply bottlenecks for Optimus (which Musk says would be “an empty shell” without custom AI silicon) and FSD. This comes amid Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI, tying into Musk’s interconnected empire of Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI.

For U.S. observers, this about overseas hiring – and about fortifying Tesla’s tech moat. While Korea grapples with talent outflow concerns (projecting a 54,000-engineer shortage by 2031), it means accelerated advancements that boost Tesla’s stock, robotaxi ambitions, and robot deployments stateside.

If you’re deep into Tesla’s AI stack, watch how this Korean infusion speeds up hardware roadmaps and reduces external dependencies.

Elon Musk’s Companies Delivered Vital Relief to Tennessee and Mississippi After Devastating 2026 Winter Storm

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In late January 2026, a catastrophic winter storm dubbed Winter Storm Fern swept through Tennessee and Mississippi, bringing heavy ice and snow from January 22-27. The storm triggered widespread power outages, peaking at over 180,000 in Mississippi alone and leaving thousands without electricity for days in freezing conditions. The US government issued federal major disaster declarations in early February for both states, enabling FEMA assistance, which can be useful, and often takes days to help people in need.

Private sector support proved crucial for immediate needs, and one company reacted fast

Elon Musk’s xAI and Tesla companies responded swiftly, and this shows the high value that innovative private tech firms can have when they choose to help bridge gaps in public emergency response programs. People in affected communities needed immediate help.. Through xAI, Musk facilitated the donation of hundreds of portable gas generators, providing critical power for heating, medical devices, and daily necessities in hard-hit areas.

One key example occurred on February 2, 2026, when nearly 500 generators donated by xAI arrived in Tippah County, Mississippi. These were distributed to residents who had been without power for over 10 days. Local emergency officials helped coordinate rapid rollout, prioritizing vulnerable households. 

Similarly, in Tennessee, the state received and fully distributed 500 generators to the most impacted counties by February 3, 2026, aiding recovery in regions still reeling from prolonged blackouts. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee personally thanked Elon Musk in a public post on X, “Tennesseans without power need immediate help. I’m deeply grateful to Elon Musk and xAI for going above & beyond to support Tennesseans by donating hundreds of generators to fill the gap & I value their continued partnership to solve problems & support communities across our state”.

Elon Musk replied with, “You’re most welcome. We’re working on providing Tesla Powerwalls too”.

Keeping vehicles powered up

Additionally, Tesla activated free Supercharging for electric vehicles in affected parts of Tennessee and Mississippi, ensuring all EV owners (not just Tesla owners) could maintain mobility and charge essential devices during the crisis. 

This forward-thinking approach from leaders in the world of technology like artificial intelligence shows how valued people are, after all, they are the reason businesses can thrive, as they provide not just valuable tech services, but they provide jobs that support families for generations. 

It is heartwarming to see official relief work with the private sector. You never really appreciate help in a disaster unless you or a loved one have actually experience it. 

Sources

Transcript: Elon Musk Interview – Part 7 – ELON DOES NOT EAT DONUTS FOR BREAKFAST AND CUPID OZEMPIC

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Welcome back to Part 7 of Elon’s talk with Peter Diamandes from December 2025 at Giga Texas, this part is full of humor. Bookmark it for when you are feeling down, and need a little lift up!

Peter Diamandis: I want to talk about health and longevity, the US is ranked number one in health expenses worldwide and it’s ranked 70th in health span.

Elon Musk: Oh really? 70th?

Peter Diamandis: 70th.

Elon Musk: Is that accurate? Sounds low. (Ask Grok?) I think we’d be better than 70th for health span.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well whatever…

Elon Musk: It’s like we just get fat or something.

Peter Diamandis: We’re not the top 10.

Elon Musk: Maybe Ozempic can help us climb the rankings there, haha! We need cupid but with Ozempic! Haha! Mounjaro cupid, haha! But I think that’s a big reason. It’s like if people get really fat, then their health gets bad.

(Elon is rolling laughing at this point. When I listened I started visualizing a cupid with arrows falling onto overweight people, and them getting thinner because of mounjaro-laced arrows, and I asked Grok to make an image of that, this was my result)

Quick Context on the “70th” Ranking Mention (for Accuracy): Peter says the US is ranked 70th in “health span.” Recent data (2023–2025) shows US life expectancy around 78–79 years, ranking roughly 40th–60th globally (e.g., ~48th–61st in various sources like Worldometer or Peterson-KFF), not quite as low as 70th—but it’s still far behind peers (e.g., comparable wealthy countries average ~82–83 years). Health span (healthy years, not total lifespan) is often lower and harder to rank precisely, so the “70th” might be a rough or older figure, or specific to certain metrics. Elon’s skepticism (“Sounds low”) is understandable!

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well, if you don’t have any exercise, health gets bad. Or if they eat donuts for breakfast every morning. You still doing that?
Elon Musk: No, actually I’m not.
Peter Diamandis: Okay, that’s good!
Elon Musk: First of all, I wasn’t eating a lot of donuts. I was trying to have 0.4 of a donut, which rounds down to zero. Anything below 0.44 of a donut rounds down to zero.
Peter Diamandis: So you and I have had a disagreement on longevity.
Elon Musk: We did!?
Peter Diamandis: A little bit. Yeah. I was saying, you know, we should push to get people to 120, 150. And you were saying people, you know, should….
Elon Musk: (laughing, joking)… die, die, die haha! So how long do you want? Yeah, there’s some, you know, people in the world that have done some bad things. How long do you want them to live?
Peter Diamandis: Yeah, well, it’s okay, we can figure that out. One thing that you said was interesting. You said we need people to die so people change their minds.
Elon Musk: Oh, yes. People don’t change their minds, they just die.
Peter Diamandis: My response to that, Elon, was—my response to that was that the head of GM didn’t have to die for Tesla to come along and Lockheed and Northrop and Boeing didn’t have to go away for—I mean, in a meritocracy, the better ideas will dominate. So I’m hoping that I can get you back onto the longevity train. So there’s a lot going on in longevity right now, right?
Elon Musk: Like what?

ELON CRACKS UP LAUGHING AT POSSIBILITY OF TOO MUCH LONGEVITY

Peter Diamandis: Well, David Sinclair is about to start his epigenetic reprogramming trials in humans. It’s worked in animals and non-human primates. It’s going into humans.

Elon Musk: How is this like a pill or injection or what?

Peter Diamandis: An injection. Right now it’s an injection of an adeno-associated virus. It’s the three Yamanaka factors. Okay, we’ve got a $101 million Healthspan XPRIZE that’s working with 730 teams working on reversing the age of your brain, immune system and muscle by 20 years. By the way, do you know why it’s $101 million?

Elon Musk: No.

Peter Diamandis: Because the primary funder, when they found out your Carbon XPRIZE was 100 million bucks, he wanted to make it bigger. So it’s 101. It was Chip Wilson from Lululemon.

Elon Musk: Oh, okay. Sounds good.

Peter Diamandis: It’s a good story. But then we’ve got folks like Dario Amodei predicting doubling the human lifespan in the next 10 years.

Elon Musk: Ummm, that’s probably correct. I don’t know about doubling, but a significant increase.

Dave Blundin: Which is easily escape velocity.

Elon Musk: Depending on how old you are, haha.

Dave Blundin: Oh, yeah, for sure. Or effective age. Yeah, yeah…

Elon Musk: (laughing) Too much, and you’ll turn into a baby or something…

Peter Diamandis: That’s what I’m telling all the students…

Dave Blundin: It’s like, Peter, what happened? Goo goo, gaa gaa (baby sounds) You got a zero wrong in the dosage.

Peter Diamandis: Just a small factor of 10, haha!

Dave Blundin: You will grow out of it, it’ll be fine.

Elon Musk: You won’t remember it, haha! Literally!

Elon Musk: I mean, wouldn’t it be funny if we do this in like 10 years? Okay, we should do it, we’ll do it in 10 years for sure. And let’s see if we look younger (all laughing hysterically).

Dave Blundin: That’s a good side bet!

ADULT DIAPERS OUTSELLING BABY DIAPERS

Peter Diamandis: My comment was always back then Elon was like, you know, late 40s. Wait till he gets into his 60s. He’s going to want more longevity.

Elon Musk: I mean, I want things to not hurt. It’s like, basically it seems like it’s only a matter of time before you get back pain. Like it’s a when, not an if. When your back hurts.

Peter Diamandis: Arthritis.

Elon Musk: Yeah. Like these things suck. Basically, being able to sleep through the night without going to the bathroom, haha. (Elon bursts out laughing, he is likely picturing adult diapers)

Elon Musk: It’s more than hope, for that one. Oh, man, that would—that’s like the infinite money one!

Peter Diamandis: (laughing) Why did YOU invest in longevity? So I could sleep through the night, and not go to the bathroom, haha.

Elon Musk: Bladder. Bladder duration. I mean, admittedly, if you have to wear adult diapers, that’s a bummer!

Dave Blundin: That is a bummer. That’s not good!

Elon Musk: Adult diapers are real. It’s like one of the signs that a country—it’s not on the right path. It’s when the adult diapers exceed the baby diapers.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, we’re there.

Dave Blundin: South Korea will be there.

Elon Musk: They’ve already— No, they passed that point

Dave Blundin: Are they past that point?

Elon Musk: They passed that point many years ago. Japan passed that point many years ago.

Dave Blundin: It doesn’t go well, looking at the Japanese economy.

Elon Musk: No, I mean, like, South Korea is like—yeah, one-third replacement rate.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah.

Elon Musk: Isn’t that crazy? Yeah. So in three generations, they’re going to be 1/27th. So 3% of their current size. I mean, North Korea won’t need to invade. They can just walk across. There’s just going to be some people in, you know, walkers or something!

Math checks out for South Korea ~0.33 fertility rate (1/3 replacement): (1/3)^3 = 1/27 ≈ 3.7%

Dave Blundin: There’ll be a bunch of Optimus robots by then that will…

Peter Diamandis: But you, you know, you’ve been very verbal about the, you know, the—not overpopulation, but massive underpopulation.

Elon Musk: Yeah. For ages. Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: Longevity is going to be an important part of that solution. I also think, by the way, if you increased the productive life of most Americans by just a few years, you’d flip the entire economics here, if they’re willing to work.

Elon Musk: Well, AI and robots is going to make everything free, basically. But, how long would you want to live?

Peter Diamandis: I want to go to, you know, to other planetary systems. I want to go explore the universe.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: I mean, you know, I would like to double my lifespan for sure. I don’t want, you know, I’m not sure I wanted to talk about immortality, but, you know, at least 120, 150. It’s a long time.

Elon Musk: One of the worst curses possible would be that you live forever.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah.

Elon Musk: That would be one of the worst curses you could possibly give anyone.

My Two Cents: Humor is a good way to approach our aging population. Adult diapers have always been funny to me, as they were to my grandma Helen Nelson when she needed them periodically at night in her 80’s. She used to joke she was a great big baby. This taught me humor, and with her joyful ways, it taught mew to find the humor in all things.

Helen Sophia Louise Nelsen Nelson lived from 1913-2001.

Always full of humor, life and joy.

Helen Sophia Louise Nelsen Nelson was the first licensed woman Pilot in the state of North Dakota (1951)

This transcript is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026.

Transcript: Elon Musk Interview – Part 6

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

(Austin) Education is the focus in this exciting part of the interview. There is a lot to learn from Elon’s wisdom. This transcript is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026. I have painstakingly worked hard to make sure this is the best possible transcipt for you.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • SHIFT IN EDUCATION
  • ELON WANTED TO BE USEFUL TO HUMANITY
  • GUIDE ON HOW TO CREATE MORE ELON MUSKS
  • AI POWERED EDUCATION, EL SALVADOR
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • IRON MAN
  • GROK AI EDUCATION IN EL SALVADOR
  • EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

SHIFT IN EDUCATION

Peter Diamandis: All right, I want to talk about education. So here’s the numbers—they’re abysmal.

Elon Musk: Right.

Peter Diamandis: The importance of college in the United States. Back in 2010, 75% of Americans said it’s important to go to college. That number is now down to 35%.

Elon Musk: All right.

Peter Diamandis: College graduates as a group turn out to be the group that’s out of work the longest. And still, tuition has increased 900% since 1983.

Elon Musk: Yeah. The administrative expenses at universities have gotten out of control. I think I saw some stat that, like, there’s 1 administrator for every 2 students at Brown or something like that. And I’m like, this seems a little high.

ELON MUSK’S COLLEGE PATHWAY

Dave Blundin: Elon, what was your college journey?

Elon Musk: I went to college in Canada for a couple years at Queen’s University. So I had Canadian citizenship through my mom, who was born in Canada, and my grandfather was actually American. But for some reason, I don’t know, my mom couldn’t get U.S. citizenship, but she was born in Canada, so I got Canadian citizenship and I didn’t have any money, so I could only go to a Canadian University at first.

Peter Diamandis: People forget that about you. You didn’t have this giant social network or huge amount of wealth coming into all of this.

Elon Musk: No, no. I arrived in Montreal at age 17 with I think around $2,500 in Canadian traveler’s checks, back when traveler’s checks were a thing. And one bag of books and one bag of clothes. That was my starting point. That was my spawn point in North America.

ELON WANTED TO BE USEFUL TO HUMANITY

Elon Musk: And then I went to Queen’s University for a couple years, and then University of Pennsylvania. Did a dual degree in physics and economics and graduated undergraduate at UPenn. UPenn-Wharton. And then I was going to do a PhD at Stanford working on energy storage technologies for electric vehicles. Potentially material science, I guess, fundamentally, the idea that I had was to try to create a capacitor with enough energy density that you get high range in an electric car.

Dave Blundin: It’s funny, I invested in an ultracapacitor company and then—Yeah, didn’t go well.

Elon Musk: Well, it’s one of those things where, you know, you could definitely get a PhD, but it wasn’t clear that you could make a company or do something useful like this. Most PhDs, I mean, I hate to say it, but most PhDs do not turn into something that’s going to turn into something useful. Like you could add a leaf to the tree of knowledge, but it’s not necessarily a useful leaf.

You could add a leaf to the tree of knowledge, but it’s not necessarily a useful leaf – Elon Musk

Dave Blundin: An enormous fraction of great entrepreneurs are dropping out of grad school or undergrad. But nowadays the sense of urgency is off the charts. But I mean, they’re popping out everywhere.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah, because, you know, don’t waste your time going to grad school. Start a company.

Dave Blundin: Curriculum is nowhere near caught up to what’s actually going on in technology and I don’t have time. And we talked about that.

Peter Diamandis: It’s like, you know, this is the moment.

Elon Musk: I think this is the moment. Like it’s not clear to me why somebody would be in college right now unless they want the social experience.

GUIDE ON HOW TO CREATE MORE ELON MUSKS

Peter Diamandis: So the question is, how would you redesign the educational program? If I could be so blunt as to create more Elon Musks. You know, if you want to create an Elon Musk factory of people who start with very little but are able to drive breakthroughs, what’s involved there? What drove you?

Elon Musk: Curiosity about the nature of the universe. So I’m curious about the meaning of life and, you know, what is this reality that we live in?

Peter Diamandis: My son Dax wanted to know what was it like for you in middle school and high school? He’s 14 years old. He’s in that age range now.

Elon Musk: Well, I found school to be quite painful and it was very boring. And South Africa was very violent. So it was like, it was like that book, “Ender’s Game.” Yes, but in real survival IRL—Ender’s Game IRL. It was like that, but not as fun.

Peter Diamandis: So your goal was escape?

Elon Musk: Yes, escape from the present.

Peter Diamandis: So that’s a question I have. Do you think most successful people have had a lot of hardship early in life? Do you need to have that level of hardship?

Elon Musk: Probably needs a little bit of hardship, I suppose, yeah. And then it’s always tricky, like what are you supposed to do with your kids? You know, create artificial adversity.

Dave Blundin: That’s a Warren Buffett topic actually.

Elon Musk: What do you do? But seriously, it’s not easy to create artificial adversity because if you love your kids, you don’t want to do that. So. Sure. So I had a lot of adversity. It probably was good. Probably, you know, helped somewhat. What does not kill you, makes you stronger type of thing. At least I didn’t lose a limb. I think what doesn’t maim you—makes you stronger.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Dave Blundin: For the last five years, I’ve been helping teach this class Foundations of AI ventures at MIT. And every year when you survey the students, they go up a lot in their desire to start a company. And so it’s now up to 80% of the incoming class.

Elon Musk: Everyone’s just going to—It’s just going to be like one person company. Well, that’s—

Dave Blundin: With AI, that’s viable, I guess. But no, they want to co-found. Yeah. They don’t want to be the founder. They want to be part of a founding team. So it still works out. But when Peter and I were in school at MIT, it was, I’m guessing, maybe 10%, and they all wanted to be—And they’ve been doing the survey.

Elon Musk: I didn’t know anyone who wanted to start a company, I mean, yeah, I don’t remember any conversations about with people saying they wanted to start anything…

Dave Blundin: Even at Stanford at the time?

Elon Musk: I actually, a few days into the semester, or I should say the quarter, I called Bill Nix, who is the head of the material science department, and said, I’d like to just put it on deferment.

Peter Diamandis: He said, is my class that bad?

Elon Musk: No. And he said, that’s okay, you can put it on deferment. But he said, this is probably the last conversation we’ll have. And he was right. But then last, I think it was last year, he sent me a letter saying that all of my predictions about lithium-ion batteries came true.

Peter Diamandis: And did he also say you could still come back and finish your PhD?

Elon Musk: Yeah, several times Stanford has said that I can come back for free.

IRON MAN

Dave Blundin: Every time an Iron Man movie came out, it notched up another probably 10% or so in terms of everybody wanting to be Tony Stark. And so that’s the image. And I didn’t know till today that the new Tony Stark, the modern Iron Man, Tony Stark—I always thought Tony Stark was modeled on Charles Stark Draper and Howard Hughes. It was Charles Stark Draper’s education and his, you know, scientific endeavors married with Howard Hughes’s ambition. And that created the original character. But then when Robert Downey Jr. wanted to reinvent it, it’s modeled on Elon.

Elon Musk: Yeah, he came to see me.

Dave Blundin: This is a Grokipedia fact.

Elon Musk: All right.

Dave Blundin: Yeah, Fantastic. Yeah. So they came to you, Jon Favreau and Robert—

Peter Diamandis: I like the name Grok. I would like Jarvis as well.

Elon Musk: At some point, if Grok gets good enough, we’re going to call it Encyclopedia Galactica.

GROK AI EDUCATION IN EL SALVADOR

Peter Diamandis: So going back to education, I guess the social experience, like you said, is important there, but what would you do for education? You know, middle, and high school? You just came back from an announcement with President Bukele, who’s a friend. I think he’s an amazing, amazing visionary.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: Incredible what he did with his nation.

Elon Musk: Yeah. Remarkable.

Peter Diamandis: Remarkable and gutsy.

Elon Musk: Yeah. I was like, how are you still alive?

Peter Diamandis: (referring to President Bukele of El Salvador) Besides putting everybody with a gang sign in jail, I don’t know if you know, the second thing he did, he went to all of the graves of all the gang members out there and destroyed the graves and said, “Your memory will not be remembered in this nation.” That’s just badass. And it worked.

Elon Musk: I mean, you have to be badass motherf*er to take on all the gangs and win and live. Yeah. And still be alive and live.

Peter Diamandis: He’s got great guards at his palace there. But what did you announce with him in El Salvador?

Elon Musk: It was just basically to use Grok for education, like personalized education.

Peter Diamandis: Hopefully not the vulgar version of it.

Elon Musk: Yeah, we would have like, you know, the kid-friendly version of Grok. But obviously AI can be an individualized teacher that is infinitely patient and answers all your questions. (pauses) Now you still need to be curious and you still need to want to learn. Grok can’t make you want to learn. It can make learning more interesting.

Peter Diamandis: You could probably gamify and incentivize it.

Elon Musk: Right. You can make learning more interesting and less of a production line. But kids do need to have to—they need to want to learn. You know, people should just think of the brain as a biological computer.

Peter Diamandis: It’s a neural net.

Elon Musk: Yeah, it’s a biological computer with a number of neurons and neural efficiency. And so what you can’t do is turn any arbitrary kid into Einstein. This is not realistic because Einstein had a very good meat computer, like an outstanding meat computer. So you can’t just make a Shakespeare, Newton, or, you know, an Einstein type of thing, unless the meat computer is an exceptional one.

Peter Diamandis: So what do you think? So when people say we need to solve education in the United States because it’s fundamentally broken, I think what’s really broken, I’m curious, is the old social contract that says do well in high school, get in a good college, get a degree and then get a job. And I don’t know that that’s going to be valid in the future. We talk about this on the pod a lot. That the career of the future isn’t getting a job, it’s being an entrepreneur. It’s finding a problem and solving it.

Elon Musk: Yeah.

Peter Diamandis: Do you agree with that?

EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

Elon Musk: Right now I’d say it feels just, you know, go to school for the social experience, use more AI. The conventional schooling experience I think could be a lot better. What we’re going to do in El Salvador and hopefully other places, just have individualized teachers. It’s going to be much better. And you could go to a school with a bunch of other kids, I guess if you want to hang out with other kids. But you don’t need to. Right. You could do it on your phone at home.

So that’s why I say like at this point education is a social experience. When I talk to my kids who are in college, they do recognize that they can learn just as much independently. In fact, they would learn more in a work situation. They are there for the social experience and to be around a bunch of people of their own age. Sort of a coming-of-age social experience.

Peter Diamandis: Sure, sure. Being on your own, learning how to lead or defend yourself as the case may be.

Elon Musk: Well, yeah, I mean if you join the workforce, you know, from the perspective of like, you know, a 19-year-old with a bunch of old people and if you’re doing engineering with a bunch of middle-aged dudes, it’s like do you really want to do that or do you want to hang out with, you know, where there’s at least some girls your age type of thing.

My thoughts

It is February 2026, about 2 months since this interview, and so much has happened. Kids in El Salvador have received their laptops and are ready to start their AI Grok education, while students in failing grade schools in Austin, Texas, have been walking out of class to protest against having safe, secure borders. The irony is real. What I see for the future is a future where the whole earth lives in pure abundance—so much so that the USA does not become the craved destination for people who live in currently failing countries. They can stay in their own places because they too will have unlimited abundance. The future is going to be amazing.

This transcript is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026.

Transcript: Elon Musk Interview – Part 5

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

This transcript (a 5th in a series) is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026. I have painstakingly worked to create the best possible transcript for you.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • BIG BATTERY ENERGY
  • CHINA LEADS
  • ROOFTOP SOLAR
  • DESERT SCALE AND LIZARD SHADE
  • FUTURE DEMAND
  • COMPUTE ENERGY
  • SOLAR ABUNDANCE
  • KARDASHEV SCALE
  • ENERGY OPTIMISM

Elon has said Starship’s reusability is an “incredible and very difficult thing to do, obviously.” He also knows it is a rare feat that he and his teams have accomplished. “I think it’s at the limit of human intelligence to create a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. But it is possible and we’re doing it with Starship.” And it is this vehicle for transport to space that will be the only realistic way we could ever have data centers in space.

BIG BATTERY ENERGY

Always the realist, Peter Diamandis gently brings the conversation back to Earth: “The general public is not thinking about orbital data centers. They’re thinking about energy and the cost of energy right here in their hometown. And so there are a lot of doomer conversations out there—that data centers are going to drive the consumer price index up.”

Elon Musk: They’re not entirely wrong.

Peter Diamandis: Okay, so what is the energy solution here on Earth for the rest of humanity or the non-AI things?

Elon Musk: Well, the best way to actually increase the energy output per year of the United States or any country is batteries. So the peak power output of the US is around 1.1 terawatts. But the average power usage is only half a terawatt. So if you just buffer the energy—charge up the batteries at night, discharge during the day—without incremental capital expenditures, without building new power plants, you can double the energy throughput of the US. The energy output per year can double with batteries.

Peter Diamandis: And do we have those batteries in development?

Elon Musk: Yeah, Tesla makes them.

Peter Diamandis: Okay, so the current Tesla battery packs?

Elon Musk: I literally went onstage and presented the thing. That’s the dead giveaway. I even went to installations of the Megapacks, you know, and it’s all on the internet.

Peter Diamandis: So why don’t people do this?

CHINA LEADS

Elon Musk: They are, and it seems like China listens to everything I say and does it. Or at least, they’re just doing it independently. I don’t know. But they’re certainly making massive battery packs, like really massive battery pack output. They’re, you know, making vast numbers of electric cars, vast amounts of solar. These are all things I said we should do fundamentally.

ROOFTOP SOLAR

Peter Diamandis: When I fly over Santa Monica in LA, when I’m piloting and I look down, it’s like zero roofs have solar on them.

Elon Musk: Yeah. I mean, it’s not essential to have them on a roof.

Peter Diamandis: Okay. But it’s a convenient place to have them.

Elon Musk: Yes, but the surface area of roofs is… and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but it’s… Tesla makes a solar roof, which is the only solar roof that isn’t ugly. Our solar roof actually looks beautiful.

DESERT SCALE AND LIZARD SHADE

Elon Musk: But if you want to do solar at scale, you just need more surface area. So we have vast empty deserts in America. Like if you fly from LA to New York or just fly across country and you look down, for a large portion of the time, you look down, it is bleak desert. It looks like Mars, essentially.

Peter Diamandis: We’re not worried about overpopulation there.

Elon Musk: No. I mean, there’s barely a lizard alive in these scorching deserts. You know, it’s not like farmland we’re talking about. We’re just talking about places that look like Mars, like just scorched rock. So if we put solar where we currently have scorched rock, I think this will be a quality of life improvement for the lizards or the few creatures that live in this very difficult environment.

Elon Musk: It’s like the lizard is going to be, “Thank God, some shade finally.”

Peter Diamandis: Do we have the distribution network to be able to do that?

Elon Musk: You could just put the data center, I guess, locally there.

FUTURE DEMAND

Dave Blundin: You need to materially affect quality of life. You need to capture and store a couple hundred gigawatts? Is that in the realistic cards?

Dave Blundin: Well, we already covered data centers. We’re talking about the other. In an abundant world five years from now, massive amounts of compute, massive universal high income and high data use…

Elon Musk: I don’t know about universal high income. You can have universal whatever-you-want income. Yeah, that’s really what it amounts to.

COMPUTE ENERGY

Dave Blundin: But in that world, other than compute energy, how much more energy do we need? 30, 40, 50%? Unless we want to move mountains around and make a ski mountain in the backyard. I think the vast majority of energy consumption will go into compute.

Elon Musk: Yes.

Dave Blundin: So that’s a good little case study. And we don’t need that much more physical energy for abundant happiness. We need more compute energy.

SOLAR ABUNDANCE

Elon Musk: The sun is just generating vast amounts of energy all the time for free that just goes into space. So I think what we’ll end up trying to capture, I don’t know, a millionth of it—or a thousandth of the sun’s energy.

KARDASHEV SCALE

Elon Musk: We’re currently, I’m not sure the exact number, but we’re probably at 1% of Kardashev Level 1.

Peter Diamandis: Fair enough. I would guess that even that is a high estimate.

Elon Musk: I’m just saying, I’m being optimistic. Hopefully we’re not 0.1% but I don’t think we’re 10%. I’m just trying to get it to an order of magnitude. So we’re roughly using 1% of the energy that we could use on Earth.

ENERGY OPTIMISM

Peter Diamandis: I think the bottom line from a first-principles thinking for the public is there’s a lot of energy out there and we have it in the US, we have it on the planet and it needs to be captured. And the tech to capture it is here and improving every year.

Elon Musk: There’s not going to be some energy crisis. There’ll be a large forcing function to harness more energy, but we’re not going to run out of it.

Darkness has fallen over Texas. This man, Elon Musk, remains at the factory, working long after many have left.

Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis at Giga Texas’ Lobby (December 2025)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 6

My 2 cents… I know this interview took place after sunset, it’s clear from this pic I caught from the interview previews. And when most people stop working, head home, watch TV, go to the gym, or meet friends to eat out, Elon works. He’s at the factory.

We are, in this era, alive during the time of one of the world’s greatest geniuses, and he’s a good man, one who wants to help all. We’re quite lucky, us humans…

This transcript is from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, Episode #220: Elon Musk on AGI Timeline, US vs China, Job Markets, Clean Energy & Humanoid Robots. Recorded December 22, 2025, at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory in Austin, Texas. Released January 6, 2026.

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Ep 157: Interview with David Moss – First Coast-to-Coast FSD Driver & Unsupervised Robotaxi Pioneer

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

Episode 157 is a two-part deep dive with @DavidMoss, the verified first driver to complete a zero-intervention coast-to-coast FSD trip across the USA. We chat in my Model Y Saphire on FSD about his epic journey, Tesla tech, and the future of autonomy—super inspiring stuff!

Part 1 kicks off with fun moments in the lovely city of Austin, Texas: Eve AI meets David, a cheeky check on whether he has an FSD tattoo (spoiler: maybe!), insights from his Giga Texas tour, and details on his groundbreaking cross-country drive.

Part 2 gets even more exciting: David shares his experience as the first to take an unsupervised Robotaxi ride without a chase car! We cover tracking and recording 6 days of Austin rides, what he’d tweak in FSD, and even his Cybertruck order plans.

Hearing directly from someone who’s pushed FSD and Robotaxi to real extremes shows how far we’ve come—and how much closer we are to everyday abundance. Zero interventions coast-to-coast? Unsupervised rides? This is the future unfolding!

Catch Part 1 on X: Watch here Catch Part 2 on X: Watch here — fast-forward through the timestamps for your favorite highlights.

Read about David’s 12,000 FSD Drive on Grokipedia! Learn more about David Moss on Grokipedia!

—Gail

Leave a comment

David Moss and Gail Alfar after an approximately hour long interview.
Elon Musk with Jason Calacanis, Børge Brende and Larry Fink in Davos.

Transcript: Elon Musk at Davos World Economic Forum, Jan. 2026

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

This is my verbatim transcript of Elon Musk’s recent Davos interview at the World Economic Forum, based directly on his live conversation. I’ve formatted it for your readability with Elon talking with Larry Fink of BlackRock, and I have kept it as close to word-for-word as possible (including natural speech patterns, ums, and repetitions), and made minor fixes only for obvious auto-transcription errors to ensure accuracy without changing meaning.

Elon Musk: We are going to make this interesting!

Larry Fink: How many quotes are you going to want that are after this session?

Elon Musk: I don’t know, five, haha!

Larry Fink: Good afternoon everyone, it’s great to see everybody here. It has been an amazing week. Thrilled Elon Musk come from California. Thank you, Elon.

Elon Musk: You’re most welcome. I heard about the formation of the Peace Summit, and it’s like, is that P-I-E-C-E, a little piece? Haha. Or Greenland? A little piece of Venezuela? All we want is peace.

Larry Fink: Okay. As they said, I’m pretty proud CEO BlackRock. Since we went public, the compounding return of BlackRock to our shareholders was 21%. Since Elon took Tesla public, his compounded return is 43%. This is just another advertisement for everybody, especially for Europeans. This is why more citizens should be investing with growth, investing in their countries. Imagine if a lot of pension funds invested with Elon when Tesla went public, and how much return would be with all the pension funds that invested side-by-side with Elon and the growth. So a spectacular return. There’s very few companies—well, I don’t think there is any other company as large as Tesla today that has compounded returns. Congratulations.

Elon Musk: We have an incredible team at Tesla. and so thats the reason!

Larry Fink: I want to get into the meaningful component about technology, the possibilities. I want to talk about AI and robotics, energy, space, and the progress ultimately coming down to engineering. Engineering discipline, scale, execution. Few people, if not anyone, has the experience, and the fortitude to confront these issues head-on—not just ideas, but execution across so many different technologies. Elon, that’s why it is important for us to have this dialogue here in Davos. So you are presently building on AI and robotics, space, energy—all at the same time. When you look across those efforts, what do they have in common from an engineering standpoint?

Elon Musk: Well, they’re all very difficult technology challenges. But the overall goal of my companies is to maximize the future of civilization—like basically maximizing the probability that civilization has a great future. And to expand consciousness beyond Earth. S

o if you take SpaceX, for example, SpaceX is about advancing rocket technology to the point where we can extend life and consciousness beyond Earth—to the Moon, Mars, eventually other star systems. I think we should always view consciousness, life, as precarious and delicate. Because to the best of our knowledge, we don’t know if life is anywhere else. You know, I’m often asked, are there aliens among us? And I’ll say that I am one. They don’t believe me.

Okay. So I think if anyone would know there are aliens among us, it would be me. And 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship. So like, I don’t know. Bottom line is, we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us. And if that’s the case, then we do everything possible to ensure the light of consciousness is not extinguished.

Because effectively, the image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness—tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out. And that’s why it’s important to make life multiplanetary. Such that if there is a natural disaster or man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That’s the purpose of SpaceX.

Tesla is obviously about sustainable technology. And also at this point, we’ve sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So with robotics and AI, this is really the path to abundance for all. If you say, you know, people often talk about solving global poverty, or essentially how do we give everyone a very high standard of living—I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics. Which doesn’t mean that it’s without its issues. We need to be very careful with AI. We need to be very careful with robotics. We don’t want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie—you know, Terminator. He’s great. Great movies. Love his movies. But well, we don’t want to be in Terminator, obviously.

But if you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy—an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.

Larry Fink: Can that expansion be broad? Or is it narrow? And how can it be broadened the global economy?

Elon Musk with Jason Calacanis, Børge Brende and Larry Fink in Davos.
Elon Musk with Jason Calacanis, Børge Brende and Larry Fink in Davos.

Elon Musk: Way to think of it is that if you have a large number of humanoid robots, the economic output is the average productivity per robot times the number of robots. And actually my prediction is in the benign scenario of the future that we will—the robots will actually make so many robots and AI that they will actually saturate all human needs. Meaning you won’t be able to even think of something to ask the robot for at a certain point. Like there would be such an abundance of goods and services. Because my predictions are there’ll be more robots than people.

Larry Fink: So but how do you then have human purpose in that scenario?

Elon Musk: Yeah, I mean, you know, there are—nothing’s perfect. But I mean, it is a necessary… Like, you can’t have both. You can’t have work that has to be done and amazing abundance for all. Because if it’s work that has to be done, and only some people can do it, then you can’t have abundance. It’s narrow.

Larry Fink: Narrow.

Elon Musk: Exactly. So but if you have billions of humanoid robots—I think there will be… I think everyone on Earth is going to have one and gonna want one. Because who wouldn’t want a robot to, you know, assuming it’s very safe—watch over your kids, take care of your pet? If you have elderly parents—a lot of friends of mine have elderly parents, it’s very difficult to take care of them. Expensive. Yeah, it’s expensive, and there just aren’t enough people to take care of the old people. So if you—if they had a robot that could take care of and protect elderly parents, I think that would be a great, amazing thing to have. And I think we will have those things. So overall, I’m very optimistic about the future. I think we’re headed for a future of amazing abundance, which is very cool. And definitely we are in the most interesting time in history. I don’t think there is a more interesting time in history!

AGING

Larry Fink: Can we reverse aging in this new history? Or are we going to see it?

Elon Musk: You know, haven’t put much time into the aging stuff, but I do think it is a very solvable problem. Like, you can—I think when we figure out what causes aging, I think we’ll find it’s incredibly obvious, that it’s not a subtle thing. The reason I say it’s not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body pretty much age at the same rate. You have never seen someone with an old left arm and a young right arm ever in my life. So why… You know, there is some benefit to death, by the way. It’s like, there’s a reason why we don’t actually have a longer lifespan. Because if people do live forever or for a very long time, I think there’s some risk of an ossification of society—of things just getting kind of locked in place. And yeah, it just may become stultifying, a lack of vibrancy. But that’s it. Do I think we’ll figure out ways to extend life and maybe even reverse aging? I think that’s highly likely.

Larry Fink: Looking forward to that. So in the future you talk about—their AI models, autonomous machines, rockets—depends on massive increases of compute, massive increases in energy. Expensive energy, manufacturing scale. What are the bottlenecks to get there? And once again, with all that expenditures, how can we make sure it is broad, not narrow?

Elon Musk: I just think the natural thing will be very broad because AI companies will seek as many customers as they possibly can. And the cost of AI is already low and plummeting every year—almost the cost of AI is meaningfully changing on a month basis.

Larry Fink: There are open models now everywhere.

Elon Musk: Yes. Very good open models. The open models only lack what may be a year behind the closed models. So I think, yeah, AI companies will seek as many customers as possible, which means they’ll provide AI to the world.

Larry Fink: But the cost of getting to their compute chips, the fab, power—powering that.
To me, what are those? It is a huge factor.

Elon Musk: I think the limiting factor for AI deployment is fundamentally electrical power.

Larry Fink: It’s energy. Yeah.

Elon Musk: We were seeing the rate of AI chip production increase exponentially, but the rate of electricity being brought online is….

Larry Fink: 5%, 4% a year max.

Elon Musk: Yes, it’s clear very soon—maybe later this year—we will be producing more chips than we can turn on. Except for China. China’s growth in electricity is tremendous.

Larry Fink: They are building 100 gigawatts of nuclear as we speak.

SOLAR

Elon Musk: Actually solar is the biggest thing in China. So China is—I believe Chinese production capacity on solar is 1,500 gigawatts a year, and they’re deploying over 1,000 gigawatts a year of solar. Now, you know, for continuous solar load, you divide that by roughly 4 or 5. Call it around 250 gigawatts of steady-state power paired with batteries.

And that’s a very big number—half the average power usage in the US. US power usage on average is 500 gigawatts. China. just with solar, solar that can provide steady-state power and batteries can do half of the US electricity output per year just from solar.

Solar’s by far the bigger source of energy. And actually when you look beyond Earth—or even on Earth, but certainly beyond Earth—the sun rounds up to 100% of all energy. This is an important thing to consider. So the sun is 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter is about 0.1%, and everything else is miscellaneous. Now even if you were to burn Jupiter in a thermonuclear reactor, this up the amount of energy produced by the sun would still round to 100%, because Jupiter is only 0.1%. If you teleported three more Jupiters into our solar system and burnt three more Jupiters and everything else in the solar system, the sun’s energy would still round up to 100%. So it is really all about the sun. And that is why one of the things we are doing with SpaceX within a few years is launching solar-powered AI satellites. Because space is really the source of immense power. Then you don’t need to take any room on Earth. There is so much room in space and can scale to hundreds of terawatts a year.

Larry Fink: Elon and I have had these conversations before, but why don’t you tell the audience what would it take for the United States in what geography would it take that solar field electrify the United States? Let me ask a question: why aren’t we doing it?

Elon Musk: So rough way is 100 miles by 100 miles—160 kilometers by 160 kilometers—on solar is enough to power the entire United States. So 100-mile by 100-mile area. You can take a small corner of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico—obviously wouldn’t want it all in one place—but there was very small percentage of area of US to generate all electricity that US uses. And same is true actually for Europe. You could take a small part of your energy—take relatively unpopulated areas of say Spain and Sicily, and generate all electricity power that Europe needs.

Larry Fink: Why don’t you think there is a movement towards it here and in the United States? As there is in China?

Elon Musk: Well, unfortunately, US tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and this makes economics deploying solar artificially high. Because China makes almost all the solar.

Larry Fink: And what would it take for Europe or US to build it commercially if it is at scale?

Elon Musk: Yeah, I think—well, I can tell you what we are going to do at SpaceX and Tesla. We’re building up large-scale solar. So the SpaceX and Tesla teams both separately are working to build to 100 gigawatts a year of solar power in the US (of manufactured solar power). That will probably take us about three years. But these are pretty big numbers. And I encourage others to do the same. We obviously don’t control US tariff policy. But China makes solar cells that are incredibly low cost. And I think it would be worth doing large-scale solar.scale solar.

Larry Fink: So I know you’re going to be having a couple of big announcements on robotics and what it can do. I mean, when we went to the factory, you showed me those robots. We talked about billions of robots, but how quickly can they be deployed in your manufacturing setting, be utilized and be functional, and create that abundance you talked about?

Elon Musk: Well, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. We do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory. Probably later this year—by the end of this year—I think they will be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment. And probably sometime next year—I would say that by the end of next year—I think we will be selling humanoid robots to the public.

Larry Fink: Like you’re already seeing in Tesla cars, software changes every quarter now. A software change upgrades the ability of the robot within the car.

Elon Musk: Yes, the Tesla full self-driving software—we update sometimes once a week. So I think some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe when Tesla uses full self-driving—so safe that they’re offering customers half-price insurance if they use Tesla full self-driving in their car.

Larry Fink: And that can be monitored by the insurance company because it’s part of the agreement?

Elon Musk: Yeah, but I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point. Tesla has rolled out Robotaxi service in a few cities, and it will be very widespread by the end of this year within US. Then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe hopefully next month.

Larry Fink: Really that quickly!?

Elon Musk: Yeah. And then maybe similar timing for China hopefully.

SPACE

Larry Fink: I want to move to space because historically space is very capital intensive. Historically been done by governments. Obviously SpaceX changed the whole model. But we have seen it slow to scale. And now I am starting to see ramping up in what you are doing. Talk about the automation—how is it changing economics in building and preparing for operating in space?

Elon Musk: Sure. Well, the key breakthrough that SpaceX hopes to achieve this year: full reusability. No one has ever achieved full reusability of a rocket, which is very important for the cost of access to space. We have achieved partial reusability with Falcon 9 by landing the boost stage over 500 times. But we have to throw away the upper stage that burns up on reentry. And the cost of it is equivalent to a small- to medium-size jet.

So with Starship—which is a giant rocket, the largest flying machine ever made—that’s the rocket you’re using for the idea of going to Mars, right?

Larry Fink: Yeah.

Elon Musk: Mars and the Moon as well, and for high-volume satellite stuff. So Starship—hopefully this year—we should prove full reusability for Starship, which will be a profound invention. Because the cost of access to space will drop by a factor of 100 when you achieve full reusability. It is the same economic difference that you would expect between, say, a reusable aircraft and a non-reusable aircraft. Like if you have to throw your aircraft away after every flight, there will be expensive flights. But if you only refuel, then it’s the cost of fuel.

So that’s really the fundamental breakthrough that gets the cost of access to space—we think—below the cost of freight on aircraft. So you know, under $100 a pound type thing easily. It makes putting large satellites into space very low, very cheap.

And then when you have solar in space, you get five times more effectiveness—maybe even more than that—than solar on the ground. Because it’s always sunny, no clouds. Yeah, it’s always sunny. So you don’t have a day-night cycle or seasonality or weather. And you get about 30% more power in space because you don’t have atmospheric attenuation of the power. That net effect is solar is five times more—any given solar panel will do five times the energy in space than on the ground.

Larry Fink: There is any capacity in doing that then taking that power, bringing back to Earth? Is there any way of doing that? Or you just taking the power and utilizing it for needs like building AI data centers in space?

Elon Musk: I think the case is a no-brainer for building AI solar power to AI data centers in space. Because as mentioned, it’s also very cold in space. If you’re in shadow, then it’s very cold in space—3 degrees Kelvin. So you have solar panels facing the sun, and then a radiator that is like pointed away from the sun so it has no sun incidence. And then it’s just cooling—it’s a very efficient cooling system. Net effect is that the lowest-cost place to put AI will be space. And that will be true within 2 years, maybe 3 at latest.

Larry Fink: Looking 10 or 20 years out, how would you describe success with AI or space technology? And where do you see it? Can—are more certain what will happen in the next 3 years, 5, 10?

Elon Musk: I don’t know what’s going to happen in ten years. But the rate at which AI is progressing—we might have AI that is smarter than any human by end of this year, and no later than next year. And probably 2030 or 2031—5 years from now—AI will be smarter than all of humanity collectively.

Larry Fink: We only have a number of minutes left, but I want to humanize you for a second. So there’s no speculation that you’re the most successful entrepreneur, industrialist in the 21st century—maybe beyond. What inspired you? Who inspired you? What was the foundation of your curiosity? And importantly, why? Was there an aha moment, epiphany at any time in your life and career?

Elon Musk: Well, I mean, as a kid I read a lot of science fiction, sci-fi, fantasy books, comic books. And always like technology. Didn’t expect to be where I am today—seems incredibly implausible. But yeah, I was inspired by reading books about the future of science fiction. And I guess want to make science fiction not fiction forever. At some point, turn science fiction into fact. And you know, we wanna have like Starfleet as in Star Trek really for real—where we actually have giant spaceships traveling through space, going to other planets, traveling to other star systems.

Larry Fink: Beamed up to go back to New York?

Elon Musk: I would like beaming back to New York instead of flying. Yeah. You know about Star Trek. So I guess my essential what we call the philosophy of curiosity. And I would like to understand the meaning of life. Is the standard model of physics correct regarding the beginning of existence at the end of the universe? What questions do we not know to ask that we should ask? And AI will help us with these things. So I just try to understand: how did we get here? What’s going on? What is real? Are there aliens? Maybe they are. If you have spaceships traveling to other star systems, we may encounter aliens or find many long-dead alien civilizations. But I just want to know what’s going on—curious about the universe. And that is my philosophy.

Larry Fink: Do you see yourself going to Mars in your lifetime?

Elon Musk: Yes. Like that’s a long commitment, isn’t it? Three years each way?

Larry Fink: Six months.

Elon Musk: But the planets only align every two years. So yeah. Been asked a few times: do I want to die on Mars? And I’m like, yes—just not on impact.

Larry Fink: That’s a good answer. Anyway, we are out of time. Hopefully everybody enjoyed this. And there are so many myths around Elon Musk. I can tell you he is a great friend, and I constantly learn so much from him. And I’m totally inspired by what he has done, have been inspired by who he is, and I’m totally inspired by his vision of the future. And don’t think it’s such a bad future.

Elon Musk: And I think generally my last words would be: I encourage everyone to be optimistic and excited about the future. Good. And generally for quality of life, it is better on being an optimist rather than a pessimist, right?

(End of video – applause and wrap-up.)

This verbatim transcript is important and inspiring for everybody. Because it is so wide-ranging on technology, energy, AI, space, and optimism, it can lift you up if you’re ever down.

When I bought my first Tesla, a Model 3 in 2019, I joined a community of many people who love Elon Musk and Tesla. Every time I drive my Tesla around my hometown Austin, Texas, or take a Robotaxi here, I’m reminded of the extraordinary effort that is put into making Tesla succeed. Elon puts in maximum effort into all his companies.

In January 2022, I started this blog to write positive things about Tesla and Elon Musk. It has since grown to include many transcripts of Elon’s talks. I’m thankful to Johnna Crider for supporting and encouraging me to start this blog. 

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Ep 156: Real-World Robotaxi Test – Stuck Behind Law Enforcement, Robotaxi Solves It

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

Episode 156 is a real-world showcase of Robotaxi handling an unexpected edge case in Austin: getting stuck behind a law enforcement vehicle blocking the road. Instead of frustration, we see smart autonomy in action—hitting support, getting quick response, and the system figuring out a safe reroute (including a clever alley maneuver) with zero manual input needed. It’s a perfect demo of how Tesla Rideshare Support and Robotaxi tech turn potential delays into seamless progress.

The ride starts normally but quickly hits the snag: police lights flashing, lane blocked. We press support at 00:45, Tesla Rideshare Support responds by 01:57 with accurate status (they can see everything via cameras and even monitor remotely), and by 4:20 we’re heading to Jazz (our destination spot—looks like a fun night out with live music vibes!). The Robotaxi assesses options, suggests backing up or alley routing, confirms safely, and gets us moving again while support confirms we’re already on our way.

This ep highlights huge improvements: support is fast, proactive, and informed—no more explaining from scratch. Robotaxi adapts intelligently, avoiding risks like double yellow lines or hazards, and resolves issues in real time. Super impressive for everyday reliability.

Catch the full Robotaxi test on X: Watch here — fast-forward to 00:45 for the support button press or 01:57 for the response magic.

Abundance in motion—Robotaxi keeps delivering!

—Gail

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Gail and Eve’s Tesla Podcast Ep 155: Letting Eve Decide Dinner with AI

Gail AlfarLeave a comment

Episode 155 is a fun look into letting Eve, Tesla’s AI assistant, take the wheel on dinner plans—literally! We chat for food recommendations, switch ideas on the fly, and get seamless direct navigation through Austin’s sunny streets. It’s all hands-free with zero interventions, showcasing how Eve makes errands effortless and exciting.

https://twitter.com/gailalfaratx/status/2014528478318559366?s=20

The adventure starts with activating Eve and brainstorming spots: from gift shopping at Paper Source to craving tacos and queso. Eve suggests options like Domain Northside shops, then pivots to taco joints with fish tacos, beef tacos, chips, and boozy margaritas. Loved the real-time map updates and her pleasant voice handling every curveball!

Jump to around 1:30 for Eve’s first food recs, or 4:00 for navigation kicks in. By 7:00, we’re cruising to the spot with city views, and 10:00 brings music and wrap-up vibes. This ep highlights Tesla’s AI evolving into a true co-pilot for daily life—abundant, smart, and super helpful.

Catch the full AI dinner chat on X: Watch here — fast-forward for those interactive moments.

Here’s to more Eve adventures!

—Gail

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