Vsauce: Elon Musk and the Responsibility of a Large Following | AI Podcast Clip with Michael Stevens
00:00:00.000 | So you're a curious lover of science.
00:00:04.200 | What do you think of the efforts that Elon Musk is doing with space exploration, with
00:00:10.640 | electric vehicles, with autopilot sort of getting into the space of autonomous vehicles,
00:00:16.000 | with boring under LA, and Neuralink trying to communicate brain-machine interfaces, communicate
00:00:23.680 | between machines and human brains?
00:00:26.920 | Well, it's really inspiring.
00:00:29.120 | I mean, look at the fandom that he's amassed.
00:00:34.600 | It's not common for someone like that to have such a following.
00:00:39.760 | And so it's-
00:00:40.760 | Engineering nerd.
00:00:41.760 | Yeah.
00:00:42.760 | So it's really exciting, but I also think that a lot of responsibility comes with that kind
00:00:46.240 | of power.
00:00:47.240 | So if I met him, I would love to hear how he feels about the responsibility he has when
00:00:53.920 | there are people who are such a fan of your ideas and your dreams and share them so closely
00:01:01.280 | with you.
00:01:03.040 | You have a lot of power.
00:01:05.040 | And he didn't always have that.
00:01:08.080 | He wasn't born as Elon Musk.
00:01:10.160 | Well, he was, but well, he was named that later.
00:01:12.320 | But the point is that I want to know the psychology of becoming a figure like him.
00:01:21.320 | Well, I don't even know how to phrase the question right, but it's a question about
00:01:25.520 | what do you do when you're following, your fans become so large that it's almost bigger
00:01:34.840 | than you?
00:01:36.600 | And how do you responsibly manage that?
00:01:39.360 | And maybe it doesn't worry him at all, and that's fine too, but I'd be really curious.
00:01:43.840 | And I think there are a lot of people that go through this when they realize, "Whoa,
00:01:47.120 | there are a lot of eyes on me."
00:01:48.800 | There are a lot of people who really take what I say very earnestly and take it to heart
00:01:54.640 | and will defend me.
00:01:56.320 | And that can be dangerous and you have to be responsible with it.
00:02:05.960 | Both in terms of impact on society and psychologically for the individual, just the burden psychologically
00:02:11.800 | on Elon?
00:02:12.800 | Yeah, yeah.
00:02:14.440 | How does he think about that part of his persona?
00:02:18.320 | Well, let me throw that right back at you, because in some ways you're just a funny guy
00:02:27.240 | that's gotten a humongous following, a funny guy with a curiosity.
00:02:33.320 | You've got a huge following.
00:02:34.960 | How do you psychologically deal with the responsibility?
00:02:38.560 | In many ways, you have a reach in many ways bigger than Elon Musk.
00:02:43.040 | What is the burden that you feel in educating, being one of the biggest educators in the
00:02:49.520 | world where everybody's listening to you?
00:02:51.840 | And actually, most of the world that uses YouTube for educational material trust you
00:03:00.040 | as a source of good, strong scientific thinking.
00:03:05.960 | It's a burden and I try to approach it with a lot of humility and sharing.
00:03:14.480 | I'm not out there doing a lot of scientific experiments.
00:03:18.500 | I am sharing the work of real scientists and I'm celebrating their work and the way that
00:03:23.640 | they think and the power of curiosity.
00:03:27.840 | But I want to make it clear at all times that, look, we don't know all the answers and I
00:03:33.560 | don't think we're ever going to reach a point where we're like, "Wow, and there you go.
00:03:37.960 | That's the universe.
00:03:38.960 | It's this equation.
00:03:39.960 | You plug in some conditions or whatever and you do the math and you know what's going
00:03:43.360 | to happen tomorrow."
00:03:44.360 | I don't think we're ever going to reach that point.
00:03:46.320 | But I think that there is a tendency to sometimes believe in science and become elitist and
00:03:54.360 | become, I don't know, hard, when in reality it should humble you and make you feel smaller.
00:03:59.920 | I think there's something very beautiful about feeling very, very small and very weak and
00:04:06.680 | to feel that you need other people.
00:04:09.280 | So I try to keep that in mind and say, "Look, thanks for watching.
00:04:12.640 | Vsauce is not, I'm not Vsauce, you are."
00:04:15.100 | When I start the episodes, I say, "Hey, Vsauce, Michael here."
00:04:18.480 | Vsauce and Michael are actually a different thing in my mind.
00:04:20.960 | I don't know if that's always clear, but yeah, I have to approach it that way because it's
00:04:26.480 | not about me.
00:04:27.480 | Yeah.
00:04:28.480 | So it's not even, you're not feeling responsibility.
00:04:31.960 | You're just sort of plugging into this big thing that is scientific exploration of our
00:04:37.120 | reality and you're a voice that represents a bunch, but you're just plugging into this
00:04:42.440 | big Vsauce ball that others, millions of others are plugged into.
00:04:48.000 | Yeah.
00:04:49.000 | So I try to encourage curiosity and responsible thinking and an embracement of doubt and being
00:05:01.560 | okay with that.
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