(audience applauding) - Okay, wait. I'll just read off all of your companies, Elon. I know them, but I'm just gonna read them to make sure I don't miss one, 'cause there's so many now. Founder, CEO, chief engineer of SpaceX, CEO, product architect, and chairman of Tesla, owner, chairman, CTO of X, SpaceX.com, founder of Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, and president of the Musk Foundation.
Did I get everything? - Yeah. (upbeat music) - Where are you? - I am, here's Connie. (laughing) - It's kind of absurd. Where are you, at Starbase? - I'm in flight, currently. So, this is a Starlink and flight connection. - Are you kidding me? That's, oh yeah, that works pretty well, huh?
(laughing) I think there's only one. (laughing) Wait, I think it's one of one. - We're doing a test of how Starlink works in an airplane at altitude. - There's only one of those in existence, right? It's on your plane, that's it, one-on-one? - There are a number of airliners that have Starlink, and there'll be a lot more in the future.
- Nice. - The Starlink connection, when something is working properly, is you won't even be able to tell you're on the ground or in the air. 'Cause unlike a geosynchronous satellite, the latency is, you know, really can be less than 20 milliseconds. It's a, in fact, for a lot of, I think for some people, the Starlink connection on the plane will be better than the connection at their house.
- That'd be pretty great. How is the Starship doing? It was incredible to see the first launch, but I understand you're closing in on the second. I know you've been working really hard on that, and the team's working hard on it. When do you think you're gonna get the next one up, and what are the chances it makes it to orbit?
- Well, we have the second one stacked at starbase, so it's ready to go. And we finished that up in the last week. We believe we've completed the remaining items requested by the FAA, so we should get our license hopefully soon. But really, the only thing holding back second-class Starship at this point is the right to require approval.
- Wow. What's your expectation, or your hope, in terms of the probability that it gets to orbit? - You know, it's just a question of timing. How long does it take to get the approval, paperwork, whatnot? So that's really up to the FAA at this point. - But what about making it to orbit?
Do you think you got a shot this time? - We are doing a new staging technique called hot staging, where you light the upstage engines, or the ship engines, while the boost stage is still firing. And this is the most efficient way to do stage separation of rocket during orbit, but we did not try that on the last mission, and we're trying it on this mission.
We think it will be overall better. But I think probably about, I hope, we'll have a 50% chance of getting to stage separation. And maybe a close to 50% chance of getting to orbit if the hot staging, the new separation method, works. I'd say maybe it's like a, I'd say probably above 30% chance of getting to orbit this time, whereas previously I said below 50.
- Is this, in terms of complexity, how complex is this of a problem compared to the other problems you've worked on in your career? - Well, I mean, making a rocket that is more than twice the size of the Saturn V, you know, it's a, in fact, with an extra orbit of the rocket, it'll have roughly three times the thrust of a Saturn V green rocket.
And the orbit's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, whereas the Saturn V was completely expendable. And with Falcon 9, we still expand the upper stage, but we bring back the upper stage, as people have probably seen the rocket landing videos. And we are also able to recover the ferry with Falcon 9.
But these things do land typically out to sea. So it takes a while to bring them back to board and get the fighting game. There's a scale of Starship, but then also the fact that it is designed for full and rapid reusability. So the both the booster and the ship come back to the launch site.
They get caught by these giant Godzilla arms. You've seen Kong versus Godzilla. It's basically that. Catches this giant rocket out of thin air and puts it back on the launch stand and gets ready for launch. So it will be capable of basically aircraft level flight rates. It's much bigger than say a 747 or an A380.
- Elon, can we talk about the events of, was it last weekend, the whole Ukraine Starlink thing? Can you give us the tick-tock of what's going on and how you're being forced to decide? (laughing) But what is it like in that decision room, if there was one, or wherever you were, where you're trying to figure out, am I keeping this on, do I turn it off, what is going on?
People must have been bombarding you. Whatever you can share about what that was like, how you made the decision. - Yeah, so I think someone was actually mistaken a little bit in his understanding of the situation. Obviously, SpaceX have provided Starlink connectivity for, to Ukraine really since the beginning of the war.
We're really within a few days of the war starting. And as the Ukrainian government said, the Starlink was instrumental in the defense of Ukraine. So they've said that really many times, although the media forgets to mention that. So, and in fact, they've said it on Twitter, it's fully known as Twitter.
(laughing) It's gonna take a while to get that right, yeah. It'll take a little time. - Okay. (laughing) So, you don't have to take my word for it, you can just read what they posted. So Starlink has been incredibly helpful to the Ukrainian war effort. We've gotten out of pocket very significantly to help them.
And at the time this happened, the region around Crimea was actually turned off. Now the reason it was turned off was, actually originally was because the United States had sanctions against Russia. And we're not allowed to actually, that includes Crimea in the sanctions. And we're not allowed to actually turn on connectivity to a sanctioned country without explicit government approval.
Which we did not have from the US government. So, basically the, look, Ukraine didn't give us any advance warning or heads up or anything. We just got these sort of urgent calls from the Ukrainian government saying that we needed to turn on Crimea. It's like in the middle of the night, basically.
We're like, what are you talking about? - You asked? - What's it for? (laughing) We basically figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor type attack on this festival, on the Russian people's festival. So they're really asking us to really practically take part in a major act of war.
And, well, we certainly have huge support for the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian government is not in charge of US people or companies. (audience cheering) - And Elon, if I could just-- - No, but I should say that, although I'm not President Biden's biggest fan, if I had received a presidential directive to turn it on, I would have done so.
Because I do regard the president as the chief executive officer of the country, whether I want that to be the president or not, I still respect the office. And so if I'd gotten a request from the president type of thing, from the American president, to be clear, (audience laughing) then I would have turned it on.
So, but no such request came through. - That's a really interesting point. And I mean, what Jamal's referring to is you're now being attacked. I saw there was Jake Tapper the other day on CNN interviewing our Secretary of State, was just, he was all lathered up, basically attacking you for this.
David-- - Yeah. - David-- - I mean, to his credit, Secretary Blinken was actually quite supportive, despite the absurd accusations and leading questions of Jake Tapper on CNN. - Yeah, he didn't take the bait, to his credit. - Now, to Secretary Blinken, in his regard, for not taking the bait at all.
- Yeah, well, to me, this is an example of no good deed goes unpunished, because if you had never given-- - I hope some good deeds go unpunished. (audience laughing) - I mean, if you had never given Starlink-- - It just despired to that. - Yeah. (laughing) But yeah, I mean, my point is just, if you had never given Starlink to the Ukrainian government for free, voluntarily, you just volunteered it, then no one would be attacking you right now for not turning it on so they could do their attack on Crimea.
Also, one other thing I'll note is that your reason for not turning it on, which is you don't want to be part of what could be a major escalation, was exactly the reason the Biden administration did not give ATACM missiles to Ukraine at that point in the war. Now, they may be changing their minds, but they were very worried about an attack the administration was, an attack on Crimea, triggering some huge escalation in this war.
So not only did you not receive a directive from President Biden, your thinking was very much in line with theirs at the time, and yet, and you're being attacked for that now. - There's something you mentioned, which is that you did this at a lot of economic cost to SpaceX.
Can you just talk about that for a second? 'Cause I'm not sure people understand who's paying for what right now and who hasn't been paid, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. - Yeah, there is, well, I should say, like a lot of people contributed to the effort. Stalingrad is the fundamental communication backbone of the Ukrainian government and essential services, like first responders and that kind of thing.
And it's used, we hope, peacefully, relatively peacefully on the war front. It is the only thing that works on the war front. Everything else has been jammed by the Russians. So it's the only thing that works. Not one of the things. (audience applauding) But I think you have to sort of think of, say, taking the actual example of Pearl Harbor and say, well, how did that work out for Japan?
It didn't work out well at all because it was a tactical victory, a strategic defeat. It enraged the American public. It was sort of a nationally wanted vengeance for this act, you know, this act. And I think that, you know, while I don't think it's on the same scale, that there was certainly that potential of sort of a mini Pearl Harbor with results in a mass escalation of hostilities.
But this would not defeat Russia. It would enrage Russia. - Do you donate the network, or do they pay you for it? - Sorry? - Yeah. - So I'm actually not sure what the final accounting is at this point, but I think at one point, at one point, you recalculated our sort of cost of supporting things that are roughly $100 million.
Now, the $100 million does not count the massive risk to the entire Starlink constellation because Russia would like to have the entire thing deleted. You know, nobody compensating us for that. And so if we were to get, say, our control center were take down in a cyber attack, they, you know, they could command all the satellites to be over and destroy the entire system or use anti-satellite weapons.
So, you know, these are, this is a pretty significant risk for which we have not received any compensation. And obviously it would be catastrophic to the entire Starlink system, which is, you know, approaching $10 billion. - Elon, do you think the current government administration-- - I'm not saying, hey, $10 billion.
And then actually I say, one of the rather interesting things was, as you've seen this, there's a very large amount of money that's been appropriated for Ukraine. You know, I'm not sure what the total is at this point, but it must be a hundred, close to a hundred billion or somewhere between 80 and a hundred billion.
You know, now all of the, you know, other sort of providers, the US providers of support to Ukraine are being paid. So then why should SpaceX be excluded? That doesn't make sense. We're doing one of the most valuable things and yet aren't getting the least money in the system, sir.
But, you know, despite that, we're still happy to keep going. And-- - Elon, does the Biden administration have it out for you? And why? - Why did we give you that idea? - Yeah. But let me ask, you own and control-- - I don't know if the whole administration has it out for you.
I think there's probably aspects of the administration that are not, or, you know, aspects of, you know, interests aligned with President Biden, who probably do not wish good things for me. I don't know, you know, really what their issue is, but there does seem to be a significant increase in the weaponization of government.
And I would say really sort of misuse of prosecutorial discretion in many areas where, and I think this is really a dangerous thing for, you know, for, I don't know, for there to be partisan politics with government agencies. It's just really, and then I think from, you know, from say, you know, a Democratic Party standpoint or say a Biden administration standpoint, I think the danger here is that if there's a significant misuse of prosecutorial discretion, let's say one says, okay, everyone's equal under the law.
Yes, but who are you choosing to pursue? And if you're pursuing what appear to independent voters to be trivial cases while ignoring serious crimes, it's hard to imagine that a lot of independent voters, that's gonna win over a thoroughful independent voters. - Did things change when you bought Twitter?
- X? - Yeah, I think they did change somewhat. You know, our goal with the sort of, you know, the X platform is really to be a level playing field, a public square that is supportive of, you know, most of the country, let's say that the middle 80% or something like that.
Now, that has not been the case really for all social media. All social media have been really very left leaning, far left leaning, and really Twitter was far left leaning. You know, the suspensions of say Republican candidates or interests or voices was really at least 10 times the rate of suppression of left wing voices on all Twitter.
So, you know, what we're trying to do is move it to the middle, which from standpoint of say the left appears, it is moving to the right, everything's relative, if you're standing on the left. (laughing) But it's not, it's simply moving to the middle, that's all, in an attempt to actually represent the whole country and not just, you know, half the country or even maybe less than half the country.
So that's it really. So I think there's really nothing to be alarmed about here. It's just that it's intended to be a town square inclusive of the whole country and the world, that's all. - It's been, I guess you took over X Twitter on Halloween weekend, if I remember correctly, when you got to the building and you got the keys.
David and I were lucky to be there with you when you got the keys and we got to check things out. This is 10 months into the turnaround and it wasn't a high functioning organization, I think, when you took it over. Where is the company at now and are you pleased with, I guess, the progress because it looks like new features are getting launched, the product velocity is great.
Obviously advertising's been challenging, but it feels like there's some green shoots. So how do you feel about the purchase now? - Yeah, well I should say we've recently seen a significant increase in advertising, which is great. So that's, if that trend continues, I think the company will be in very good financial shape on the advertising front.
So that, in terms of positive developments, that seems to be one of them. And from a feature standpoint, I think that those who are using the system, I think we might have delivered more new features in the last year than in the last, all Twitter did in five years.
The feature development pace is very rapid. And this is being done with really about 15% of the original company. Maybe a little more, 15 to 20%. So it's really efficient. At the end of the day, you have to say, how complicated is a system like the X Twitter platform?
How different is it from a group chat, frankly? It's like a group chat at scale. So I don't think you need an army to maintain a group chat. - Yeah. (audience laughing) (audience applauding) Yeah. I mean, it's not the self-driving platform, and it had maybe 10 times as many people working on it as the self-driving platform at Tesla, which seems crazy.
- The entire self-driving AI software team is 200 people. And what they're doing is much more complex than Twitter. - Yeah. - Or, you know, much more. (audience laughing) - Well, you know. - There's other things that obviously need to be done, like advertising sales, obviously network operations. - How, can you talk to us about that?
- It's really not, it's not a huge, I don't even know what I mean for what we're doing here. And I think, you know, people that are still at the company are obviously being very productive in creating and delivering new features. And, you know, we keep seeing sort of breadboard usage.
And the most rigorous number is really the user seconds as reported by the mobile device, especially iOS. The iOS, what iOS reports as the screen time is the least gainful metric. And those numbers are very good. So, you know, I think, of course, I'm pretty optimistic about where things are headed.
And I feel like the company's just, you know, just recently turned a corner. - Tell us about. - You know, it's been, well, at least moderate prosperity and hopefully significant. - Tell us about the success of sharing revenue. Why did you do it? And then just the vision you have for just the creator economy and what you want that to evolve into and build into.
- Yeah, I mean, it sounds to reason that if you're a creator and you need to make a living for what you're doing. So there's gotta be, you know, fair compensation, competitive compensation for a creator, whether they're doing, you know, writing or pictures, video, whatever the case may be.
And so we're not really advancing anything new here. We're just, you know, as YouTube does with creators, they will do rev share with advertising. And so we're doing rev share with advertising. We're also, you know, obviously they have enabled direct subscription to accounts where whatever that somebody, you know, you could be doing audio, video, long form text, anything, and you could subscribe to someone.
And that's, you know, obviously that's where you're first subscriber and make a living as well, you know, for a creator to make a living. So the intent is for the X platform to be the best home for creators, where if you've got interesting content, then you'd want to put it on our platform.
And, you know, there's a lot of questions about like sort of the algorithm and whatnot. I should mention like the algorithm is, I think almost all of it is open sourced and we will, I think quite soon, have the entire thing open source. The only reason it really hasn't been done entirely open source yet is because we're somewhat embarrassed with the code and need to just clean it up before putting something extremely embarrassing out there.
But the point is that like we want transparency builds trust. And if you've got, if you can recreate the results, on the X platform of how viral a post is gonna be, independently using the public algorithm, you know, the open source algorithm, that's really where we want to get to.
So you kind of know what to expect and why something happened. Now I should say that we are trying to optimize for user time on the platform. What this naturally means is that posting content that someone looks at longer is gonna get higher priority than content that is short.
Just because the system is trying to maximize, it's aspiring to maximize unregretted user minutes is what I call it. So like basically how do we, if we're succeeding, you want to spend more time on the platform and you want to, and after having spent that time, you don't want to regret it.
Speaking of TikTok, you know, I've had a lot of people tell me they spent a lot of time on TikTok and they regret it. We don't want to be, we want it to be that you spent a lot of time on the X platform and you learned a lot, you were entertained and you don't regret it.
So when you're optimizing for user minutes, and like I said, aspirationally unregretted user minutes, if you, the more content that you post on the system, the more reach that thing will get because the system is saying, oh, the user is spending more time on the platform because they're seeing say your podcast or reading a long form article or watching some video.
That's going to get a lot more time than say, if you link to a video elsewhere or you link to an article elsewhere, that's just, that means you'll see people feel that post for a very short period of time. And so the system will be like, okay, that did not increase user time.
So it will, it won't be excluded, but it will get less attention than actually posting content natively on the system. - Do you want to talk about the ADL and you sort of what the status of that is, whether you're pursuing a lawsuit or not, or where that stands?
- I think we'll have to see about that. I mean, yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is that ADL did initiate a boycott. They don't call it a boycott, they call it a pause. But you know, a pause that is never ending is boycott. So it's the same thing.
So, and we just, we saw a massive drop in US advertising. We saw basically no change in advertising in Asia, but domestically with ADL is strong, we saw a 60% drop in advertising. So, you know, that's pretty intense. And this is despite, you know, showing repeated analysis of the system, including third party analysis of the system, which actually showed that the number of views of hateful content declined.
So, you know, the third parties who have all the data analyzed and said, actually, there's less hate speech. The issue, I think, with the ADL is not a question of hate speech. It's not a question of anti-Semitism, obviously. It's that the ADL and a lot of other organizations have become activist organizations which are acting far beyond their stated mandate or their original mandate.
And I think far beyond what donors to those organizations think they are doing. You know, one of the things that the ADL was extremely opposed to, and in fact was instrumental in happening was that the ADL was instrumental in getting Donald Trump de-baffled. And then when we, you know, we restored the account that they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account on Twitter and Alex, that constituted hateful speech.
I mean, he hasn't even said anything, you know. He hasn't at least said something or posted something for there to be incremental hateful content. This is absurd. And what's this got to do with anti-Semitism? Donald Trump's son-in-law is Jewish. His Jewish grandchildren are pretty sure he's not anti-Semitic, okay.
You know, it's at the wedding. (laughing) The problem is that a lot of these organizations, like I said, they're really being captured by the woke agenda and they're pushing, you know, a series of beliefs and values that I think are often contrary to what they're done as belief. And that's what we have in this situation.
- Yeah, I'll note that the two positions that you've taken that have brought the most heat on you, number one, defending free speech, number two, advocating peace. (laughing) - How dare you, you lot mother. - How dare you? - How dare you? - And there's an article-- - I feel like I'm in the opposite world or something.
- Yeah, we're living in an upside down world. There's an article in today's New Yorker calling you a super villain because you're advocating peace and protecting the First Amendment. I mean, it's like completely upside down. (laughing) - Do you want people to eat their vegetables? - At this point, you literally cannot tell actual press from parody.
- No. - If that was a Babylon Bee or Onion, (laughing) - No, literally. - You're doing it-- - And change the banner to, you know, Babylon Bee, whatever, Onion or something like that, have some parody thing and be like, oh, that's a good joke. (laughing) - Yeah, super villains normally advocate for peace.
That's, you know, of course. (laughing) - We wanna get rid of all the nuclear weapons. Hey, you want-- - Well, hold on, hold on. - There was a, that's a, what? (laughing) - The funniest skit that didn't make it on SNL that we were workshopping was probably "Woke James Bond." And we wanted to do like this "Woke James Bond" and then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, "Oh, we're gonna do this." And then we were like, - We had a Graham Allison.
- Reality and also like the, you know, the conspiracy theories that haven't come true list is quite short. (laughing) And we really need more conspiracies generated because we're running out of-- - To find the truth. (laughing) - The to be checked off is accurate. So I don't know who's responsible for these conspiracy theories, but we've seen some more material.
- Paging Alex Jones. - Elon, we had Graham Allison here today. I know you talked about his book. We had Ray Dalio here. We had Ro Khanna. And we talked a lot about China, the US relationship with China. You have several businesses that have deep supplier and customer relationships in China.
Given what's going on, and clearly the tenor has changed, the mood has changed with respect to US policy towards China, what it's like in DC, what it's like in Silicon Valley, and how everyone talks about the relationship with China today. It's pretty crazy how quick things have changed. As a business leader with all these business relationships with China, how do you make decisions and how things are changing?
And how do you think about where this is headed? - Sure, well, I mean, let's just clarify here. You know, SpaceX has no, SpaceX and Starlink have no business in China whatsoever. They're not allowed, you know, SpaceX doesn't launch China satellites, and Starlink is abandoned in China. So, to be clear, SpaceX, Starlink, zero business in China.
In the case of Tesla, one of our four vehicle factories, one is in China. So, you know, it's a significant car market, but it is, you know, so what I'm trying to say is, by far the bulk of my business interests, if I were purely mercantile, which I aspire not to be, are outside of China, let's just be clear about that.
Then, with respect to, now, that said, I think I understand China well. I've been there many times, I've met with senior leadership at many levels in China for many years. And so, I think I've got a pretty good understanding, at least as an outsider of China. So, and Tesla has been very successful domestically in China.
So, you know, the fundamental thing here is really Taiwan. The, China has, well, really since, for like half a century or so, maybe longer at this point, it's longer at this point, that their policy has been to sort of reunite Taiwan with China. From this standpoint, you know, it may be analogous to like Hawaii or something like that.
Like an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China. Mostly because of the US, as the US Pacific Fleet has stopped any sort of reunification effort, wars. So, now, really things get to the point, increasingly year over year, where China's military strength is increasing, and ours is more or less static.
And strategically, you know, you can imagine trying to defend Taiwan is not easy, 'cause it's very close to the coast of China. So, there will come a point, you know, probably in the not too distant future, where China's military strength in that region, or it's at exceeds US military strength in that region.
And if one is to take China's policy literally, and probably one should, then there will be some forceful, force will be used for, you know, to incorporate Taiwan into China. This is what they've said. That if there's not a diplomatic solution, there will be a solution by force. - Let me, if I can-- - And so, really what's going on here, and you've seen, you know, this in many areas, and I think this tempo's gonna increase, is that, you know, both China and the US are preparing for a potential showdown, you know, in the South China Sea.
So, that's why you're seeing increasing restrictions on export of US technology to China, such as the Nvidia's, you know, the Nvidia H100's being banned, you do not ship it to China. And I think there'll be more and more, you also know that there's not enough advanced ship making equipment to China.
So, and I suspect, you know, China's gonna respond with some reciprocal sanctions, and I think you'll see this kind of a tip for a cap, reciprocal sanctions increasing in the next few years. So, I think quite a very hot temperature. And then we'll see this, is there gonna be a diplomatic solution to reunification or a non diplomatic solution?
- You-- - But it is made clear that there will, one way or another, be a solution, from this standpoint. - You mentioned Nvidia, so let me just talk about AI and bring it back to that for a second. Can you tell us your regrets, but also the positives of the experience you had with OpenAI, and then what your goals are with XAI?
- Well, the AI discussion is certainly a long one, or could be a long one. Digital super intelligence, that might be the most significant technology that humanity ever creates. And it has the potential to be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. So, you know, in the case of OpenAI, it was to, how they're not be a unipolar world where Google, with its subsidiary DeepMind, you know, would control an overwhelming amount of AI talent and compute and resources, which then is somewhat dependent on, basically how Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, believe things should go, 'cause they, between the three of them, or two out of three, have control over Alphabet, 'cause they've got super voting rights.
And, you know, I was quite concerned, based on some conversations I had with Larry Page, where, you know, he did call me a specious, for being pro-humanity. And, so I'm like, what side are you on, Larry? You know, not our, as you can see. You know, I think, and so, so, you know, I felt like uncomfortable having the entire future of digital super intelligence be in the hands of someone who called me a specious, for being pro-humanity.
You know, how could it not be? So, as OpenAI was originally created as an open source non-profit, and now is a closed, it's supposed to be, it should be renamed Closed for Maximal Profit AI. (audience laughing) It is closed, and they are aiming to, I think they try to make $100 billion, I think according to Sam Hoffman, get $100 billion from somewhere for some vast amount of compute to create digital God.
Apparently all the weights are stored in a comma-separated value file, by the way, so. Our digital God will be a CSV file. (audience laughing) - How do we import it? File, import, God. - Yeah, just, yeah. So, anyway, so it's now, OpenAI is more, it's also very closely aligned with Microsoft.
You know, Microsoft is really, the OpenAI servers are running on, in Azure and Microsoft's data centers. So really, what you have is, I think at the end of the day, Microsoft's having more control than OpenAI. They have access to all the source code, they have access to all the weights of the GP4 and future versions.
So they have all rights to this, to think. It's not, at any point, really, they could cut off OpenAI. I don't think OpenAI quite realizes the dependence on Microsoft. And even if Microsoft does break some contract, they'll just be tied up in litigation for years. So really, you've got a contest between Google and Microsoft.
Google, as I mentioned, I'm concerned about, you know, not caring enough about AI safety, and good reason. And then Microsoft just is, I think, you know, a profit-seeking organization. And I think such is great, but I can't say, like, you know, it would be difficult to say that Microsoft has an amazing track record in moral decision-making.
(audience laughing) - Diplomatic. - Anyway, so I was like, okay, look, let's just, I think let's try to create a third company that is competitive. I do think Tesla is underrated from an AI standpoint, in terms of real-world AI. Tesla has the best real-world AI. So, you know, hopefully between XAI and Tesla, there's kind of a third contender or visual supercompany.
- Look, you've done, you open-sourced your patents at Tesla. You are very pro-open-source, your source code at X. Would you ever considering releasing Dojo and FSD more as a platform substrate for everybody else, or that's sort of off the table right now? - Well, I don't know that, you know, in the case of, say, Dojo, or our work inference hardware that's in the car, our inference computer, which is actually a lot more compute than Dojo, by the way.
You know, we've got somewhere in the order of four million cars that have high-speed AI inference computers in them. Like, open-sourcing chip designs doesn't mean you suddenly get that thing. - Yeah. - You know, so. You can open-source the software, but I think chip designs, they'll need ones that actually use those chips, or really, yeah, would be someone that's willing to spend many billions of dollars on a computer development.
So, anyway, I think in the case of, you know, Dojo's interesting, Optimist is really interesting. Anyway, I think just in general, Tesla is one of the world's leading AI companies, and in some respects, the leading AI company when it comes to real-world AI, understanding the real world and actually reacting to that with self-driving.
And I think that will become part of a solution for AGI, or General Superintelligence. So, in the case of Tesla, I think we've got a sort of a good governance structure, and that there's no super-voting rights or anything like that. So, if I'm, you know, go crazy, the shareholders of Tesla can vote me out.
You know, I have enough of work to be, you know, I think, moderately influential, but not enough to stay in, even if I'm doing crazy stuff. So, I think that's actually good. - Great. I was told we have to wrap up. - Oh, okay. Just on FSD, before we wrap, I'll let you go.
We were talking earlier this year, and you said, hey, maybe chat GPT 4.0-like moment for self-driving was coming. And I've been playing with the beta, and yeah, how close does it feel to you? Because some of the rides it's been doing for me are pretty darn impressive. - The latest beta's pretty incredible.
- Yeah, it's pretty neat. You know, I used to love it on the highways and on the streets. I'd be like, okay. But now I'm using it increasingly on the streets. So, how do you feel about it right now? And I guess you made a lot of predictions on it over the years, but it does feel like it's getting pretty close.
- Yeah, I think it's very close, too. You know, being in a situation where, even if there's no human oversight or intervention, that the probability of a safe journey is higher with FSD and no supervision, like even if you're asleep in the car, than if the person is driving.
We were very close to that. You know, those that have the FSD beta, which really anyone can get at this point. So, the miles we see driven under the FSD beta currently are much safer than the miles that are driven without it. So, that's already a very good milestone.
You can just see that it's getting better, but if you compare the FSD beta today versus six months ago, versus a year ago, versus 18 months ago, it's really, the improvement is dramatic. And we've got the final piece of the puzzle, which is to have the control part of the car transition from about 300,000 lines of C++ code to also neural network.
So, the whole system will be neural network. Photons in to controls out. And that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle for full self-driving being significantly better than human. - Awesome. Thanks for taking the time, buddy. Fly safe, and I'll see you shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, Elon Musk.
(audience applauding) Thanks, bud. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) - Rain Man David Sack. (upbeat music) - And it said. - We open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. - Love you, Wes. - I'm a queen of the king of the line. (upbeat music) - Besties are back.
(laughing) - We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy 'cause they're all just useless. It's like this like sexual tension that we just need to release somehow. - What about B? What about B? - What about B? - B. - What? - We need to get merch.
- Besties are back. ♪ I'm going all in ♪ ♪ I'm going all in ♪