The following is a summary of the Elon Musk interview at the Ron Baron Conference in November, 2022.
To create this summary, we used both OpenAI Whisper and GPT-3 fine tuning, which you can learn more about here:
Peter Foy
Elon Musk on the Twitter acquisition
In the interview, Elon said that Twitter was having serious revenue and cost challenges before the acquisition talks started, and that he was going to execute a plan to make Twitter a better system and get more regular users to subscribe for $8 a month.
Elon believes that Twitter is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla, and that it has the potential to be extremely valuable:
But I think once Twitter is set on the right path, I think it is a much easier thing to manage than SpaceX or Tesla.
He wants to enable everyone to be payment verified with Twitter Blue, in order to reduce the amount of spam, bots, and trolls on the platform.
And so if somebody, because there is a huge problem with spam and bots and trolls on Twitter and organizations trying to manipulate public opinion.
He also wants to prioritize Twitter search, replies, and mentions by verified users first:
But if we can get enough verified users, and we're going to prioritize Twitter search, replies, mentions, by verified users first, and then we're also going to obviously make Twitter stow way better system
Additionally, he wants to get as many people payment verified as possible, and to create an experience where 80% of America can feel comfortable. Unfortunately, Elon said that activist groups have been successful in causing a massive drop in Twitter advertising revenue.
And I also think it's like one of the things that's important is to be able to sort of decide what kind of experience you want to have on Twitter.
Tesla
In the interview, Elon spoke highly of Tesla, noting that it has significantly accelerated the advent of sustainable energy, and is now the best at manufacturing in the auto industry.
"In the case of Tesla, our goal is to advance sustainable energy."
He mentioned that Tesla may need to get into the mining and refining business in order to obtain the critical elements of batteries they need.
He also noted that before Tesla, no one was doing electric cars, and now almost every major car company in the world is building electric cars as a result of Tesla. As the interview said:
Without Elon, there would not be electric cars.
Elon also said that he rarely tries to convince anyone to invest in Tesla, and that the holy grail for humanity to become a space-bearing civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.
He also mentioned that his day to day work at SpaceX and Tesla is almost entirely engineering and design, and that the long-term goal for supercharger stations is to have Tesla and batteries at them so that they are as many as possible, self-sustaining.
Autonomous Driving
Elon believes that Tesla is the leader in solving the problem of generalized autonomy and self-driving vehicles.
And no one is even close to Tesla for solving generalized autonomy, generalized self-driving vehicles
He believes that the Optimus program, a humanoid robot, will leverage the intelligence developed for self-driving to be useful.
For SpaceX, Elon believes that it is important for the future to be exciting and for humanity's existence to be insured over the long term. Autonomous driving and autonomous trucks are ideas that could be used to move things around if there are not enough drivers.
Elon believes that autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough and that Tesla is the best at manufacturing in the auto industry.
Autonomy is an insanely fundamental breakthrough.
So you would see a five-fold increase in the utility of the car that could be autonomy.
Starship, the moon, and becoming a multi-planetary species
Elon believes that Starship is the key to unlocking humanity's potential to become a multi-planetary species, as it has the potential to drastically reduce the cost of access to space by a factor of a thousand.
He discussed that the goal of Starship is to make it possible for humanity to afford a permanent base on the moon, and that this is the 'holy grail' of space exploration.
The goal is to lower the cost of access to orbit and ultimately to Mars and the moon and elsewhere to the point where humanity can actually afford to become a multi planet species
He also believes that the Apollo program was incredibly inspiring to the world, and that Starship could have a similar effect. Ultimately, he believes that going to the moon will make us all members of humanity.
Elon believes that, with known physics, it is only barely possible to make a fully reusable orbital rocket, and that the only way to achieve this is to hire great people and ask them all the right questions.
Elon believes that becoming a multiplanetary species and space-bearing civilization is essential for humanity's future, and that the holy grail of this endeavor is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.
The critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary and for humanity to be a space-bearing civilization is a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, global rocket.
