AI Labs: Elon Musk wants AI in space
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Well, Musk has always been a bit of a doomer in the sense that he thinks AI could prevent the end of humanity.
This is the FT's San Francisco bureau chief, Stephen Morris, talking about Elon Musk.
He's a big science fiction fan. He always references Ian Banks' culture novels as kind of the utopian idea of the future of AI, where machines create super abundance and the rest of the humans just live for parties. But he also likes to talk about Terminator, the flip side, Skynet, you know, deciding that the easiest way to prolong its existence is by removing humanity. And he uses these kind of pop culture science fiction references a lot.
Musk has been warning about the dangers of AI for years. But at the same time, despite those fears, he's been determined to be a central player in the creation of the technology. He was an early investor in Demis Hassavis' DeepMind and one of the original founders of OpenAI.
With Musk, there's always an inherent contradiction. I was speaking with Sebastian Malaby, who has written a book, book about Demis Hassabis. And I said, you know, you've spoken to Elon a lot, you know, Demis, if Musk is so worried about AI, like why is he right out there on the frontier trying to build one of the biggest, most dangerous models? And he said, well, as far as I can tell, like Elon is both terrified of this technology, but also terrified about not being in the vanguard of the next big thing. You know, so it was electric cars, it was autonomy, it's space flight rockets. AI is the next frontier and Musk just cannot bear to like not be there himself.
Elon Musk was quick to recognize the significance of AI, but he always seemed to find a way of missing out. By the time ChatGPT came along, DeepMind had long been sold to Google, Sam Altman was the boss of OpenAI, and Musk was out in the cold. But now he has his own AI lab, XAI, part of his giant SpaceX company, which Musk is hoping to take public in the largest IPO in history. AI is at the heart of SpaceX's future plans, putting data centres into orbit and, in the words of the IPO documents, the emergence of new trillion-dollar markets on the Moon, Mars and beyond. So can the world's richest man make up for lost time, take AI into space and put himself back at the vanguard of artificial intelligence?
What is Elon Musk's relationship with AI?
This is Tectonic from the Financial Times. I'm Murad Ahmed, the FT's technology news editor. A handful of Silicon Valley companies are vying to lead the world in artificial intelligence. In this season, I'm talking to the FT's expert tech reporters about each of them. In this episode, XAI, SpaceX, and Elon Musk.
To talk about Elon Musk and XAI, I spoke to Stephen Morris and to Hannah Murphy, who writes about technology for the FT in San Francisco. You'll hear from her in a moment, but first I wanted Stephen to recap a bit of Musk's history with AI, starting with a famous debate he once had with Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, at a party back in 2015.
Yeah, it's his birthday. I think it's his 44th birthday party. His then wife, I think Tallulah Riley, the actress, had organized it for him. And he was having a debate, a late night debate around a fire pit with Larry Page, as you said, one of the co-founders of Google. Apparently, Larry Page has some disorder of his throat or vocal cords, which means he has to whisper very quietly. And everyone at the party was trying to listen into this increasingly frenetic debate about the future of AI. And the way that Musk tells the story is that essentially Larry Page wanted to bring about the AI singularity and merge AI technology with humans to create, you know, not Androids.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:04
2
What is Elon Musk's relationship with AI?
3:04–7:22
3
How did Musk's early investments shape his AI ambitions?
7:22–11:12
4
What challenges has Musk faced in the AI landscape?
11:12–13:26
5
What role does SpaceX play in Musk's AI strategy?
13:26–17:22
6
How does Musk's xAI compare to competitors like OpenAI?
17:22–26:05