Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252

The video is a podcast interview with Elon Musk discussing SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, self-driving, robotics, and AI.

The video is a conversation between Elon Musk and Lex Fridman, where they discuss various topics such as SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, self-driving, robotics, and AI. They talk about the recent SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit, the stress and relief that came with it, and the subsequent astronaut missions. They also discuss the all-civilian Inspiration mission and the importance of continuing to reach higher ground as a species. Musk expresses his love for humanity and his desire to have a good and exciting future that maximizes the happiness of people.

• The SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020 was seen as the first step in a new era of human space exploration.
• Elon Musk believes that despite humanity's issues, we should do everything we can to have a good and exciting future that maximizes people's happiness.
• Musk was confident that at the time of the launch, no one could think of anything to improve the probability of success.
• Musk believes that Tesla's Autopilot system is already safer than a human driver.
• Musk believes that AI is the most important issue facing humanity.
• Elon Musk believes that we need to build a science base on the moon and get people to Mars to become a space-bearing civilization.
• Elon Musk is the chief engineer of SpaceX and has signed off on pretty much all the design decisions.
• The Raptor engine is a full flow staged combustion engine that operates at a very high chamber pressure.
• The holy grail of orbital rocketry is a fully reusable rocket.

Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252 - YouTube

SpaceX Launch and Human Space Exploration

• The SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30th, 2020 was seen as the first step in a new era of human space exploration.
• Elon Musk believes that despite humanity's issues, we should do everything we can to have a good and exciting future that maximizes people's happiness.
• The launch was extremely stressful for Musk, and he prayed for the mission's success.
• Once the subsequent astronaut missions were successful, Musk was able to enjoy them more.
• The Inspiration mission was inspiring, and Musk encourages people to watch the documentary on Netflix.

Crew Dragon Demo 2

• Musk was confident that at the time of the launch, no one could think of anything to improve the probability of success.
• He prayed for the mission's success and found it to be a great relief when it was successful.
• For high-stress situations, Musk finds it's not so much elation as relief.
• The subsequent astronaut missions were more enjoyable for Musk.
• The Inspiration mission was the first all-civilian mission to space and reached the highest orbit in under 30 or 40 years.

Tesla Autopilot and Self-Driving

• Musk believes that Tesla's Autopilot system is already safer than a human driver.
• He thinks that Tesla will achieve full self-driving by the end of this year.
• Musk believes that self-driving cars will be a game-changer for transportation and will reduce the number of car accidents.
• He thinks that self-driving cars will be able to operate without a human driver in the future.
• Musk believes that Tesla's Autopilot system will be able to handle all driving situations in the future.

Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252 - YouTube

Robotics and AI

• Musk believes that AI is the most important issue facing humanity.
• He thinks that AI will surpass human intelligence in the next five years.
• Musk believes that AI will be able to do everything that humans can do and more.
• He thinks that AI will be able to solve many of humanity's problems, but it could also be dangerous if not properly regulated.
• Musk believes that we need to be proactive in regulating AI and ensuring that it is used for good.

Moon Base and Mars

• Elon Musk believes that we need to build a science base on the moon and get people to Mars to become a space-bearing civilization.
• He thinks that it's concerning that we haven't been back to the moon in almost half a century.
• Musk believes that we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon.
• He compares it to having a science base in Antarctica and other parts of the world.
• Musk thinks that building a serious moon base is the next big thing.

Elon Musk's Role in SpaceX

• Elon Musk is the chief engineer of SpaceX and has signed off on pretty much all the design decisions.
• He is responsible for all the things that could go wrong with the vehicle, and it's fundamentally his fault if something goes wrong.
• Musk sees all the risks and problems when he sees the rocket or the dragon spacecraft, not what other people see.
• He spends most of his time on engine production, not the design of the engine.
• Musk believes that prototypes are easy, but production is hard.

Raptor Engine

• The Raptor engine is a full flow staged combustion engine that operates at a very high chamber pressure.
• It's the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed.
• Musk believes that the Russian RD engines are the best rocket engines ever designed, but the Raptor engine is better.
• The Raptor engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet, but it's the first engine that's better than the Russian RD engines.
• Musk is most excited about the efficiency and high chamber pressure of the Raptor engine.

Hardest Problem with Starship

• The hardest problem with Starship is engine production, not the design of the engine.
• Musk believes that prototypes are easy, but production is hard.
• The Raptor engine is the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed.
• Musk spends most of his time on engine production.
• He thinks that engine production is the biggest thing absorbing his time.

SpaceX's Raptor Engine

• The Raptor engine is designed to operate at 300 bar, possibly higher.
• The record for operational engine is the Russian RD engine, which is around 267 bar.
• The difficulty of the chamber pressure increases on a non-linear basis.
• The high chamber pressure allows for a high power density for the engine, enabling a high thrust to weight ratio and a high specific impulse.
• The specific impulse is a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine.

Challenges in Manufacturing the Raptor Engine

• The Raptor engine is very complex with many components and unique materials.
• Several alloys had to be invented to make the engine work.
• The engine is in a staged combustion, full flow stage combustion, which has many feedback loops in the system.
• It is hard to control because changing one thing has a recursive effect on other parts of the engine.
• The reason for using a staged combustion, full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency.

Making a Fully Reusable Rocket

• The holy grail of orbital rocketry is a fully reusable rocket.
• Everything has to be the best, including the engine, airframe, heat shield, avionics, and control mechanisms.
• Mass has to be shed in any possible way, such as catching the booster and ship with a tower instead of using landing legs.
• The goal is to achieve full and rapid reusability, which will take many launches to achieve.
• Catching the largest flying object ever made with a tower and chopstick arms is a challenging task.

Possible Challenges in Achieving Full and Rapid Reusability

• The physics of achieving full and rapid reusability are not in doubt, but the timing is uncertain.
• It will take many launches before full and rapid reusability can be achieved.
• The challenge is to achieve a full and rapid reusability in a short amount of time.
• There are days or moments when Elon Musk doubts that achieving full and rapid reusability is even possible.
• The goal is to make space travel accessible to everyone, and achieving full and rapid reusability is a critical step towards that goal.

Belief in Success

• Success is in the set of all possible outcomes.
• There was a time when success was not in the set of possible outcomes.
• There is a chance of success, but unsure how long it will take.
• The team is working night and day to make it happen.
• The critical thing to achieve for the revolution in space flight is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.

Source of Strength

• Elon Musk doesn't need a source of strength to persevere through the project.
• He believes that this is something important to get done, and they should keep doing it or die trying.
• Quitting is not in his nature.
• He doesn't care about optimism or pessimism, they're going to get it done.
• He doesn't have a systematic process for thinking through problems, but he applies first principles analysis.

First Principles Analysis

• First principles analysis is something that can be applied to any kind of technology problem.
• It's about breaking things down to the most fundamental principles.
• It sets the axiomatic base and then reasons up from there.
• Conclusions are cross-checked against the axiomatic truths.
• Some basics in physics would be like violating conservation of energy or momentum.

Manufacturing

• Manufacturing is a very underrated problem.
• It's important to think about things in the limit.
• Scaling things to a very large number or to a very small number can change things.
• It's important to think about things in terms of tempo and time.
• Manufacturing is a very important part of the process.

Manufacturing and First Principles Thinking

• It is harder to bring an advanced technology product into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place.
• When trying to figure out why a product is expensive, one must consider if it is due to low volume or something fundamentally flawed in the design.
• Thinking about things in the limit can help reduce complexity and change the design to make a product less expensive.
• Raw materials in a product set the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the product can be unless the materials are changed.
• How the atoms are put into the desired shape is what actually causes a product to be expensive.

Thinking at Tesla and SpaceX

• Jim Keller, who worked with Elon Musk, carried the same kind of thinking about reducing costs through first principles thinking.
• People who work at Tesla and SpaceX learn this way of thinking and it becomes obvious to them.
• Manufacturing at high volume can make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property that needs to be licensed.

Reducing the Cost of Manufacturing

• Manufacturing at high volume can make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property that needs to be licensed.
• Reducing the cost of manufacturing involves simplifying everything down.
• Thinking about how to reduce the cost of manufacturing involves first principles thinking.
• Anything in volume can be made for a cost that asymptotically approaches raw material value plus intellectual property.
• Manufacturing at high volume is a hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything.

Reducing the Cost of TeslaBot

• Jim Keller educated Elon Musk on how to reduce the cost of manufacturing TeslaBot.
• First principles thinking can help reduce the cost of manufacturing complex systems like TeslaBot.
• Manufacturing at high volume can make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property that needs to be licensed.
• Reducing the cost of manufacturing involves simplifying everything down.
• Thinking about how to reduce the cost of manufacturing involves first principles thinking.

Designing the Perfect Product

• People often start designing a product with the tools and methods they are familiar with.
• It's better to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product and then figure out how to get the atoms in that shape.
• Thinking in this way is important because it prevents falling victim to the momentum of the way things are done in the past.
• It's good to think of things in both directions: what can be built with the tools that we have and what does the theoretical perfect product look like.
• The theoretical perfect product is a moving target because the definition of it changes as we learn more.

Mars Landing

• SpaceX's best-case scenario for landing a human being on Mars is five years, and the worst case is ten years.
• The determining factor is fundamentally engineering the vehicle, which is the most complex and advanced rocket ever made.
• The fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars.
• The objective is to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, and the cost per tonne to the surface of Mars needs to be affordable.
• In order to pass a very important great filter, we need to be a multi-planet species.

Tesla Autopilot

• Tesla Autopilot is not perfect, but it's getting better all the time.
• The goal is to make it so that a driver does not need to pay attention to the road.
• The current version of Autopilot is not capable of handling all driving scenarios, but it's getting closer.
• The neural net is trained on a massive amount of data, and it's constantly learning and improving.
• The goal is to make Autopilot ten times safer than human driving.

Robotics and AI

• Robotics and AI are two sides of the same coin.
• The goal is to create robots that can do things that are unsafe, repetitive, or boring for humans.
• The biggest challenge is creating robots that can handle the complexity of the real world.
• The neural net is the key to creating robots that can handle the complexity of the real world.
• The neural net is trained on a massive amount of data, and it's constantly learning and improving.

Extending Life Beyond Earth

• The current situation is remarkable, as it has been around four and a half billion years and this is the first time in one half billion years that it has been possible to extend life beyond earth.
• The window of opportunity may be open for a long time, but it also may be open for a short time.
• It is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open just in case it closes.
• Civilization could die with a bang or a whimper, and there are many threats such as nuclear weapons and pandemics.
• We should think of being a multi-planet species as taking out insurance for life itself.

Building a Civilization on Mars

• Spaceships are critical to getting to Mars, and we need them to come back.
• The current cost of one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars.
• We need to improve the cost by at least a factor of a thousand to create a self-sustaining civilization.
• The self-sustaining part is important, as it is the key threshold.
• The grateful to will have been passed when a self-sustaining city on Mars is created.

Terraforming Mars

• The focus right now is on spaceships, as if you can't get there, nothing else matters.
• The cost of one ton to the surface of Mars is currently too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization.
• We need to improve the cost by at least a factor of a thousand.
• The ideal cost would be much less than a million per ton.
• The self-sustaining part is important, as it is the key threshold.

Threats to Civilization

• There is a certain probability that something bad will happen on Earth, such as a civilization-ending event.
• It is important to think of these things and just think of them as probabilities, not certainties.
• Stephen Hawking estimated a one percent chance per century of a civilization-ending event.
• We should think of being a multi-planet species as taking out insurance for life itself.
• We can bring the creatures from Earth to Mars and breathe life into the planet, creating a second planet with life.

Mars City Self-Sustainability

• Mars city needs to be self-sustaining to survive even if spaceships from Earth stop coming for any reason.
• One critical missing ingredient can cause the city to die out.
• The minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city is uncertain, but it is probably at least a million tons.
• Setting up infrastructure on Mars is necessary, including semiconductor fabs and iron ore refineries.
• Mars is not hospitable, and it is a fixer-upper planet outside of Earth.

Wormholes and Traveling Faster Than Light

• General relativity allows for wormholes, but humans currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light.
• Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light, but the amount of energy required is gigantic.
• The universe expanded at much more than the speed of light during the big bang.

Rocket Propulsion and Reusability

• The holy grail is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital system.
• The Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there, but the upper stage is not reusable.
• The degree of the booster is not as reused as desired.
• Full and rapid reusability can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor of a hundred.
• With full and rapid reusability, the minimum marginal cost per flight is on the order of 15 to 20 million dollars.

Efficiency of Engines and Innovation

• The efficiency of engines and innovation is limited by physics.
• The cost of building up for stage is at least 10 million dollars.
• The upper stage is not as rapidly and completely reusable as desired.
• The minimum marginal cost per flight is on the order of 15 to 20 million dollars.
• Full and rapid reusability can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor of a hundred.

Reusable Rockets

• Reusing rockets is the biggest cost-saving measure for space travel.
• Throwing away any significant part of a rocket increases the cost.
• Starship could do a cost per launch of around a million dollars.
• Starship can put over 100 tons in orbit.
• Reusable rockets require brilliant engineering, not new physics.

Direct Democracy on Mars

• Direct democracy would work best for an early civilization of humans on Mars.
• Representative democracy is subject to special interests and coercion of politicians.
• Population should vote on laws themselves, and laws should be short enough to understand.
• Keeping a well-informed populace and transparency is essential.
• Accepting cookies is an example of a good idea done horribly.

Garbage Collection for Rules and Regulations

• Wars had a cleansing function for rules and regulations.
• Without a war, rules and regulations accumulate every year.
• Rules and regulations should not be immortal.
• Garbage collection function is necessary for rules and regulations.
• Some rules and regulations put in place will be counterproductive.

Removing Rules and Regulations

• Rules and regulations accumulate every year, making it harder to do anything.
• Effort should be put into removing rules and regulations.
• Special interests fight to keep rules and regulations in place.
• There should be an active process for removing rules and regulations.
• Rules and regulations can be thought of as lines of code for operating civilization.

Removing Laws on Mars

• There should be an active process for removing laws and questioning their existence.
• Any given law must have a sunset and require active voting to keep it up there.
• It should be easier to remove a law than to add one.
• Smart contracts could be used to implement laws by which governments function.
• Deals should be short, simple, and in plain language.

Garbage Collection and Laws

• The metaphor of garbage collection from a coding standpoint could be applied to laws.
• Laws should have a built-in thing where they kind of die after a while unless somebody explicitly defends them.
• Rules and regulations can be thought of as software or lines of code for operating civilization.
• Code accumulation without code removal leads to archaic bloatware.
• Technologically speaking, there may be room for ideas of smart contracts to implement laws.

Challenges of Removing Rules and Regulations

• Removing rules and regulations gets tough because special interests are dependent on them.
• The problem with the constitution is that it doesn't have any garbage collection built in.
• Regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year but don't put effort into removing them.
• Civilization's arteries harden over time, making it harder to get things done.
• Ultimately, it will be up to the people on Mars to decide how to handle rules and regulations.

Cryptocurrency on Mars

• Musk considered putting Dogecoin on the moon, but Mars would need a different currency.
• Mars would need a standalone currency because of the speed of light issue.
• Mars would likely have a localized cryptocurrency.
• The future of Mars should be up to the Martians.
• Cryptocurrency is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the money database.

The Current Money System

• The current money system is a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running old Cobalt in batch mode.
• Banks and the Federal Reserve still use old Cobalt mainframes.
• The government has editing privileges on the money database, which increases the error in the database.
• Money should be viewed through the lens of information theory.
• Cryptocurrency is an attempt to reduce the error in money caused by governments diluting the money supply.

Money as Information

• Money is information and does not have power in and of itself.
• Money is a database for resource allocation.
• Money is useless if there are no resources to allocate.
• Thinking about money in the limit is helpful.
• Money is a physics tool for thinking about resource allocation.

Crypto and the Future

• Cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the systems that allow us to do transactions and store wealth.
• Crypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money caused by governments diluting the money supply.
• Both policy and technological advancements are needed to improve the money system.
• Crypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money caused by governments diluting the money supply.
• Money should be viewed through the lens of information theory.

The Role of Money as a Database for Resource Allocation

• Money is a database for resource allocation across time and space.
• The most effective form of a database or data system for money is a fundamental issue.
• Bitcoin in its current form has limited transaction volume and latency.
• Bitcoin is useful as a store of wealth or accounting of relative obligations but not as a day-to-day currency.
• Different technological solutions have been proposed, such as the lightning network and layer two technologies.

The Need for Efficient Value Ratios and Obligation Shifting

• A database or infrastructure is needed to enable efficient value ratios between products and services.
• Something is needed to shift obligations across time, such as debt and equity.
• Dogecoin has a higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin and lower transaction fees.
• Bitcoin's small block size and long synchronization time made sense in 2008 but are comically low in 2021.
• A linear increase in the amount of currency generated has value to prevent reluctance to spend due to deflationary expectations.

The Potential of Dogecoin

• Dogecoin has a fixed number of coins or hash strings generated every year, resulting in some inflation but not a percentage base.
• The percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time.
• Dogecoin has some merit due to its higher transaction volume capability and lower transaction fees than Bitcoin.
• Dogecoin was created as a joke but has potential as a currency.
• There is a trade-off between different technological solutions for money infrastructure.

The Importance of Information and Infrastructure for Operating an Economy

• Money is a database for resource allocation and infrastructure is needed to enable efficient value ratios and obligation shifting.
• Bartering is extremely unwieldy for a massive number of products and services.
• Information and infrastructure are needed to operate an economy.
• The best system for money infrastructure is a fundamental issue.
• Bitcoin is useful as a store of wealth or accounting of relative obligations but not as a day-to-day currency.

Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto

• Elon Musk thinks that Bitcoin is fundamentally better than any other currency he has seen.
• He believes that it is not the ideal system for a currency, but it is better than anything else.
• He is not Satoshi Nakamoto, and he would tell us if he were.
• Elon Musk thinks that the anonymous creator of Bitcoin is an interesting quirk of human history.
• He believes that the evolution of ideas is more important than singular figures.

Tesla Autopilot

• Elon Musk thinks that Tesla Autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years.
• He was skeptical when he first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on Mobileye.
• He thought that the lane keeping problem was way too difficult to solve.
• Elon Musk believes that the decision to eventually go from scratch on the hardware and software was one of the boldest decisions he has seen.
• He thinks that the neural network architectures and the way they are tested and validated in the real world are the things he cares and loves about most.

Self-Driving

• Elon Musk thinks that self-driving is a difficult problem to solve.
• He believes that the neural network architectures and the way they are tested and validated in the real world are the things he cares and loves about most.
• He thinks that the data set selection and the whole data engine process are crucial for self-driving.
• Elon Musk believes that the real world is the ultimate test for self-driving.
• He thinks that the current version of Tesla Autopilot is not full self-driving, but it is getting close.

Robotics and AI

• Elon Musk thinks that robotics and AI are going to be the biggest industries in the world.
• He believes that the future of robotics and AI is going to be very exciting.
• He thinks that the biggest challenge in robotics and AI is going to be developing a general intelligence.
• Elon Musk believes that the biggest risk in robotics and AI is going to be the misuse of the technology.
• He thinks that the best way to mitigate the risk is to have a regulatory agency that oversees the development of AI.

Autopilot Engineering Team

• The Autopilot engineering team is extremely talented.
• The team is made up of some of the smartest people in the world.
• The team is responsible for the Tesla Autopilot AI.
• The team is led by Ashok, the head of Autopilot engineering.
• The team is also led by Andre, the director of AI.

Insights on Autonomous Driving

• The problem of autonomous driving is harder than expected.
• To solve self-driving, we need to recreate what humans do to drive.
• The entire road system is designed to work with passive optical and neural nets.
• To achieve full self-driving, we need to recreate this in digital form.
• We need cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form.

Perception Problem in Driving

• The perception problem is what humans solve when driving.
• Tesla has to solve the perception problem.
• The perception problem includes the ontology of objects like car doors.
• Control and planning are coupled with perception.
• Game theoretic kind of stuff is not the hard part.

Software and Vector Space

• The hard part of the problem is a lot of software.
• There are a lot of smart lines of code.
• The problem involves creating an accurate vector space.
• The vector space includes cars, humans, lane lines, and curves.
• The bitstream from image space needs to be effectively compressed.

Human Perception and Memory

• The human perception system is incredible at mapping raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads.
• Peripheral vision is painting color in the corners of our eyes, and our brain is painting in the missing version of the blind spot.
• Human memory is perhaps the weakest thing about the brain because it is expensive and limited.
• The brain is trying to forget as much as possible and distill the things we see into the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects.
• When driving, our brain is constantly trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and edit that down to the least amount necessary for us to drive.

Vector Space and Concepts

• Having an accurate vector space is crucial for controlling self-driving cars.
• Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game like Grand Theft Auto or Cyberpunk.
• Human perception goes beyond vector space to a space of concepts, where we remember things as concepts rather than spatial representations.
• For driving, we don't need to fully represent those concepts, but we indirectly establish vector space and have predictions for those vector spaces.
• When driving, we establish vector space and then have predictions for that vector space, such as seeing people crossing the road before driving past a bus.

Human Distractions While Driving

• People are constantly distracted while driving, doing things like texting, changing the radio station, and having arguments.
• When driving, people should glance around to refresh their vector space and distill the relevant vectors.
• Our brain is constantly trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and edit that down to the least amount necessary for us to drive.
• Human perception goes beyond vector space to a space of concepts, where we remember things as concepts rather than spatial representations.
• For driving, we don't need to fully represent those concepts, but we indirectly establish vector space and have predictions for those vector spaces.

Watch the video on YouTube:
Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #252 - YouTube