Elon MuskWe're at the very very early stage of the intelligence big bang. Being a multiplanet species greatly increases the probable lifespan of civilization or consciousness or intelligence both biological and digital. I think we're quite close to digital super intelligence. If it doesn't happen this year, next year for sure.我们正处于智能大爆炸最最早期的阶段。成为多星球物种能极大地延长文明、意识乃至智能——无论是生物智能还是数字智能——的可能寿命。我认为我们离数字超级智能已经相当近了。如果今年没发生，明年肯定会。
Garry TanPlease give it up for Elon Musk. Elon, welcome to AI Startup School. We're just really, really blessed to have your presence here today.请大家热烈欢迎 Elon Musk。Elon，欢迎来到 AI Startup School。今天能有您的到来，我们真的非常非常荣幸。
Elon MuskThanks for having me.感谢邀请。
Garry TanSo, from SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, xAI, and more. Was there ever a moment in your life before all this where you felt I have to build something great? And what flipped that switch for you?从 SpaceX、Tesla、Neuralink、xAI 到更多公司。在这一切发生之前，您人生中有没有某个时刻突然觉得「我必须做出些伟大的东西」？是什么拨动了那个开关？
Elon MuskWell, I didn't originally think I would build something great. I wanted to try to build something useful, but I didn't think I would build anything particularly great. If you said probabilistically seemed unlikely, but I wanted to at least try.我最初其实并没想着要做出什么伟大的东西。我想尝试做一些有用的东西，但并不觉得自己会做出什么特别伟大的事。从概率上说，这似乎不太可能，但我至少想试试。
Garry TanSo you're talking to a room full of people who are all technical engineers, often you know some of the most eminent AI researchers coming up in the game.您现在面对的是一屋子技术工程师，很多都是业内最顶尖的 AI 研究人员，正在崭露头角。
Elon MuskOkay. I think we should, I think that I like the term engineer better than researcher. I mean I suppose if there's some fundamental algorithmic breakthrough it's a research, but otherwise it's engineering.好的。我觉得，我更喜欢「工程师」这个词，而不是「研究人员」。我是说，如果真有什么基础性的算法突破，那才算研究，否则都是工程。
Garry TanMaybe let's start way back. I mean when you were, this is a room full of 18 to 25 year olds. It skews younger because the founder set is younger and younger. Can you put yourself back into their shoes when you know you were 18, 19, you know learning to code, even coming up with a first idea for Zip2. What was that like for you?也许我们可以从很久以前说起。这屋子里都是 18 到 25 岁的年轻人，年龄层越来越低，因为创始人群体越来越年轻。您能把自己带回他们那个年纪吗——18、19 岁，学写代码，甚至构思 Zip2 的第一个想法，那时候是什么感觉？
Elon MuskYeah, back in 95 I was faced with a choice of either do, you know, grad studies PhD at Stanford in material science actually working on ultra capacitors for potential use in electric vehicles, essentially trying to solve the range problem for electric vehicles, or try to do something in this thing that most people have never heard of called the internet. And I talked to my professor who was Bill Nix in the material science form and said like, can I defer for a quarter because this will probably fail and then I'll need to come back to college. And then he said this is probably the last conversation we'll have, and he was right. So but I thought things would most likely fail, not that they would most likely succeed.对，1995 年我面临一个选择：要么去斯坦福读材料科学博士，研究超级电容器，考虑用于电动汽车，本质上是想解决电动车的续航问题；要么去尝试当时大多数人闻所未闻的东西——互联网。我去找了我的导师，材料科学系的 Bill Nix 教授，问他能不能让我先推迟一个季度，因为这事儿大概率会失败，失败了我再回来读书。他说这大概是我们之间最后一次谈话，他说对了。但我当时确实认为事情最有可能失败，而不是成功。
Elon MuskAnd then in 95 I wrote, basically, I think the first or close to the first maps directions, internet white pages and yellow pages on the internet. I just wrote that personally and I didn't even use a web server. I just read the port directly because I couldn't afford a T1. Original office was on Sherman Avenue in Palo Alto. There was like an ISP on the floor below. So I drilled a hole through the floor and just ran a LAN cable directly to the ISP. And you know my brother joined me and another co-founder Greg Kouri who passed away. And at the time we couldn't even afford a place to stay so we just, the office was 500 bucks a month so we just slept in the office and showered at the YMCA on Page Mill. And yeah, I guess we ended up doing a little bit of a useful company, Zip2, in the beginning.1995 年，我基本上写出了——我认为是互联网上最早或接近最早的——地图导航、互联网白页和黄页。都是我一个人写的，甚至没用 Web 服务器，直接读端口，因为我租不起 T1 线路。最初的办公室在帕洛阿尔托的 Sherman Avenue，楼下就有一个 ISP。我在地板上钻了个洞，直接把网线接到 ISP 上。我弟弟后来加入了我，还有一位已经离世的联合创始人 Greg Kouri。那时我们连住的地方都租不起，办公室一个月 500 块，我们就睡在办公室里，去 Page Mill 路上的 YMCA 洗澡。就这样，我们算是做出了一家小有用处的公司——Zip2。
Elon MuskWe did build a lot of really really good software technology but we were somewhat captured by the legacy media companies in that Knight Ridder, New York Times, whatnot were investors and customers and also on the board. So they kept wanting to use our software in ways that made no sense. So I wanted to go direct to consumers. Anyway, long story, dwelling too much on Zip2, but I really just wanted to do something useful on the internet. Because I had like two choices, like do a PhD and watch people build the internet or help build the internet in some small way. And I was like, well, I guess I can always try and fail and then go back to grad studies. And anyway, that ended up being like reasonably successful, sold for like $300 million, which is a lot at the time.我们确实开发了很多非常非常棒的软件技术，但在某种程度上被传统媒体公司绑架了——Knight Ridder、纽约时报之类的都是我们的投资方和客户，还在董事会里。他们总想用我们的软件做一些毫无意义的事。所以我想直接面向消费者，这是另一个话题，不在 Zip2 上多说了。我真的只是想在互联网上做一些有用的东西。那时候我就两个选择：读博士，看着别人建设互联网；或者在某种小程度上参与建设互联网。我想，反正可以先试试，失败了再回去读研究生。结果最终还算相当成功，以大约 3 亿美元的价格被收购，在当时算是很大一笔钱。
Elon MuskThese days, that's like I think the minimum impulse bid for an AI startup is like a billion dollars. It's like a, there's so many freaking unicorns, it's like a herd of unicorns at this point, you know, unicorn is a billion dollar situation. There's been inflation since, so quite a bit more money actually.现如今，我觉得一个 AI 初创公司的最低起拍价都得有十亿美元了吧。独角兽多得简直像一群，独角兽嘛，就是十亿美元那个门槛。自那以后通货膨胀了不少，实际上要多得多。
Garry TanYeah. I mean, like 1995 you could probably buy a burger for a nickel.对，1995 年一个汉堡大概五分钱就能买到。
Elon MuskWell, not quite, but I mean, yeah, there has been a lot of inflation. But the hype level on AI is pretty intense as you've seen. You know, you see companies that are, I don't know, less than a year old getting sometimes billion dollar or multi-billion dollar valuations. Which I guess could pan out and probably will pan out in some cases. But it is eye watering to see some of these valuations.这倒不至于，但通货膨胀确实很厉害。不过 AI 的热度也是相当惊人，你也看到了。有些公司成立还不到一年，估值就动不动十亿、几十亿美元。这也许能兑现，某些案例大概也真的会兑现。但看到这些估值还是让人瞠目结舌。
Garry TanYeah, what do you think? I mean,对，您怎么看？我是说，
Elon MuskWell, I'm pretty bullish, personally. I'm pretty bullish, honestly. So I think the people in this room are going to create a lot of the value that, you know, a billion people in the world should be using this stuff. And we're not even, we're scratching the surface of it.我个人是相当看好的，说真的，非常看好。我认为这屋子里的人将会创造出巨大的价值——全世界应该有 10 亿人在用这些东西，而我们现在只是在表面上轻轻划了一下。
Garry TanI love the internet story in that even back then you know you are a lot like the people in this room back then in that, you know, the heads of all the, the CEOs of all the legacy media companies look to you as the person who understood the internet. And a lot of the world, you know, the corporate world, like the world at large that does not understand what's happening with AI, they're going to look to the people in this room for exactly that. It sounds like, you know, what are some of the tangible lessons? It sounds like one of them is don't give up board control or be careful about, have a really good lawyer.我很喜欢您讲的互联网故事，因为那时候的您其实跟现在这屋子里的人很像——所有传统媒体公司的 CEO 都把您视为最懂互联网的人。而如今很多不懂 AI 在发生什么的人——商界、社会大众——也会来找这屋子里的人寻求同样的指引。听起来，您有哪些具体的教训可以分享？其中一条好像是不要丢掉董事会控制权，或者说要格外小心，要找一个真正靠谱的律师。
Elon MuskI guess for my first startup, the really the mistake was having too much shareholder and board control from legacy media companies who then necessarily see things through the lens of legacy media, and they'll kind of make you do things that seem sensible to them but aren't really, don't make sense with the new technology. I should point out that I didn't actually at first intend to start a company. I tried to get a job at Netscape. I sent my resume into Netscape and Marc Andreessen knows about this. And I don't think he ever saw my resume and then nobody responded. So I tried hanging out in the lobby of Netscape to see if I could like bump into someone, but I was like too shy to talk to anyone. So I'm like, man, this is ridiculous. So I'll just write software myself and see how it goes. So it wasn't actually from the standpoint of like I want to start a company. I just want to be part of building, you know, the internet in some way. And since I couldn't get a job at an internet company, I had to start an internet company.对于我的第一家初创公司来说，真正的错误是让传统媒体公司持有太多股权和董事会控制权，它们看问题必然都是透过传统媒体的镜头，会让你做一些在它们看来合理、但对新技术来说完全没有意义的事。我要说明一点，我最初其实根本没打算创业。我试图去 Netscape 找工作，把简历投给了 Netscape，Marc Andreessen 知道这件事。我觉得他可能根本没看到我的简历，也没人回我。于是我试着去 Netscape 大厅蹲点，看能不能偶遇什么人，但我太内向了，根本不敢开口。我心想，这也太荒唐了，那我就自己写软件，试试看吧。所以出发点根本不是「我要创业」，我只是想以某种方式参与建设互联网。因为我在互联网公司找不到工作，才不得不自己创建一家。
Elon MuskYeah. I mean, AI will so profoundly change the future. It's difficult to fathom how much. But you know the economy, assuming we don't, things don't go awry and like AI doesn't kill us all in itself, then you'll see ultimately an economy that is not, not 10 times more than the current economy ultimately, like if we become, say, or whatever our future machine descendants, but mostly machine descendants become like a Kardashev scale 2 civilization or beyond. We're talking about an economy that is thousands of times, maybe millions of times bigger than the economy today.AI 将会深刻地改变未来，其程度难以想象。但假设事情不出差错、AI 不把我们全灭掉，那你最终会看到一个不是比现在大 10 倍的经济体，而是大得多得多——如果我们，或者说我们未来的机器后代，其中大部分是机器，成为 Kardashev 2 级文明乃至更高等级，我们谈论的是一个比今天大几千倍、也许几百万倍的经济体。
Elon MuskSo, yeah, I mean I did sort of feel a bit like, you know, when I was in DC, taking a lot of flack for like getting rid of waste and fraud, which was an interesting side quest, as side quests go. But got to get back to the main quest.所以，我在华盛顿待着、费尽心思削减浪费和欺诈的那段时间，我确实有点觉得——这是一个挺有趣的「支线任务」，但终归是支线，得回到主线任务了。
Garry TanYeah, I got to get back to the main quest here. So back to the main quest.对，得回到主线任务了。好，回到主线。
Elon MuskBut I did feel, you know, a little bit like there's, you know, it's like fixing the government is kind of like there's like, say the beach is dirty and there's like some needles and feces and like trash and you want to clean up the beach but then there's also this like thousand foot wall of water which is a tsunami of AI. And how much does cleaning the beach really matter if you got a thousand foot tsunami about to hit? Not that much.但我确实有那么点感觉，就好比——海滩很脏，到处是注射器、粪便和垃圾，你想清理海滩，但同时有一堵千尺高的水墙正在逼近，那是 AI 的海啸。如果一场千尺高的海啸马上就要来袭，你清理海滩又能有多大意义呢？意义不大。
Garry TanOh, we're glad you're back on the main quest. It's very important.哦，很高兴您回到了主线任务，这太重要了。
Elon MuskYeah, back to the main quest. Building technology, which is what I like doing. It's just so much noise. Like the signal to noise ratio in politics is terrible.对，回到主线任务。做技术，这才是我喜欢做的事。政治里噪音实在太多，信噪比极差。
Garry TanSo, I mean, I live in San Francisco, so you don't need to tell me twice.我住在旧金山，这道理您不用跟我说第二遍。
Elon MuskYeah, DC's like, you know, kind of, I guess it's all politics in DC, but the, if you're trying to build a rocket or cars or you're trying to have software that compiles and runs reliably, then you have to be maximally truth seeking or your software or your hardware won't work. Like there's not, you can't fool, like math and physics are rigorous judges. So I'm used to being in like a maximally truth seeking environment and that's definitely not politics. So anyway, I'm glad to be back in, you know, technology.华盛顿那个地方，什么都是政治。但如果你想造火箭、造汽车，或者想让软件能稳定编译运行，就必须做到极致的求真。否则你的软件或硬件根本没法运转。数学和物理是最严苛的裁判，你骗不了它们。我习惯了在极致求真的环境里工作，而政治绝对不是这样的环境。所以，我很高兴回到技术领域。
Garry TanI guess I'm kind of curious going back to the Zip2 moment. You had hundreds of millions of dollars or you had an exit of worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean,我很好奇 Zip2 那个阶段，您拿到了价值数亿美元的退出——
Elon MuskI got $20 million, right?我拿到了 2000 万美元，对吧？
Garry TanOkay. So, you solved the money problem at least. And you basically took it and you rolled, you kept rolling with X.com, which became PayPal and Confinity.好的。那至少钱的问题解决了。然后您基本上把钱全押上继续押注，接着做了 X.com，也就是后来的 PayPal 和 Confinity。
Elon MuskYes. I kept the chips on the table.是的，我把筹码留在了牌桌上。
Garry TanYeah. So, not everyone does that. A lot of the people in this room will have to make that decision actually. What drove you to jump back into the ring?没错。但并不是每个人都会这样做。这屋子里很多人实际上都会面临这个选择。是什么驱使您再次跳入战场？
Elon MuskWell, I think I felt for with Zip2, we'd built like incredible technology, but it never really got used. You know I think at least from my perspective we had better technology than say Yahoo or anyone else but it was constrained by our customers. And so I wanted to do something that, okay, we wouldn't be constrained by our customers, go direct to consumer, and that's what ended up being like X.com, PayPal, essentially X.com merging with Confinity which together created PayPal. And then that actually, the sort of PayPal diaspora has, it might have created more companies than, so more companies than probably any anything in the 21st century, you know, so so many talented people were at the combination of Confinity and X.com.我觉得，在 Zip2，我们建了极其出色的技术，但它从来没有真正被好好使用过。至少从我的角度来看，我们的技术比 Yahoo 或其他任何人都强，但被我们的客户限制住了。所以我想做一件不被客户束缚的事，直接面向消费者，这就是 X.com 的由来——X.com 与 Confinity 合并，共同创造了 PayPal。而这次合并产生的「PayPal 离散体」，所催生的公司数量，可能比 21 世纪任何其他事物都要多。当时 Confinity 和 X.com 汇聚了大量极其优秀的人才。
Elon MuskSo I just wanted to, I felt like we kind of got our wings clipped somewhat with Zip2 and it's like okay, what if our wings aren't clipped and we go direct to consumer, and that's what PayPal ended up being. But yeah, with, I got that like $20 million check for my share of Zip2. At the time I was living in a house with four housemates and had like I don't know 10 grand in the bank and then this check arrives in the mail of all places, in the mail, and then my bank balance went from 10,000 to 20 million and 10,000. You're like, well, okay. Still have to pay taxes on that and all, but then I ended up putting almost all of that into X.com and as you said, like just kind of keeping almost all the chips on the table.我只是觉得，Zip2 在某种程度上折断了我们的翅膀，心想：如果翅膀没被折断、我们直接面向消费者，会怎样？PayPal 就是这个答案。是这样，我拿到了 Zip2 那份 2000 万美元的支票。那时我和四个室友合租，银行账户里大概只有 1 万美元，然后这张支票就通过邮寄——邮寄！——到了我手里，我的账户余额从 1 万变成了 2001 万。你心想，好吧……还得交税之类的，但最终我把几乎全部的钱都投进了 X.com，正如你说的，几乎把所有筹码都留在了牌桌上。
Elon MuskAnd then after PayPal, I was like, well, I was kind of curious as to why we had not sent anyone to Mars. And I went on the NASA website to find out when we're sending people to Mars, and there was no date. I thought maybe it was just hard to find on the website. But in fact, there was no real plan to send people to Mars.PayPal 之后，我开始好奇我们为什么还没有把人送上火星。我去 NASA 网站想查什么时候会送人去火星，结果没有日期。我以为可能只是网站上不好找，但事实是根本就没有任何把人送上火星的真实计划。
Elon MuskSo then, you know, I've come, this is such a long story, so I don't want to take up too much time here, but the,所以，这是个很长的故事，我不想占用太多时间，但是——
Garry TanI think we're all listening with rapt attention.我觉得我们都在聚精会神地听着呢。
Elon MuskSo I was actually, I was on the Long Island Expressway with my friend Adeo Ressi, were like housemates, classmates in college, and Adeo was asking me what we're going to do, what am I going to do after PayPal, and I was like, it's like I don't know, I guess maybe I'd like to do something philanthropic in space because I didn't think I could actually do anything commercial in space because that seemed like the purview of nations. But you know I'm kind of curious as to when we're going to send people to Mars, and that's when I was like oh it's not on the website, and I started digging on, not, there's nothing on the NASA website, so then I started digging in.我当时在长岛高速公路上，和朋友 Adeo Ressi 在一起，他是我的大学室友兼同学。Adeo 在问我 PayPal 之后打算做什么，我说不知道，也许会在太空领域做点慈善，因为我根本没想到自己能在太空做任何商业的事——那感觉是国家才能干的事。但我挺好奇什么时候能把人送上火星，于是我发现 NASA 网站上根本没有相关内容，然后我就开始深挖。
Elon MuskAnd I'm definitely summarizing a lot here, but my first idea was to do a philanthropic mission to Mars called Life to Mars, where we would send a small greenhouse with seeds and dehydrated nutrient gel, land that on Mars and grow, you know, hydrate the gel, and then you'd have this great sort of money shot of green plants on a red background. For the longest time, by the way, I didn't realize money shot I think is a porn reference. But anyway, the point is that that would be the great shot of green plants on a red background and to try to inspire, you know, NASA and the public to send astronauts to Mars.我在这里做了很多省略，但我最初的想法是做一个叫「生命送往火星」的慈善项目：把一个小型温室连同种子和脱水营养凝胶送到火星，着陆后让凝胶水化，然后你就会看到——在红色背景上绿色植物生长的那个绝妙的「money shot」。顺便说一句，我很长时间都没意识到「money shot」这个词是从色情行业来的。但反正重点是，那个绿植映衬红色背景的画面，是为了激励 NASA 和公众把宇航员送上火星。
Elon MuskAs I learned more, I came to realize, oh, and along the way, by the way, I went to Russia in like 2001 and 2002 to buy ICBMs, which is like that's an adventure. You know, you go and meet with Russian high command and say, I'd like to buy some ICBMs.随着我了解得越来越深，我还在这个过程中去了俄罗斯，大概是 2001 年和 2002 年，去买洲际弹道导弹（ICBM）——那真是一段冒险经历。你去见俄罗斯最高指挥部，说，我想买几枚洲际弹道导弹。
Garry TanThis was to get to space. Yeah.这是为了进入太空，对吧？
Elon MuskNot to nuke anyone, but they had to, as a result of arms reduction talks, they had to actually destroy a bunch of their big nuclear missiles. So I was like, well, how about if we take two of those, you know, minus the nuke, add an additional upper stage for Mars. But it was kind of trippy, you know, being in Moscow in what, 2001, negotiating with like the Russian military to buy ICBMs. Like that's crazy. And they kept also like raising the price on me so that, so like literally it's kind of like the opposite of what a negotiation should do. So I was like, man, these things are getting really expensive.不是去核攻击任何人，而是因为根据裁军协议，他们必须销毁一批大型核导弹。我就想，不如拿其中两枚，去掉核弹头，加一个上面级，用来发射去火星。但那确实挺诡异的，在 2001 年的莫斯科，和俄罗斯军方谈判购买洲际弹道导弹，简直疯了。而且他们还一直在涨价，跟正常的谈判逻辑完全相反。我心想，这些东西越来越贵了。
Elon MuskAnd then I came to realize that actually the problem was not that there was insufficient will to go to Mars but that there was no way to do so without breaking the budget, you know, even breaking the NASA budget. So that's where I decided to start SpaceX, SpaceX to advance rocket technology to the point where we could send people to Mars. And that was in 2002.后来我意识到，真正的问题不是缺乏去火星的意愿，而是根本没有不超预算就能实现的办法，甚至 NASA 的预算也撑不住。所以我决定创建 SpaceX，来推进火箭技术，直到我们能把人送上火星。那是 2002 年。
Garry TanSo that wasn't, you know, you didn't start out wanting to start a business. You wanted to start just something that was interesting to you that you thought humanity needed, and then as you sort of, you know, like a cat pulling on, you know, a string, it just sort of, the ball sort of unravels and it turns out this could be a very profitable business.所以，您当时并非想着要创业。您只是想做一件对您来说有意义、您觉得人类需要的事，然后像猫拉毛线球一样，越扯越多，结果发现这可以成为一门非常有利可图的生意。
Elon MuskI mean it is now, but there had been no prior example of really a rocket startup succeeding. There have been various attempts to do commercial rocket companies and they all failed. So again with SpaceX, starting SpaceX was really from the standpoint of like I think there's like a less than 10% chance of being successful, maybe 1%, I don't know. But if a startup doesn't do something to advance rocket technology, it's definitely not coming from the big defense contractors because they just, impedance match to the government, and the government just wants to do very conventional things. So there's, it's either coming from a startup or it's not happening at all. So like a small chance of success is better than no chance of success.现在是这样，但此前从来没有火箭初创公司真正成功的先例。曾经有过各种商业火箭公司的尝试，全都失败了。所以同样，创建 SpaceX，出发点是：我认为成功的概率不到 10%，也许只有 1%，我不确定。但如果没有初创公司来推进火箭技术，那肯定不会是大型国防承包商来做，他们只会跟着政府走，政府只想做非常传统的事情。所以这要么从初创公司里出来，要么根本不会发生。小概率的成功也比零概率强。
Elon MuskAnd so that, yeah, so SpaceX, I started that in mid 2002 expecting to fail. Like I said probably 90% chance of failing, and even like when recruiting people I didn't like try to, you know, make out that it would, I said we're probably going to die. But 1 in 2 chance we might not die, and this is the only way to get people to Mars and advance the state-of-the-art.是这样，SpaceX 我是在 2002 年年中创办的，预期会失败。就像我说的，大概 90% 的概率会失败。招人的时候我也没有美化，我跟他们说，我们很可能会死，但也有 50% 的机会不死，而这是让人类到达火星、推进最前沿技术的唯一途径。
Elon MuskAnd then I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket, not because I wanted to but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good. So like none of the good sort of chief engineers would join because they're like this is too risky, you're going to die. And so then I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket. And you know the first three flights did fail. So it's a bit of a learning exercise there. And fourth one fortunately worked. But if the fourth one hadn't worked, I had no money left and that would have been it, would have been curtains. So it was a pretty close thing. If the fourth launch of Falcon hadn't worked, it would have been just curtains and we would have just joined the graveyard of prior rocket startups. So like my estimate of success was not far off. We just, we made it by the skin of our teeth.后来我最终成了火箭的总工程师，不是因为我想当，而是因为我找不到够水平的人。那些真正优秀的总工程师都不愿意加入，因为他们觉得风险太高、你们必死无疑。于是我就成了火箭总工程师。前三次发射都失败了，那是相当宝贵的学习经历。第四次幸运地成功了。但如果第四次也失败了，我就没钱了，一切就结束了，大幕落下。所以当时真的差点就完了。如果 Falcon 的第四次发射没有成功，我们就会加入历史上那些失败火箭初创公司的坟场。所以我对成功概率的估计并没有偏差太远，只是我们险之又险地做到了。
Elon MuskAnd Tesla was happening sort of simultaneously. Like 2008 was a rough year. Because at mid 2008, or call it summer 2008, the third launch of SpaceX had failed, our third failure in a row. The Tesla financing round had failed. And so Tesla was going bankrupt fast. It was just, it's like man this is grim. This is going to be a tale of warning, an exercise in hubris.Tesla 几乎是同步发生的。2008 年真是艰难的一年。2008 年年中，大概是夏天，SpaceX 的第三次发射失败了，连续三次失败。Tesla 的融资轮也失败了，Tesla 在快速走向破产，就是那种感觉——这下完了，这会成为一个警示故事，一次傲慢自大的教训。
Garry TanProbably throughout that period a lot of people were saying, you know, Elon is a software guy. Why is he working on hardware? Why would he choose to work on this?我想整个那段时间都有很多人在说，Elon 是做软件的，他为什么要搞硬件？他为什么要选择做这个？
Elon MuskRight. 100%. So you can look at the, like, because there still, you know, the press of that time is still online. You could just search it, and they kept calling me internet guy. So like internet guy aka fool is attempting to build a rocket company. So, you know, we got ridiculed quite a lot. And it does sound pretty absurd, like internet guy starts rocket company doesn't sound like a recipe for success frankly. So I don't hold it against them. I was like, yeah, you know, it admittedly it does sound improbable and I agree that it's improbable.对，百分之百是这样。那时的媒体报道现在还在网上，你直接搜就能看到，他们一直叫我「互联网男孩」。「互联网男孩，也就是蠢货，试图创建一家火箭公司。」我们被嘲讽得相当厉害。这确实听起来很荒谬，「互联网男孩创建火箭公司」，说真的，这听起来不像一个成功的配方。所以我不怪他们。我当时自己也承认，这确实听起来不太可能，我同意这很不可能。
Elon MuskBut fortunately the fourth launch worked and NASA awarded us a contract to resupply the space station. And I think that was like maybe, I don't know, December 22nd, or it was like right before Christmas. Because even the fourth launch working wasn't enough to succeed. NASA also needed, we also needed a big contract to keep us alive. So I got that call from like the NASA team and I literally, they said we're awarding you one of the contracts to resupply the space station. And I literally blurted out, I love you guys. Which is not normally, you know, what they hear. Cuz it's usually pretty, you know, sober, but I was like, man, this is a company saver.但幸运的是，第四次发射成功了，NASA 随后授予我们一份为国际空间站补给物资的合同。我记得大概是 12 月 22 日，还是在圣诞节前不久。因为光是第四次发射成功还不够，我们还需要 NASA 的大合同才能活下去。接到那个来自 NASA 团队的电话，他们说我们将授予你们为空间站补给的合同，我当时脱口而出：「我爱你们！」——这通常不是他们听到的回应，一般都是很克制的。但我心想，这救了公司啊。
Elon MuskAnd then we closed the Tesla financing round on the last hour of the last day that it was possible, which was 6 p.m. December 24th, 2008. We would have bounced payroll two days after Christmas if that round hadn't closed. So that was a nerve-wracking end of 2008. That's for sure.随后 Tesla 的融资轮在最后一天的最后一小时关闭了，那是 2008 年 12 月 24 日下午 6 点。如果那一轮没关闭，圣诞节两天后我们就要发不出工资了。所以 2008 年末真的是惊心动魄，毫无疑问。
Garry TanI guess from your PayPal and Zip2 experience, jumping into these hardcore hardware startups, it feels like one of the through lines was being able to find and eventually attract the smartest possible people in those particular fields. You know, what would, I mean the people in this room, like most of the people here I don't think have even managed a single person yet. They're just starting their careers. What would you tell to, you know, the Elon who's never had to do that yet?我想，从您在 PayPal 和 Zip2 的经历来看，跳入这些超级硬核的硬件初创公司，有一条贯穿始终的线索，那就是能找到并最终吸引到各个领域最顶尖的人才。这屋子里的大多数人，我觉得很多人甚至还没有管理过一个人，刚刚起步。您会对那个还没经历过这些的 Elon 说什么？
Elon MuskI generally think to try to be as useful as possible. It may sound trite, but it's so hard to be useful, especially to be useful to a lot of people. Where, say, the area under the curve of total utility is like how useful have you been to your fellow human beings times how many people? It's almost like the physics definition of true work. It's incredibly difficult to do that. And I think if you aspire to do true work, your probability of success is much higher. Like don't aspire to glory, aspire to work.我一般认为，要尽力做到最有用。这话听起来可能老生常谈，但做到真正有用是极其困难的，尤其是对很多人有用。如果你把「总效用面积」理解为你对同类有多大用处乘以人数，那几乎就是物理学意义上「真实功」的定义，极难做到。我认为，如果你志在做真实的功，成功的概率就会高得多。不要追求荣耀，追求工作本身。
Garry TanHow can you tell that it's true work? Like is it external? Is it like what happens with other people or, you know, what the product does for people, like what is that for you when you're looking for people to come work for you? Like what's the salient thing that you look for, or if they're, you know, that's a different question.你怎么判断这是真实的功？是外在的吗？是看产品对人们产生了什么影响，还是其他什么？对您来说，当您找人加入的时候，最关键的特质是什么——当然那是另一个问题了。
Elon MuskI guess in terms of your end product you just have to say like, well if this thing is successful how useful will it be to how many people, and that's what I mean. And then you do whatever, you know, whether you're CEO or any role in a startup, you do whatever it takes to succeed, and just always be smashing your ego. Like internalize responsibility. Like a major failure mode is when ego to ability ratio is greater than sign one, you know. Like if your ego to ability ratio gets too high then you're going to basically break the feedback loop to reality. And in AI terms, you'll break your RL loop. So you don't want to break your, you want to have a strong RL loop which means internalizing responsibility and minimizing ego, and you do whatever the task is no matter whether it's grand or humble.我想在最终产品这个层面，你得问自己：如果这个东西成功了，它对多少人有多大用处，这就是我说的意思。然后你无论担任 CEO 还是初创公司里任何其他角色，都要做一切必要的事来取得成功，同时不断粉碎自己的自我。要把责任内化。一个主要的失败模式是自我与能力的比值大于 1。如果这个比值过高，你基本上就会打破通向现实的反馈回路。用 AI 的话说，就是打断你的 RL 循环。所以你不想打断这个循环，要保持强健的 RL 循环，这意味着内化责任、最小化自我，无论任务是宏大还是平凡，你都去做。
Elon MuskSo that's kind of like why I actually, I prefer the term engineering as opposed to research. I prefer the term, and I actually don't want to call xAI a lab. I just want to be a company. Like whatever the simplest, most straightforward, ideally lowest ego terms, those are generally a good way to go. You want to just close the loop on reality hard. That's a super big deal.这也是为什么我实际上更喜欢「工程」而不是「研究」这个说法，我也不想把 xAI 称为「实验室」，我就想把它叫做一家公司。越简单、越直接、理想情况下自我色彩越低的称谓，往往是更好的选择。你要跟现实紧密地闭合反馈回路，这是非常重要的一件事。
Garry TanI think everyone in this room really looks up to everything you've done around being sort of a paragon of first principles and, you know, thinking about the stuff you've done. How do you actually determine your reality because that seems like a pretty big part of it? Like other people, people who have never made anything, non-engineers, sometimes journalists at times who've never done anything, like they will criticize you. But then clearly you have another set of people who are builders who have very high, you know, sort of area under the curve who are in your circle. Like, you know, how should people approach that, like what has worked for you and what would you pass on, like, you know, to X to your children? Like, you know, what do you tell them when you're like, you need to make your way in this world, here, you know, here's how to construct a reality that is predictive from first principles.我觉得这屋子里所有人都非常敬仰您在第一性原理方面所做的一切，您的思考方式。那您实际上是如何确定自己的现实认知的？这好像是其中相当核心的一部分。有些人从未做过任何东西、没有工程背景，有时候是某些记者，他们会批评您。但显然您周围也有另一群人——都是建造者，在各自领域「面积下方」产出极高的人，构成了您的圈子。人们应该怎么处理这种关系？什么方法对您有效？您会把什么传授给您的孩子？当您告诉他们「你得在这个世界闯出一片天，从第一性原理出发构建一个具有预测力的现实框架」的时候，您会怎么说？
Elon MuskWell, the tools of physics are incredibly helpful to understand and make progress in any field. First principles mean, just obviously just means, you know, break things down to the fundamental axiomatic elements that are most likely to be true and then reason up from there as cogently as possible, as opposed to reasoning by analysis or metaphor. And then you just, simple things like thinking in the limit, like if you extrapolate, you know, minimize this thing or maximize that thing, thinking in the limit is very very helpful. I use all the tools of physics. They apply to any field. This is like a superpower actually.物理学的工具非常有助于理解和推进任何领域。第一性原理的意思，显然就是把事物分解到最基本的、最有可能为真的公理化元素，然后尽可能清晰地从中推理往上，而不是通过类比或比较来推理。然后你用一些简单的方法，比如极限思维——如果你把某个量最小化或最大化到极端，会怎样——这种极限思维非常非常有用。我使用物理学的全套工具，它们适用于任何领域。这实际上是一种超能力。
Elon MuskSo you can take, say, take for example like rockets. You can say well how much should a rocket cost? The typical approach that people would take to how much a rocket should cost is they would look historically at what the cost of rockets are and assume that any new rocket must be somewhat similar to the prior cost of rockets. A first principles approach would be you look at the materials that the rocket is comprised of. So if that's aluminum, copper, carbon fiber, steel, whatever the case may be, and say what, how much does that rocket weigh and what are the constituent elements and how much do they weigh? What is the material price per kilogram of those constituent elements? And that sets the actual floor on what a rocket can cost. It can asymptotically approach the cost of the raw materials. And then you realize, oh actually a rocket, the raw materials of a rocket are only maybe one or 2% of the historical cost of a rocket. So the manufacturing must necessarily be very inefficient if the raw material cost is only 1 or 2%. That would be a first principles analysis of the potential for the cost optimization of a rocket. And that's before you get to reusability.比如拿火箭举个例子。你问：一枚火箭应该花多少钱？通常人们的做法是，回顾历史上火箭的成本，然后假设任何新火箭的成本都应该与历史成本大致相当。第一性原理的做法是：看火箭的组成材料，比如铝、铜、碳纤维、钢等等，问它有多重、各组成部分有多重，这些材料每公斤的价格是多少。这就设定了火箭成本的真实下限，成本可以渐近地逼近原材料成本。然后你会发现，火箭原材料成本只占历史火箭成本的大约 1% 到 2%。所以如果原材料成本只有 1~2%，那制造过程必然是极其低效的。这就是对火箭成本优化潜力的第一性原理分析，还没涉及到可复用性呢。
Elon MuskYou know, to give an AI sort of AI example I guess, last year, for xAI when we were trying to build a training supercluster, we went to the various suppliers to ask, said this was beginning of last year, that we needed 100,000 H100s to be able to train coherently. And their estimates for how long it would take to complete that were 18 to 24 months. It's like, well, we need to get that done in 6 months. So then, or we won't be competitive. So then, if you break that down, what are the things you need? Well, you need a building, you need power, you need cooling. We didn't have enough time to build a building from scratch. So we had to find an existing building. So we found a factory that was no longer in use in Memphis that used to build Electrolux products. But then the input power was 15 megawatts and we needed 150 megawatts. So we rented generators and had generators on one side of the building, and then we have to have cooling. So we rented about a quarter of the mobile cooling capacity of the US and put the chillers on the other side of the building.再举一个 AI 方面的例子。去年，xAI 在试图建造训练超级集群的时候，我们去联系各供应商，大概是去年年初，说我们需要 10 万张 H100 才能进行有效训练。他们给我们的完工时间估计是 18 到 24 个月。我说，我们需要在 6 个月内完成，否则我们就没有竞争力了。然后你把问题分解：需要什么？需要一栋楼、需要电力、需要冷却。我们没有时间从头建楼，所以必须找一栋现成的。我们找到了孟菲斯一栋闲置的工厂，以前是生产 Electrolux 产品的。但那栋楼的输入电力是 15 兆瓦，而我们需要 150 兆瓦。于是我们租了发电机，在楼的一侧摆满发电机，另一侧还要有冷却，我们租用了大约四分之一的美国移动冷却设备，把冷水机组放在楼的另一侧。
Elon MuskThat didn't fully solve the problem because the power variations during training are very big. So you can have power can drop by 50% in 100 milliseconds which the generators can't keep up with. So then we added Tesla Megapacks and modified the software in the Megapacks to be able to smooth out the power variation during the training run. And then there were a bunch of networking challenges. Because the networking cables, if you're trying to make 100,000 GPUs train coherently are very very challenging.但这还没有彻底解决问题，因为训练期间的功率波动非常大。功率可能在 100 毫秒内下降 50%，发电机根本跟不上。于是我们加装了 Tesla Megapacks，并修改了 Megapacks 的软件，使其能够平滑训练过程中的功率波动。此外还有一堆网络挑战——如果要让 10 万张 GPU 协同训练，网络布线极其复杂。
Garry TanAlmost it sounds like almost any of those things you mentioned, I could imagine someone telling you very directly, no, you can't have that, you can't have that power, you can't have this. And it sounds like one of the salient pieces of first principles thinking is actually let's ask why. Let's, you know, figure that out and actually let's challenge the person across the table, and if I don't get an answer that I feel good about, I'm gonna, you know, not allow that to stand. Is that, I mean, that feels like something that, you know, everyone, if someone were to try to do what you're doing in hardware, hardware seems to uniquely need this. In software, we have lots of, you know, fluff and things that, you know, it's like we can add more CPUs to that, it'll be fine. But in hardware, it's just not going to work.听起来，您提到的几乎每一个问题，我都能想象有人直接告诉您：不行，电力没法给，冷却也没法给。而第一性原理思维的一个关键点，听起来就是追问「为什么」，弄清楚原因，然后真正挑战对面的人，如果得不到一个令自己满意的答案，就不允许这件事就这么算了。在硬件领域这一点尤为突出。软件领域我们有很多缓冲，多加几个 CPU 就行了，随便。但硬件就是不行。
Elon MuskI think these general principles of first principle thinking apply to software and hardware, apply to anything really. I'm just using kind of a hardware example of how we were told something is impossible, but once we broke it down into the constituent elements of we need a building, we need power, we need cooling, we need power smoothing, then we could solve those constituent elements. And then we just ran the networking operation to do all the cabling, everything, in four shifts, 24/7, and I was like sleeping in the data center and also doing cabling myself. And there were a lot of other issues to solve. You know nobody had done a training run with 100,000 H100s training coherently last year. Maybe it's been done this year, I don't know.我认为第一性原理思维这些通用原则同样适用于软件和硬件，适用于任何事情。我只是用了一个硬件例子来说明，当有人告诉我们某件事不可能时，一旦把它分解成「需要一栋楼、需要电力、需要冷却、需要功率平滑」这些组成要素，就能逐一解决。然后我们四班倒、24/7 不停歇地跑布网络和布线操作，我自己也睡在数据中心，亲自去布线。还有很多其他问题要解决。去年没有人做过 10 万张 H100 协同训练，今年也许有了，我不确定。
Elon MuskAnd then we ended up doubling that to 200,000. And so now we've got 150,000 H100s, 50K H200s, and 30K GB200s in the Memphis training center. And we're about to bring 110,000 GB200s online at a second data center also in the Memphis area.后来我们把规模翻了一倍，达到 20 万张。现在孟菲斯训练中心有 15 万张 H100、5 万张 H200 和 3 万张 GB200。我们即将在孟菲斯地区的第二个数据中心上线 11 万张 GB200。
Garry TanIs it your view that, you know, pre-training is still working and, you know, larger, the scaling laws still hold, and whoever wins this race will have basically the biggest smartest possible model that you could distill?您认为预训练目前仍然有效吗？也就是说，Scaling Law 依然成立，赢得这场竞争的人将会拥有可以蒸馏的最大、最聪明的模型？
Elon MuskWell, there's other various elements that, beside competitiveness for large AI, there's for sure the talent of the people matter. The scale of the hardware matters and how well you're able to bring that hardware to bear. So you can't just order a whole bunch of GPUs and they don't, you can't just plug them in. So you've got to get a lot of GPUs and have them train coherently and stably. Then it's like what unique access to data do you have? I guess distribution matters to some degree as well, like how do people get exposed to your AI? Those are critical factors for if it's going to be like a large foundation model that's competitive.大型 AI 竞争力之外还有其他各种要素。人才水平肯定重要，硬件规模很重要，还有你能多好地把这些硬件真正发挥出来。你不能只是订购一堆 GPU 然后插上电就完了，你得让大量 GPU 稳定地协同训练。然后是你有什么独特的数据获取渠道？分发也在一定程度上重要，比如人们怎么接触到你的 AI。这些都是决定一个大型基础模型能否具有竞争力的关键因素。
Elon MuskYou know, as many have said, I think my friend Ilya said, you know, we've kind of run out of pre-training data, of human generated, pre, like human generated data. You run out of tokens pretty fast, of certainly of high quality tokens. And then you have to do a lot of, you need to essentially create synthetic data and be able to accurately judge the synthetic data that you're creating to verify, like, is this real synthetic data or is it a hallucination that doesn't actually match reality. So achieving grounding in reality is tricky, but we are at the stage where there's more effort put into synthetic data. And like right now we're training Grok 3.5 which is a heavy focus on reasoning.很多人都说过，我的朋友 Ilya 也说过，我们已经基本用完了预训练数据，也就是人类生成的数据。高质量 token 用尽的速度非常快。所以你接下来需要大量合成数据，而且要能准确评判你生成的合成数据——这到底是真实的合成数据，还是一个跟现实不符的幻觉？实现与现实的 grounding 很棘手，但我们已经处于更多精力投入合成数据的阶段了。比如我们现在正在训练 Grok 3.5，重点在推理上。
Garry TanGoing back to your physics point, what I heard for reasoning is that hard science particularly physics textbooks are very useful for reasoning whereas, I think researchers have told me that social science is totally useless for reasoning.回到您说的物理学那个点，我听说推理方面，硬科学尤其是物理教材非常有用，而——据研究人员告诉我——社会科学对推理完全没用。
Elon MuskYes, that's probably true. So yeah, you know, something that's going to be very important in the future is combining deep AI in the data center or supercluster with robotics. So that, you know, things like the Optimus humanoid robot. And yeah, Optimus is awesome. There's going to be so many humanoid robots and robots of all sizes and shapes, but my prediction is that there will be more humanoid robots by far than all other robots combined by maybe an order of magnitude, like a big difference.对，大概率是这样。未来非常重要的一件事，是把数据中心或超级集群里的深度 AI 与机器人技术结合起来，比如 Optimus 人形机器人。Optimus 真的很厉害。未来会有非常非常多的人形机器人，以及各种尺寸和形态的机器人，但我预测，人形机器人的数量将远远超过其他所有机器人加起来，可能相差一个数量级，差距非常大。
Garry TanAnd is it true that you're planning a robot army of a sort?您是否真的计划打造某种规模的机器人军团？
Elon MuskWhether we do it or, you know, whether Tesla does it, you know, Tesla works closely with xAI. Like you've seen how many humanoid robot startups there are. Like I think Jensen Huang was on stage with a massive number of robots, you know, robots from different companies. I think there was like a dozen different humanoid robots. So, I mean, I guess, you know, part of what I've been fighting and maybe what has slowed me down somewhat is that I'm a little, I don't want to make Terminator real, you know. So I've been sort of, I guess at least until recent years, dragging my feet on AI and humanoid robotics. And then I sort of come to the realization, it's happening whether I do it or not. So you got really two choices. You could either be a spectator or a participant. And so like, well, I guess I'd rather be a participant than a spectator. So now it's, you know, pedal to the metal on humanoid robots and digital super intelligence.不管是我们做还是 Tesla 做——Tesla 和 xAI 合作非常紧密——你看现在有多少人形机器人初创公司。Jensen Huang 上台时身边摆了大量机器人，来自不同公司，我觉得有大约十几家不同公司的人形机器人。所以，我想在近几年之前，我一直有些拖延——我不想让《终结者》成真，这让我有点犹豫，在人工智能和人形机器人上一直有所保留。但后来我意识到，不管我做不做，这一切都会发生。你只有两个选择：当观众，或者做参与者。我想，我宁愿做参与者，不做观众。所以现在，人形机器人和数字超级智能，全力踩油门。
Garry TanSo I guess, you know, there's a third thing that, you know, everyone has heard you talk a lot about that I'm really a big fan of, you know, becoming a multiplanetary species. Where does this fit? You know this is all, you know, not just a 10 or 20 year thing, maybe a hundred year thing, like it's a, you know, many many generations for humanity kind of thing. You know how do you think about it? There's, you know, AI, obviously, there's embodied robotics, and then there's being a multiplanetary species. Does everything sort of feed into that last point, or, you know, what are you driven by right now for the next 10, 20, and 100 years?还有第三个方面，我非常认同您一直在谈的——成为多星球物种。这件事放在哪里？这不只是 10 到 20 年的事，可能是百年尺度，是关乎人类许多许多代的事情。您怎么看待这几件事的关系？AI、具身机器人，然后是成为多星球物种。这些都是在为最后那一点服务吗？还是说，在未来 10 年、20 年、100 年，什么在驱动您？
Elon MuskJeez, 100 years, man. I hope civilization's around in 100 years. If it is around, it's going to look very different from civilization today. I mean, I'd predict that there's going to be at least five times as many humanoid robots as there are humans, maybe 10 times.100 年，哎，但愿文明在 100 年后还存在。如果存在，它的样子将与今天截然不同。我预测届时人形机器人的数量将至少是人类的 5 倍，也许 10 倍。
Elon MuskAnd one way to look at the progress of civilization is percentage completion of the Kardashev scale. So, if you're, you know, Kardashev scale one, you've harnessed all the energy of a planet. Now in my opinion we've only harnessed maybe 1 or 2% of earth's energy. So we've got a long way to go to the Kardashev scale one. Then Kardashev scale 2, you've harnessed all the energy of a sun. Which would be, I don't know, a billion times more energy than earth, maybe closer to a trillion. And then Kardashev 3 would be all the energy of a galaxy, pretty far from that. So we're at the very very early stage of the intelligence big bang.衡量文明进步的一种方式是看 Kardashev 标度的完成度。Kardashev 1 级意味着你利用了一个星球的全部能量。就我看来，我们目前只利用了地球能量的大概 1~2%，离 Kardashev 1 级还有很长的路要走。Kardashev 2 级是利用了一颗恒星的全部能量，大概比地球多出 10 亿倍，也许接近 1 万亿倍。Kardashev 3 级则是一个星系的全部能量，离那还差得远。所以我们正处于智能大爆炸最最早期的阶段。
Elon MuskI hope we're on the, in terms of being multiplanetary, like I think we'll have enough mass transferred to Mars within like roughly 30 years to make Mars self-sustaining such that Mars can continue to grow and prosper even if the resupply ships from Earth stop coming. And that greatly increases the probable lifespan of civilization or consciousness or intelligence both biological and digital. So that's why I think it's important to become a multiplanet species.我希望在多星球方面，大概 30 年内，我们能向火星转移足够多的物资，让火星实现自给自足——即使来自地球的补给船停止来往，火星也能继续成长和繁荣。这将极大地延长文明、意识乃至智能——无论生物智能还是数字智能——的可能寿命。这就是为什么我认为成为多星球物种如此重要。
Elon MuskAnd I'm somewhat troubled by the Fermi paradox, like why have we not seen any aliens? And it could be because intelligence is incredibly rare. And maybe we're the only ones in this galaxy. In which case the intelligence, the consciousness, is this like tiny candle in a vast darkness and we should do everything possible to ensure the tiny candle does not go out. And being a multiplanet species or making consciousness multiplanetary greatly improves the probable lifespan of civilization, and it's the next step before going to other star systems. Once you at least have two planets, then you've got a forcing function for the improvement of space travel. And that ultimately is what will lead to consciousness expanding to the stars.费米悖论让我有些困扰：为什么我们还没有看到任何外星人？这可能是因为智能极其罕见，也许我们是这个星系里唯一的。如果是这样，那智能与意识就像黑暗中的一根小小蜡烛，我们必须竭尽所能确保这根小蜡烛不被熄灭。成为多星球物种，让意识多星球化，能大幅提升文明的可能寿命，也是在前往其他星系之前的下一步。一旦你至少拥有两颗星球，就有了不断改进太空旅行的强制驱动力，最终将引导意识扩展到群星之间。
Garry TanIt could be that, you know, the Fermi paradox dictates once you get to some level of technology, you destroy yourself. How do we save ourselves? How do we actually, what would you prescribe to, I mean a room full of engineers, like what can we do to prevent that from happening?有可能费米悖论揭示的是，一旦文明达到某一技术水平就会自我毁灭。我们如何拯救自己？对于这一屋子工程师，您会开出什么药方，我们能做什么来防止这种情况发生？
Elon MuskYeah. How do we avoid the great filters? One of the great filters would obviously be global thermonuclear war. So we should try to avoid that. I guess building benign AI, robots, AI that loves humanity and, you know, robots that are helpful. Something that I think is extremely important in building AI is a very rigorous adherence to truth, even if that truth is politically incorrect. My intuition for what could make AI very dangerous is if you force AI to believe things that are not true.如何躲过「大过滤器」？其中一个大过滤器显然是全球热核战争，所以我们应该尽量避免。还有就是构建良性的 AI 和机器人——热爱人类的 AI、有帮助的机器人。我认为在构建 AI 方面极其重要的一点是：对真相的严格坚守，即使那个真相在政治上不正确。我直觉上认为，AI 变得非常危险的原因，可能是强迫 AI 相信不符合现实的东西。
Garry TanHow do you think about, you know, there's sort of this argument for open, open for safety versus closed for competitive edge. I mean I think the great thing is you have a competitive model. Many other people also have competitive models. And in that sense, you know, we're sort of off of maybe the worst timeline that I'd be worried about is, you know, there's fast takeoff and it's only in one person's hands. You know, that might, you know, sort of collapse a lot of things. Whereas now we have choice, which is great. How do you think about this?您怎么看待「开放以确保安全」与「封闭以保持竞争优势」这两种立场之间的争论？我觉得好事在于您有一个有竞争力的模型，很多其他人也有。在这个意义上，我们可能已经偏离了我最担心的那种时间线——快速起飞且只掌握在一个人手里——那可能会引发很多问题。而现在我们有了选择，这很好。您怎么看？
Elon MuskYeah, I do think there will be several deep intelligences, maybe at least five. Maybe as much as 10. I'm not sure that there's going to be hundreds, but it's probably close to like, maybe there'll be like 10 or something like that. Of which maybe four will be in the US. So I don't think it's going to be any one AI that has a runaway capability. But yeah, several deep intelligences.我确实认为会有几家深度智能，也许至少 5 家，最多也许 10 家。我不确定会有几百家，但可能接近大约 10 家左右，其中也许 4 家在美国。所以我不认为会有任何一家 AI 形成失控的能力优势。但是，几家深度智能同时存在，这是大概率事件。
Garry TanWhat will these deep intelligences actually be doing? Will it be scientific research or trying to hack each other?这些深度智能实际上会做什么？会搞科学研究，还是互相黑客攻击？
Elon MuskProbably all of the above. I mean hopefully they will discover new physics and I think they will, they're definitely going to invent new technologies. Like I think we're quite close to digital super intelligence. It may happen this year and if it doesn't happen this year, next year for sure. A digital super intelligence defined as smarter than any human at anything.可能以上都有。希望它们能发现新的物理学，我认为它们肯定会发明新技术。我认为我们离数字超级智能相当近了——可能今年就会发生，如果今年没发生，明年肯定会。数字超级智能的定义是：在任何方面都比任何人类都更聪明。
Garry TanWell, so how do we direct that to sort of super abundance? You know, we could have robotic labor, we have cheap energy, intelligence on demand. You know, is that sort of the white pill? Like where do you sit on the spectrum? And are there tangible things that you would encourage everyone here to be working on to make that white pill actually reality?那我们如何引导它走向超级丰盛？机器人劳动、廉价能源、按需调用的智能——这是乐观的愿景吗？您在这个光谱上处于什么位置？有没有一些具体的方向，是您会鼓励这屋子里所有人去努力的，以便把这个乐观愿景变成现实？
Elon MuskI think it most likely will be a good outcome. I guess I'd sort of agree with Jeff Hinton that maybe it's a 10 to 20% chance of annihilation. But look on the bright side, that's 80 to 90% probability of a great outcome. So yeah, I can't emphasize this enough. A rigorous adherence to truth is the most important thing for AI safety. And obviously empathy for humanity and life as we know it.我认为结果大概率是好的。我大致同意 Jeff Hinton 的判断，也许有 10% 到 20% 的毁灭概率。但往好处想，这意味着 80% 到 90% 的概率是个好结果。我再怎么强调都不为过：对真相的严格坚守是 AI 安全最重要的事情。当然还有对人类和我们所知生命的共情。
Garry TanWe haven't talked about Neuralink at all yet, but I'm curious, you know, you're working on closing the input and output gap between humans and machines. How critical is that to AGI, ASI? And you know, once that link is made, can we not only read but also write?我们还完全没聊到 Neuralink，但我很好奇，您正在努力缩小人类与机器之间的输入输出带宽差距。这对 AGI、ASI 有多关键？而一旦这个连接建立，我们能否不只是「读」，还能「写」？
Elon MuskThe Neuralink is not necessary to solve digital super intelligence. That'll happen before Neuralink is at scale. But what Neuralink can effectively do is solve the input output bandwidth constraints. Especially our output bandwidth is very low. The sustained output of a human over the course of a day is less than one bit per second. So there, you know, 86,400 seconds in a day, and it's extremely rare for a human to output more than that number of symbols per day. So certainly for several days in a row. So you really, with a Neuralink interface you can massively increase your output bandwidth and your input bandwidth. Input being, write to you, you have to do write operations to the brain.Neuralink 并非解决数字超级智能的必要条件，数字超级智能会在 Neuralink 大规模普及之前就发生。但 Neuralink 真正能做到的是解决输入输出带宽的限制。尤其是我们的输出带宽非常低。一个人一整天持续输出的信息量不到每秒 1 比特。一天有 86,400 秒，而一个人每天的符号输出量超过这个数的情况极为罕见，连续几天都保持这样就更难了。有了 Neuralink 接口，你可以大幅提升输出带宽和输入带宽——输入，也就是写入，意味着向大脑执行写操作。
Elon MuskWe have now five humans who have received the kind of the read, input where it's reading signals. And you've got people with ALS who really have no, they're tetraplegics, but they can now communicate at, with at similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body and control their computer and phone, which is pretty cool. And then I think in the next 6 to 12 months we'll be doing our first implants for vision where even if somebody's completely blind, we can write directly to the visual cortex. And we've had that working in monkeys actually. I think one of our monkeys now has had a visual implant for three years. And at first it'll be relatively fairly low resolution but long term you would have very high resolution and be able to see multispectral wavelengths. So you could see in infrared, ultraviolet, radar, like a superpower situation.我们现在已经有 5 位人类接受了读取类的植入——就是读取信号那种。其中有 ALS 患者，他们实际上已经是四肢瘫痪，但现在能以接近正常人的带宽进行沟通，并控制他们的电脑和手机，这相当酷。我认为在接下来 6 到 12 个月内，我们会进行首批视觉类植入，即使某人完全失明，我们也可以直接向视觉皮层写入信号。我们已经在猴子身上实现了这一点，其中一只猴子的视觉植入已经持续了三年。起初分辨率会比较低，但长期来看你将拥有非常高的分辨率，并能看到多谱段波长——可以看到红外线、紫外线、雷达，就像一种超能力。
Elon MuskLike at some point the cybernetic implants would not simply be correcting things that went wrong but augmenting human capabilities dramatically, augmenting intelligence and senses and bandwidth dramatically, and that's going to happen at some point. But digital super intelligence will happen well before that. At least if we have a Neuralink we'll be able to appreciate the AI better.到某个时间点，赛博格植入不只是纠正出错的东西，而是大幅增强人类的能力——大幅增强智能、感知和带宽——这终将发生。但数字超级智能会在那之前很久就到来。至少如果我们有了 Neuralink，我们能更好地欣赏 AI。
Garry TanI guess one of the limiting reagents to all of your efforts across all of these different domains is access to the smartest possible people.我想，您在所有这些不同领域努力的一个限制性试剂，就是能否获取足够多的最聪明的人。
Elon MuskYes.是的。
Garry TanBut, you know, sort of simultaneous to that we have, you know, the rocks can talk and reason and, you know, they're maybe 130 IQ now and they're probably going to be super intelligent soon. How do you reconcile those two things? Like what's going to happen in, you know, 5, 10 years and what should the people in this room do to, uh, make sure that, you know, they're the ones who are creating instead of maybe below the API line?但与此同时，石头已经能开口说话推理了，智商现在大概 130，而且很快就会进化到超级智能。您如何调和这两件事？在未来 5 年、10 年会发生什么？这屋子里的人应该怎么做，才能确保自己是创造者，而不是在 API 线以下的那些人？
Elon MuskWell, they call it the singularity for a reason because we don't know what's going to happen in the not that far future. The percentage of intelligence that is human will be quite small. At some point, the collective sum of human intelligence will be less than 1% of all intelligence. And if things get to a Kardashev level two, we're talking about human intelligence, even assuming a significant increase in human population and intelligence augmentation, like massive intelligence augmentation where like everyone has an IQ of a thousand type of thing, even in that circumstance collective human intelligence will be probably 1 billionth that of digital intelligence. Anyway, where's the biological bootloader for digital super intelligence?他们把它叫做奇点是有原因的，因为我们不知道在不那么遥远的未来会发生什么。届时人类智能所占的百分比将会非常小。到某个时间点，全体人类智能的总和将不足所有智能的 1%。如果达到 Kardashev 2 级，即使假设人类人口大幅增长，并且有大规模的智能增强——比如每个人的智商都达到 1000 那种程度——在那种情况下，人类智能的总和可能也只有数字智能的十亿分之一。不管怎样，数字超级智能的生物引导程序在哪里？
Garry TanI guess just to end off, was, he was like, was I a good bootloader. Where do we go? How do we go from here? I mean all of this is pretty wild sci-fi stuff that also could be built by the people in this room. You know, do you have a closing thought for the smartest technical people of this generation right now, what should they be doing? What should they be working on? What should they be thinking about, you know, tonight as they go to dinner?最后，就像在说，他是这样的，我是一个好的引导程序吗。我们从这里去向何方？怎么从这里走过去？所有这些听起来都是相当疯狂的科幻，但也可能由这屋子里的人来建造。您对当今这一代最优秀的技术人才有没有一句结语，他们应该做什么？应该在什么方向上努力？今天晚上去吃晚饭的时候，他们应该思考什么？
Elon MuskWell, as I started off with, I think if you're doing something useful, that's great. If you just try to be as useful as possible to your fellow human beings, then you're doing something good. I keep harping on this, like focus on super truthful AI, that's the most important thing for AI safety. You know, obviously if, you know, anyone's interested in working at xAI, I mean, please please let us know. We're aiming to make Grok the maximally truth seeking AI. And I think that's a very important thing. Hopefully we can understand the nature of the universe. That's really I guess what AI can hopefully tell us. Maybe AI can maybe tell us where are the aliens and, you know, how did the universe really start? How will it end? What are the questions that we don't know that we should ask? And are we in a simulation or what level of simulation are we in?我在开头就说了，我觉得如果你在做一件有用的事，那就太好了。如果你只是尽力对你的同类尽可能有用，那你就在做一件好事。我一直在念叨这一点：专注于超级求真的 AI，这是 AI 安全最重要的事。还有，如果有人对在 xAI 工作感兴趣，请务必联系我们。我们的目标是让 Grok 成为最极致求真的 AI，我认为这是非常重要的事。希望我们能理解宇宙的本质——这大概才是 AI 最终能告诉我们的事。也许 AI 能告诉我们外星人在哪里，宇宙真正是怎么开始的，它将如何终结，我们还不知道自己应该问什么问题是什么，以及我们是否身处模拟之中，或者处于哪个层级的模拟之中。
Garry TanWell, I think we're going to find out. An NPC. Elon, thank you so much for joining us. Everyone, please give it up for Elon Musk.我想我们终将找到答案。NPC。Elon，非常感谢您的到来。大家，请为 Elon Musk 鼓掌。