Elon Musk speaks at VivaTech, France's biggest technology tradeshow

#ElonMusk #SkyNews #Musk  

SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel for more videos: http://www.youtube.com/skynews 

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/skynews 
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skynews 
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skynews 
Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@skynews 

For more content go to http://news.sky.com and download our apps: 
Apple https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sky-news/id316391924?mt=8 
Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bskyb.skynews.android&hl=en_GB 

Sky News Daily podcast is available for free here: https://podfollow.com/skynewsdaily/

Sky News videos are now available in Spanish here/Los video de Sky News están disponibles en español aquí: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzG5BnqHO8oNlrPDW9CYJog 

Sky News videos are also available in German here/Hier können Sie außerdem Sky News-Videos auf Deutsch finden: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHYg31l2xrF-Bj859nsOfnA 

To enquire about licensing Sky News content, you can find more information here: https://news.sky.com/info/library-sales

It's a brand for innovation, for ambition, for- A perfume?

This is the agreement that you made with the Arno family a few hours ago.

I mean, it's, I mean, really, it brands itself.

And you are the origin of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, to name a few, and even OpenAI.

So you love taking risks, and you are going always against the tide and the popular wisdom.

Now there is Now there is a bet of the 44 billion US dollar question, which is will you still be right with Twitter?

I don't know if, you know, listen, if I'm so smart, why did I pay so much for Twitter then?

So, as I'm not a journalist, I'm not trying to get headlines and to have provocative response and to make a scoop.

But nevertheless, if you wish to do that, it is authorized.

So we are expecting that you will really make the show because everyone come here to see you, to listen to you, and to get some of the magic that you have.

Well, I'm honored that you at all went to listen to what I have to say.

It's great to see the crowd and I know you guys seem awesome.

But you told me that you would like, you said that you would like to speak in French.

are some people who believe that you are a genius and there are some who believe that you are evil.

So you will tell us what you are, or you will let the people draw their own conclusion?

what what what do you think that you have a head of your uh...

Yes if you if you look at what you can see an angel's halo on my head and the wings, it's subtle.

Yeah, they're difficult to see but if you look carefully, you know, they're right there.

So, yeah, hopefully not evil, aspirationally not evil.

The most important question for everyone is, what the hell is driving you?

Why are you so obsessed by new operation, new creation, new things to do?

So That quote is going to probably sting.

So well, I think the companies still have a lot to do for their core mission.

For electric vehicles, sustainable energy, still less than 1% of the global fleet is electric.

So you've got about 2000000000 cars and trucks on the road, but still less than 20 million are electric at this point.

So there's still a long way to go for sustainable energy, for sustainable energy generation.

So this, you know, the Tesla mission, I think we've made a lot of progress, but still it's a lot more ahead.

Then SpaceX, the goal is, it's a big goal, but we want to try to make life multi-planetary, to extend life beyond Earth.

And I think this is important for a number of reasons but there's this sort of defensive reason of ensuring that the light of consciousness does not go out and if I made some of these questions if I'm going on too long, you feel free to interrupt me.

Okay, so, people do ask me, you know, have I seen UFOs and aliens and that kind of thing.

And I think I would have seen them by now.

So it appears that we might be the only consciousness, at least in this galaxy.

And if so, that's kind of a scary prospect because it means that the light of consciousness is like a tiny candle in a vast darkness, and we should do everything we can to prevent that candle from going out.

So that means obviously taking the actions to ensure that Earth is good that Earth is safe and secure for civilization.

And I think it also means extending life beyond Earth to other planets in the solar system and ultimately to other star systems.

And I think that's both a sort of defense of the light of consciousness and also I think a point of inspiration.

Because life cannot just be about solving 1 problem after another.

I mean, we need things that move our hearts.

And that when you wake up in the morning, you're excited to be alive.

And being a space-faring civilization, and making true the things that we see in the good science fiction movies.

This is 1 of the things that I think can inspire all of humanity.

Just like when the astronauts went to the moon in 1969.

It was something that, and they said for all mankind, you know, and it really was something you say to any human on earth, what's the most amazing thing that humanity has ever done?

A lot of, at least 1 of those things would be we went to the moon, you know?

And so you want to have these inspiring things that make you excited to be alive and excited about the future.

And you had those thoughts and dreams when you were a kid, or this came much later on?

Well, I didn't think I would be doing these things as a kid.

So I was obviously interested in science.

I mean, this is hardly going to be surprising.

I was interested in science fiction and technology.

You have to tell the truth because there is someone who is listening to you, huh?

She can call me out on this if it's not accurate.

So I guess the thing that was maybe most significant from a philosophical standpoint was that when I was about maybe 12 or 13, I had somewhat of an existential crisis, where I was like, what is the meaning of life?

And I read a lot of books on religion and philosophy.

And then ultimately, I read this book, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is great.

And in that book, that book is really a philosophy book that's disguised as humor.

And the point that Douglas Adams makes is that the real difficulty is understanding what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe.

that really, we want to have it's essentially it's like a philosophy of curiosity, of saying what can we do to find out more about the nature of the universe and the meaning of life.

And so that's the sort of foundational element.

And then from there, you say, OK, well, if we want to find out the meaning of life, we have to expand the scope and scale of consciousness.

We have to go out there and explore the stars to know what questions to ask about the universe and understand the universe.

And so from that, it was like, well, We have to make sure that Earth is good, so we have to have sustainable energy.

We want to build technology to travel beyond Earth.

It is from that core philosophy that these companies arise in most cases.

You can say, how does Twitter help with that?

I would like to go back to Earth and to the various enterprises that you contributed to create or co-created or created.

I think in retrospect, I think it was good that the company was acquired by eBay, because there was so much talent at PayPal, and that talent subsequently went on to create many other companies.

So YouTube, for example, was created by 2 people that worked at PayPal.

There was LinkedIn was created from PayPal, there was Yelp, there was many other companies.

Yeah, so, and if I'd been still working on PayPal, then there wouldn't be, you know, Tesla would not be in its current form and SpaceX wouldn't exist.

So, yes, I guess the short answer is yes.

But now with the, you would have loved to keep it again.

Well, there is, I think, the potential to do something that is

This is sort of like the X, the sort of everything app kind of thing.

We're trying to finish a task that was started about 24 years ago.

X slash Twitter is gonna be just a very useful thing and hopefully something that is a positive force for civilization.

Moving to Tesla, I have, through 1 of our operations, done the first advertising campaign for the electric car of GM.

Can you explain why GM and other car manufacturers have not created Tesla and why Tesla is successful, what is the difference?

You're talking about the EV1, basically, the EV1 car that's so General Motors actually did come out with this electric vehicle 1, EV1.

Actually, I thought when that came out… It was

I expected there would be an EV2, EV3, and so forth.

And if they had done that, actually, there would be no need for Tesla.

But For reasons that aren't clear, GM recalled all of the EV1s, even from customers that really wanted to keep the cars.

They recalled the cars, and they crushed them in a junkyard.

And It still blows my mind that they did this because the people who had the EV1s, they loved the car so much, they held a candlelit vigil at the junkyard where the cars were crushed.

Okay, like it was like someone was getting killed, you know, like and and it's like If somebody is holding a candlelit vigil for the destroyer because they love your product so much.

Maybe you should make more of it You know, I mean it's like pretty rare for candlelit vigils to be helpful products.

So I don't understand why they didn't do more.

They should have, and they would be the leader in electric vehicles today, but they didn't.

And so there was a need for Tesla because the, you know, at the time of starting Tesla, there were no electric vehicles being made.

And they were, so the big car companies were not making electric vehicles, there were no startups that we were aware of making electric vehicles.

And I mean, in the case of both Tesla and SpaceX, I thought the chance of success was maybe 10%.

So it's not like I thought it would be successful.

Now moving to the kids' dream, which is to become an astronaut and not to build rockets, how do you move from the idea that every child has, I will be an astronaut too.

No, I'm trying to compress the story so that they're not too long, because the story is actually quite long.

Because I didn't start out wanting to do the rockets.

At first I was going to do this philanthropic mission to Mars called Mars Oasis.

And then as I started investigating what it would take to launch this mission to Mars, just a little greenhouse basically, it was intended to inspire the public.

And I started understanding more about what rockets could be used.

I actually went to Russia a few times to try to buy some of their nuclear missiles, minus the nuke.

So that was pretty wild, being in Russia in

negotiating to buy 2 of their biggest missiles.

that Unless there was something new with rockets, that was the fundamental issue.

The cost of access to space was the fundamental issue.

So it wasn't a question of trying to increase the public's desire.

The public's desire for space and exploration is very high.

And there needs to be a radical improvement in the cost of access to orbit.

So I was like, OK, well, I'm going to try starting a rocket company and see if it's successful.

But I, like I said, I told people at the time, because people would say to me, tell me this joke of like, what's the, you know, what's the, you know, how do you go from, sorry.

Sorry, I'm getting a little hot under the collar here.

So, they'll say, what's the fastest way to make a small fortune in the rocket industry?

And the punchline is, you start with a large 1.

If the fourth 1 had not succeeded, SpaceX would not exist.

Fast forward, you created or you co-created OpenAI.

And After having created OpenAI, suddenly you say we should have a pause.

Some people say it's because he has not done it.

I didn't think anyone would actually agree to the pause, but I thought just for the record, I just want to say I think we should pause.

Well, I think there's a real danger for digital superintelligence having negative consequences.

And so if we are not careful with creating artificial general intelligence, we could have potentially a catastrophic outcome.

So, now I think there's a range of possibilities.

I think the most likely outcome is positive for AI, but that's not every possible outcome.

So we need to minimize the probability that something will go wrong with digital superintelligence.

So I'm in favor of AI regulation because I think advanced AI is a risk to the public and anything that's a risk to the public, there needs to be some kind of referee.

And so I think that my strong recommendation is to have some regulation for AI.

So speaking about Twitter, You have made a big bet on Twitter.

You said it a few minutes ago that you paid too much.

And you are now going on to Twitter 2.0 or 3.0, which I understand it's a full-scale reinvention of the company.

Yes, we are evolving the company very rapidly.

The company is changing quite dramatically.

There are a lot of controversies about Twitter.

So I have, in fact, 3 very quick questions.

The first 1 is, why have you decided to acquire it?

The second is what was wrong at Twitter to make you acting?

And the last 1 is, not the last of the 3, because there are many other questions, is why do you believe that you would be successful and you would be.

Well obviously I was on Twitter as a major user, and even before the acquisition closed, my Twitter account was the most interacted with account in the world.

So, I guess I'm pretty closely attuned to what's going on with Twitter.

I get a feel for how is it shifting 1 way or the other.

And generally, I was concerned that Twitter was having a negative effect on civilization, that it was having a corrosive effect on civil society.

And so anything that undermines civilization, I think, is not good.

And I go back to my point of like we need to do everything possible to support civilization and move it in a positive direction and I felt that it would that Twitter was kept moving more and more in a negative direction and my hope and aspiration was to change that and have it be a positive force for civilization.

People are very happy to listen to that approach, but the perception is very different.

Well, I think it depends on, and I think if somebody is a regular Twitter user, I think most people would say that their experience has improved.

of the bots and the scams and the various bad things that were happening.

We've gotten rid of, now at this point, I think 95% of the child exploitation material that was on Twitter, which was a shock to see, the amount of that, that was really terrible.

Some of that had been going on for 10 years and no action.

So I think we've done a lot of good in that respect.

And then I think we've also done things like we have open sourced the algorithm, so we're trying to be as transparent as possible.

So Twitter is the only social media company where you can see the actual code of the algorithm.

I mean, the way to build trust is not take my word for it.

It's let's show you exactly how it works and full transparency.

And we're also going to be showing like if your account is in any way affected by the Twitter system, You can see it clearly.

And just, you know, moving in, I think, a good direction.

We've, I think the recommendation algorithm, and I don't want to go on too long for Twitter, but I think it's actually quite good and that those who are on the Twitter system I think generally think it's good.

So at least for the public out there, they are using the system more.

So we're seeing pretty significant week over week growth in usage.

So the public is speaking with their time.

And if they're putting their time on Twitter, that's a very good signal.

What would you say to advertisers who left Twitter to convince them to come back?

Yeah, actually I should say that maybe with a few exceptions, almost all the advertisers have said that they've either come back or they said they will come back.

So actually, I feel pretty optimistic about the future.

And yeah, so, you know, we're really, at this point, I believe, actually, I'm not aware of any advertiser that is, they've either come back or they said they'll come back.

There are probably a few exceptions but overall I think it's it's very positive.

We ask Christelle Eddeman from Orange, the CEO of Orange, to join us, as well as Antoine Arnaud from LVMH, and Asmita Jubay from L'Oréal.

We have to move in order that they add chairs.

See all Sky News transcripts on Youtube

Elon Musk delivers speech at VivaTech