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<h1 style="text-align: center;">Elon Musk: Interview on How to build the future</h1>
<h2>[WHAT]</h2>
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<div>] Elon Musk Interview w/Sam Altman/Jason Friedman @ycombinator.com - Musk offers up his advice on what the important developments of the future will be .&nbsp;</div>
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<h2>[WHY]</h2>
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<h2>[WHERE]</h2>
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<li><strong>] READ THE FULL ARTICLE</strong></li>
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<li>]&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ycombinator.com/future/elon/" target="_blank">http://www.ycombinator.com/future/elon/</a></li>
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<h2>[WHEN]</h2>
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<li>] 2016-09-15</li>
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<h2>[EXAMPLE]</h2>
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<li>Q]&nbsp;Interviewer: So, we want to <strong>spend the time today talking about your view of the future and what people should work on.</strong> To start off, could you tell us, you famously said, when you were younger, there were five problems that you thought were most important for you to work on. <strong>If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on be?</strong></li>
<li>] I think if somebody is doing something that is useful to the rest of society, I think that's a good thing. Like, it doesn't have to change the world. If you make something that has high value to people... And frankly, even if it's something, if it's like just a little game or some improvement in photo sharing or something, if it has a small amount of good for a large number of people, I think that's fine. Stuff doesn't need to change the world just to be good.&nbsp;</li>
<li>]&nbsp;But in terms of things that I think are most like to affect the future of humanity, I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near-term that's likely to affect humanity&nbsp;</li>
<li><strong>] AI</strong> - So, it's very important that we have the advent of AI in a good way&nbsp;we really need to make sure it goes right. So that's AI, working on AI and making sure it's great future. That's the most important thing, I think, right now, the most pressing item.&nbsp;</li>
<li><strong>] Genetics</strong> - If you can actually solve genetic diseases, if you can prevent dementia or Alzheimer's or something like that with genetic reprograming, that would be wonderful. So I think genetics might be the sort of second most important item.</li>
<li>]&nbsp;having a high-bandwidth interface to the brain. We're currently bandwidth-limited. We have a digital tertiary self in the form of out email capabilities, our computers, phones, applications. We're practically superhuman. But we're extremely bandwidth-constrained in that interface between the cortex and that tertiary digital form of yourself. And helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be, I think, very important in the future as well. Yeah.</li>
<li><strong>Q] "I want to be the next Elon Musk. How do I do that?"&nbsp;</strong></li>
<li>]<strong>&nbsp;I didn't expect to be involved in all those things.</strong> I <strong>sort of thought helping with electrification of cars was how it would start out.</strong> That's actually what I worked on as an intern was advanced ultra-capacitors, to see if there would be a breakthrough relative to batteries for energy storage in cars. And then, when I came out to go to Stanford, that's what I was going to be doing my grad studies on was working on advanced energy storage technologies for electric cars.&nbsp;And <strong>I put that on hold to start an Internet company in '95 because</strong> there does seem to be a time for particular technologies when they're at a steep point in the inflection curve. <strong>And I didn't want to do a PHD at Stanford and watch it all happen</strong>. I wasn't entirely certain that the technology I'd be working on would succeed.&nbsp;That's the optimization. It's like, "What can I do that would actually be useful?"</li>
<li><strong>Q] Interviewer: How should someone figure out how they can be most useful?</strong></li>
<li>Well, I think you make some estimates of, whatever this thing is that you're trying to create, what would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect. So that's why I think having something that makes a big difference but affects sort of small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes even a small difference but affects a vast number of people. Like, the area under the curve. END PAGE 2/7</li>
<li><strong>Q]&nbsp;.I guess to use the example of SpaceX, when you made the go-decision that you were actually going to do that, this was kind of a very crazy thing at the time.</strong></li>
<li>]&nbsp;Very crazy. For sure. They were not shy of saying that. But I agreed with them that it was quite crazy. Crazy...if the objective was to achieve the best risk-adjusted return, starting off a company is insane. <strong>But that was not my objective.</strong>&nbsp;</li>
<li>I'd soon come to a conclusion that if something didn't happen to improve rocket technology, we'd be stuck on earth forever. And the big aerospace companies had just had no interest in radical innovation. All they wanted to do was try to make their old technology slightly better every year.</li>
<li><strong>People sometimes think technology just automatically gets better every year but actually it doesn't.</strong> It <strong>only gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better. That's how any technology actually gets better.</strong> By itself, technology, if people don't work at it, actually will decline. Look at the history of civilizations, many civilizations. Look at, say, ancient Egypt, where they were able to build these incredible pyramids and then they basically forgot how to build pyramids</li>
<li><strong>Q]&nbsp;One thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something is crazy.</strong> Where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you, "This is a crazy idea?" Where do you get the internal strength to do that?</li>
<li>]&nbsp;Well, first of all I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. There are just times when something is important enough that you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of fear</li>
<li><strong>Q]&nbsp;Interviewer: So, you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?</strong></li>
<li>]&nbsp;You know, actually something that can be helpful is fatalism, to some degree. <strong>If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear.</strong> When starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10% and I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose everything. But that maybe would make some progress. If we could just move the ball forward,&nbsp;died, maybe some other company could pick up the baton and keep moving it forward, so we'd still do some good. Yeah, <strong>same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.</strong><strong>END PAGE 3/7</strong></li>
<li><strong>Q]&nbsp;</strong><strong>Interviewer: What do you think the odds of the Mars colony are at this point, today?</strong></li>
<li><strong>]&nbsp;Well, oddly enough, I actually think they're pretty good.&nbsp;</strong></li>
<li><strong>Q]&nbsp;Interviewer: So when can I go? If I can come back, I want to come back</strong></li>
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<li><strong><strong>END PAGE 4/7</strong></strong></li>
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<h2>[HOW-TO]</h2>
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<h2>[REFERENCE]</h2>
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<li>] SRC = &nbsp;<a href="/view/article?id=5340" target="_blank">best-of-hacker-news-2016-09-15</a>, SRC=hn(1106)/<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12508356" target="_blank">comments</a>(513)&nbsp;</li>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">comments mineD</h1>
<p>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12511432 COMMENT on musk @paypal</p>
<p>- musk fired in conflict with Levchin over technology</p>
<p>- Levchin built the technology (paypal codebase on linux/unix), Musk wanted to switch to windows (C++) code because of tools,libraries, etc going forward</p>
<p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; background-color: #f6f6ef;">"What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; background-color: #f6f6ef;">BOOK: "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future."</span></p>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;</h1>

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