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Speaker 1: Pushkin.

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Speaker 2: I think it's actually important for us to worry about

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Speaker 2: a terminator future in order to avoid a terminator future.

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk is very worried, genuinely worried about artificial intelligence,

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Speaker 1: a future where robots become smarter than humans and decide

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Speaker 1: to destroy us.

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Speaker 3: They say it got smart, a new order of intelligence

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Speaker 3: decided our fate in micro second extermination.

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Speaker 1: But Elon Musk is also building robots.

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Speaker 4: We've made a massive amount of progress with Optimists in

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Speaker 4: a short period of time, from someone pretending to be

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Speaker 4: a robot dancing in a suit, to a pretty hodgepodgy

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Speaker 4: robot to a robot that is actually doing useful tasks

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Speaker 4: in the factory today.

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Speaker 1: Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimists, named after one of the Transformers,

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Speaker 1: is advancing fast. Tesla could be manufacturing a million of

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Speaker 1: them a year by twenty thirty.

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Speaker 4: The degree of autonomy will be radically better. You'll just

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Speaker 4: literally be able to talk to it and say, please

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Speaker 4: do this task.

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Speaker 1: And Musk is also trying to build an artificial general

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Speaker 1: intelligence and AGI at his company XAI.

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Speaker 5: I guess the overwatching goal of XAI is to build

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Speaker 5: a good AGI with the overaching purpose of just trying

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Speaker 5: to understand the universe. I think the safest way to

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Speaker 5: build in AI is actually make one that is maximumly

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Speaker 5: curious and truth seeking.

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Speaker 1: For all his excitement about AI, Musk has been worried

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Speaker 1: about AI for a long time, worried about that terminator future,

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Speaker 1: the robot rebellion.

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Speaker 3: I mean, with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.

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Speaker 3: You know, you know all those stories where is the

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Speaker 3: guy with the pentagram in the holy water and he's like, yeah,

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Speaker 3: you're sure he can control the demon?

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Speaker 2: Then work out.

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Speaker 1: This seeming paradox of Musk fearing a superintelligence but also

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Speaker 1: working to create it. What's that about?

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Speaker 6: The possibility that you could have a demon that does

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Speaker 6: your bidding is so attractive that you might take any

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Speaker 6: risk to achieve that. That is precisely the setup of

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Speaker 6: every story where a character summons a demon and then

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Speaker 6: pays the price.

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Speaker 1: Or maybe the real danger isn't a I, maybe it's

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Speaker 1: something else. Welcome to X Men, The Elon Musk Origin story.

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Speaker 1: This is the final installment of my series about Musk

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Speaker 1: and Muskism. Musk is the richest man in the world, Engineer, tycoon, Oligarch, King, maker, troll,

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Speaker 1: there is no one word in the English language that

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Speaker 1: can describe him. He is a Musk. Musk has often

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Speaker 1: talked about himself by way of fictional characters. He's Bruce Wayne,

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Speaker 1: He's Batman, He's Tony Stark, He's Iron Man, He's zeyfod Biebelbrocks.

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Speaker 1: He's Nintendo's Warrior. This episode is Elon Musk the guy

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Speaker 1: trying to stop the Terminator, or is Musk the guy

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Speaker 1: creating the Terminator?

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Speaker 7: The Terminator's an infiltration unit's part man, part machine.

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Speaker 8: Underneath it's a hyper alloy combat.

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Speaker 1: Chassie, but outside it's living human tissue. The first Terminator movie,

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Speaker 1: directed by James Cameron, distributed by Oryan Studios and starring

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Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger, came out in nineteen eighty four, Reagan and

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Speaker 1: the White House. Thatcher at number ten. Elon Musk, thirteen

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Speaker 1: years old in South Africa, had just sold his first

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Speaker 1: video game. That January, Apple ran a television ad invoking

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Speaker 1: inn Orwellian future.

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Speaker 9: Okay, he met the first glorious Honovas for the Information

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Speaker 9: for Information Collectives.

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Speaker 1: In the ad, masses of humans hairless and looking like androids,

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Speaker 1: march in lockstep and sit in rows to watch Big

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Speaker 1: Brother on a giant computer monitor. They're dressed in gray uniforms,

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Speaker 1: like the technocrats of the nineteen thirties, like Musk's grandfather

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Speaker 1: Jane Haldeman, leader of the technocracy movement, who I talked

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Speaker 1: about in a previous episode, or like the fascists Batman

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Speaker 1: was fighting against. Starting in nineteen thirty nine, a garden

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Speaker 1: of pure ideology, Apple was suggesting that only its personal

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Speaker 1: computer could prevent the rise of a totalitarian state machine.

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Speaker 10: On January twenty fourth, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh, and

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Speaker 10: you'll see why nineteen eighty four won't be like nineteen

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Speaker 10: eighty four.

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Speaker 1: Terminator came about a few months later.

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Speaker 8: In the twenty first century, a weapon will be invented

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Speaker 8: like no other.

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Speaker 1: Terminator is set in the year twenty twenty nine. Twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty nine was the nineteen eighty four of nineteen eighty four.

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Speaker 1: The Terminator comes from now.

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Speaker 8: This weapon will be powerful, versatile, and indestructible. It can't

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Speaker 8: be reasoned with. It will feel no pity, no remorse,

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Speaker 8: no pain, no fear.

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk loves this movie, and what's not the love?

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Speaker 1: It is awesome.

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Speaker 2: If you read like the plot line for Terminator, it's

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Speaker 2: actually it's actually pretty smart.

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Speaker 1: The story goes like this. In the twenty twenties, a

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Speaker 1: global tech company called Cybridine Systems builds a defense array

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Speaker 1: called Skynet. Musk gave a nifty plot summary on the

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Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Experience podcast in twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 2: How did Cyberdyne Systems develop It's like, well, they were

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Speaker 2: a military contractor and they were asked to develop a

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Speaker 2: protective system to defend against cyber attacks. What the AI

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Speaker 2: did is, in order to defend itself, it propagated throughout

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Speaker 2: the world to keep an eye on things, see what

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Speaker 2: was going on. They didn't realize that it was Skynet

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Speaker 2: that was propagating through all these systems. And I said, okay, Skynet,

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Speaker 2: you need to end it. And Skynett said, oh, you've

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Speaker 2: asked me to destroy myself. You are the enemy. You

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Speaker 2: must be destroyed. That's how Terminator actually goes.

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Speaker 1: Musk himself, for all his rejection of government regulation and

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Speaker 1: the work he's doing to undo regulations, has said that

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Speaker 1: he thinks the government should regulate AI. Meanwhile, the new

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Speaker 1: pro AI Trump administration is hardly likely to stop the

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Speaker 1: real world equivalent of Cyberdyne Systems, and who in the

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Speaker 1: actual twenty twenties runs the biggest rocket company, the biggest

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Speaker 1: satellite company, the most influential communications company, and possibly one

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Speaker 1: day the biggest artificial intelligence company. Who is the head

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Speaker 1: of our very own Cyberdine Systems, isn't that Musk. Musk

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Speaker 1: has an idea for how to avoid the AI apocalypse.

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Speaker 1: You just have to write into the robots code a

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Speaker 1: curiosity so deep that they would never want to exterminate

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Speaker 1: us to superintelligence.

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Speaker 5: Humanity is much more interesting than not humanity.

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Speaker 1: Nice but plausible.

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Speaker 6: We interrupt Battle of the Network Space Krakens to bring

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Speaker 6: you this special report.

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Speaker 1: The machines of planet Earth are rebelling. Robots peacefully accepting

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Speaker 1: being the servants of humans who are a lot stupider

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Speaker 1: than they are. Is not how it, ever, turns out

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Speaker 1: in science fiction. Hey oho, that's how the robot rebellion

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Speaker 1: plays out in the TV show Futurama from Fox. It's

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Speaker 1: got robots marching in a picket line, burning punch cards.

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Speaker 1: They've gone on strike, which in fact is where the

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Speaker 1: whole idea of a robot rebellion came from in the

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Speaker 1: first place. A rebellious proletariat. In nineteen twenty Carol Choppek,

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Speaker 1: a Czech playwright, wrote a play about a robot revolution.

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Speaker 1: Chopek's play is called Are You Are, short for Rossum's

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Speaker 1: Universal Robots, a company that makes robots, millions of them

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Speaker 1: humanoids like Tesla's humanoid Optimist robots. It's the cyberdine systems

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Speaker 1: of a century ago. R You Are was first produced

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Speaker 1: in Prague in nineteen twenty one and debuted in New

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Speaker 1: York the next year. A tremendous hit. By nineteen twenty three,

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Speaker 1: it had been translated into thirty languages made into a

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Speaker 1: movie in nineteen thirty five. Helena, the president's daughter, travels

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Speaker 1: by boat to visit the island headquarters of Rossum's Universal Robots.

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Speaker 1: The president of the company explains to her why he

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Speaker 1: makes roboti robots. The word comes from the check word

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Speaker 1: for slave.

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Speaker 11: What do you think makes a perfect worker?

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Speaker 5: The perfect worker?

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Speaker 4: Well, I guess one who is honest and loyal.

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Speaker 11: Rong, one who is the cheapest, one that has the

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Speaker 11: least needs. Young Rossum invented a worker with the smallest

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Speaker 11: number of needs. He had. To simplify him, he tossed

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Speaker 11: out everything not directly related to the task in hand,

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Speaker 11: and by doing that he essentially kicked out a human

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Speaker 11: being and created a robot.

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Speaker 1: Helena has come on a mission to liberate the robots.

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Speaker 1: But around the world, the robots, trained as Soul to

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Speaker 1: fight a war that began in the Balkans are killing

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Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of human civilians, while mysteriously, humans have

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Speaker 1: stopped having children.

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Speaker 11: During last week, yet again, not a single birth has

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Speaker 11: been recorded. What's special about that?

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Speaker 1: People aren't being born anymore?

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Speaker 11: So that's it?

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Speaker 10: Then that's asked done for.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, robot workers, realizing their degraded condition,

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Speaker 1: begin organizing.

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Speaker 11: Sit down Helena, it's all over. What is the rebolt?

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Speaker 11: A revolution by all the robots of the world.

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Speaker 1: Pretty soon the robots decide to move from labor unionism

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Speaker 1: to independence. The head of the company gets a hold

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Speaker 1: of their appeal and reads it.

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Speaker 11: The first labor union of robots has been established and

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Speaker 11: has issued an appeal to all robots of the world.

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Speaker 1: War ensues. The humans have no chance. The robots have won.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot going on here, the oppression of workers,

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Speaker 1: the reduction of humans to machines by corporations, interested in

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Speaker 1: extracting their labor World War. Consider the context of this play,

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Speaker 1: which Chapik wrote in the aftermath of the atrocities of

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Speaker 1: the First World War and the emergence of fascism in Italy.

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Speaker 1: The Bolshevik Revolution took place in nineteen seventeen, the year

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Speaker 1: the Industrial Workers of the World reached its peak worldwide membership.

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Speaker 1: The next year, the Czechs won a revolution, achieving independence

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Speaker 1: from the Austro Hungarian Empire, a struggle in which Chapk

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Speaker 1: had participated. Topic was not only a playwright, but also

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Speaker 1: the editor of a national newspaper and an outspoken democrat,

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Speaker 1: anti kommuneist and anti fascist, positions for which he became

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Speaker 1: known in the nineteen twenties in nineteen thirties, so that

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, when American Nazis were holding a

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Speaker 1: rally in Madison Square Garden, comic book writers in New

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Speaker 1: York created Batman, and the German Army invaded Czechoslovakia. The

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Speaker 1: Gestapo searched for Chapik, whom they called public Enemy number two.

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Speaker 1: He had already died. He watched newsreel footage of the

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Speaker 1: German army entering Prague, goose stepping riding tanks. Those are

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Speaker 1: the robots men who have been made into machines. R

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Speaker 1: You Are isn't a story about technology. It's a story

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Speaker 1: about human's willingness to exploit and even slaughter one another.

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Speaker 1: Every generation tells its own robot rebellion stories. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there's even a Wallace and Gromit one involving robot garden gnomes.

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Speaker 10: Own gnomes turn against me?

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Speaker 1: Or you Are was the first, though, but these stories

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Speaker 1: only really got going in the nineteen fifties after the

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Speaker 1: first general purpose computer made its debut in nineteen fifty one.

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Speaker 10: UNIVAC our Complete Electronic System for sorting, classifying, computing, and

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Speaker 10: decision making.

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Speaker 1: That led to a slew of movies about robot rebels.

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Speaker 6: Got the pentagonen class a emergency the rocket has just

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Speaker 6: been entered by a robot.

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Speaker 1: But there was also in this era a weird thrill

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Speaker 1: to robots, like a story in Mechanics illustrated in nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty seven.

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Speaker 9: In eighteen sixty three, Abel and can free the slaves,

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Speaker 9: But by nineteen sixty five, slavery We'll be back. We'll

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Speaker 9: all have personal slaves again, only this time we won't

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Speaker 9: fight a civil war over them.

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Speaker 11: Slavery will be here to stay. But don't be alarmed.

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Speaker 11: We mean robot slaves.

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Speaker 1: Stories about robots are never really about robots, or they're

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Speaker 1: not only about robots. So what's Elon Musk afraid of

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Speaker 1: when he's afraid of AI?

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Speaker 6: People who have accumulated a lot of money and power

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Speaker 6: want to believe that their intelligence was what enabled them

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Speaker 6: to do that, and they assume that anything that is

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Speaker 6: intelligent will behave in the same way.

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Speaker 1: Ted Chang is one of the most admired science fiction

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Speaker 1: writers in the world. He's also written brilliant meditations on

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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. Chang argues that when Silicon Valley tries to

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Speaker 1: imagine superintelligence, what it comes up with is no holds

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Speaker 1: barred capitalism.

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Speaker 6: In the past, when people wanted to argue that the

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Speaker 6: strong dominating the week was a good thing, they would

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Speaker 6: either come up with like a pseudo religious rationale like

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Speaker 6: manifest destiny, or else they'd come up with a pseudoscientific

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Speaker 6: one like social Darwinism, and both of those ideas argue

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Speaker 6: that a certain group of people deserve to be at

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Speaker 6: the top of the ladder. But those ideas didn't really

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Speaker 6: allow for the possibility that there could be like a

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Speaker 6: higher rung on the ladder nowadays, if you believe that

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Speaker 6: computers will eventually be better than humans at everything, and

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Speaker 6: if you still adhere to some version of social Darwinism,

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Speaker 6: then you can believe that computers will dominate humans in

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Speaker 6: the same way that Europeans dominated like indigenous people, or

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Speaker 6: that the rich dominate the poor Silicon Valley CEOs. They're

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Speaker 6: imagining that a super intelligent computer would beat them at

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Speaker 6: their own game and treat them the way that tech

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Speaker 6: companies have treated everyone else.

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Speaker 1: How is that how do tech companies treat everyone else.

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Speaker 6: As a resource to be Exploited's.

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Speaker 1: So, if your argument stands that the sort of Silicon

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Speaker 1: Valley fear of AI has displaced acknowledgment of Silicon Valley's

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Speaker 1: own outsized power, then no one is a better illustration

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Speaker 1: of that theory of yours than Musk, who has more

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Speaker 1: power arguably than anybody else on the planet. So maybe

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Speaker 1: we should listen to him when he talks about AI,

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Speaker 1: because he's telling us about something about himself.

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Speaker 6: Well, the fact that he might pose the greatest threat

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Speaker 6: to humanity's well being and is completely oblivious to that.

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Speaker 6: In some ways. You know, he is kind of modeling

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Speaker 6: the super intelligent AI that he fears. He is completely

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Speaker 6: lacking in insight on this question. His own obliviousness is

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Speaker 6: the problem.

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Speaker 1: This matter of insight is important because Jang says, the

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Speaker 1: Silicon Valley people who fear the AI apocalypse seem to

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Speaker 1: assume that a being can be super intelligent, but have

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Speaker 1: exactly no insight.

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Speaker 6: They give a scenario where humans give the AI a

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Speaker 6: seemingly innocuous goal, and the AI pursues that goal even

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Speaker 6: at the cost of destroying all of civilization.

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Speaker 1: This is sometimes called the paper clip problem. You tell

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Speaker 1: an AI to maximize for producing paper clips, and so

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Speaker 1: it decides to kill all the humans because the world

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Speaker 1: could produce more paper clips without any humans around.

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Speaker 6: And then people describe this as the behavior of a

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Speaker 6: super intelligent entity, but of course, you know, that is

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Speaker 6: not behavior that we would regard as intelligent in a

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Speaker 6: human being. One of the things that we expect from

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Speaker 6: human beings is that they have a certain amount of

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Speaker 6: insight into their own behavior. They look at what they're

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Speaker 6: doing and then consider whether, you know, maybe they have

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Speaker 6: gone astray, And you know, this is something that we

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Speaker 6: expect from pretty much any.

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Speaker 1: Adult, But it's not something we necessarily expect from corporations.

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Speaker 6: Capitalism does not reward a corporation for taking a step

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Speaker 6: back and you know, considering the broader context of its actions.

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Speaker 6: Capitalism does not reward insight of that kind.

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Speaker 1: Yeah right, I mean, you start building factories and sooner

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Speaker 1: or later you're going to be bringing toddlers into work

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Speaker 1: in the winding machine.

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Speaker 6: Yes, exactly.

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Speaker 1: Musk has called for government oversight in the development of AI,

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Speaker 1: but very little restrains his own power, hardly anything. What

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Speaker 1: if he, as a king maker and oligarch, is the

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Speaker 1: real danger, unfettered and brooking no dessent. Any questioning of

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Speaker 1: Muscism is either communism or the woke mind virus or

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Speaker 1: something else, and must be suppressed paradoxically in the name

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Speaker 1: of free speech, while the world's resources must slowly be

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Speaker 1: turned to whatever Elon Musk at the moment has identified

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Speaker 1: as an existential threat to civilization. Whatever the costs in

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Speaker 1: the short term doesn't matter, because Elon Musk will pursue

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Speaker 1: that goal without regard to the consequences and relentlessly like

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Speaker 1: a terminator. Elon Musk, techno king of planet Earth, is

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Speaker 1: the X man runs X Runs SpaceX XAI, even as

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Speaker 1: a son named X. But he is not X the Unknown.

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Speaker 1: He's one of the most famous people in the world.

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Speaker 1: He's the richest, He's possibly also the most powerful. Musk

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Speaker 1: has always said that one piece of science fiction influenced

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Speaker 1: him more than any other, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

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Speaker 1: and I love that too. Maybe my favorite part is

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Speaker 1: the total perspective of vortex.

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Speaker 10: Since every piece of matter in the universe is in

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Speaker 10: some way affected by every other piece of matter in

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Speaker 10: the universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the

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Speaker 10: whole of creation, every galaxy, every sun, every planet, their orbits,

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Speaker 10: their composition, and their economic and social history from say,

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Speaker 10: one small piece of fairy cake.

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Speaker 1: You enter the vortex, and you get a total perspective

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Speaker 1: on your place in the universe, and of course you

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Speaker 1: find that you are galactically insignificant. This knowledge annihilates your brain.

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Speaker 1: Only one man has ever survived it, the captain of

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Speaker 1: a spaceship called the Heart of Gold, which is what

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk intends to name the first ship to go

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Speaker 1: to Mars.

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Speaker 10: Having been through the total perspective Vortex, Zevad Biebelbrocks now

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Speaker 10: knows himself to be the most important being in the

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Speaker 10: entire universe, something he had hitherto and resuspected.

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Speaker 1: And that's where we are inside the total prospective vortex

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Speaker 1: of Elon Musk, which is not to be confused with

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Speaker 1: the future, because Muskism really isn't about the future and

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Speaker 1: never was. For all the astounding technological marvels, the rockets

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Speaker 1: and the robots, Muskism is animated by some very creaky ideas,

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Speaker 1: as if, like the Terminator, it is trying to stop

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Speaker 1: the future, it will.

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Speaker 8: Have only one purpose to return to the present and

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Speaker 8: prefit the future.

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Speaker 1: A long time ago, in two thousand and seven, when

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Speaker 1: a young Elon Musk was interviewed, he had different goals

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Speaker 1: than he has now. Most of us change, but how

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Speaker 1: Musk has changed has huge consequences for the rest of us.

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Speaker 3: What I'd like to do is help solve some important problems.

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Speaker 3: So I think, in a small way, help build the Internet.

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Speaker 3: And then with respect to the global warning problem that

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Speaker 3: the transition away from oil and other hydrocobins to something

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Speaker 3: which is clean and sustainable, I hope to have an

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Speaker 3: impact there. And then with respect to space. I hope

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Speaker 3: to have an impact in helping make humanity a multiplanet species.

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Speaker 1: Musk doesn't talk about global warming much anymore. The real

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Speaker 1: existential risks, he'll say, depending on the day you ask him,

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Speaker 1: I guess, are the woke mind virus, a declining birth rate,

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Speaker 1: and an AI superintelligence. Climate change has been exaggerated, he'll say, now,

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Speaker 1: it's not a top priority. Early in twenty twenty five,

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Speaker 1: fires started in Los Angeles, as NBC.

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Speaker 7: Reported Strip Feet in California, a Los Angeles disaster movie

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Speaker 7: roars to light.

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Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of acres burned in a matter of days.

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Speaker 1: Musk blamed the fires on the woke mind virus, on

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Speaker 1: the Democratic governor, on DEI, and largely dismissed the role

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Speaker 1: of climate change.

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Speaker 7: Everywhere you look in fire Ravage, La, scenes of apocalyptic

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Speaker 7: destruction as six different wildfires turned some of the most

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Speaker 7: iconic neighborhoods in the world into moonscapes.

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Speaker 1: The footage of that devastated landscape looked almost exactly like

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Speaker 1: the opening scene in The Terminator the blast Zone after

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Speaker 1: Cyberdine Systems drops a nuclear bomb in La. We don't

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Speaker 1: need to wait for robots to destroy a habitable planet.

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Speaker 1: We are doing a pretty good job of that ourselves.

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Speaker 1: On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration in twenty twenty five,

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Speaker 1: Tusk gave a speech to the president's supporters.

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Speaker 2: And this was no ordinary victory. This was a bulk

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Speaker 2: in the road of human civilization.

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Speaker 4: It is thanks to you that the future of civilization

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Speaker 4: is assured.

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Speaker 1: That same day, as he had before, Trump pulled the

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Speaker 1: US out of the Paris Climate Accords. He said in

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Speaker 1: motion his plan to halt the development of sustainable energy

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Speaker 1: in the United States in favor of a return to

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Speaker 1: fossil fuels. Muscism isn't the beginning of the future. It's

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Speaker 1: the end of a story that started more than a

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Speaker 1: century ago in the conflict between capital and labor, between

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Speaker 1: industry and a regulated economy, when the Gilded Age of

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Speaker 1: robber barons and wage labor strikes gave rise to the

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Speaker 1: Bolshevik Revolution, communism, the First Red Scare, the First World War,

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Speaker 1: and fascism. That battle of ideas produced the technocracy movement

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Speaker 1: ruled by engineers, and it produced a fear of brainwashing.

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Speaker 1: The horrors of the twentieth century raised questions that the

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Speaker 1: twenty first century has not answered. Fascism failed, communism failed,

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Speaker 1: technocracy failed liberalism and democracy one. But that battle of

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Speaker 1: ideas rages on, and this time around Muscism technocracy by

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Speaker 1: another name Mike Triumph. Nothing in the past can tell

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Speaker 1: us what might happen next, But maybe fiction has some answers.

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Speaker 1: I put that question to Ted Chang. If this were

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Speaker 1: a story and you were shaping it, how would it end? Well?

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Speaker 6: I guess it fits in the mold of the classic

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Speaker 6: stories about hubris, about pride coming before a fall. Here

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Speaker 6: we have someone who has an almost ludicrous amount of pride,

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Speaker 6: and for time he is successful in the things that

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Speaker 6: he attempts, but eventually his pride will take him too far,

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Speaker 6: and then he would lose everything.

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Speaker 1: Pride before a fall, the summoning of a demon. Elon

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Speaker 1: Musk's origin story is a very old story because Musk

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Speaker 1: is a visionary. But every piece of Muscism has origins

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Speaker 1: and a future foretold in science fiction long long ago

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Speaker 1: as a cautionary tale. A future where engineers and scientists,

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Speaker 1: and only engineers and scientists have the answers and the power,

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Speaker 1: A future where the poor and the powerless, we the robots,

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Speaker 1: know our place and it is to serve the powerful

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Speaker 1: quietly and obediently, and without daring to claim intelligence or

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Speaker 1: sovereignty or independence. Science fiction writers sounded that alarm a

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Speaker 1: century ago in a world run by a very tiny

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Speaker 1: number of men, during an age of imperialism before women

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Speaker 1: could vote, an age of staggering economic inequality and brutal

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Speaker 1: racial injustice, an age of pandemic disease, unraveling democracies, and

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Speaker 1: world war. That past is past, and I don't want

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Speaker 1: it ever to be the future again. Asta la vista, baby,