Elon Musk: A Different Conversation | Full Episode | People by WTF Ep. 16

Nikhil Kamath (0:44)

Our audience is largely wannabe entrepreneurs in India, and I feel like all of us have so much to learn from you because you have done it so many times over in so many different domains.

Elon Musk (0:56)

Yeah.

Nikhil Kamath (0:57)

So we will speak to them today, and I will try and center all my questions in that direction so they can take advantage of this conversation and maybe start, take a chance and build something. Elon, do you want a coffee?

Elon Musk (1:28)

Sure, why not? Are we going to be talking for a while?

Nikhil Kamath (1:32)

I hope we are.

Elon Musk (1:33)

Okay, sure.

Nikhil Kamath (1:37)

Meghna?

Elon Musk (1:38)

May I trouble you for a coffee?

Nikhil Kamath (1:39)

Can we get another coffee?

Elon Musk (1:43)

Cappuccino, I guess.

Nikhil Kamath (1:45)

Are you a coffee drinker, Elon?

Elon Musk (1:47)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have a copy of once, usually in the mornings.

Nikhil Kamath (1:51)

One a day kind of thing?

Elon Musk (1:52)

Yeah, pretty much.

Nikhil Kamath (1:58)

You want to wait for it?

Elon Musk (1:59)

No, I'm good.

Nikhil Kamath (2:07)

The first thing I must say is, you're a lot bigger and bulkier, muscular than I would have thought you are.

Elon Musk (2:15)

Oh, stop, you've messed with my people a lot.

Nikhil Kamath (2:19)

Really, seriously?

Elon Musk (2:22)

Yeah, I mean, look, on the internet, I'm small, you know.

Nikhil Kamath (2:28)

You're essentially, what percentage of internet is spent on Twitter? Is there a number to it, on X?

Elon Musk (2:37)

Well, so we have, like, about 600 million monthly users. Although, it can spike up if there's some major event in the world. It can get up to, I don't know, 800 million or a billion if there's some major event in the world.

So, there's, I don't know, 250, 300 million per week type of thing. It's a pretty decent number. And it tends to be readers, you know, people that read words. You know, so...

Nikhil Kamath (3:12)

Do you think that will change?

Elon Musk (3:14)

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of video on the X system, but at this point, increasing amounts of video. But I think where the X network is strongest is among people who think a lot and read a lot, you know. So that's where it's going to be strongest, because we have words. And, you know, so among readers, writers and thinkers, I think X is number one in the world.

Nikhil Kamath (3:52)

As far as social media goes, the form factor, if you had to wager a guess for tomorrow, how much is text, how much is video? I've heard you speak about maybe voice and hearing being the next form of communication with AI. What happens to X in its true form? How does it evolve?

Elon Musk (4:15)

Yeah, so I do think most interaction is going to be video in the future. Most interaction is going to be real-time video with AI. So real-time video comprehension, real-time video generation, that's going to be most of the load. And that's how it is for most of the Internet right now. It's mostly Internet is video. Text is a pretty small percentage, but the text tends to be higher value generally, or more, it's more densely compressed information. Like, yeah, so, but if you say like, what is the most amount of bits generated and compute spent, it's certainly going to be video.

Nikhil Kamath (4:57)

So I used to be a shareholder of X, a very small one. And I got paid when you bought Twitter and you made it X. Happy decision, glad you did it.

Elon Musk (5:08)

Yeah, yeah, I think it was important. You know, I felt like Twitter was heading in or had gone in a direction that had sort of a more of a negative influence on the world. It was, I mean, of course, this depends on one's perspective. Some people will say, well, actually, they liked the way it was and now they don't like it. But I think the fundamental thing was that Twitter was amplifying, I would say, a fairly pretty far left by most people's standards in the world's ideology because of where it was based in San Francisco. So, and then they actually suspended a lot of people on the right.

So, from their perspective, even someone in the center would be far right. If you're far left, anyone in the center is far right because it's just on the political spectrum. They're just as far left as you get in the United States and San Francisco. So what I've tried to do is just restore to be balanced and centrist. So there haven't been any left-wing voices that have been suspended or banned or de-amplified or anything like that. Some of them have chosen to just go somewhere else. But at this point, it is, the operating principle of the X system is to adhere to any country's laws, but not to put out them on the scale beyond the laws of the country.