Speaker A
Hey team. Oh gee, are we late, guys? Good to be here. Go America. Go America. Team America. Go.
Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, and Tom Brown discuss AI's impact, energy needs, chip production, and America's role in the AI revolution.
Key Takeaways
- Artificial super intelligence requires a holistic reinvention of computing, from hardware to software to energy.
- Scaling energy production is a fundamental challenge and opportunity for the US to lead in AI innovation.
- Data centers are becoming economic engines that can revitalize communities and modernize infrastructure.
- Space-based solar power and orbital compute represent promising frontiers for sustainable AI energy supply.
- Responsible development and safety are integral to advancing super intelligence technologies.
What the video covers
- The discussion highlights America's leadership in technological revolutions and the emergence of artificial super intelligence (SI).
- Super intelligence represents a complete reinvention of the computing stack, requiring advances in chips, algorithms, and energy infrastructure.
- Energy generation and power scaling are critical to supporting AI compute demands, with a focus on increasing US energy capacity.
- SpaceX aims to develop orbital compute and space-based solar power to supplement terrestrial energy needs.
- Data centers are evolving into 'super intelligence factories' that revitalize small towns and modernize the power grid.
- The economic impact of increased power usage for AI compute is significant, with estimates linking gigawatts of power to billions in GDP growth.
- Collaboration between chip design, software development, and energy infrastructure is essential for maintaining US competitiveness, especially against China.
- There is a strong emphasis on responsible and secure deployment of SI technologies, including safety and containment measures.
- The panel discusses the transformative potential of SI in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and space exploration.
- Ongoing efforts include joint declarations on SI safety and fostering optimism about the future enabled by super intelligence.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and America's Technological Leadership
- 01:35The Computing Stack and Energy Foundations of AI
- 03:05Scaling Energy and Chip Production for AI
- 04:39Economic Impact of Power Usage on GDP
- 06:06Space-Based Energy and Orbital Compute
- 08:31Data Centers as Super Intelligence Factories
- 10:05Reindustrialization and Energy Innovation
- 13:10SI Safety, Responsible Development, and Future Outlook
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Yes, indeed. So America, Wright brothers, first man on the moon, the internet, the two of us, Wright brothers.
Speaker A
I like that. Indeed. We've essentially led every major technological revolution, which has been to the enormous benefit of America, ordinary Americans. We're, I guess, now calling this super intelligence, which I think is actually good branding.
Speaker A
And so let's talk about how America wins this and we make that winning good for ordinary Americans.
Speaker A
Well, um, excuse me, Diet Coke. Sorry. So first of all, artificial super intelligence, super intelligence is a complete reinvention of the computing stack. Everything from the way the processors, the chips are designed and the way they operate to the
Speaker A
way software is now trained and developed to the way that the applications are able to perform, what they're able to do and how they perform. Every single layer of the computing stack has been reinvented.
Speaker A
This way of doing computing, unlike previous ways of retrieving information, this is a generative approach to computing and therefore in order for us to succeed, the first thing we need is energy because we need the energy to
Speaker A
run the compute, the compute run the algorithms, the algorithms then feed the applications. So at the foundational layer is energy and from that energy we build the land, power, and shell that hosts the infrastructure
Speaker A
and so on, so forth. And so the way we win, of course, we are world class in chip design. We're world class in algorithm development. And one of the things that we need to do is just be
Speaker A
vigilant about enabling power delivery and power generation to happen. And President Trump has been visionary in being pro-energy. Without the pro-energy vision of President Trump, it would have been impossible for us to build the data centers on top of it.
Speaker A
Now, of course, these data centers are coming online so quickly. We're coming into a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of communities. We have to do a better job in partnering with the
Speaker A
communities and bring them along and make them part of the prosperity and the success of this industrial revolution. But you know, that's how we win. We got to build the world's best chips. We got to
Speaker A
build, we have to have lots and lots of energy, create incredible algorithms, and then lastly make sure that America is enthusiastic about the technology so that we diffuse it into all of these various industries from manufacturing to
Speaker A
healthcare, space, space exploration, so on, so forth. Awesome. Elon, how do we win? How do we keep winning?
Speaker A
Well, we need a lot of power, a lot of energy generation. So scaling energy, I think, is one of the biggest things. You've got to scale energy, you've got to scale chip production. And I think we're
Speaker A
winning on software, on anything intellectual or digital. But long in the long run, we need to be able to generate enough power to compete with, I think essentially China is the biggest competitor and China has
Speaker A
about three times the electricity production of the United States. And I think we'll figure out how to make shift. So the really central challenge, I think, long term is going to be
Speaker A
how do you generate enough power and how do you ensure that we have enough logic and memory fabrication capacity in the United States or in a safe region.
Speaker A
Well, we need the Wright brothers on the job. Yes. Well, it turns out the Wright brothers are on the job. Elon, if you bring on 10 gigawatts, which SpaceX has discussed publicly, that'll be about
Speaker A
25% of all the power added in America. And I know you have literal rocket engineers working on bringing on the power.
Speaker A
Yeah. Helping make the turbines. So can you talk about that? Yeah, it's, I mean, just to frame this, the average power consumption in the United States is about 500 gigawatts. So every 5 GW of incremental
Speaker A
steady-state production is a 1% increase in the power used. And I think actually will materialize to be approximately 1% increase in GDP because the intelligence keeps increasing. So if you just, you know,
Speaker A
plot on a curve how is the useful intelligence per watt increasing, how is the both at the hardware level, Jensen's GPUs keep getting better in terms of their compute per watt. And the algorithms also
Speaker A
get better in using and getting more intelligence per watt. So I think that's maybe an interesting note. I would bet anyone that 1% increase in power usage corresponds to roughly 1% increase in GDP. And so 10 gigawatts
Speaker A
would be a 2% increase in GDP with the Reubins, I think. So let's do the simple math.
Speaker A
So each gigawatt can probably generate about, call it, 40 to 50 billion dollars of economic output each year.
Speaker A
Yeah, I mean, well, 1% would be, yeah, I mean, 1% of the United States would be 300 billion.
Speaker A
Yeah. 300 billion and so 50, one-sixth, what, 1% of the 1% increase. So 5 gigawatts would be, yeah. Well, 5 gigawatts would be 300 billion.
Speaker A
Yeah, exactly. 60 billion a gig. Yeah, that's right. The math, math. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we're good at.
Speaker A
Yes. Yes. Yeah. So that's quite, not good at too many other things, but yeah. I mean, it's going to increase quite dramatically year-over-year.
Speaker A
So yeah. I mean, from a SpaceX standpoint, we're looking at long-term, how do we access a lot more energy than could be accessed on the ground and that's with space.
Speaker A
So orbital compute is going to be a very big deal. In fact, Google agrees. They just actually sent up, or are either about to or soon about to send up some TPUs.
Speaker A
I think there was an H100 that was put into orbit like last year, I think.
Speaker A
So it does work in space and SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year. And if brought to space, you get the nameplate or better on the solar power, whereas if it's on the ground, you're going to get somewhere between a fifth and an eighth of the solar power generation and you need enormous batteries.
Speaker A
Whereas it's essentially always sunny in space. So right now is a great time to do it because the economic returns of these computing systems are so good.
Speaker A
Yeah. The launch cost, although still quite high, in terms of the overall economic benefit is quite affordable.
Speaker A
Absolutely. This is the perfect time to do it. Putting Nvidia compute in space is the best way to get there.
Speaker A
Climbing the Carter scale with American power and American chips on American rockets. I love it.
Speaker A
Yeah. So Jensen, you said something that I thought was important about how when we bring the energy to all these small towns, we're reindustrializing America. We're revitalizing small towns.
Speaker A
We're modernizing the grid. These are things that essentially every American politician has wanted for the last 35 years. What would you say? What are some specifics you can give about how data centers are good for ordinary Americans in the communities
Speaker A
and how they're getting better for those communities? Yeah, we used to call them data centers.
Speaker A
We call them data centers because that's where we hold data. But the things that we're building now, these are really SI factories, super intelligence factories. And the reason why it's a factory is because you're producing something of economic value.
Speaker A
You're just not storing it. And so these SI factories are real factories. It's like a big giant power generator in real factories.
Speaker A
It's got a lot of computing, networking in there, power generation, cooling systems. It's complicated things. And so we're building out, you know,
Speaker A
It's got a lot of computing, networking in there, power generation, cooling systems. It's complicated things. And so we're building out you know just as the internet today allows you to find anything anywhere in the future with these AI, excuse me, SI infrastructure,
Speaker A
SI factories, you'll be able to know anything and do anything from anywhere. And so uh now we're building this infrastructure out and you know call it uh across all of the United States uh somewhere between 10 uh 20 gigawatts a
Speaker A
year. Let's just just estimate that creates just you know probably about a million jobs in in building out these data centers. Don't forget you've got to build the power generation plants, you got to build the data centers, you've
Speaker A
got construction, you've got you know power cooling, you've got you know pipe fitters. And so this is the first time in probably as you mentioned 35 I was going to say 50 years first time in 50 years we are re-industrializing the
Speaker A
United States creating a whole bunch of blueco collar jobs and um I and I think we want we want an econ we want an economy that has a shape that includes white collar jobs and blue collar jobs not just white collar jobs and so so I
Speaker A
think that this is our great chance of reshaping our economy and bringing that type builders and craft backed into the United States.
Speaker A
Absolutely. And it I mean it feels like what uh what Colossus and Macro hard and macro harder have done have been amazing for the communities around them, the jobs they've created. How do you how do you think about that?
Speaker A
Uh yeah, the I mean the economic impact is positive economic impact has been tremendous. Um I mean we we there's actually a job shortage in in the region and whereas there used to be uh quite a bit of unemployment and now it's uh
Speaker A
there there's a overmployment if you will there's there's more jobs than than there are people um and the the tax benefits uh for the community have been tremendous. I think the I think we might have doubled their their tax budget or
Speaker A
something um quite quite tremendous. Then we we do like small things that are helpful like provide you know low price halfp price stallink uh access. Um we're building a water recycling plant that's a $250 million water recycling plant. Um
Speaker A
I think you you do need to do things for the community. Um and if you do so they will reciprocate.
Speaker A
Awesome. Now one of the the things that people people forget is that for the first time in in probably forever that we have the market forces to support the investment of sustainable energy. You give me an example of a fusion fision
Speaker A
you know small nuclear reactor large re reactor almost every form of sustainable energy is being funded today. And so we have the opportunity to fund the future of energy without without the government subsidizing without right. I mean, we
Speaker A
this is you give me an example of a great energy battery storage idea. It's going to get funded. Awesome. By by the way, on behalf of all Americans, I want to thank both of you. I think combined you have created more than 5 trillion
Speaker A
dollars of wealth for ordinary Americans in their 401ks, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, many tens of billions of wages. So, thank you. Um, I I think Jensen's done five trillion by himself actually.
Speaker A
I'm sorry. I think Jensen's done five trillion by himself. I think I think I think around three and a half or something.
Speaker A
Yeah. I was trying I was trying to be conservative. Yes. Yeah. So, you guys both had a great Monday. I was watching the uh Starship launch, first orbital Starship launch while I was reading about the open agent safety
Speaker A
framework from Nvidia. Uh which was an exciting morning. Uh so may maybe you could each talk about each of those because we need Starship to get those 200 gawatts of American solder with American chips, American super intelligence into orbit.
Speaker A
I'll talk about his and he talks on mine. And so no, I'm just kidding. So, so um uh let's see. As you know, we want to advance AI. Advance SI. We I'm going to get good at this. We're going to advance
Speaker A
SI in a in a responsible uh and optimistic way. And we we know that the future uh we strongly believe that the future that SI is going to enable is a future that we want to be part of. And
Speaker A
so, we're optimistic about that. And that's the reason why we're driving so hard. On the other hand, we have to make sure that we develop this technology safely and securely. Um there are several different parts of it. While
Speaker A
you're training the model, um that's that's generally a fairly safe environment. But while you're evaluating the model, while you're testing the model, you have to make sure that the agent agentic system, the model itself is highly contained. That containment
Speaker A
system has to be really secure. And the second thing is that while you're while you're testing it, you want to monitor that that just because just even though even though you have it contained, you should never trust that it's contained.
Speaker A
And so you want to monitor it in real time. And you want to ideally monitor it with another another chip so that it is outside, you know, if you will out of band outside the environment, outside the sandbox of the agent itself. And so
Speaker A
you want to contain and you want to monitor. Um once you're done uh evaluating in this way when you deploy you want to use a very similar system and this is no different than than um uh just about any digital any human
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employee that you hire uh you give them a containment of rights and tools and access uh and then you monitor on on a regular basis on a continuous basis. And so in the case of agents we just have to
Speaker A
make sure containment and monitoring has to be done in the most secure of ways.
Speaker A
And we in introduced two technologies. One's called open shell. Uh it's a a containment system. Uh it's basically kind of like a browser for websites.
Speaker A
It's now essentially a browser of agents. Um and that browser keeps uh the agent isolated from the rest of the computer and the rights that you give it are only the rights it should have. And then the the the monitoring system uh is
Speaker A
a a new chip called Bluefield and it it just keeps an eye on everything that the agent is doing at all times. And if it does anything that's you know out of bounds and against the policy that has
Speaker A
been given uh then it you know escalates uh as far as you need it to escalate.
Speaker A
And I thought it was a great analogy in in the technical blog where you said in the early days of internet everybody was worried about your credit card could get stolen. We made the internet safe and that's why we have Amazon, we have
Speaker A
Netflix, we have Google, we have X, we have so many so many great things because we made the internet safe. Now we're do now now we're doing the same with AI and safety is not, you know, inconsistent with advancing the
Speaker A
technology. Safety and advancing a technology is one and the same thing. It's no different than than um uh when you have autopilot. Not only is it advanced technology, it's also safer technology. And so you want to you advance the technology in that way. Um
Speaker A
the two are not in conflict. Um the idea that if you advance capability it somehow compromises safety. If you advance safety somehow you fall behind that that's just that you know those are false choices.
Speaker A
Yeah. Safety lets us accelerate. But Elon if the Starship's going to be a big part of those 200 gigawatts what can you tell us about Monday's flight? What you learned? How you feeling about the program?
Speaker A
Yeah I think the Starship is going great. uh we we uh we took Starship to orbit for the first time and we deployed uh Starlink B3 satellites which were enormous satellites. I mean these are satellites with the wingspan of a 737.
Speaker A
So u really really enormous uh in fact it's it's the largest payload delivered to orbit since Skylab.
Speaker A
So, uh, now we expect Starship to, uh, ultimately next year I think probably reach, um, a weekly or twice weekly cadence.
Speaker A
We've got not Tom Brown here. I know him by his ex handle. Welcome. Good to see you guys again.
Speaker A
Um, yes, it was. Uh, my my car took a wrong turn, so you guys got here faster than me. Impressive.
Speaker A
I'm glad you made it. So, but Elon, please please continue. You were talking about how Starship is going to let us get to 200 gigs of American solar with American chips with American super intelligence.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, I mean Starship is going to do a lot of things. It's I mean it's intended uh to carry enough payload to the moon and Mars to build a self-growing city on the moon or Mars.
Speaker A
So um I mean I think as a rough order of magnitude you need about a million tons to deliver to the surface of the moon to uh create a self-growing city or similarly sim similar number for Mars.
Speaker A
Um and and and then in addition it will launch um at least a few hundred gawatts a year of uh AI compute. Um 200 gawatts a year would be a 40% increase annually in the United States total energy uh
Speaker A
consumption. So that's quite a quite a big number. Um, and it might end up being a terowatt one day. Um, so this is this is serious tonnage.
Speaker A
Awesome. And and Tom, uh, Enthropic, uh, your your company, you're a co-founder of Enthropic. You announced Opus 5.5 in the last several days. And I thought maybe we'd go to the exponential that we are on. And I think it's helpful to
Speaker A
ground what can Opus 5.5 and maybe it's for everybody. What can Opus 5.5 do to make the lives of ordinary Americans better today and where are we going to be in a year?
Speaker A
Yeah. So um Opus 55 is uh a model that I think just continues the normal progress that we've had of getting kind of more IQ points for each of these super intelligences uh with each model release. Um, and so the main things that
Speaker A
people will see if they use it now is that it can do a task that takes a longer time than they'd be able to delegate to to a previous model. Um, and so I think the things that people should
Speaker A
see is just like as a normal American, if you want a task, if you want to actually delegate a task to it, it will be able to do that better is one thing.
Speaker A
And then two is a thing that I think people notice less, which is just that there's going to be a huge amount of software being written by these models.
Speaker A
And so all of the products that people use are going to be getting higher quality, cheaper over time. And it'll have this effect of just like all of the all of the tools that we use now were written by like people doing
Speaker A
engineering work. And now it's going to be written by both people and super intelligence is doing much much more engineering work than was possible before.
Speaker A
Absolutely. But I think it's doing so much more than this. There's already multiple stories of AI, I'm sorry, super intelligence. Super intelligence finding a life-saving drug that can be used for a disease that it wasn't understood that it could safely treat. So, it's saving
Speaker A
lives. I think it's having profound impacts on education, but may maybe each of you could talk for ordinary Americans. What's super intelligence doing today? And what's it going to be able to do in a year? I'm an ordinary
Speaker A
American and uh I use I use um uh Claude to uh help me do research and and um instead of giving me just answers and most of my research that maybe there's comparative research that I'm doing and there's two
Speaker A
or three different approaches to something and I wanted to answer a list of different questions and uh compare and contrast uh rates of rates of growth or rates of change or whatever it is and and so I describe I literally, you know,
Speaker A
every single question I have and nothing gives me more joy than and then and I ask it to create a nice report and and plot it out and sometimes it's a pie chart, sometimes it's a bar graph and I
Speaker A
just hit enter and nothing gives me more joy than just watch it go and it comes back and it creates a beautiful, you know, beautiful report and and then instead of instead of researching all these different topics for four, six,
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eight hours, which back in the old days I would on a weekend, you know, learn something new, it goes off and creates me this really really beautiful final report in about 3 minutes and you know it's all condensed and now you're
Speaker A
getting smarter faster. Love it. What about for you? How is how do you how are you seeing super intelligence helping ordinary Americans? What do you think it'll do in a year or two?
Speaker A
Maybe a year or two. Take a year or two from now. Yeah. Well, I I think it's it's helping people organize their lives and uh do better at their jobs. So, I think it really will become um essential if it
Speaker A
isn't already for people to use AI uh for in their professional lives certainly and and in their private lives. And so, AI is just an incredibly helpful, useful thing. Um, you know, I've heard many anecdotes of AI helping people uh with
Speaker A
medical issues. Um, and in in many cases where the the doctor was wrong and the they they submitted their X-rays or MRI to to AI and and AI got it right and and but but for AI, they would have died.
Speaker A
And I've heard many such cases. Awesome. And hopefully Opus 56 tells Tom, "Don't take that left, take the right." Hopefully, I think it's important these these super intelligences, they're imbued with the values of their creators. And we do have
Speaker A
there there are American values that we all share. The first amendment, free speech, commitment to truth.
Speaker A
Can you can you talk about what each of you are doing to imbue help make sure that these these super intelligences are imbued with with the right values?
Speaker A
Are we allowed to say anything controversial? Say something controversial. Okay. So, so um I the the SI are are tools and and the challenge with an SI with values uh meaning it has judgment. um depending on how you use that SI, it may decide uh um
Speaker A
how it deci it may judge you and it's effectiveness would be affected by that judgment. And so it's a little bit like a steak knife where if you if you uh were served medium well, it cuts perfectly, but if you were served rare
Speaker A
steak and it looks awfully like live meat, somehow it doesn't cut. And so I I think there's a there's a you know there's a there's a question in my mind yet about how much judgment you really want these tools to have. And and so
Speaker A
that the intentions of the user um you know obviously I use I use the knife as an example but you can think of a whole bunch of other examples. Uh the intentions are a little bit different.
Speaker A
you know whether you're a defender or an attacker for example in cyber security the defender's actions could resemble an attacker and you want the defender you want this SI to um uh activate on behalf of the defender even though it appears
Speaker A
to be an you know an aggressive action. Great. I think we're running up on time but maybe if you guys could share you spent a lot of time at the White House.
Speaker A
Is there anything that that you can share share with the world about what came out of what was evidently a a uh a long and productive lunch?
Speaker A
We did good. Yeah. We we signed a joint declaration uh regarding SI safety. Um and uh I think I think that'll be published by the White House soon if it hasn't been already. Uh but uh we we agreed to to a
Speaker A
number of things that uh include joint monitoring um board special committees and u just generally uh grading each other's homework which is a lot better than if people just grade their own homework uh for obvious reasons and and includes every it includes
Speaker A
everything from um rigorous internal controls um wellestablished methods well established processes um very clearly documented intentions of the products that you're building, internal controls to make sure that you're delivering on those intentions. Um internal audit um that that escalates uh external audits
Speaker A
um from from a third party and uh um and then industry sharing best practices. I I thought that the the the declaration has has a lot of teeth. Um I thought it was really well written and um I think
Speaker A
this is a a practice that that quite frankly as a standards for our industry going forward. Um every every single company out of out of embrace and so uh pus pus pulled it all together. Uh he he um watched over the meeting and uh uh
Speaker A
was able to bring everybody out and um you know I thought it was it was really wellrun.
Speaker A
Awesome. Well, on behalf of all Americans, thank thank all of you for doing everything you can to make the future as awesome and optimistic for American Americans as you can and you are. So, thank you.
Speaker A
Thank you.
Topics:Elon MuskJensen HuangTom BrownArtificial Super IntelligenceAI RevolutionEnergy ScalingChip ProductionData CentersSpaceXOrbital Compute
