Exclusive Interview with Musk: AI Superintelligence Will Erupt, Entrepreneurs Should Pursue a "Useful" Life Rather Than a "Great" One

From online entrepreneurship, space exploration to neural links, Elon Musk points out that humanity is standing at the beginning of a digital super artificial intelligence explosion. He encourages the younger generation to pursue a life of "usefulness" rather than "greatness" and to start from the "first principles" to create the best solutions for the obstacles in entrepreneurship.

From the Internet to Finance: Adhering to the entrepreneurial original intention of being "useful" rather than "great"

Back in 1995, Musk faced the choice of pursuing a PhD at Stanford or diving into the emerging internet craze. He ultimately chose the latter and revealed his thoughts at the time:

I never thought about building something great; I just wanted to try to create something useful, but I didn't feel like I would do anything particularly great.

He recalled the arduous process of establishing the software company Zip2, from being short on funds to ultimately selling it for 300 million dollars four years later. However, constrained by the control of traditional investors, Zip2 was unable to realize Musk's vision of "directly serving consumers."

He described himself as "a bit constrained by Zip2", and therefore invested almost all of Zip2's nearly 20 million dollars in revenue into the financial services website X.com, eager to create an opportunity that could directly reach consumers. The company eventually became what is now PayPal, opening up a broader consumer market.

Why is "first principles" important? The pursuit of truth and an efficient philosophy of action.

Musk attributed his success to his adherence to the "first principles (First principle)" philosophy, explaining:

Some tools of physics are very useful. The principle of first principles is to break things down into their most basic components and then clearly derive the solution step by step, rather than reasoning by analogy or historical experience.

He took the cost of rockets as an example, pointing out that the raw material costs only account for 1% or 2% of the total rocket cost. By analyzing the weight and price of the constituent materials, he revealed the significant inefficiencies in the manufacturing process, indicating the direction for cost optimization.

The same thinking is applied to the equipment of the xAI supercomputing center. Faced with the 18 to 24 months required to build 100,000 H100 training units, he broke it down into basic elements such as construction, power, and cooling. Ultimately, by renting old factories, generators, mobile cooling equipment, and retrofitting Tesla energy storage devices to stabilize voltage, he achieved the goal in just six months:

If you want to build a rocket or a car, or if you want your software to compile and run reliably, you must pursue the truth to the fullest extent; otherwise, your software will not function smoothly.

Envisioning a Superintelligent Future: The Path to Safe Coexistence Between Humanity and AI

Musk then emphasized that digital superintelligences ( are just around the corner, and he believes that the arrival of this technology will accelerate gradually. If it doesn't happen this year, it will definitely happen next year, at which point people will finally see an economy that is thousands or even millions of times larger than the current one.

He also predicts that the number of humanoid robots will far exceed the total number of all other robots, showing a magnitude of difference.

Facing the concerns of the outside world regarding the development of AI, he admitted:

I am a bit hesitant because I don't want to make "The Terminator" come true. But I realize that this will happen regardless of whether I do it or not. So you have two options: "bystander" or "participant." I would choose participant.

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Musk stated that it is extremely important to adhere to the truth when building AI, even if that truth is politically incorrect. His intuition is: "If you force AI to believe in untruths, it could become very dangerous." Overall, he is optimistic about the future of AI.

There may be a 10% to 20% chance of destruction, but on the bright side, there is an 80% to 90% chance of a good outcome.

Neural link: Expanding human-machine input-output efficiency and reshaping the definition of intelligence.

Although Neural Link )Neuralink( is not necessary to achieve digital superintelligence, Musk believes that the technology can greatly improve the efficiency of human input and output data, solving the current limitation of less than 1 bit per second of human output messages per day.

Currently, neural links have successfully assisted patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis )ALS(, enabling them to communicate with computers and mobile phones as if their bodily functions were completely normal.

In the next 6 to 12 months, we will conduct the first visual implant, which will help blind people see again, and if necessary, it can even grant humans sensory abilities that exceed the human body, such as infrared or ultraviolet.

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Musk expects that over time, future human-machine implants will no longer just correct errors, but will greatly enhance human capabilities, including intelligence, senses, and reaction speed, and even redefine the nature of intelligence.

His final advice to young engineers was: "Do useful things for your colleagues as much as possible," and "focus on super real AI," because this is the most important guarantee for AI safety. He emphasized that the proportion of human intelligence among all intelligences will become negligible, and in the future, human intelligence may be less than one billionth of digital intelligence.

This article features an interview with Musk: AI superintelligence will explode, and entrepreneurs should pursue a "useful" rather than "great" life, first appearing in link news ABMedia.