Elon Musk, Academician of the National Academy of Engineering,” article titled “Believe Technology Creates a Better Future”. I’m glad to share technology and human vision with Chinese friends.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., member of the National Academy of Engineering
As technology accelerates, it may one day surpass human comprehension and control. Some are optimistic, some are pessimistic. But I believe that as long as we are not complacent and maintain a sense of urgency, the future of mankind, driven by the power of technology, will be bright. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy: If humans want to make the future good, they should act to make the future good.
I hope to do our best to use technology to maximize the realization of a better future for mankind. To this end, any area that contributes to a sustainable future is worth investing in. Whether it is Tesla, a brain-computer interface company, or a space exploration technology company, the ultimate goal of these companies is to improve the quality of human life in the future and create as much practical value as possible for the world. Tesla aims to Accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy, brain-computer interface companies devote themselves to medical rehabilitation, and SpaceX makes interstellar connections possible.
Clean Energy: A Sustainable Future
For clean energy, the starting point of my thinking is how to continuously and permanently produce and store energy, and how to continuously provide power for future production and life. In my opinion, the future of sustainable energy involves three links.
Generation of sustainable energy. The sun is like a giant fusion power generator from which humans are currently exploiting very little energy. In the long run, solar energy will become the main energy source of human civilization. Of course, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear power are also useful energy supplements.
Storage of sustainable energy. In view of the change of day and night and the change of weather, we need many fixed battery packs to store solar and wind energy, because the sun does not shine all the time, the wind does not blow all the time, and the invisible energy needs to be sealed in a large number of fixed battery packs .
Electric transportation. Vehicles, including cars, planes, and ships, are fully electrified. Electric rockets may be more difficult, but we may be able to make the propellants used in rockets through sustainable energy sources. Ultimately, the world economy will run entirely on sustainable energy.
The world is on track to transition to sustainable energy, and humanity should continue to accelerate this process. Because the sooner this transition is achieved, the less risk humans pose to the environment and the greater the gain. When the supply of clean energy continues, the cost of carbon sequestration and desalination will be cheaper, and climate change and water shortages will be solved. When fossil fuels are eliminated from the stage of history, the sky will be cleaner and the world will be quieter , the air will be cleaner and the future will be brighter.
Solar energy, battery packs, and electric vehicles outline a bright future. Next we need to focus on addressing the limiting factors. The development of vehicle electrification has become the consensus of various countries, but the global popularity of pure electric vehicles requires the support of terawatt-hour batteries. According to our estimates, humans need about 300 terawatt-hours of battery energy storage to achieve a sustainable energy transition. The biggest difficulty in promoting sustainable energy lies in the large-scale production of lithium battery cells. Specifically, from mining, element refining to the production line of battery cells, and finally forming a battery pack, many complex links need to be experienced. It can be said that the production of battery cells restricts the rapid development of sustainable energy economy.
As a pioneer and innovator focusing on energy innovation technology, Tesla was founded to solve the problem of energy innovation. On the one hand, we create comprehensive sustainable energy products from the three links of energy production, storage and use; on the other hand, we are committed to redefining battery manufacturing and removing restrictions on battery capacity through innovative research and development of advanced battery technology. I believe the world will transition to a sustainable future through a combination of solar, wind, plus battery storage and electric vehicles. I am very happy to see more and more companies joining this field. In the cause of energy innovation, Chinese enterprises will be a force to be reckoned with.
Humanoid Robots: Doing What Humans Do
Today’s cars are more and more like intelligent, connected robots on wheels. In fact, in addition to cars, humanoid robots are also becoming a reality. In 2021, Tesla will launch a universal humanoid robot (Tesla Bot). The height and weight of the Tesla robot is close to that of an adult, it can carry or carry heavy objects, and it can also walk in small steps. The screen on its face is an interactive interface for communicating with people. You may be wondering, why did we design this legged robot? Because human society is based on the interaction of bipedal humanoids with two arms and ten fingers. So if we want a robot to adapt to its environment and do what a human does, it needs to have roughly the same size, shape and capabilities as a human.
The initial positioning of Tesla robots is to replace people in repetitive and dangerous jobs. But the long-term goal is to make it serve thousands of households, such as cooking, mowing lawns, and caring for the elderly.
Achieving this goal requires robots to evolve smart enough and to be capable of mass-producing robots. The “four-wheeled robot” we produce, the car, has changed people’s travel and even their way of life. And when one day we solve the problem of self-driving cars (that is, real-world artificial intelligence problems), artificial intelligence technology can be extended to humanoid robots. This will have broader application prospects than cars.
We plan to launch the first prototype of a humanoid robot this year, and focus on improving the intelligence of the robot to solve the problem of large-scale production. Since then, the practicality of humanoid robots will increase year by year as the scale of production expands and costs drop. In the future, a home robot may be cheaper than a car. Maybe in less than a decade, people will be able to buy their parents a robot for their birthday.
It is foreseeable that with the power of robots, we will create an era of extreme abundance of goods and services, and everyone can live a prosperous life. Perhaps the only scarcity that exists in the future is that we as humans create ourselves.
Brain-Computer Interfaces: Empowering the Disabled
Compared with electric vehicles, some Chinese friends may not be so familiar with brain-computer interface companies. Such companies are mainly engaged in the development of computer and human brain fusion technology. The brain chips they develop are the size of coins, similar to wearable devices such as smart watches, but they can be more deeply integrated with the user’s body — by implanting in the cerebral cortex. Record and stimulate brain activity.
At this stage, the technology is helping the injured on an individual level. We have received a lot of sad emails: a 25-year-old young man had an accident while riding a motorcycle during the golden years of his life, which made him unable to eat on his own. This is a great grief for both the individual and the family. In view of this, brain-computer interface technology will focus on curing or alleviating related diseases such as brain injury for many years to come. For example, it could help those with spinal injuries and neurological disorders restore limb sensory or motor function, or allow quadriplegics to use their brains to easily operate a computer or mobile phone.
The technology could also ameliorate a wider range of brain injuries, whether congenital or accidental, or caused by age and external stressors, including severe depression, morbid obesity, sleep problems, underlying schizophrenia, etc., are expected to be alleviated by human-machine devices.
With the development of brain-computer interface technology, in the long run, this connection will hopefully expand the channels for the outside world to communicate with the human brain, and “access” more brain regions and new neural data. The technology could allow humans to effectively merge with AI and ultimately expand new ways humans interact with the world, themselves and others. Even if the goal of human-computer integration is difficult to achieve, brain-computer interface technology will play a huge role in the field of medical rehabilitation.
Space Exploration: The Possibilities of Interplanetary Habitat
Ultimately, my best hope is that humans create a self-sufficient city on Mars. Many people ask me, why explore outer space and turn humans into multi-planetary creatures? In the vast universe, human civilization is like a tiny candle, like a little light in the void. When one day, the expansion of the sun makes the earth no longer habitable, we can fly to our new home in a spacecraft. If human beings can inhabit other planets, it means that human beings have one of the conditions to pass the great screening of the universe. At that time, we will become interstellar citizens, and human civilization will continue.
The first step in achieving cross-planet habitation is to reduce the cost of travel, which is exactly what SpaceX was founded to do — we first build recyclable rockets, and then build reusable giant ships to continuously increase carrying capacity. As of the beginning of this year, SpaceX has successfully completed 79 rocket reuse flights, delivering cargo to the space station and sending ordinary people into space. We also designed and built the largest launch vehicle in history, the “Starship”, which can carry 100 passengers and supplies at a time. In the future, we plan to build at least 1,000 “starships” and send batches of pioneers to Mars to build a self-sufficient city.
The world is changing with each passing day as technology changes life at an accelerating pace. Life is more than simply solving one problem after another. We all want to wake up in the morning looking forward to the future and rejoicing at what’s to come. I hope many more will join us in our fight to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. I also welcome more like-minded Chinese partners to join us in the exploration of clean energy, artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration and even space, and jointly create a future worth looking forward to.
