The South by Southwest Conference & Festivals (SXSW), a nine-day mega-event in Austin, Texas, that covers technology, culture, film and music, kicked off on Fri Mar 9 and will continue till Sat Mar 17.
Elon Musk joined the cast and creators of HBO’s Westworld at the end of the show’s panel on Saturday. The show’s creator Jonathan Nolan created and presented a new video celebrating the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket launch in February. We have seen parts of the video before, in diaries here at DK, but the video contains some new footage of the 3rd booster that failed to land on the drone ship, because “Not enough ignition fluid to light the outer two engines after several three engine relights”.
While introducing the video, Jonathan Nolan said - “It’s not a trailer for a movie. It’s not a trailer for a TV show. What we’re hoping is this the trailer for one part of the next chapter of the human story.”
During the panel discussion and afterwards, Musk expounded on the reason to travel to Mars. Some highlights of his short talk —
There are a lot of terrible things happening all over the world, all of the time. There are lots of problems that need to get solved. Lots of things that are miserable and kind of get you down.
But life cannot just be about solving one miserable thing after another. That can’t be the only thing. They need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity.
Musk quoted Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who talked about how earth is the cradle of humanity but that you can’t stay in the cradle forever.
Musk said he felt really excited by Tsiolkovsky’s ideas around needing to be out there among the stars, and to expand the scope and scale of human consciousness.
We have seen these sentiments expressed by Elon before in his tweets, as documented in the diary “Why Go To Mars? And other Planets and Moons” at www.dailykos.com/….
On Sunday, Mar 11, Musk sat down for an hour long Q&A session with Jonathan Nolan, discussing a wide range of topics near-and-dear to Musk. Here is the full video —
Here is an abbreviated and annotated version of the session -
Here are some highlights of the interview —
On AI, Musk spoke in rather dark and foreboding terms -
We have to figure out some to ensure that the advent of digital super intelligence is one that is symbiotic with humanity. I think that’s the single biggest existential crisis that we face.
Mark my words, AI is much more dangerous than nukes. It scares the hell outta me. It’s capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows.
There needs to be a public regulatory body that has insight and then oversight to confirm that everyone is developing AI safely and in a way that is “symbiotic with humanity”.
On going to Mars -
There is a certain probability that we will enter the dark ages, particularly if we have a third world war.
If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilization somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages.
That’s why it’s important to get a self-sustaining base, ideally on Mars because Mars is far enough away from Earth that, if there’s a war on Earth, the Mars base might survive. It’s more likely to survive than a moon base.
The BFR (rocket) will fly for the first time in the first half of 2019 (not to Mars). People have told me that my timelines historically have been optimistic.
The BFR flight will cost less than the first Falcon flight.
We’ll start off building the most elementary of infrastructure: just a base to create propellant, a power station, glass domes in which to grow crops, all of the sort of fundamentals without which you would not survive. Then there’s going to be an explosion of entrepreneurial opportunity, because Mars will need everything from iron foundries to pizza joints.
Most likely, the form of government on Mars would be a direct democracy, not a representative one. People will vote directly on issues
On self-driving cars —
I expect self-driving cars to be at least 100 to 200 percent safer than a human driver by the end of next year
On sustainable energy -
Sustainable energy is really important. They core technologies are there — wind , solar and batteries.
The fundamental problem is that the cost of technologies that release carbon is not properly included in the price.
On himself —
At SpaceX, 80-90% of my time is spent on engineering and design.
In order to make the right decisions, you have to understand things at a detailed level.
The interview ended with Elon and his brother Kimbal singing MyLittle Buttercup from The Three Amigos. As Elon predicted, it was quite bad. Kimbal Musk is quite an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and environmentalist himself. According to en.wikipedia.org/… -
Kimbal Musk has been cited as a "global social entrepreneur" for his work to "pursue an America where everyone has access to real food." He is considered a "founding father of the modern food movement" and one of the "top people changing food in America." He owns The Kitchen Cafe, LLC, a family of community restaurants located across the American Heartland in Colorado, Chicago, Memphis, and Indianapolis.
After seven years of supporting the Growe Foundation to plant school gardens in the Boulder community, Musk and Matheson established The Kitchen Community 501c3 nonprofit to help connect kids to real food by creating Learning Gardens in schools across America. Learning Gardens teach children an understanding of food, healthy eating, lifestyle choices and environment through lesson plans and activities that tie into existing school curriculum, such as math, science and literacy.
SXSW
South by Southwest (abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By) is an annual conglomerate of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987, and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with SXSW interactive lasting for five days, music for seven days and film running concurrently for nine days.
The schedule of events this year contains a gazillion events. Check it out at schedule.sxsw.com/…. It’s big.
See www.sxsw.com/… for a list of featured speakers.
Here is a short summary of day 3. Look for other daily summaries at YouTube.
Here is an engaging Q&A session with Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), who is running against Ted Cruz for Senate -
Obama at SXSW 2016. Ya think the current unPresident can do anything remotely similar to this?
Epilogue
There is a lot to digest in the Elon Musk Q&A. There is no other comparable public figure today who has the eloquence, depth and vision across such a wide range of topics. Whether you agree with Elon on everything or nothing or somewhere in between, you have to admire the out-of-the-box thinking and problem-solving mindset of not just him, but the entire cadre of smart people behind him. And you have to suspect that these folks will get things right or figure things out, most of the time if not all of the time. And there are plenty of other companies and people, who do the hard work of advancing science and technology, perhaps with less fanfare, who also deserve our support and admiration.
As for SXSW, I was not aware of it at all. I am now.