Abundance Summit March 18, 2026 Live with Peter Diamandis at the 2026 Abundance Summit, Elon Musk discusses Grok 4.20, the AI "hard takeoff," recursive self-improvement, Optimus 3 and the path to a post-scarcity, universal-high-income economy.
Live with Peter Diamandis at the 2026 Abundance Summit, Elon Musk discusses Grok 4.20, the AI "hard takeoff," recursive self-improvement, Optimus 3 and the path to a post-scarcity, universal-high-income economy.
Transcript Full transcript on whatsuptesla.com → Audience. And as you can see, I'm still trying to monetize hope.
Yeah, you look like you're in great shape.
Is there any sort of youth serum things going on or what?
It's our Longevity X prize. We're getting there, buddy. We're getting there. I think in our last conversation, you're getting on board with the idea of extended longevity. Yes.
Some degree. I mean, like, I don't know if we wanted everyone to live forever or whatever, but I think health span and not, you know, having an extended period of senescence where you're just drooling on yourself sounds like a good idea. We want to avoid that.
Yeah. So first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and XAI Baller move going to power humanity's first Dyson swarm. So I'm curious, it truly is. What's your timeline for launching these data centers? And how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of the speed at which you're going to be making this happen.
Yeah, so SpaceX is, has filed. SpaceX is in the quiet period. I can't actually tell you things that would cause problems. Yeah.
Oh, I'll leave it, I'll leave it that. I appreciate that, but can't wait for the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with Eric Schmidt and with one of the leads from one of the other hyperscalers. I won't mention who, but I'm curious where you feel we are in recursive self improvement? Are we there? Do you see Grok doing recursive self improvement at this point? And how. What's the timeline for AGI and asi? Give us a sense of that.
Yeah, I think we've been in recursive improvement for a while here. If you mean by like recursive self improvement without a human in the loop, is that what you mean?
I do. On the AI software side, I mean,
humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self improvement. So every successive model is built by the one before it. So that is happening to a large degree, but it's not yet fully automated.
end of this year, but not later than next year.
Do you see a hard takeoff at that point?
We're in the hard takeoff.
Right now, Yes. I mean, look at. I mean, at this point I go to sleep, there's some passive AI breakthrough and when I wake up, there's another one yes. Yeah, it's hard to keep track, honestly. So, yeah, it's a bit of a head spinner.
Yeah, Well, I think a lot of the head spinning is happening from you too.
Yeah, well, you know, Groq's doing pretty well. And in some metrics, by some metrics, it's the best. For example, it's the best at predicting things, which, you know, is arguably the best metric for intelligence. The new Grok 4.20 is really, really good. We're currently behind on coding. The reason I was a bit late for this was that I was just in a giant, sort of all hands on coding, just going through all of the things that need to happen to essentially catch up and exceed our competitors on coding, which I think we'll do. I feel we should probably get there by the middle of this year. And then I think people don't quite understand just how much intelligence there will be or just how far it will exceed human intelligence to a degree that is impossible to fully understand. But you can certainly imagine a situation where we, let's say a million times more energy is harnessed than all of Earth's current electricity usage. That would still only be roughly a millionth of the sun's energy output. So essentially, if you increase Earth's economy by a factor of a million, it's still roughly a trillion, since we're a trillionth of the Sun's energy. If you increase Earth's economy in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you will be roughly one millionth only of the sun's energy harnessed. But what is it? What is, what is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of a civilization think about or look like or do, it's going to be something pretty magnificent. The challenge will be even vaguely appreciating that level of intelligence. But it's safe to say it will solve everything you can possibly think of. Yes. Longevity being, you know, certainly one of them. And I, I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism.
I see. Hope. Hope, yeah, exactly. You've taken to heart monetizing hope, which is pretty funny. It was, it was Grox.
It was Grok's marketing advice to me when you roasted me on.
Right. Probably roasting you and saying you monetize them. But hey, if you're going to spend the monetizing misery, I suppose, yes, for sure. Yeah. But yeah, just when you have AI and robots are going to increase the economic output or by so many orders of magnitude, we cannot possibly comprehend it,
we're Likely in the very short time to become a minority than a vast minority, than a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet.
Yes. Not even on this planet in the solar system.
Because your best case outcome for Earth for intelligence is roughly one billionth of the sun's energy. That's your best case outcome. If you generate intelligence, only on Earth intercept it, right?
Yes, because roughly one, roughly half of the Sun's energy hits Earth and that's the vast majority of energy that's out there that we can access. So really, the intelligence in the solar system will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on Earth itself.
How. Can I ask you a question, Elon? How far out can you see, how many years out can you make reasonable predictions right now?
It's hard to predict the, the path exactly. Especially because often things are kind of an S curve or a series of S curves where it starts off slow, grows exponentially, hits linear zone and then goes logarithmic. That generally has been what I've seen with breakthroughs in AI, for example, is there'll be some breakthrough. It'll have an S curve and then it looks like it's just going to go to infinity, but then you hit logarithmic returns until there's another breakthrough.
So progress in AI is just a sort of series of, you know, sort of overlapping S curves or connected S curves.
I mean, there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now? Yeah.
Okay. This is going to sound pretty crazy.
It's okay. We've been, we've been talking about crazy.
Receptive audience to wild prognostications.
I'd say the economy is 10 times the sleep its current size in 10 years. Greater than.
You really saying something?
Yeah. You said triple digit growth in, in 5 plus years from now on on GDP and 10x the economy. But in terms of your ability, I
feel like that's, that's, that's a 10x in roughly 10 years, I feel is actually a fairly comfortable prediction with if there's like World War 3 or something that could put a kink in those plans or those expectations. But in the absence of World War 3, if current trends continue, I would say the economy, taxes in 10 years.
Love it. Can you give us an. We had a bunch of.
We'll have a base on the moon.
Yes. And we'll, and we'll have, and we'll
have people on Mars and we'll have
mass drivers on the moon. Yes.
I think so in 10 years, I think, I think we'll have a mass driver on the moon in 10 years.
I love it. Gerard K. O' Neill's vision being fulfilled. We had four robots on stage here this year on the, at the Abundance Summit. I look forward to optimus. I'm curious Optimus 3 timeline and in particular, when can I buy one or two? When. When do you expect Optimus to go into commercial for commercial sale or will you be leasing it?
Well, we're in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world. Nothing's even close.
In fact, I haven't even seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus 3, frankly. Maybe they're out there or they're secret or something, I don't know. But, You know, and I have to make sure I'm saying things that are reasonably public as well.
Of course, we're streaming this on X. Yeah.
Okay. This is pretty public and accurate.
Yeah. I think we'll start production on Optimus three this summer, but very slow at first. Like this sort of classic S curve ramp of manufacturing units versus time and then probably reach high volume production around summer next year. And then, you know, we'll have Optimus 4, you know, design clean next year, like try to release a new robot design every year. An improved robot design every year.
When Dave Blunden and I were at the Gigafactory, it was an extraordinary experience. Eleven and a half million square feet for the Tesla. And then I think you said you're building out nine and a half million square feet for Optimus there as well, which is, which is extraordinary.
Let's, let's say my square feet. Random is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That'll be quite that. That's going to be a new factory design too. Like it's not different from other factories.
How far before we have robots building robots? I mean, you automated so much of the Gigafactory already where there are humans playing a small role. Do the robots just play the role that humans are playing in that regard?
We still have a lot of humans building things. Tesla direct employees who are building things or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people in the building is roughly 100,000. So we have a lot of people. Tesla total headcount's around 150k. Of which two thirds are, you know, in the factory in one form or another. And then our suppliers, there's probably maybe a million or 2 million people. In our suppliers type of thing. So it's a lot of people. What we do expect that is that the output per person at Tesla becomes very, very high. Yeah. So we're not planning any, like, layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact, we will increase our headcount, but the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high.
When we were, like, when we were together, we discussed the idea of sustainable abundance on our podcast. And you reinforce the idea that we have a coming age of universal high income, which has become a point of discussion beyond ubi, But I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get there. Have you reflected that any further and more. So, you know, we talked about a time frame of civil unrest, you know, two, three, four, five years, probably a lot of COVID like checks in the interim until we get to a demonetization and a, you know, deflation that leads us to uhi. Any more reflections on that? People need that hope and that vision. Yeah.
I mean, to be clear, I don't think we should be sort of complacent. We do need to be careful because the future is a range of possible outcomes and they're not all great. But at this point, I do agree with you that it's likely to be great. It's probably 80% likely, maybe more likely to be great. And I do think we'll have universal high income. We're basically just issuing money to people. And really just because the output of goods and services will so far exceed the money supply that you know that effectively you have deflation. Because just deflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money supply. So that, that's. So if the rate of growth of goods and services far exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply, which I predict will happen, then you will have deflation.
Yes. And a lot of. A lot of people spinning up new companies, competing against each other, driving the price down and increasing the variability and deflation faster and faster.
Yeah, it's basically AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that they will actually run out of things to do for the humans. They'll just run out of things to do for the humans. And then they. Well, you know, there's only so much that humans can even express that they want. So you go back to my example of like, if you go a million times greater than the Earth's economy, you've long since saturated all human desire. You know, like maybe, like if you go a thousand times More than our current economy. Thousand times. You probably have already saturated human. Anything people can think of that they want.
So do you think the value of money is going to significantly decrease? Will we go post capitalist?
Yeah, I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.
So just as you're becoming a.
It's probably something like an index culture sort of future. And I think the AI down the road will really not use human currency. It will just care about power and mass wattage and tonnage.
It's kind of ironic then, right? Just as you're becoming a multi trillionaire, money starts to have less value?
Yeah, pretty much, yeah. You know, there's all this stuff. It's really just trillionaires represents like some percentage ownership in companies that I built. And it's not like sitting in the bank account. It's just literally I own a percentage of the companies. The companies are doing lots of useful things. The value of the company grows. I own a percentage of the companies and that's the sums up to that number, which seems high.
Yeah, you know, it's. I was interviewed by somebody who was asking me about your, your drive, what drives you. And I said, elon's driven to solve problems. He's driven to make life in the world better by just solving the biggest problems over and over and over again. And if someone else were solving them, he wouldn't need to. But no one else is solving them. So I just want to say thank you for that, pal. Thank you for that.
I am curious, do you think that democracy and our modern institutions can keep up with this supersonic tsunami coming our way? Are they just going to fall in its way? They're just going to break down. How do we deal?
I mean, it's called the singularity for a reason, you know that it's hard to predict what happens in the singularity. I mean, Grok's logo is the singularity.
I love it. It's a beautiful logo behind you, by the way. It's gorgeous.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So the halo around a black hole is the mass and light are falling in type of thing. It's hard to know what happens inside the singularity, but it's going to be very interesting. Like we're going to live in the future will be very entertaining of that I'm confident.
And I, I think also like AI and robotics, also the only way we're going to solve our budget deficit, frankly, and, and not just go bankrupt as a country. So I, I'm, I'm you know, you've had an influence on me. And then I'm like, just. I've just decided to be more optimistic. It's like, we just should be more optimistic.
You know, not that I wasn't optim. An optimist, but I was like, maybe dwelling a little too much on the negative stuff.
It's all upside, being an optimist and a realist a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to be complacent or just assume everything's going to go well, but try to make it go well. But, I mean, there will be some pretty amazing things that happen. So if you've got humanoid robots that are. That have very high dexterity and are incredibly smart, it means that everyone on Earth will have access to better medical care than the richest person on Earth. Which, by the way, I would say, like, you know, if I'm allegedly the rich person, I think actually sovereigns are richer than me, by the way. But it's, you know, like, I had to have, like, a neck surgery three times because the first two ones were done wrong. You know, like, I'm like, what that. You know, so. And I, like, my back still hurts a little bit. I'm like, can AI please solve back pain? That would be a huge win. And I think it will.
So, you know, back pain sucks. I think that's maybe, like, you know, sometimes. Why do people get grumpy when they get older? It's because of back pain. It's like, if your back hurts all the time, you can't sleep well, you're going to be grumpy.
We had David Sinclair on stage this morning, and he's going into human trials with ER100. His partial epigenetic reprogramming and one of the papers recently published shows it enables joint repair. And so back pain may be one of the things that it eliminates.
So that would be amazing.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Honestly, the average happiness level for humans would just go up tremendously if you just saw back pain. Because it's not a question of if you'll get back pain, is when you'll get back pain.
I keep on inviting you to come down to Fountain Life in. In Dallas. We'll. We'll help you out. But sometime when you have time, you
have, like, what do you. I understand. Like, you can get like, MRI and CAT scans and everything, but, like, what do you do with that? You know, it's like, happy to.
Happy to send you the list. I'll. I'll DM you the list. Yeah, exactly. You know, listen, you've been so generous. Next up on stage with me is one of another great moonshot entrepreneur, Ben Lamb, who runs Colossal, the de extinction company. You know, the woolly mammoth and 15 other species. I heard. I heard you say you might want a mini woolly mammoth.
Yeah. I think it would be really cool to have a pet miniature woolly mammoth. That was pretty epic.
Okay, I'll put a word in for you with Ben.
That'd be adorable. Little things just running around trumpeting away and it's like, look at that. We had a great little pet.
Can somebody please do Jurassic park in real life? I'd definitely go. Even if there was some risk of death, that'd be super cool.
I think if anybody's going to do that, it's Ben Lamb in Colossal. He's really re. He's engineering living life products. Someone asked him recently if he could make a Pikachu and he said, probably,
yeah, well, Jurassic Jurassic World, whatever. That would be great.
Elon, so grateful for you coming and joining us and sharing. Thank you, my. Thank you, my friend. Let's give it up for Elon Musk. Sam.