Just hours ago, Elon Musk suffered a nasty loss in court — one that put an end to his $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI. A jury said he waited too long to sue the AI behemoth and its cofounder and CEO Sam Altman, and the judge accepted that verdict, tossing Musk’s claims that OpenAI’s leaders had improperly converted a charity he helped fund into a for-profit business.
“I think this is a dangerous precedent to set,” Musk told Forbes chief content officer Randall Lane at the Forbes Innovation 250 celebration dinner in Palo Alto, his first interview since the verdict was handed down. “It means if somebody can take a nonprofit and convert it to a for-profit, that undermines all charitable giving in America.”
Musk was also asked about SpaceX. On Wednesday, SpaceX is expected to file for the biggest IPO of all time, a massive offering which seeks to raise as much as $75 billion at a valuation of more than $2 trillion. Shares, which will trade on NASDAQ under the ticker SPCX, bundle SpaceX’s space and Starlink satellite operations with Musk’s AI startup, xAI, which the space and defense company acquired in February. He declined to comment on the IPO.
Musk also made predictions about the advancement of AI and robotics in the next half-decade. “In five years, digital intelligence will exceed the sum of all human intelligence. In five years, there might be at least 100 million humanoid robots, but maybe a billion,” he said. “I predict the economy is probably twice its current size in five, maybe six, years. In five to seven years, you’re going to hit a doubling period, in plus or minus a few years, you’ll see giant changes.”
Asked who his favorite entrepreneurs are, his first answer is obvious: Nikola Tesla, namesake of the electric car company he leads. Pressed further, he name checked Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. Musk also noted the rate of development in AI research is a “headspinner.” “When I go to sleep, there’s an AI breakthrough, when I go to lunch there’s an a breakthrough,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious we’ll have AI that’s vastly smarter than humans and in some way it already is,” he continued, adding “I hope it’s nice to us.”
When Lane asked Musk to talk about big ideas he hadn’t had the chance to yet work on, Musk encouraged other entrepreneurs to look into boring tunnels for transportation, and creating new synthetic medicines using new RNA technologies. After thinking for a moment, he added that there was an opportunity in electric aircraft. “I encourage other people to start tunnel companies,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity in tunnels. It’s quite hard work building these things.”
Musk doesn’t think of himself through the lens of how his companies will be written about in history books. “I don’t really get up and say, what shall I innovate today,” he said. “It really just is building the technologies necessary to extend life beyond earth.” And what does Musk want to be remembered for in 250 years? “He played a useful role in the advancement of civilization.”