Elon Musk : How to Build the Future
Why Hacker News recommends it
Offered as a more down-to-earth Musk interview with better questions than most, and cited for his stated concerns about concentrated AI power.
What it is
A 20-minute Y Combinator interview in which Sam Altman asks Elon Musk how to build the future. Topics include which problems a 22-year-old should work on, such as AI, genetics, and brain interfaces, and general advice for founders.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2016 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends agrafix · 2016-09 · on “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species [video]”
Came here to say the same thing, I was really hoping for some better questions like the ones in the "How to build the future" [1] interview... [1] [this video]
Recommends m463 · 2019-04 · on “The Quest for Room-Temperature Superconductors”
A more down-to-earth video to watch might be this one: "Elon Musk: How to Build the Future" [this video] (of course "down-to-earth" is very relative)
Recommends divbzero · 2022-02 · on “Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco”
The anonymous “Interviewer” in the last part of that Reddit post was Sam Altman, excerpted from a 20-minute conversation with Elon Musk in 2016 [1] that I found to be interesting even as a non-fanboy. [1]: [this video]
Cites vinchuco · 2016-10 · on “Ask HN: What should I be doing to Maximize the Benefit Mankind can get from me?”
To answer your question, instead of maximizing your output, I believe that maximizing everyone else's output is more valuable. It is also harder, otherwise someone else would have already done it. I am very biased to answer that mathematics drives science. Advance the tools and applications follow. [1] Here is a more heuristic take on it by Elon Musk: [this video] [1] [LINK]
Cites kailuowang · 2017-03 · on “Elon Musk invested early in DeepMind just to keep tabs on the progress of AI”
I think Elon Musk's concern over A.I. has been widely misunderstood. His concern is NOT A.I. replacing the human species. As he clearly stated in this interview[1], his concern is that the immense power of A.I. owned by a small group of organizations or even individuals, which IMO, is well justified. 1. [this video]
Cites someperson · 2024-11 · on “SpaceX Super Heavy splashes down in the gulf, canceling chopsticks landing”
It's not too crazy of a question since Elon Musk has given public interviews in association with YCombinator [1] [2] (and was a founder in partly YC-associated OpenAI [3]), and the fact he seems to spend his limited time these days posting on X, streaming video games, memeing and presumably lurking on Reddit. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
Critical bookaway · 2025-01 · on “Aaron Swartz and Sam Altman”
PG liked him, because Altman decided to go to great lengths to get PG to like him. While Drew, Chesky and the Collison brothers were busy building billion dollar companies, Altman took the “shortcut” and made a concerted effort to cozy up to the most powerful man in the room — and it payed dividends. Altman did the same thing in the early OpenAI days by doing flaterring video series interviews with Elon Musk, Vinod Khosla and others [0]. Incidentally, The YC interview with Elon Musk was done the year Musk made a donation to OpenAI (2016), I still remember PG’s essay where he gave Altman the ultimate character reference (2008) [1]: >When we predict good outcomes for startups, the qualities th