Chief Twit 🆇 @chieftwit25

Elon Musk: If you have a radical new technology, you want to try to maximize the probability it will do good things for humanity and not bad things. “The reason OpenAI exists at all is that Larry Page and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in Palo Alto and I would talk to him late into the night about AI safety. And at least my perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough. He really seemed to want some sort of digital superintelligence, basically a digital God, if you will, as soon as possible. I agree with him that there's great potential for good, but there's also potential for bad. If you've got some radical new technology you want to try to take the set of actions that maximize the probability it will do good and minimize probability it will do bad things. It can't just be hell-for-leather, let's just go barreling forward and hope for the best. At one point I said, well, what about we're going to make sure humanity's okay here. And then he called me a speciesist. And so I was like, okay, that's it. Yes, I'm a speciesist. Okay, you got me. What are you?” Tucker Carlson 2023 — April 19, 2023

Elon Musk: I've spent a lot of time in the factory, walking the floor. I literally lived in the factory for a while. “Tesla is a massive manufacturer in the US. In fact, the biggest factory that's been built in recent years is the Tesla factory in Texas, and there's another big factory in Nevada. I'm a huge believer in manufacturing. I love manufacturing. I like making things. I've spent a lot of time in the factory, walking the floor. I literally lived in the factory for a while. We had some tough times at Tesla. It's really difficult to make any kind of manufacturing company work. SpaceX is also a massive manufacturer. It's the biggest manufacturer of rockets and satellites in the world, and that's all in the US.” Town Hall in Lancaster, October 26, 2024

Elon Musk: In the future, you'll be able to inhabit an Optimus robot. “As we advance the Neuralink devices, you should be able to actually have full body control and sensors from an Optimus robot. So, you could basically inhabit an Optimus robot. Not just the hand, the whole thing. So you could basically mentally remote into an Optimus robot and it'll be kind of cool. The future is going to be weird, but pretty cool.” Neuralink presentation, June 27, 2025

Elon Musk: The pace of AI is faster than any technology in history by far. “It seems to be growing in capability by at least fivefold, perhaps tenfold per year. It'll certainly grow by an order of magnitude next year.” (Conversation with Rishi Sunak, November 2, 2023)

Walter Isaacson: Elon has done what China, the U.S. or Boeing couldn't, and he didn't stop there. “Here's a guy who brought us into the era of electric vehicles, the only person who can shoot off rockets and get things to orbit and have the boosters land. China hasn't done it; the U.S. hasn't done it; Boeing hasn't done it. He's put up 5,000 satellites and recreated the Internet in Low Earth Orbit. Everything was going well. I said [to him], man, this has been a pretty good year. You've been the richest person on Earth; you're Time's Person of the Year; you've done all these things. You're going to relax. And he said he was secretly buying shares of Twitter. I said: Oh, this movie is not going to end well.” The 92nd Street Y, October 13, 2023

Elon Musk: Raptor 3 is a marvel of technology. Rocket experts couldn't believe their eyes. “Raptor 3 is a massive increase in payload capability, in engine efficiency and in reliability. This is really a revolutionary engine, I'd say kind of an alien technology rocket engine. Even industry experts, when we showed a picture of the Raptor 3, said, that engine is not complete. So then we said, well, here's the engine not complete firing at a level of efficiency that has never been achieved before. So I mean, that is one clean engine. In order to make the engine like that, we had to simplify so many parts of the design, incorporate secondary fluid circuits and electronics in the structure of the engine itself, so everything is contained and protected. It is a marvel of engineering, frankly.” From: SpaceX Update 2025, May 29, 2025

Elon Musk: Doing something useful for other people is what gives me satisfaction. “I like to get things done. I like to be useful. That is one of the hardest things to do, to be useful.” Joe Rogan: “What gives you satisfaction? When you complete a project, when something that you invent comes to fruition and you see people enjoying it?” Elon: “Yes. Doing something useful for other people that I like doing.” Joe Rogan: “That's interesting. For other people.” Elon: “Yes.” The Joe Rogan Experience, September 7, 2018

Elon Musk: It's going to be wild. “I would expect the first really good AI video game to be next year and probably the first half hour of watchable TV this year and probably the first watchable AI movie next year. Things are really moving at an incredible pace.” xAI Grok 4 Presentation, July 9, 2025

Elon Musk: I don't think about staying ahead. I just think about improving the experience for the owner of the car. “I don't know if Tesla will stay ahead. Maybe we won't stay ahead. I just think about how we can improve the experience for the owner of the car. How can we make it the most fun, the most functional? What can we do to have them love the product as much as possible? And if somebody else makes a better product, then more power to them, then I guess we should lose.” Axel Springer Pioneer's Talk. December 1, 2020

Elon Musk: Work on products that you personally love, that you feel really need to exist. “You want to focus on something that you are personally passionate about, that you personally care about. It's very hard to be motivated for a product that you don't really feel strongly about. And it doesn't have to be high-tech. It could be in any field. It's got to be a product that you feel really needs to be there, that you personally love. And I would listen to your instincts. Do you love this product or service? Because it's kind of impossible to know what do other people love. But if you love it, that's a good sign. A good test would be that you can't wait for this product to be on the market. And if that's the case, you're going in the right direction.” Interview at Viva Tech Paris, June 16, 2023

Elon Musk in 2012: SpaceX is like a little kid fighting sumo wrestlers. “I'm probably not the guy that most people would bet on. It's like a little kid fighting a bunch of sumo wrestlers. Usually the sumo wrestlers win. SpaceX is a little scrappy company. Every now and again, little scrappy company wins. I think this will be one of those times.” 60 Minutes, March 8, 2012

Elon Musk: I hope you agree that becoming a multiplanet species is the right way to go. “I think there are really two fundamental paths history is going to bifurcate along two directions. One path is we stay on Earth forever and then there will be some eventual extinction event. I don't have an immediate doomsday prophecy, but eventually history suggests there will be some doomsday event. The alternative is to become a space-faring civilization and a multiplanet species, which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go. Yes? That's what we want!” Presentation at the International Astronautical Federation, September 27, 2016

Elon Musk: We don't know the meaning of life, but we can expand consciousness to understand more. “Our AI Grok is modeled after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is one of my favorite books. It's a book on philosophy disguised as a book on humor. And I would say that forms the basis of my philosophy, which is that we don't know the meaning of life. But the more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, digital and biological, the more we are able to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. I have a philosophy of curiosity.” Interview with Lex Fridman, November 9, 2023

Elon Musk: Starship could clean up space debris in orbit or collect old satellites. “We can actually send something that is almost 9 meters in diameter to orbit. So for example, if you want to do a new Hubble, you could send a mirror that has 10 times the surface area of the current Hubble as a single unit. It doesn't have to unfold or anything. Or you can send a large number of small satellites, you can do whatever you'd like. You can actually also go around and if you wanted to collect old satellites or clean up space debris, you can just use the sort of chomper over there and go around and collect satellites or collect space debris if you want. That may be something we have to do in the future. But that fairing would open up and retract and come back down. So, it enables launching of Earth satellites that are significantly larger than anything we've done before, or significantly more satellites at a time than anything that's been done before.” Presentation at the International Astronautical Federation, September 29, 2017

Elon Musk: “I don't know if people believe me or not, but I think honesty is the best policy. I think the truth will win over time.”

Elon Musk: I didn't think SpaceX would succeed – and it almost didn't. “We started off developing a small rocket, which was kind of a scale model version and proceeded to have three failed launches in a row. For various technical reasons, the first three launches did not succeed in reaching orbit. Launches 2 and 3 did get to space, but they didn't achieve enough speed to reach orbital velocity. It was in 2008, we were heading into the recession, and we had one rocket left. Fortunately, in late 2008, that fourth launch did work and we made it to orbit and then we won a NASA contract after that. Fortunately things worked out. But if that fourth launch had not worked, then SpaceX wouldn't be around. So it was very close call. In fact, when I started I thought, okay, I think I've got enough money for three launches. Fortunately, it was just enough to make that fourth one.” Montana Jobs Summit, September 16, 2013

Elon Musk: We're in the Big Bang of the Intelligence Explosion. “I feel like we're in the Big Bang of the intelligence explosion. We have court-side seats to the Big Bang of intelligence explosion. One thing's for sure, it won't be boring. I think we should always consider that there's some chance of a bad outcome to try to protect against the bad outcome. We don't want to be complacent and say that everything's just going to be fine, that there's no chance of a bad outcome. I think of this in movie terms. Are we in a Gene Roddenberry movie or a James Cameron movie? Which movie are we in here? And you could either have a Roddenberry or a Cameron outcome. I think in this case, we want the Roddenberry outcome.” Interview with David Faber, CNBC, May 20, 2025

Elon Musk: I don't agree with moral relativism. I think there are facts about the world. Jordan Peterson: “The postmodern take is, everything is a plethora of power games and so there's no rank-ordering approaches to the truth in terms of ethical suitability.” Elon: “Obviously, we would not agree with that philosophy, that sort of moral relativism. I think you can look at a given belief system and critique it as being likely to enhance or decrease enlightenment. Will any given belief system improve our understanding of the universe? Will we learn more things? Will we achieve a deeper understanding of physics? I think there are facts about the world. There are things that are extremely likely to be true versus less likely to be true.” Interview with Jordan Peterson, July 22, 2024

Elon Musk: I care about the truth very much. “I care about the truth very much. That's why we have, for example, Community Notes on the 𝕏 system. My posts are equally subject to this, I've been community-noted many times. In order for a Community Note to surface, people who have historically disagreed must agree. And all of the code for Community Notes is open-source. All of the data is open-source. So you can completely recreate it from scratch. The way to build trust is transparency.” Interview with Don Lemon, March 16, 2024

Elon Musk: 𝕏 is a real-time aggregator of the collective wisdom. “The new model of news is really going to gather information from people who are at the scene, who are experts in the field, summarize the experts in the field and people who are at whatever event is being talked about, and aggregate that into a real-time news feed. For the most part, that will be better than conventional journalism. You've got real-time aggregation of the collective wisdom of tens of millions of people. Although something may be said that is incorrect, it is very quickly corrected. Whereas a newspaper that is publishing, what happened yesterday, when you read the article, that article could be wrong, often is wrong, but there's no rebuttal to the article.” Cannes Lions, June 19, 2024