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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

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Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#141

Post by srunni »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #22
etendue wrote: post #7

How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?

I'm not sure you would. I mean, I'm sure you could somehow, but at this point so much of what needs to be done is basic research, and really can be done well in that context. There aren't many things that are ready to leave the context of a research lab and into commercialization. We've got some notable disasters with Theranos, and even the YC funded Taxa (glowing plant - that was a farce from the get-go, but they're…

> Most of the methods in a biological wet lab are very far from standardized and need a great deal of troubleshooting. Most post-docs in a new lab spend a couple months just trying to get basic stuff working that they've done dozens of times before.

Having had experience with syn bio in grad school and trying to reconcile the empirical (biology) and first principles (CS/math) approaches, I've been thinking a lot lately about how to streamline the troubleshooting process for picking up and optimizing wet lab methods. I'd love to chat - my email's in my profile.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#142

Post by Gargoyle »

guelo wrote: post #123
kstenerud wrote: post #105

It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have t…

Au contraire, people that know the technology and industry can see through the PR much more clearly.

Or at least know how to feed their own egos with self-serving "insights".

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#144

Post by kelvin0 »

Great interview, I'm always really interested in hearing what entrepreneurs like Musk have to say. However, none of the interviews ever seem to delve into the personal aspects of his life. I would love to have Elon go through a typical day and explain how achieves some balance in his life and what that looks like for him. Being a husband, a father and a friend must be quite challenging and I would love to hear more about how he views his life in general.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#145

Post by degenerate »

skndr wrote: post #76
idlewords wrote: post #3

I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.

I built this thing if you want to follow along. Unfortunately no video, but at least you can copy the text: https://jotengine.com/t/elon

Wow you built something I always wished existed... going to check this out later, thank you much.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#146

Post by jklinger410 »

soufron wrote: post #83
milkytron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly very interesting, in fact I wrote this down when I heard it. And if you look at the projects he's working on (Renewable energy, cars able to powered by renewable energy, and preserving life outside of Earth), they all affect a great portion of humanity, and have a very large affect.

Affect like how? As of today they're useless, except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.

>except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.

This is enough, no?

The same with Space-X...

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#147

Post by weinzierl »

Besides the part about the importance of being useful and how to be useful I find the following answer most interesting:

> So it's not that I think that the risk is that the AI would develop a will of its own right off the bat. I think the concern is that someone may use it in a way that is bad. Or even if they weren't going to use it in a way that's bad but somebody could take it from them and use it in a way that's bad, that, I think, is quite a big danger. So I think we must have democratization of AI technology to make it widely available. And that's the reason that obviously you, me, and the rest of the team created OpenAI was to help spread out AI technology so it doesn't get concentrated in the hands of a few.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#148

Post by gech »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #22
etendue wrote: post #7

How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?

I'm not sure you would. I mean, I'm sure you could somehow, but at this point so much of what needs to be done is basic research, and really can be done well in that context. There aren't many things that are ready to leave the context of a research lab and into commercialization. We've got some notable disasters with Theranos, and even the YC funded Taxa (glowing plant - that was a farce from the get-go, but they're…

>leave the context of a research lab and into commercialization. We've got some notable disasters with Theranos

Did that spring from a research lab or from a happyhour with mba types wanting to jump on "start-up" fortunes

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#149

Post by untilHellbanned »

guelo wrote: post #123
kstenerud wrote: post #105

It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have t…

Au contraire, people that know the technology and industry can see through the PR much more clearly.

Exactly. He sucks up airtime for quieter, likely superior approaches in other or the same areas. It's anger not envy. What's the point of Wired interviewing Elon Musk for the 10,000th time? There are so many people doing so much good stuff out there. Finding them isn't hard. They are on the internet too.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#150

Post by Nanite »

aantix wrote: post #106

Why do they discuss the speed of the line? Isn't the finalized output a much more useful metric? (e.g. one car per hour)? If there's a ton of work done at the various checkpoints, the pace is slow but maybe the length of the line isn't very far?

It seemed to me the question was asked in the context of some closing small talk, and got a very Musk answer :) as far as I know, the Tesla assembly lines have nowhere near the amount of robotics of the much larger volume lines of for instance Honda, so very slow by those standards.
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