Conversation with Elon Musk World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026

Lesson 1Protecting the light of consciousness

You know, I'm often asked, are there aliens among us? They don't believe me. So, but I think if anyone would know if there are aliens among us, it would be me. And we have 9,000 satellites up there, and not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship. So, I'm like, I don't know. Bottom line is, I think we need to assume that life and consciousness is extremely rare, and it might only be us. And if that's the case, then we need to do everything possible to ensure that the light of consciousness is not extinguished. The way I view it is, the image in my mind is of a tiny candle in a vast darkness, tiny candle of consciousness that could easily go out. And that's why it's important to make life multiplanetary, such that if there is a natural disaster or a man-made disaster on Earth, that consciousness continues. That's the purpose of SpaceX.

Lesson 2A future of sustainable abundance

Tesla is obviously about sustainable technology, and also, at this point, we've sort of added to our mission sustainable abundance. So, with robotics and AI, this is really the path to abundance for all. You know, people often talk about solving global poverty, or essentially, how do we give everyone a very high standard of living? I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics, which doesn't mean that it is without its issues. I mean, we need to be very careful with AI. We need to be very careful with robotics. We don't want to find ourselves in a James Cameron movie, you know, Terminator. But if you have ubiquitous AI that is essentially free or close to it, and ubiquitous robotics, then you will have an explosion in the global economy, an expansion in the global economy that is truly beyond all precedent.