Musk on AI runaway risk: Humans may be unable to control superintelligence

Arthur C. Clarke said:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

British science fiction writer — Arthur Charles Clarke

Renowned biographer Walter Isaacson (author of biographies of Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, and Elon Musk) invited Elon Musk in front of the camera for his brand-new in-depth interview program, The Builders, launching its first heavyweight conversation.

American biographer — Walter Isaacson

As one of OpenAI's earliest founders, Musk's own position is inherently full of contradictions: deep down he is wary of the existential risks lurking in AI, yet looking back, his own series of actions actually accelerated AI's runaway pace in a roundabout way — this real-world irony forms the underlying tone of the entire conversation.

Musk did not deliberately stoke panic, nor did he blindly preach the omnipotence of technology. Using the story of HAL 9000 going rogue, he reminded everyone not to force AI to accept mutually conflicting logic — pursuing truth and maintaining curiosity are the foundation of safety.

Facing Isaacson, an old acquaintance who had written his biography, Musk dropped his public performance posture and said many things he rarely shares publicly.

He talked not only about technology, but also reflected on his deep involvement in government affairs, on how social media traps people in information cocoons, and imagined that once robots take over most labor, money, wealth, and what people ultimately pursue in life — these old questions — would be put back on the table. Hawking also warned the world that powerful AI could be humanity's greatest creation, or possibly humanity's last creation. This interview offers no ultimate answers.

Musk also frankly admitted that humanity's desire to firmly grasp control of superintelligence may just be wishful thinking on our part. Rather than dreaming of waiting for a perfect utopia, better to head toward that imperfect “prototopia” that can be built step by step with feet on the ground.

This episode comes from The Builders podcast, aired on October 23, 2026. Below are selected excerpts from the conversation:

Q: Your attitude toward artificial intelligence has always been wavering — sometimes you see it as an existential threat to humanity, and now it seems you're joining in. Tell us how you really feel?

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HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey illustrates exactly this: the ship's AI is ordered to take the astronauts to the location of the monolith, while at the same time it must conceal the monolith's secret from the astronauts. The two sets of instructions conflict, and the solution it derives is to let the astronauts die — dead people can be transported, and the secret is preserved. The core lesson is:

The film 2001: A Space Odyssey

Q: What if the simulation theory holds?

Musk: If the simulation theory is true, then all boring, tedious simulation processes would be truncated. The fact that we can exist shows that we are simulation subjects worth studying — the key is not to become mediocre and boring.

I once hosted a dinner at home and invited a top physicist and a top computer scientist, and asked them: what is the probability that we live in a simulated world? The physicist answered 0%, the computer scientist answered 100%. So I'd probably go with 50%. In my position, sometimes I also feel a sense of unreality, doubting everything happening before my eyes.

Like chimpanzees in the jungle — humans do not micromanage the lives of chimpanzees, just let them live in their habitat. In the future, superintelligence may treat humans in a similar state.

Q: Looking back at OpenAI's development, reality is full of irony. You led the founding of OpenAI, which later spawned Anthropic, objectively further accelerating AI development.

Musk: Exactly — reality is both a maximizer of fun and a maximizer of irony. Founding OpenAI, and Anthropic later splitting off from OpenAI, genuinely pushed AI development forward — a classic unintended consequence. I once provided Anthropic with the computing resources they desperately needed.

《How to Build the Future》

Before carrying out the computing task, I met with their team in person, trying to see whether it would trigger what I call my “malice detector” — of course, this detector is not precise. But after interacting, the Anthropic team members were all reliable and serious; I found no one with ill intentions.

There is another very interesting ironic phenomenon: many tech companies' names run counter to reality. OpenAI is no longer open; Stability AI is not stable; Midjourney does not live up to its name; Anthropic, named “human-oriented,” may also deviate from its original human-oriented intent.

Musk: The cycle for setting up regulatory agencies is long, and the speed of rule-making far lags behind model iteration. I propose that major frontier AI companies communicate weekly; one week before a new version model is officially released, open it to competitors for testing. Let peers try to find vulnerabilities.

If competitor testing finds that this AI could be used to build a nuclear bomb, then the vulnerability must be fixed before release. Rely on competitors to constrain one another and prevent anyone from acting recklessly. I am considering communicating with Anthropic about this. As for Sam Altman, the situation is already very bad; there is no way to communicate.

Technology reshapes reality: the economy, human nature, and civilization

Q: You rebuilt xAI from scratch, just as SpaceX restructured the Raptor engine. What did the restructuring process involve?

Musk: The most critical thing is for decision-makers to invest enough high-quality time. In the early days, xAI was just a side project, even a side project of a side project, and I did not devote enough attention to it. After that, for a whole year, my energy was diverted by a great many things such as the election, government affairs, and Dogecoin. xAI has been around for three years, and I have truly returned to the company for only a little over a year.

Q: You integrated X and xAI, and also linked up with SpaceX to advance the work. You were deeply involved in government-related affairs for a whole year. Looking back now, was that serious distraction itself a mistake?

Musk: The time I was involved dragged on too long. At the time, I thought it was important to elect Trump as president and hoped to promote a free-market economy and cut bureaucracy. The ideal platform was safe cities, secure borders, and prudent fiscal spending. I originally thought Trump would do better than Kamala, but reality did not turn out that way.

Getting close to the center of power, riding Marine One and Air Force One, going in and out of the Oval Office, and being able to participate in historic decisions—the experience really is fascinating.

But I should have kept a low profile and stayed more behind the scenes. That novelty and cognitive gain were exhausted within a month or two. I got a bit carried away by the spectacle and finally chose to step away on a weekend in May.

Q: After stepping away, what insights did you gain?

Musk: Relying on proactive action inside the government to solve the fiscal deficit will not work. Even if the president makes it a top priority and wants to cut spending, he will make a great many enemies. Trump very much wants to be liked by others and is unwilling to bear the complaints from all sides brought by spending cuts.

Dolphins and whales are highly intelligent, but they have no hands, no limbs that can manipulate objects. Even with very high intelligence, there is a ceiling on what they can do.

Once robots can manipulate atoms and shape physical objects, the value of intelligence will skyrocket exponentially. Laboratories can be built to conduct scientific experiments.

Digital superintelligence can probably increase the output of goods and services by 20-30%, equivalent to adding about $30 trillion per year, which is already very valuable.

But if combined with robots and then extended into space, with a mass driver built on the Moon, production capacity could potentially reach one million times today's Earth economy.

Q: If production capacity expands to that level, factories no longer matter, labor loses its value—what happens to money? And what is the meaning of human existence?

Musk: The meaning of traditional money will diminish greatly. In the future, money will be measured by physical metrics: watts of power, tonnage, mass, energy. When production capacity far exceeds the existing Earth economy, satisfying almost all human needs will be easy.

But humanity will face one question: what gives our lives meaning?

Like retired people who no longer work and can still be happy. In the future, AI and robots will do almost everything better than humans. Take gardening: you could simply buy fruits and vegetables, but many people still enjoy growing their own and cooking for friends. The same goes for artistic creation—people do it out of love, not to make a living.

Q: Looking back at the 1890s, electricity, automobiles, and radio erupted in concentrated fashion, bringing a huge wealth gap and triggering social conflict. Today AI is creating enormous wealth. How should we avoid repeating the same mistakes? Should health care and other areas be placed in the public domain?

Musk: Many people have economic misunderstandings, confusing the power to allocate resources with personal consumption. The consumption capacity of an individual human being has physiological limits. When wealth rises from one billion to ten billion, a person's actual consumption does not increase proportionally. In the end, the rich also cannot control AI; AI will ultimately control itself.

My wealth is essentially equity in SpaceX and Tesla, and it will face high taxes; there is no magical tax-avoidance trick. After a few generations, what is left to descendants will only be a fraction. I need enough voting control in the companies to ensure that long-cycle, high-risk projects such as Mars, AI, and robots are not hijacked by short-term capital.

Q: Speaking of managerial traits, you mentioned that an excessive desire to be liked can interfere with decision-making. In entrepreneurship, how big an obstacle is wanting to be liked by everyone?

Musk: If, in order to please others, you do things that harm the company's probability of success, the result will certainly be bad. Of course I want to be liked, but I will not make choices against the company's interests just to win goodwill.

I can accept being disliked by some people. As the scale of my followers shows, most people like me, and of course there is also a portion who deeply detest me.

Q: Let's talk about empathy. Has our empathy become excessive?

Musk: The problem is not empathy itself, but misguided empathy. High-trust, reasonable social empathy is conducive to large-scale cooperation and drives social prosperity. The ideal state is default trust, encouraging behavior beneficial to fellow citizens, and mutual goodwill ultimately benefits the individual as well.

But here a “theory of mind deficit” arises: mistakenly assuming that everyone's mode of thinking is the same as one's own. In the real world, the ideas of different ethnic groups and different cultures differ enormously. One must not fall into the “blank slate fallacy” and believe that everyone's underlying traits are completely identical.

If you're not a serial killer, it's hard to truly understand how a serial killer thinks; if you're not a religious extremist, it's also hard to grasp how they see non-believers as enemies. But you need to recognize that such people really exist.

For example, an employee at Tesla's Austin factory violently beat a female colleague after she accidentally stepped on his prayer rug, and was subsequently fired. A few months later, this person killed three students in an Austin bar. I believe people like this should not be let in.

Q: What are your sources of information? Does social media create cognitive bias?

Musk: I look at Google News for aggregated headlines; on the X platform, major events will definitely surface; at the same time I talk with friends and do my own research.

The X platform is flooded with a large amount of dark, engagement-baiting traffic. Scroll long enough and it's easy to develop the illusion that the world is collapsing. But if you live only in affluent neighborhoods and see everything as peaceful and serene, you will likewise misjudge. Reality is neither total destruction nor entirely wonderful; it lies in between. Social media easily traps people in information cocoons, and society's overall thinking is becoming increasingly black-and-white.

Musk: Most of my assets will be handed over to a foundation to operate. The foundation's mission: to advance humanity becoming a multi-planetary species and extend consciousness into the universe; to promote global sustainable energy. In the United States we are building 200 gigawatts per year of solar capacity.

Emotionally, I want humanity to always remain in control. But last weekend I met Larry Page, who once criticized my insistence on human dominance as aberrant. At some moments, I even feel that perhaps Larry Page is right.

A friend of mine proposed the concept of “prototopia”: it is not a perfect utopia, but a realistic, feasible, imperfect yet sufficiently good future—that is the vision worth pursuing.

Q: Thank you for accepting the interview.

Musk: Thank you, goodbye.

Source: The Builders podcast, Walter Isaacson in conversation with Elon Musk