I only saw the last half or so of the interview with Elon Musk yesterday on CNBC. He was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who was as usual masterful. Andrew is the son of my law school classmate and friend Larry Sorkin and my old friend Joan Ross Sorkin, who I met well before she met Larry. I don’t usually watch Andrew on CNBC, but I do see him often when he is a guest on Morning Joe on MSNBC. I am always amazed at Andrew for three reasons: he is always knowledgeable, he is always smooth, and he always agrees with me.

It’s the first time I have seen Musk in that kind of a forum. I assume that the entire interview was well over an hour, and Andrew was able to ask him a raft of challenging questions with appearing at all antagonistic or unfriendly.

sSo much of what Musk said was so interesting. I did not hear anything about his trip to Israel, his alleged antisemitism, his loss of advertisers on X, or anything related to that. I saw nothing about SpaceX. I assume all that was covered before I signed on.

The comments that I did hear him make (hopefully I am going to be accurate here) included:

(1) He really does not like Biden. It seems personal, starting when Biden had a summit for electric vehicle manufacturers and did not invite Musk or Tesla to attend. He claims not to know why Biden did this (I certainly don’t – I don’t remember it even happening), but it has certainly soured Musk on Biden. On the other hand, he really liked (and got/gets along very well with) Barack Obama. Asked about Trump, he clearly does not think much of Trump. He said he could not vote for Biden in 2024; he doesn’t know if he could vote for Trump. He thinks that will be a terrible choice.

(2) He is a fan of free speech, and he thinks Twitter was being too controlled by the government. His plan for X seems to be not to wield a heavy hand eliminating posters, but to mark posts as being false or possibly force after they are posted. When asked why there were so many pro-Hamas posts compared to the pro-Israeli posts, he responded with: well, there are billions of Muslims and, what, twenty million Jews – what do you expect?

(3) He discounts those who say that there isn’t or won’t be a demand for electric cars. He says that 90% of the cars being sold in China are electric, and he believes that there are several very competitive electric car manufacturers in China, where he thinks they really have the skill to make them, He didn’t name any American car manufacturers who he thought competitive.

(4) He says he doesn’t like unions because they contribute to a “lord and peasant” mentality. He thinks that Tesla is different. Line employees become executives. Everyone eats in the same cafeteria. No executive-only elevators. Everyone gets stock options, even those who don’t know what stocks are before they are hired, and many become millionaires. He is willing to have a union vote at Tesla any time; if the union wins, it means Tesla has failed.

(5) Sorkin asked him about self-driving cars, and whether the public would ever accept self-driving cars which might create injuries or fatalities, even if the number was significantly fewer than occur when there are human drivers. Musk believes that deaths can be cut up to 90%, and that the statistics will convince the public.

(6) I don’t know how to explain this, but another of his businesses is working on neurological medical devices which will connect directly to the brain, and let, say, people who have no use of their arms operate computers only by thinking of what they want to do on the computer. And, after this is perfected, which he thinks will happen soon, as test on humans are almost ready to begin, the next area to attack will be blindness, where he believes work on the optic nerve will enable some blind people to see – as blindness is often a brain problem, not an eye problem. This sounded very exciting.

(7) Artificial intelligence, good or bad? Musk is very afraid that artificial intelligence could lead to the end of civilization and needs to be carefully regulated. This led to a discussion of regulation in general – Musk says that he supports regulation not for the sake of regulation, but when it is required to promote human safety. He talked about the amount of regulation that an automobile manufacturer must comply with; he has no problem. Regulating speech, though, in light of the First Amendment, which he feels crucial in this country, is apparently another story.

Musk said that the dangers of artificial intelligence used to keep him up nights, but then he thought of the old Chinese proverb or curse: May you live in interesting times. And he realized that he wanted to live in interesting times (he said we are living in the most interesting times in history now), and if AI leads to the destruction of civilization, he would like to be around when it happens. It will be interesting.

Finally, Andrew asked him if he ever said anything that he later regretted saying. Of course I do, Musk said. He paused and then said – for example, I regret I said that just now.