Moonshots with Peter Diamandis - Elon Musk: Optimus 3 Is Coming, Recursive Self-Improvement Is Already Here, and the Singularity | #239

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Recorded live at https://www.abundance360.com/ Peter H. Diamandis, MD, is the Founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University, ZeroG, and A360 Elon Musk is the cofounder and CEO of Tesla, cofounder of SpaceX, and xAI. – My companies: Apply to Dave's and my new fund: https://qr.diamandis.com/linkventures... Go to Blitzy to book a free demo and start building today: https://qr.diamandis.com/blitzy _ Read the Solve Everything Paper Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else:https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends Connect with Peter: X Instagram Listen to MOONSHOTS: Apple YouTube – *Recorded live on March 11th, 2026 *The views expressed by me and all guests are personal opinions and do not constitute Financial, Medical, or Legal advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

audience and as you can see I'm still trying to monetize hope. Yeah, you look like you're in great shape. I'm doing great. Is there any sort of youth serum things going on or what? It's our longevity XPRIZE. We're getting there, buddy. I think in our last conversation, you're getting on board with the idea of extended longevity, yes? Yeah. Okay.

some degree. I mean, like, I don't know if we want everyone to live forever or whatever, but I think health span and not, you know, having an extended period of senescence where you're just drooling in yourself, sounds like a good idea. We won't avoid that. Yeah. So, first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and X-A-I, baller move, going to power humanity's first Dyson swarm. So I'm curious. It truly is. It truly is. What's your timeline for launching these data centers and how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of the speed at which you're going to be making this happen.

Yeah, so SpaceX is in the quiet period. I can't actually tell you things that would cause problems. Yeah. Oh. I'll leave it. at that. I appreciate that. But I can't wait for the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with Eric Schmidt and with one of the leads from one of the other hyperscalers. I won't mention who, but I'm curious where you feel we are in recursive self-improvement.

Are we there? Do you see GROC doing recursive self-improvement at this point? And what's a timeline for AGI and ASI, give us a sense of that. Yeah, I think we've been in recursive improvement for a while here. If you mean by like recursive self-improvement without a human in the loop, is that what you mean? I do. On the AI software side. I mean, humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So, you know, every successive model is built by the one.

before it so that that is happening to a large degree but it's not yet fully automated it may be there end of this year but not later than next year do you see a hard takeoff at that point we're in the hard take-off okay right now yes I mean look at I mean at this point I go to sleep, there's some massive AI breakthrough, and when I wake up there's another one. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to keep track, honestly. It's a bit of a headspinner.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of the head spinning is happening from you too. Yeah. Well, you know, Grox doing pretty well, and in some metrics, by some metrics it's the best. For example, it's the best of predicting things, which, you know, is arguably the, the, you know, you know, it's arguably the best metric for intelligence. The new GROC 4.20 is really, really good. We're currently behind on coding. The reason I was a bit late for this was that I was just in a giant sort of all hands on coding,

just going through all of the things that need to happen to essentially catch up and exceed our competitors on coding. which I think we'll do. I feel, you know, we should probably get there by the middle of this year. And, and then I think Google don't quite understand just how much intelligence there will be, or just how far it will exceed human intelligence to a degree that is impossible to fully understand. But you can certainly imagine a situation where we, let's say a, let's say a, million times more energy is harnessed than all of Earth's current electricity usage. That would still only be roughly a millionth of the Sun's energy output. So essentially, if you increase Earth's economy by a factor of a million, it's still roughly

a trillion. Since we're a trillionth of the Sun's energy, if you increase Earth's economy in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you will be roughly one millionth only of the sun's energy harness. But what is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of a civilization think about or look like or do? It's going to be something pretty magnificent. The challenge will be even vaguely appreciating that level of intelligence.

But it's safe to say, will solve everything you can possibly think of. Yes. Long-trip being, you know, certainly one of them. And I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism. Thank you, pal. I see you, you, hope.

Yeah, exactly. You've taken it a heart, monetizing hope, which is pretty funny. It was, it was, it was Grock's marketing advice to me when you've roasted me on a podcast. I probably and saying you monetize them. But hey, it's better than monetizing misery, I suppose.

Yes. For sure. Yeah. But, yeah, just when you have AI and robots are going to increase the economic output or by so many orders and magnitude,

we cannot possibly comprehend it. We're likely in the very short time to become a minority, than a vast minority, than a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet? Yes, not even on this planet, but in the solar system. Yes, for sure. Because your best case outcome for Earth for intelligence is roughly one billionth of the

sun's energy. That's your best case outcome. if you generate intelligence only on Earth. Intercept it, right? Yes, yes, because roughly one, roughly half of both of the sun's energy hits Earth, and that's the vast majority of energy that's out there, but that we can access. So really the intelligence in the solar system

will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on Earth itself. I ask you a question, Elon, how far out can you see? How many years out can you make reasonable predictions right now? It's hard to predict the path, exactly, especially if it, because often things are kind of an S curve, or a series of S curves, where it starts off, slow, grows exponentially, hits Lenia zone, and then goes logarithmic. That generally has been what I've seen with the brain. breakthroughs in AI, for example, is there'll be some breakthrough, it'll do, have an S-Cove, but then it looks like it's just going to go to infinity, but then you hit logarithmic

returns until there's another breakthrough. Yep. So progress in AI is just a sort of series of, you know, sort of overlapping S-coves or connected to S-coves. I mean, there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now? Yeah. Okay, this is going to sound pretty crazy.

It's okay. We've been talking about crazy. There's a receptive audience to wild prognostications. Yes. I'd say the economy is ten times its current size in ten years. Greater than. Okay. I was really saying something.

Yeah, you'd said triple-digit growth in five plus years from now on GDP and 10x the economy but in terms of your ability like I feel like that's that's that's a that's a ten X and roughly ten years I feel is a a actually a fairly comfortable prediction with this doesn't if there's like World War III or something that that could put a kink in those plans of those expectations yeah but in the absence of World War III If Conor Trends continue, I would say the economy, 10 X is in 10 years. Love it.

Can you give us a – we had a bunch of – And we'll have a base on the moon. Yes. And we'll have – and we'll have people on Mars. And we'll have mass drivers on the moon. Yes. I think so in 10 years. I think we'll have a mass driver in the moon in 10 years.

I love it. Gerard K. O'Neill's vision being fulfilled. We had four robots on stage here this year at the Abundance Summit. I look forward to Optimus. I'm curious, Optimus 3 timeline, and in particular, when can I buy one or two? When do you expect Optimus to go into commercial for commercial sale, or will you be leasing it? Well, we're in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world.

Nothing's even close. Yeah. In fact, I haven't even seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimist's free, frankly. Maybe they're out there or they're secret or something. I don't know. But, you know, I have to make sure I'm saying things that are reasonably public as well, of course. Of course. We're streaming this on X.

Yeah. Okay, this is pretty public and accurate. Yes. Yeah, I think we'll start. production on Optimus 3 the summer, but very slow at first. Yeah. Like, you know, this sort of classic S-Curve ramp of manufacturing units versus time. And then probably reached high-volume production around summer next year.

And then, you know, we'll have Optimus 4. you know, design quickly next year. I try to release a new robot design every year, and improved robot design every year. When Dave Blundon and I were at the Gigafactory, it was an extraordinary experience, 11.5 million square feet for the Tesla. And then I think you said you're building out

9.5 million square feet for Optimus there as well, which is extraordinary. Let's... It's 10 million square feet round of us. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be quite, that's going to be a new factory designed too. Like it's not different from other factories.

How far before we have robots building robots? I mean, you automated so much of the gigafactory already, where they're humans playing a small role. Do the robots just play the role that humans are playing in that regard? We still have a lot of humans building things. You know, Tesla direct employees who are building things or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people who are building is roughly 100,000. So we have a lot of people. There's a Tesla total hit counts around 150K of which two thirds are, you know, in the factory in one form or another.

And then our suppliers, there's probably maybe a million or two million people in our suppliers. type of thing. So it's a lot of people. What we do expect that is that the output per person at Tesla becomes very, very high. So we're not planning any like layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact, we will increase our headcount. But the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high. When we were like you can't bring it believe it. Yeah. When we were together, we discussed the idea of sustainable abundance on our podcast, and you reinforced the idea that we have a coming age of universal high income, which has become a point of discussion beyond UBI.

But I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get there. Have you reflected in that any further? And more so, we talked about a time frame of civil unrest, you know, two, three, four, five years, probably a lot of COVID-like checks in the interim until we get to a demonetization and a deflation that leads us to UHI. Any more reflections on that?

People need that hope and that vision. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, I don't think we should be sort of complacent. We do need to be careful because the future is a range of possible outcomes, and they're not all great. But at this point, I do agree with you that it's likely to be great. You know, it's probably 80% likely, maybe more likely to be great.

And I do think we'll have universal income. We're basically just issue money to people, you know, and the really just, because the output of goods and services will so far exceed the money supply that, you know, that effectively you have de-inflation is just the ratio of the outputs of goods and services to the money supply So that that's so if the rate of growth of Of goods and services are exceeds the rate of growth of the money supply which I predict will happen Then you will have deflation Yes and a lot of a lot of people spinning up new companies competing against each other driving the price down and

quite increasing the variability and inflation faster and faster. Yeah, basically AI and robots are going to make some of stuff and provide it so many services that they will actually run out of things to do for the humans. They'll just run out of things to do for the humans. And then they, you know, there's only so much that humans can even express that they want.

So you go back to my example of like, if you go a million times greater than the Earth's economy, you've long long since saturated all human desire. You know, like maybe, like, if you go to a thousand times more than our current economy, a thousand times, you probably have already saturated, saturated human, anything people can think of that they want.

So do you think the value of money is going to significantly decrease? Will we go post-capitalist? Yeah, I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future. So just as you're becoming a... It's probably something like an in-banks culture sort of future. And I think the AI down the road will really not use human currency. It will just care about power and mass, wattage and tonnage.

It's kind of ironic then, right? Just as you're becoming a multi-trillionaire money starts to have less value? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You know, all this stuff, it's just really just really just represents like some percentage ownership in companies that I built and it's not like sitting in the bank account. It's just literally I own a percentage of the companies. The companies are doing lots of useful things.

The value of the company grows. I own a percentage of the companies. And that's the sums up to that number, which seems high. Yeah. I was interviewed by somebody who was asking me about your drive, what drives you. And I said, Elon's driven to solve problems. He's driven to make life in the world better by just solving the biggest problems over and over and over again. And if someone else were solving them, he wouldn't need to. But no one else is solving them. So I just want to say, thank you for that, pal. Thank you for that.

I am curious. Do you think that democracy and our modern institutions can keep up with a supersonic tsunami coming our way? Are they just going to fall in its way? They're just going to break down? How do we deal? I mean, it's called the singularity for a reason, you know, which is that it's hard to predict what happens in the singularity. I mean, GROC's logo is the singularity. I love it. It's a beautiful logo behind you, by the way. It's gorgeous. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's sort of the light the light the the the halo around a black hole is the mass and light are falling in type of thing It's hard to know what it happens inside the singularity But it's going to be very interesting like we're going to live in it the future will be very entertaining of that I'm confident yes and I think also like AI and robotics and

also the only way we're going to solve our budget deficit, frankly, and not just go bankrupt as a country. So, you know, you've had an influence on me and that I'm like, I've just decided to be more optimistic. It's like we just should be more optimistic. Thank you, pal. I thought that I wasn't an optimist, but I was like maybe dwelling a little too much

on the negative stuff. It's all upside being an optimist. And a realist a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You don't want to be complacent or, just assume everything's going to go well, but try to make it go well. But, I mean, there won't be some pretty amazing things that happen.

So if you've got humanoid robots that have very high dexterity and are incredibly smart, it means that everyone on Earth will have access to better medical care than the richest person on Earth, which, by the way, I would say, like, you know, if I'm allegedly the rich person on Earth, or whatever. I think actually sovereigns are richer than me, by the way. But it's, like, you know, I, like, I had to have, like, a neck surgery three times because the first two ones were done wrong. You know, like, I'm like, what that, you know?

So, and I'm like, my back still hurts a little bit. I'm like, can AI please solve back pain? That would be a huge one. And I think it will. Yep. So, you know, back pain sucks. I think that's maybe like, you know, sometimes why do people get grumpy when they get older? It's because back pain. It's like if you're backwards all the time and you can't sleep while, you're going to be bumpy.

We had David Sinclair on stage this morning and he's going into human trials with ER 100, his partial epithetic reprogramming. And one of the papers recently published shows it enables joint repair. And so back pain may be one of the things that it eliminates. That would be amazing. Yeah, for sure. I see average happiness level for humans would just go up from tremendously if you just solve back pain because it's not a question of if you'll get back pain. It's when, you know, you'll get back pain.

I keep on inviting you to come down to Fountain Life in Dallas. We'll help you out, but sometime when you have time. Do you have like, what do you, I understand like you can get like MRI and catscans and everything, but like what do you do with that? You know, it's like, happy to send you the list. I'll DM you the list to seraphutic. You know, exactly. You know, listen, you've been so generous.

Next up on stage with me is one of another great moonshot entrepreneur, Ben Lamb, who runs colossal, the De-extinction Company, you know, the woolly mammoth and 15 other species. I heard you say you might want a mini-willy mammoth. Is that true? Yeah, I think it would be really cool to have a pet miniature, Willie Mammoth. That would be pretty epic. Okay. I'll put a word in for you with Ben.

That'd be adorable. Little things are just running around, trumpeting away, and it's like, look at this. We're a great little pet. Amazing. Can somebody please do Jurassic Park in real life? I'd definitely go, even if there was some risk of death. It'd be super cool.

I think if anybody's going to do that it's Ben Lamb and Colossal. He's engineering living life products. Someone asked him recently if he can make a Pikachu and he said probably. Yeah. Well, Jurassic World, whatever. That would be great.

All right. I'll ask him. Elon, I'm so grateful for you coming and joining us and sharing. Thank you, my friend. Let's give it up for Elon Musk. We're gonna stop us.