Colonising Mars to ‘Blade Runner’ pickup truck: Elon Musk reveals future plans

Musk wants to build a ‘SpaceForce’ base on Mars and possibly on the moon too

Highlights from Elon Musk’s interview with Recode. (Bloomberg)

Elon Musk is perhaps the most eccentric tech personality. He builds futuristic products and wants to colonise Mars.

Musk also has a rather interesting Twitter feed where he tweets the most random things and announces new product developments. Contrary to what people think Musk says that he spends only 10-15 minutes on Twitter.

Musk sat down with Recode for an interview where he talked about his companies, future products, plans of colonising Mars and more.

Colonising Mars

One of the most interesting topics is Musk's obsession with Mars. The SpaceX owner talks about having a "Space Force" base on Mars or even the moon. Like humans have Air Force bases on earth the same can be done in space as well for expanding civilisation.

"I think the idea of being out there among the stars and among the planets is very exciting," Musk says. "So around the 2024 timeframe, there's a rendezvous opportunity for Mars, which hopefully we can catch," he adds.

Musk plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars latest by 2024. He isn't sure though if there will be anyone on board.

Future of AI

Recalling Musk's statement on how AI can be dangerous for humans, he recommends having a governing committee around the technology's potential. With the fast increasing pace of AI becoming smarter, Musk says that AI should be studied thoroughly and rules to safeguard it should be made.

"In the long term, as AI gets probably much smarter than humans, the relative intelligence ratio is probably similar to that between a person and a cat, maybe bigger. I do think we need to be very careful about the advancement of AI," he says.

Future of self-driving cars and Tesla

Musk shed light on the company's new navigation feature in its self-driving cars. "Drive on Nav" will move the car from highway on-ramp to off-ramp and change lanes automatically. One of the challenges this technology faces is having an all-round vision of nearby objects. Even with eight cameras on board the neural net powering this technology isn't advanced enough to identify every object.

Talking about Tesla's stand right now, Musk highlights the company's importance for sustainable environment. He also assures that Tesla is financially stable now and has no plans of going private. In terms of competition, Musk remains confident that no car company can come close to their tech.

New vehicles

Among the new vehicles from Tesla, Musk is most excited about its pickup truck. The upcoming Tesla pickup truck will be very futuristic like the ones in Cyberpunk and Blade Runner. Musk also mentioned about having a "supersonic vertical-takeoff-and-landing electric jet" in the future, but definitely no planes at Tesla.