Musk: I got drawn into politics with the Trump administration, and my experience in the White House is exciting

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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said that artificial intelligence and robotics represent, from his point of view, the only way to address the American national debt, considering that the experience of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has proven the impossibility of resolving the deficit crisis from within government institutions.

“The only way we will be able to solve the national debt is through artificial intelligence and robots,” Musk said in an interview with writer Walter Isaacson, as part of a new podcast series called “The Builders with Walter Isaacson,” scheduled to begin broadcasting on Tuesday. “We will not be able to solve the problem by trying to save money to reach that goal.”

Musk's statements come in the wake of his experience leading the "DOGE" initiative, which was established with the aim of reducing government spending and reducing waste, but it did not achieve the results that its supporters had hoped for, according to what Axios reported in an exclusive report.

Lack of political will to reduce spending

Musk said that the desire to reduce government spending does not exist in the presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the judiciary, adding that government officials do not actually want to reduce spending, with the exception of a limited number of figures, including Republican Senator Rand Paul.

He added that achieving progress on this file might have been possible if US President Donald Trump had made reducing spending his primary goal, but he pointed out that seeking to address the deficit and stop spending that he sees as waste leads to creating political opponents.

Musk said that Trump likes to be accepted by others, and does not prefer to receive calls from people who are angry because of stopping funding for certain programs or projects.

Musk admits: “I got carried away too much”

In an admission about his government experience, Musk said that he "got a little carried away" in politics, and that he spent too much time away from his companies.

He added that it would have been better for him to play a less visible role, and for his participation in the government to last only a month or two, instead of the approximately four months he officially spent in the White House.

“I should have gone back to focusing on AI a little earlier than I did,” he said.

When Isaacson asked him if working inside the West Wing of the White House appealed to him too much, Musk replied: “To some extent,” explaining that being in the Oval Office while making big and important decisions was an exciting experience for him.

The conversation touched on Musk's appearance carrying an electric saw on stage during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), about a month after the start of Trump's second presidential term.

Musk described that period as a "weird weekend," but avoided going into additional details when Isaacson asked him to clarify what happened, saying: "Let's leave the past alone, or something like that."

Warnings about autonomous artificial intelligence

In a broader context, Isaacson warned of the risks associated with the development of autonomous artificial intelligence agents that are not subject to close human supervision, noting that the pioneers of the personal computer era, including Steve Jobs, might have dealt with these technologies with caution.

These warnings came in a new introduction to an updated edition of Isaacson's book, "Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution," originally published in 2014.

Isaacson said he launched “The Builders” series with the goal of interviewing the characters leading the new era of artificial intelligence, questioning them about the potential risks, and understanding their motivations by listening to their first-hand accounts.

He described Musk as an exceptional engineer who pushes technical development forward through the "Starship", "Starlink", "Neuralink" projects, and self-driving electric cars, but added that he sees, according to what he stated in his biography about Musk, that the latter is too inclined towards gloomy explanations and conspiracy theories when it comes to politics and people.

The new series is scheduled to include interviews with a number of prominent figures in the technology and artificial intelligence sector, including Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Fei-Fei Li, Dario Amode and Daniela Amode.

According to the introduction to the series, the dialogues will address these people’s ambitions, fears, vision for the future of humanity, and the motives behind their development of widely influential technologies at an accelerating pace.