Microsoft AI CEO recalls Larry Page’s sci-fi vision; Elon Musk says 'He is right'

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has recounted a futuristic lunch conversation from 2015 with Google co-founder Larry Page. Revealing that the chat took place at a canteen in SpaceX, Suleyman said that Page envisioned exploring distant galaxies using advanced self-propelling probes by the end of the century. Responding to Suleyman’s story, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk echoed the sentiment, stating that Page “might be right” in his bold prediction for human civilization. The ethics board meeting at SpaceX canteen Recalling the 2015 encounter, Suleyman said that the company chose Musk as one of the three independent members while having a conversation sitting in the canteen at SpaceX headquarters during the very first meeting of DeepMind's AI Ethics and Safety Board. When Google acquired DeepMind in 2014, Suleyman and his co-founders, Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, made it an explicit condition of the sale that Google establish an ethics committee featuring independent oversight representation. The board structure required mutual agreement between both parties: - Google executives: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and then-Chief Legal Officer David Drummond. - DeepMind co-founders: Mustafa Suleyman, Demis Hassabis, and Shane Legg. - Jointly Selected Independent Board Member: Elon Musk. “Yeah, I remember in 2015 being in the canteen at SpaceX. And we had our first meeting of the Ethics and Safety Board. So when we sold DeepMind to Google, we made it a condition of our acquisition that we would have an Ethics and Safety Board with independent representation on the board,” Suleyman said in a podcast The Builders with Walter Isaacson and Kaleidoscope. “One of those independent members, because Google had to agree, which was obviously Larry, Sergey, and David Drummond at the time. And then me, Demis, and Shane had to jointly agree who those three independents would be. And so we jointly picked Elon as one of them,” he added. Suleyman noted that he remains unsure whether holding those early AI safety discussions at SpaceX headquarters played any role in influencing Musk's subsequent founding of OpenAI. “No idea if that had an influence on the founding of OpenAI or not. But so then we had our morning session and we were sitting down for lunch and I was sitting next to Larry. You know, obviously he was suspicious of me as well because he was like, you know, you’re one of those speciesists,” he recalled. Larry Page’s sci-fi vision for interstellar probes During lunch following the board's morning session, Suleyman found himself sitting next to Larry Page. It was during this meal that Page shared his long-term vision for deep-space exploration driven by advanced technology. “And he said, you know, I think that what you don’t understand, Mustafa, is that by the end of the century, I’m going to be exploring the galaxies at the head of a von Neumann probe,” Suleyman recalled. As Suleyman explained, a von Neumann probe is a theoretical, self-propelling robotic spacecraft designed to navigate across light-years while autonomously harvesting energy and resources directly from space. Elon Musk reacts: ‘Larry Page might be right’ Revisiting the 2015 exchange, Elon Musk expressed strong support for the ambitious timeline, pointing to Page's long track record of accurate technological foresight. “Our civilization would be winning wondrously if we are exploring the galaxy with Von Neumann probes by 2100!” Musk remarked, adding, “Larry Page might be right. He has correctly predicted many things.”