Elon Musk is America’s favorite entrepreneur. He’s reinvigorated space travel with SpaceX–and space travel and the moon landing are deeply embedded in American pride and culture. So are technology and cars–and Musk is breaking good there too, creating the Tesla, creating American jobs, creating new technology and changing energy consumption patterns. He’s perfect really: he’s trying to save this planet but in case he fails he’s making sure we can go to another one!
Both the cars and the rockets will be able to mostly drive themselves in the near future. Computers are increasingly able to “think” enough to permit that. But Musk warns that there’s a potential “demon” on the horizon. With advances in artificial intelligence, “we are summoning the demon,” Musk told a gathering at MIT last week. Sounding like a true connoisseur of science fiction nightmares, Musk said Artificial Intelligence may be our “biggest existential threat.”
