Is Elon Musk good or bad for futurism

[Ozzie guy]

I am genuenly unsure if Elon Musk is good for futurism.

The good

• Invested 1 billion in OpenAI

• Probably acts as a pipeline to make some of his fanboys futurists

Neutral

• some of his space endevers seem genuine but the space community e.g. NASA does not like what he is doing, I don't know why and need to look into it.

The bad

• He lies about when things are expected

• he lies about what his products can do

• He creates very stupid things like hyperloop and lies about his stupid projects

The above 3 things are all to boost the value of his stock or give him more power e.g.hyperloop was to prevent the government from investing in public transport.

Elon Musk may be facing prison time soon. Teslas market value is about the combined value of all other major car companies combined yet Tesla produces significantly less cars than any major car company. As Elon Musk recently he sold $5 billion worth shares at once in the stock pumped up by his lies he will likely face fraud charges when his stock collapses and be compared to con artists like Elizabeth Holmes.




Like I said after all this I actually don't know if Elon is bad or good for futurism. There is alot of value in investing 1 billion into OpenAI and to be honest not much is lost from him hyping up transport. He has begun hyping up his AI, Robotics and computer brain interfaces which seems much more dangerous for futurism. Given his fame maybe it increases the chance of an AI winter. He has hyped up and lied about his AI for self driving cars for years it is not a new thing. Hearing about Elon working on a Tesla bot and making that his priority made me concerned and probably lead to me making this post today.

[funkervogt]

The bad
He lies about when things are expected

Yes, but the things usually end up happening only slightly later than he predicted.

[Tadasuke]

This video is gold:

Some ideas of Elon Musk are faulty and some are too optimistic on their timing. Like there's no way there will be 1 000 000 people living on Mars in 2050. Tesla's cars were supposed to be at level 5 autonomy by 2022 from what I remember. Tesla Bots will take decades to design and mass produce. Neuralink is not new as things are standing, I remember reading about wireless brain implants in monkey years before Neuralink. Still no Starship or fully reusable rockets, still no level 5 autonomy, still no affordable electric cars, still no Tesla semi-trailer trucks, still no affordable energy storage, still no affordable satellite Internet, still no general AI, still no practical Hyperloop. Elon's ideas are about hypothetical future things, but Space X has successfully lowered costs of sending astronauts or cargo to orbit. Falcon 9 reusable is a step in the right direction for rocketry. Future Timeline has a good chart about falling costs of bringing a ton of mass into space. I am looking forward to future developments. I think that by 2030 there will be level 5 autonomy vehicles, affordable electric cars, Moon base (NASA), Mars base (SpaceX), fully reusable rockets, affordable solar rooftiles, affordable energy storage, affordable satellite Internet connection, Tesla semi-trailer trucks, Tesla Cybertruck with more durable windows and maybe even general AI (but that I think will happen later). Hyperloop will never be practical however. This doesn't mean Elon doesn't do good things for the world, because he clearly does. I think that the next 10 years will be more eventful than the last. This year alone, many important things are happening in space and in electric vehicles areas. Electric cars may be equal in price to gasoline cars in 2026 and after that they may be cheaper thanks to lighter cars and much better, solid-state batteries which are almost ready for mass production.

I am optimistic about the future, even more than Elon, because I don't see a necessity to colonize Mars. If AI defeats humans on Earth, it will fly to Mars and defeat humans there too. No asteroids will come undetected and giant asteroids don't hit more often than perhaps once every 100 million years. There is almost zero chance that a dangerous asteroid is going to fall down on Earth in the next few centuries. Asteroids can be deflected of course and it will become possible during this century, let alone this millenium. By the year 2120 we will probably be level 1 on Kardashev Scale and by the year 3000 we will probably be level 2 on Kardashev Scale. Asteroids don't pose a threat to a K2 civilization. Supernovas do however, but it doesn't matter whether we are on Venus, on Earth, on Mars or on Neptune in that case. Elon's a bit weird in my opinion.

[mahuxybu]

I think that Elon is our future, he can't be bad. Quite the opposite, he drives the world towards future and I'm glad that we have such a person.

[andmar74]

Musk is creating the future while we others just ramble.

[weatheriscool]

I think overall good.

The man does a lot of great things and I consider him the Edison and ford of our time.

The problem is he hates the poor, the worker and if allowed to would utter f*ck labor rules and regulations over to enrich himself over the rest of our society.

[wjfox]

I think he's a terrible person – a net negative for humanity. My respect for him has plummeted in the last two years.

[raklian]

I think he's a terrible person – a net negative for humanity. My respect for him has plummeted in the last two years.

Yeah, any notable achievements by his companies are thanks to the engineers.

[Vakanai]

He's someone who's technological ambitions are in line with our own, but who's morals and ethics are straight up corporate fascist. And frankly it's getting to where the latter far outweighs the former...