“Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.” – Abraham Lincoln
The above quote was uttered by Lincoln, then a local lawyer, in 1838 in his famous speec to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois.
Great minds always prefer to choose a path different from the crowd and love to go where other people haven’t been yet. Distinction will always be the paramount object for such men. But sometimes it’s the thirst for distinction that discourages them from taking a beaten path.
Such people are born with a desire to have a unique place in the history. Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon are a few examples in history. They deny any obligation to serve under anyone. They refuse to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. They will promise anything and do anything, as long as it advances their ambitions and unhidden agendas.
In the Lyceum address, Lincoln emphasized the idea that it’s necessary to hold the ambitions of geniuses or great minds in check. Today it is just as true as it was then.
In recent times, one man who has redefined the human qualities of ingenuity, fearlessness, innovation, confidence, and ruthlessness to the max in business is Elon Musk.
Musk is known for taking unconventional paths, whether it’s creating a profitable enterprise on a relatively new technology (electric vehicles) through Tesla, or transforming the future of transportation that would end traffic congestion by digging tunnels, working with the Boring Company.
To have a hand in the conscientious development of artificial intelligence (AI), he’s involved with OpenAI. To boost space tourism and giving humankind a chance at becoming a multi-planetary species, he is working with SpaceX. And to augment the human brain’s capabilities, he has put up Neuralink.
He is at the helm of a number of companies, and each of one is going to play a critical role in the evolution of human society in the near future. Apart from that, Musk’s ventures have created a strong public image of an engineering and managerial genius, who wants to solve the world’s problems.
But for the past few months, he has been in news for taking over the social-media giant Twitter. After months of waffling, lawsuits, verbal mudslinging, and the near miss of a full-blown trial, Elon Musk completed a US$44 billion deal to own Twitter on October 27.
India ranks third in the world in terms of the Twitter user base. Most political or social debates happen through Twitter, as we know that India’s traditional media languish in 150th position in the Press Freedom Index.
Twitter serves as a more credible source of news for the people of the world’s largest democracy. So any changes made on the platform without proper transparency will impact the nature of Indian democracy.
Free speech is the cornerstone of democracy and it cannot be decided or guaranteed by one man but by communities with proper checks and validation. So changing the core of the Twitter platform without much transparency will mean changing the core of democracy.
Musk posted a message saying “the bird is freed” just minutes before the midnight deadline to close the Twitter deal. In his message to advertisers, he emphasized that Twitter is a cornerstone of civilization and he was buying it to help humanity. But is it so?
Access to data
During his visit on October 26 to Twitter headquarters, Musk reportedly told the employees that he didn’t plan to lay off 75% of the 7,500-strong workforce. But on October 28, after taking control of the social-media company, he immediately fired the company’s chief executive officer Parag Agrawal, policy chief Vijaya Gadde, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and later on the entire board of directors, to take full control of the company.
In India, under Musk’s leadership Twitter has fired more than 90% of its staff.
Twitter is unique in the social-media space. It is centered on news (and particularly political news) in a way that other outlets are not. That’s in part because it is a place that many journalists have come to rely on for sourcing and community. Certainly, Musk’s actions are simply an effort to disrupt the institutional power of traditional media. In the much longer term, there is increasing evidence that Twitter as we know it will cease to exist.
In his statements about his intent to buy Twitter, Musk espoused the importance of free speech to democracy, calling the social-media platform “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” But he didn’t mention how he envisages creating that town square.
More so, Twitter after Musk’s purchase will be loaded with debt; interest alone will be billions of dollars each year. It’s hard to believe that someone spent $44 billion and fought a hard battle, only for providing free speech. But the answer may lie with what he could do with our data.
AI achieves accuracy through deep neural networks. For example: Alexa and Google are based on deep learning. Elon Musk can use all of our data that is housed in Twitter’s servers and algorithms for Neuralink AI. Neuralink is building the first brain-machine interface (BMI), which now mimics consciousness and can be used to build the most advanced and responsive robots ever created. Twitter can be used as a massive input to train AI/ML models for Neuralink.
Before the Twitter deal, on October 1, Musk had already launched a prototype of a humanoid robot, Optimus, being developed for his Tesla electric cars. A video of the robot carrying a box, watering plants, and moving metal bars in the automaker’s factory was shown during the launch.
Musk has said that in the near future robots could be used in homes, making dinner, mowing the lawn and caring for the elderly. “It is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it,” he said.
Now, with Neuralink as a BMI interface, Optimus as a humanoid robot, and Twitter as a source for deep learning, he has the potential to create a totally new different or digital world based on automated and intelligent machines without any threat of AI outsmarting humans.
All Musk wants from humanity is their data, and which is what makes the Twitter deal worth the cost. But it’s easy to get lost within the multifarious goals that Musk has across this smorgasbord of companies, until they correlate with one another to serve a common agenda or purpose.
A fantasy-like future, but at a price
If you want to understand the fantasy-like future that Musk is building, it is essential to understand the past that shaped him. “I was raised by books, books, and books,” Elon said in one of his media interviews. He spoke bitterly about his abusive father and childhood loneliness.
Some of those books help explain the world Musk is building, particularly Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. The billionaire has in the past argued that we need a Plan B if Earth finds itself irreversibly damaged through climate change, overpopulation, a Third World War, or an eventual mass extinction event.
In an April 2022 interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, the billionaire stated his goal of wanting to transport a million people to Mars by 2050. Musk’s vision remains aligned with a series of tweets from 2020, in which he articulated a plan to build 100 starships each year over a 10-year period. He sees 2029 as the earliest date humans might first step on Mars.
Five Musk companies are now creating a perfect ecosystem to help in the Mars colonization project. All his companies are running around-the-clock operations to develop the spacecraft and technology that will enable humans to become a multi-planet species as soon as possible.
The role of AI (Open AI), robots (Optimus), automated vehicles (Tesla), SolarCity, and satellites (Starlink) will be vital in the project. These technologies make much more sense on Mars than on Earth. But Earth can be a perfect testing ground. He wants humans to participate in the larger project of colonizing Mars. Humanity can only accomplish this by giving their data and buying his product and services.
If his space colonization plans prove successful, he will certainly find a prominent mention in the history books forever. But if he fails, humanity will face an existential crisis.
Up to now, he has managed to sell the world on his capability to achieve objectives that appear so lofty that they could be mistaken for fantasies. But can humans take a leap of faith into the unknown, both in terms of engineering and social evolution, with Elon Musk?