Generally, style could be predictable. The pantheon for youngsters making an attempt to flex their studying habits sometimes contains The Nice Gatsby, Catcher in The Rye, or 1984. However even earlier than changing into a CEO who tries to place himself aside from different CEOs, Elon Musk was making an attempt to interrupt from the mildew, shirking the standard classics in favor of well-known sci-fi lit. It differentiated him from his friends, however was nonetheless a predictable transfer for the person behind SpaceX and OpenAI.
Musk discovered that sci-fi addressed a curiosity brewing throughout his teen years in a means that faith and science alone couldn’t. Neither gave passable solutions to his questions on the place the universe got here from and why it exists, Walter Isaacson wrote in his new biography of the CEO, titled Elon Musk.
“When he reached his teenagers, it started to gnaw at him that one thing was lacking,” Isaacson wrote. That feeling led to an “adolescent existential disaster” that Musk tried to unravel with books.
“I started making an attempt to determine what the that means of life and the universe was,” Musk mentioned. “And I received actual depressed about it, like possibly life might don’t have any that means.” He turned to existential philosophers like Nietzsche, however they left him feeling extra adrift (he doesn’t advocate this as teenage studying materials). He discovered solace within the supernatural world as a substitute.
There are three authors and books, Isaacson wrote, that guided Musk by way of this section and to the opposite aspect of making an attempt to colonize Mars and bringing robots to life in a means that advantages, quite than harms, humanity.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
A favourite of Musk’s, this novel takes place on a lunar penal colony dominated by a super-computer referred to as Mike. The AI surpasses its robotic state “with self-awareness and a humorousness,” Isaacson writes, that results in its self-sacrifice throughout a revolt.
“The e-book explores a problem that might change into central to Musk’s life: Will synthetic intelligence develop in ways in which profit and shield humanity, or will machines develop intentions of their very own and change into a menace to people,” Isaacson explains.
Musk would quickly grapple with this query when he helped discovered OpenAI in 2015 alongside Sam Altman. He has usually spoken about risks of AI, arguing that AI programs wanted safeguards to stop them from changing people (a subject that he usually debated with Google cofounder Larry Web page, which ultimately led to their fallout). Musk’s tackle AI security fashioned the muse of OpenAI’s objectives “to advance digital intelligence in the best way that’s most certainly to profit humanity as an entire,” per an announcement from the corporate’s web site.
Isaac Asimov’s Robotic collection
Musk discovered extra future AI bait in Asimov’s collection of 37 brief tales and 6 novels centered round, you guessed it, robots. The work grappled with the identical subject of AI ethics that Heinlein’s work did. “The tales formulate legal guidelines of robotics which might be designed to verify robots don’t get uncontrolled,” Isaacson wrote.
To get actual dorky with it, one e-book names one in all these guidelines the Zeroth Regulation, entailing that “a robotic might not hurt humanity, or, by way of inaction, enable humanity to come back to hurt.” The books had a long-lasting impression; as Isaacson factors out, Musk tweeted a long time later that “Basis Collection & Zeroth Regulation are elementary to the creation of SpaceX.”
This was one more affect in Musk’s quest with Altman to discovered OpenAI in a means that benefited humanity. The problem of “AI alignment” aimed to align AGI (synthetic common intelligence) with human values and intent—very like how Asimov’s guidelines in his novels have been meant to hinder robots from taking on.
The Hitchhiker’s Information to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Hailing this traditional because the novel most affected Musk’s “marvel years,” Isaacson wrote that it “helped form Musk’s philosophy and added a dollop of droll humor to his critical mien.” Slightly than making thinly-veiled phallic jokes like Musk tends to do, Adams had extra of an ironic take that Musk mentioned helped dig him out of a depressive state.
The story can be centered round understanding the that means of life. In it, residents give a super-computer the duty of answering what the universe’s goal is, which solutions with “42” seven million years later. “The issue, to be fairly trustworthy with you, is that you just’ve by no means truly identified what the query is,” the pc informed the shocked crowd.
Seemingly, Musk brings the teachings from this galaxy—alongside along with his later curiosity in video video games—into each enterprise that he explores now. “I took from the e-book that we have to lengthen the scope of science in order that we’re higher capable of ask the questions in regards to the reply, which is the universe,” he mentioned, a thought he has carried with him in creating his personal AI enterprise, xAI, after leaving OpenAI in 2018 when Altman rejected his proposal to run the corporate.
He mentioned in a July Twitter Areas Discuss that xAI goals “to construct an excellent AGI with the overarching goal of simply making an attempt to grasp the universe. The most secure solution to construct an AI is definitely to make one that’s maximally curious and truth-seeking.”
AI improvements can actually begin to really feel supernatural and ring eerily of any famed sci-fi story, as traders poured billions into tech developments within the subject earlier this yr. Taking a web page from his favored books, Musk informed US senators AI was a double-edged sword this week throughout a summit on the subject and made a plea for regulation on deeper AI.
As one of many early inventors within the subject of AI, Musk desires to keep away from changing into just like the sci-fi trope he as soon as studied, an ego-based scientist who may in the future lose management of his invention. Though he’s since regretted strolling away from OpenAI, calling himself “an enormous fool,” for doing so. Maybe curling up and studying a e-book can salve the sting.
