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.
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.
Global economy doubles in product every 15-20 years. Computer performance at a constant price doubles nowadays every 4 years on average. Livestock-as-food will globally stop being a thing by ~2050 (precision fermentation and more). Human stupidity, pride and depravity are the biggest problems of our world.
