The billionaire has a lofty vision for humanity—and is unusually determined to see it through
Yet Mr Musk is as widely loathed as he is admired, thanks to his pronouncements on politics, his crusade against the “woke mind virus” and his rocky stewardship of Twitter . Mr Isaacson describes a man with a lofty vision for humankind, but also one who is impulsive, pugnacious and self-destructive.
Born in 1971, Mr Musk had a tumultuous childhood in South Africa. He was brought up partly by a struggling single mother and partly by an abusive father . Mr Musk was violently bullied at school. As a teenager, he saw a man stabbed through the head.
In Mr Isaacson’s view, Mr Musk is propelled by a conviction that humanity is hurtling towards calamity. Hence his superhuman work ethic and his tolerance for risk . Hence, too, his habit of furiously reprimanding or even summarily firing employees whom he deems incompetent or insufficiently committed. Mr Isaacson describes times when Mr Musk has flown into what his confidants call “demon mode”. Mr Musk, by his own assessment, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome.
Mr Musk has great faith in his own wisdom. When it comes to artificial intelligence , it seems no one but he can be trusted to protect humans from malevolent machines, which is why he had Tesla’s engineers develop a humanoid robot, and why he launched his ownHe is not afraid to get involved in geopolitics, either. Mr Isaacson recounts the tale of how,