Who is Elon Musk? An Iron Man, a Rocket Man, or Optimus Prime?
For now, Elon Musk is a businessman and an investor and has key roles in SpaceX, Tesla, X (formally known as Twitter), The Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink and he is one of the founding members of Open AI too.
At the time of writing this article, his net worth was approximately $247 billion, and he is one of the richest people in the world.
Historically speaking, Elon Musk came from a well-off family. His mother, Maye Musk, is a model and dietitian, born in Canada and raised in South Africa. His father, Errol Musk, born in South Africa, is a retired engineer, politician and businessman.
Elon Musk has been very vocal on political and social issues. He had endorsed Donald Trump publicly on X after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, on July 13, 2024.
Elon Musk has spoken many times about the woke culture and that he has vowed to fight against it.
Elon Musk got into a storm of criticism in October 2023 at the start of the Israel-Hamas war, that he is not representing both sides equally, leaving many wondering why that is.
SpaceX
Elon Musk started SpaceX in May 2002 by putting $100 million of his own money. On September 12, 2024, in the span of just 22 years, SpaceX pulled off the first private spacewalk and shocked the whole world.
On October 13, 2024, SpaceX’s Starship’s lower half of the rocket successfully returned to its launchpad and watching it was a WOW factor as if you were watching a scene from a sci-fi movie. Simply Amazing!
So yeah, this reflects Elon Musk’s determination, who at the time had to decide which company to save and which to let go.
Tesla
Well, who doesn’t like Tesla, the top EV in the world, an icon of quality and luxury. Elon Musk, on October 10, 2024, unveiled to the world Cybercab and Robovan, self-driving or driverless vehicles, which I believe are the cars of the future.
Let’s talk about robots now. Optimus is a humanoid which is under development by Tesla. A Prototype of Optimus was shown in the year 2022. Optimus was also featured in the Cybercab and Robovan event on October 10, 2024, and Elon Musk said the robot (under development) would be available to buy at around $30,000.
Elon Musk said this would be the far biggest product in the history of mankind and I believe he is right. My only concern is whether is it going to be the best product in the history of mankind?
X
X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk bought it for $44 billion in April 2022. According to Elon Musk, he bought this company to protect the freedom of speech in America. Whatever does he mean by it? And how successful he will be in this. Time will tell.
The boring company
The boring company is a tunnel construction company. Elon Musk started this company with the aim of easing traffic in Los Angeles and making the driving experience better in the long run.
xAI
xAI is an artificial intelligence start-up by Elon Musk started back in March 2003 and describes the purpose of this as “to understand the true nature of the universe”.
As exciting as AI is nowadays, it is still at the very early stage of its lifetime. I believe, like many others, that AI needs to be handled very carefully, and there needs to be proper laws and legislation for it. And at the moment, the legislation is happening at a very slow pace, if at none.
Neuralink
Neuralink is about the micro implants in the brain, also known as BCIs, brain-computer interference. This is an amazing initiative by Elon Musk and will help humanity in many many ways, medically or otherwise. It’s just that we have to be very careful that human greed for power and money doesn’t overshadow this technology.
On January 29, 2024, Elon Musk said a Neuralink device had been successfully implanted in a human, and the patient was recovering.
OpenAI
Let’s talk about OpenAI now. Elon Musk is also a founding member of this artificial intelligence organisation. It started as a nonprofit organisation back in December 2015 and is now known for its famous ChatGPT chatbot.
Elon Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and has expressed his concerns that the company has deviated from his original goals to something else.
In February 2019, OpenAI announced ChatGPT 2 for its ability to generate human-like text, which gained a lot of attention around the world.
Now the question remains, who is Elon Musk? An Iron Man, a Rocket Man, or Optimus Prime?
And what is Elon Musk up to?
Only time knows.
Something I Wonder.
This article is written by Jordan Zaman
Published 15 October 2024