If he was n’t known for consort EV car maker Tesla , Elon Musk would still be bang for SpaceX , his spacecraft and satellite companionship with Martian ambitions . Or for Neuralink , a party working on developing implantable brainpower – computer interface . Or for X.AI , the latest entry in the artificial intelligence information arms airstream . Or , of course , for buy societal medium connection Twitter , then promptly deconstruct everything about it , from the staff , to the name ( now merely “ X ” ) , to much of its established functionality .
If that ’s not enough for a detail - packed biography from Walter Isaacson , I do n’t know what is . The latest , from the author of book onSteve Jobs , Einstein , andLeonardo Da Vinci , is simply called “ Elon Musk , ” and spends more than 600 Sir Frederick Handley Page on Musk ’s life , from puerility to the latest Twitter disputation .
He sat down with Gizmodo for an extended talk of the town about the novel book the day after its September 12 release . The following is an edited and condensed version of that talk . A poor telecasting Q&A is above .
Photo: Mark Neschis/Gizmodo
Dan Ackerman : Why are we so hypnotized with Elon Musk ? There are a lot of rich people out there attempt to put their stamp on the human beings . What about him in particular , makes him a personality that we ca n’t stay away from ?
Walter Isaacson : I ’ve always liked to speak about riotous innovators , whether it be Steve Jobs or Jennifer Doudna , who ’s nifty at wreak us into the era of transmissible editing . When I started this book , [ Musk ] was work us into the earned run average of electric vehicles , and other companies had almost gotten out of that business sector , and he ’s been able to do more than plausibly any other soul to move us towards that geological era of galvanizing vehicle . second , he was the only soul able to get astronauts into cranial orbit from the United States , or to be able to snap off rockets into reach and land them and reuse them . So he seemed like a somewhat innovative guy . A year into exercise on this leger , he decided to buy Twitter , so that made it more of a weird roller coaster .
district attorney : As a biographer , you say a stack by who you choose to profile , whether it ’s Ben Franklin or Steve Jobs or Leonardo da Vinci . Where does Elon correspond into that continuum ?
WI : We talk about fresh people , but fresh people are a dime bag a dozen . Who thinks different ? Who can be creative ? Who questions every essential ? Well , you get Einstein , who ’s greatest “ think otherwise ” ever is to figure out that the speed of light is constant , but clock time is relative . You get it on , that ’s really a saltation that nobody else would have taken at the time . Obviously , Steve Jobs brings us into a whole lot of unexampled industries , including well-disposed personal reckoner , the cell earphone diligence , the music industry , disrupts a lot of things . And similarly with Musk , it ’s not necessarily that he ’s smart . I mean , Bill Gates has more processing power , I would say , but it ’s an power to be turbulent that I observe interesting because it ’s a key to creative thinking . It ’s really the essence I explored in Leonardo da Vinci because Leonardo da Vinci is the ultimate of that .
DA : You bring up “ think unlike ” which makes me suppose of Apple and the lap between someone like Elon Musk and someone like Steve Jobs , especially in their personality traits . Both might be read to lack some level of personal empathy and both can create this realism distortion study around them . Do you think Musk apprize being liken to Steve Jobs ?
WI : He does n’t really talk about Jobs that much . I intend both of them have a world distortion field . Both of them drive people crazy , labor them mad . But also push back them to do things they did n’t think they ’d be able to do .
It ’s certainly not the most tabloid - worthy part of the book , but one of the most interesting parts of the ledger to me is that Musk cared as much about the manufacture process as he did about the Cartesian product . He tell design a merchandise is tough , but what ’s really severe is to make the auto that makes the political machine … if you depend at Elon Musk ’s desk in Hawthorne , California , in Fremont , Texas , at the Austin Gigafactory , it ’s right on the assembly furrow . Because he says if you ’re project a ware , you have to see at each moment , how it ’s being made and where the bottleneck are .
DA : Another riveting thing that came out from the book that mass have been verbalize about is Elon Musk ’s involvement with Starlink and Ukraine … Do you purchase his argumentation about his motivation , want to prevent a huge escalation that might lead into World War Three ?
WI : I have sex it sounds primitive , but this guy is revelatory . And I retrieve tattle to him that dark , and many other time . It ’s like , “ Oh , my God , if this find , they ’ll go nuclear . ” He tell , I ’ve talked to the Russian embassador and they ’ve say they have this doctrine , Russian practice of law , that if you assail the motherland , we have the right to avenge atomic .
He read to me , I did Starlink so people could watch Netflix movies and chill and dally video game . Why am I in this war ? And I ’m like , why are you in this warfare ?
district attorney : That sounds eminent - given , whether you match with him or not . But then there ’s this other side that we ’ve seen , I call it kind of his “ blackguard routine , ” embracing of a lot of radical ripe wing material body on Twitter , his embracement of the “ banning the ADL ” movement on Twitter . Part of it feels performative to me , does it sense that way of life to you ?
WI : There ’s not an easy solution there because he ’s a very erratic person . And if you ’re with him in the midsection of the daylight you ’re talking to him , and he ’s in his engineering rational manner , he ’s actually quite a centrist . But if you ’ve have him in a dark humor , which Grimes calls “ Demon Mode , ” he gets really dark , and he has populist , more outer boundary theory that he engage with on Twitter which allows it to be amplified more , which is in my judgement , not a pretty sight .
district attorney : To what degree do you think he regrets getting demand with Twitter at all now , besides even the money . Is it a misdirection from all of the other things that he feels he has been put here on Earth to do ?
WI : As you ’ll read in the Word , there are import where he ’s like , how did I get into this ? He ’s yelling at his lawyers , Alex Spiro and others : “ you could gain ground this typeface in Delaware and get me out of this thing ! ” And there are other time [ he says ] this is Irish bull , this is a total waste of time even having this conversation that he and I were having about what he was going to do with Twitter . And then later that eve in text edition messages , “ I ’m croak to habituate it to create what X.com should have been and it ’s going to be an accelerant . ” So he would be giddily enthusiastic and darkly overturned as he went through it .
district attorney : What ’s your take on how he ’s managed Twitter so far ?
WI : After he gets Twitter and he come in , it ’s a psychologically safe place . It look beautiful . Everybody ’s care about the comfort of multitude and nurturing them . He ’s like , “ No , we have to be all - in , we have to be all hardcore . ” And he give notice what rick out to be about 80 % of the multitude . I assume that when I wake up every morn , it ai n’t gon na be there . I look every morning and it ’s still there .
Some masses say , oh , now he ’s now destroy it . It does n’t exist anymore . It is not what it was when masses like you and me had mellifluous conversations and we were all embrocate with blue check , and it was a clubhouse for citizenry like us . It ’s become a much more contentious blank space and has a lot more masses spending clip on it and especially uploading telecasting . There was a telecasting [ podcaster ] Lex Fridman and I did last week and he upload on Twitter – 58 million views . And so that ’s something the political platform does now that it had n’t done before . And he ’s allowed mass to monetize it . In other intelligence , you’re able to charge masses , you’re able to get advertising splits from it . So he ’s done a lot of things to make it different . He ’s add together more things in six month then Parag and Jack Dorsey did in three eld , but he ’s also screwed it up .
DA : Artificial tidings . That ’s the hot issue of the daylight . It ’s also one of his biggest fixation . Has he convinced you of his POV that AI poses an existential terror , and we have to very carefully command and order it ? Not everyone feel that way . He understandably does .
WI : Does he really believe it could be a danger ? He has his apocalyptical moods . They do n’t last all 24 hours of the day , but there are humour that say , if there ’s a [ Ukrainian ] cabbage flack , like Pearl Harbor , on the Russian fleet , they ’ll go nuclear . And if AI is allowed to run amok and not be unite to human agency , the alignment outlet , as it ’s called , that will be a big problem .
district attorney : One hundred class from now , someone else is save a historical biography of Elon Musk . Is he fancy as a net force out for good in the globe ?
WI : I consider that he will sure go down 100 years from now as have great historical significance . I think all of societal media will be retrieve as having , at best , a non - good , and at worst , a very harmful influence . But that let in many forms from Facebook on through . We did not make people take obligation for what they did , or platforms take responsibleness , but that ’s a controversial take . I do n’t put it in the Word of God , it ’s just my own take that somehow if you look out the Oppenheimer movie , you see that when we get that engineering science , we kick in and say , alright , how are we going to endeavor to make certain this djinni does n’t keep getting out of the bottle ? I do n’t intend we ’ve done that well with social spiritualist and I think Musk is not going to look well in account about what he ’s doing with the weapons platform now love as X.
Walter Isaacson’s“Elon Musk ” is uncommitted now .
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