Elon Musk

“I could go and buy one of the islands of the Bahamas and turn it into my personal fiefdom, but I am much more interested in trying to build and create a new company,” he said. “I haven’t spent all my winnings. I’m going to put almost all of it back to a new game.”

So Musk decided to forge ahead with building a rival AI team to work on Tesla Autopilot. Even as he was struggling with the production hell surges in Nevada and Fremont, he recruited Andrej Karpathy, a specialist in deep learning and computer vision, away from OpenAI. “We realized that Tesla was going to become an AI company and would be competing

Musk had shown little interest in philanthropy over the years. He felt that the good he could do for humanity was best accomplished by keeping his money deployed in his companies that pursued energy sustainability, space exploration, and artificial intelligence safety.

three-hour visit to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he had agreed to give a lecture. It was a welcome break. He could process his thoughts about Twitter in the background while he engaged in something else. He pushed the cadets not to fall prey to the cautious bureaucratic mindset that he believed stymied government programs. “If we’re not blowin

All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it har

It was inevitable that there would be some fatal accidents involving Autopilot, just as there were without Autopilot. Musk insisted that the system should be judged not on whether it prevented accidents but instead on whether it led to fewer accidents. It was a logical stance, but it ignored the emotional reality that a person killed by an Autopilo

“Risk is a type of fuel.”

Pick your battles. In Polytopia, you might find yourself surrounded by six or more tribes, all taking swipes at you. If you swipe back at all of them, you’re going to lose. Musk never fully mastered that lesson, and Zilis found herself coaching him on it. “Dude, like, everyone’s swiping at you right now, but if you swipe back at too many, you’ll ru

Musk was a good student, but not a superstar. When he was nine and ten, he got A’s in English and Math. “He is quick to grasp new mathematical concepts,” his teacher noted. But there was a constant refrain in the report card comments: “He works extremely slowly, either because he dreams or is doing what he should not.” “He seldom finishes anything.