Love Life To Concerns Over AI: What Elon Musk's Biography Reveals About The SpaceX Founder's Life
The biography, titled Elon Musk, talks about several aspects of the billionaire's life. The discussions for the biography started between Musk and author Walter Isaacson in 2021.
As a new biography of Tesla CEO Elon Musk hit the stands earlier this week, the world saw a new side to the tech billionnaire. The biography, 'Elon Musk', is already a big hit in China, where it is priced at over $10, according to American news website CNBC. The biography, the discussions for which started between Musk and author Walter Isaacson in 2021, talks about several aspects of the billionaire's life.
The book traces Musk's journey from his school to his meteoric rise in the tech and business world. It also delves into his family and romantic relationships. Walter Isaacson, who had earlier penned the biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs includes several anecdotes from Musk's life.
Here's a look at the top five takeaways from the biography of Elon Musk:
1. A Difficult Time With His Father
Isaacson writes in the biography that Elon Musk had a high threshold for pain. He quotes Musk as saying: "Adversity shaped me." Musician Grimes, with whom Musk shared a romantic relationship, says in the book that Musk was never content as he was driven by post-traumatic stress disorder from the incidents in his childhood, reported The Guardian.
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal were raised in South Africa by their father Errol, an engineer. Kimbal says that his worst childhood memory was that of watching Errol shout at Elon after he was hospitalised for injuries sustained in a fight at school. Errol admits that he was a parent who "encouraged physical and mental toughness". Errol continued to "torment" Elon till the latter left their Pretoria home at the age of 17, reported British news website The Independent.
2. Musk's Relationships
The book talks in detail about Elon Musk's relationships. When he danced with his first wife Justine at their wedding reception in 2000, he told her that he was the "alpha" in the relationship. He had six kids with Justine, one of whom died at 10 months.
After his break up with Justine, he met British actor Talulah Riley at a nightclub in the UK when he went to deliver a speech at the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2008, the book says, according to American magazine People. Later, Musk proposed Riley, but he didn't have a ring at the time. So the couple just shook hands and got married in 2010. The couple got divorced and got married again in 2013 and divorced again in 2016.
However, the most intriguing was perhaps his relationship with American actor Amber Heard, who just a year ago, was involved in a defamation case against her husband actor Johnny Depp. The book mentions that the couple had been in an on-and-off "brutal" relationship for a year till 2018. According to New York Daily News, Heard says in the book that Musk “loves fire, and sometimes it burns him”, adding: “His brother and friends hated her with a passion.”
The book also talks about Musk's "secret" third child with musician and songwriter Claire Elise Boucher, aka Grimes.
3. Musk's Actions After Twitter Takeover
As he completed the takeover of microblogging website Twitter in October last year, Musk swiftly ousted the company's executive team. Just months before the move, when Musk had acquired a large stake in Twitter, he met then CEO Parag Agrawal. Following their encounter, Musk remarked, "What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon, and Parag is not that," reported The Guardian.
Their relationship soured shortly eventually. Agrawal texted Musk, expressing his concern about Musk's tweet asking if Twitter was "dying". Musk, while on a break in Hawaii, retorted, "What did you accomplish this week?" He went on to say, "I'm not joining the board. This is a futile effort. I will make an offer to take Twitter private."
This exchange took place at a time when discussions about Musk potentially joining the board were on. Agrawal's response underscored the power imbalance and Twitter's apprehension regarding Musk. He messaged, "Can we discuss this?" Soon after, Musk officially submitted a bid for Twitter, a move he attempted unsuccessfully to backtrack on, sealing the fate of Agrawal and his colleagues.
4. Elon Musk Concerned About 'Dwindling Population'
One of the key reasons behind Musk establishing a new artificial intelligence company, xAI, was to address the looming threat of population decline, the book reveals. During a face-to-face discussion with Isaacson, the billionaire entrepreneur expressed concerns that human intelligence might eventually be overtaken by digital intelligence.
He pointed out that the growth of human intelligence had stagnated due to a decline in birth rates, while computer intelligence was experiencing exponential growth, akin to Moore's law on steroids. Musk believed that, at some point, digital brainpower would surpass biological brainpower.
Musk and Isaacson had this conversation in the Austin, Texas, residence of Shivon Zilis, an executive at Musk's Neuralink venture and the mother of two of his children. Zilis revealed that she had chosen to have children with Musk through IVF after being persuaded by his argument that having children was a "social duty" for intelligent individuals. According to The Guardian, she says in the biography, "He genuinely wants intelligent people to have children. So, he encouraged me to do so."
5. Elon Musk's Role In Russia-Ukraine War
Musk's satellite communications company, Starlink, has played an important role in Ukraine's defence against the Russian invasion. According to the book published by Simon & Schuster, when a Russian cyber-attack disrupted Ukraine's satellite communications network just an hour before the invasion, Musk responded to an appeal for assistance from Ukrainian officials and the country's Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.
However, the book also says that Musk asked his engineers to take down Starlink coverage, which could have potentially enabled an attack by drone submarines on Russia's navy at the Sevastopol base in Crimea.
Subsequently, Isaacson clarified this excerpt after Musk used his X platform to assert that there was no Starlink coverage in that specific area, and he declined a Ukrainian request to activate it. Musk posted, "If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would have become directly involved in a significant act of war and escalation of conflict."
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