A researcher wears an electrode-equipped cap in an experiment aimed at demonstrating direct brain control of a computer. (University of Washington / National Science Foundation via YouTube)
To explain it all for us, Musk turned to Tim Urban, the creator of the Wait But Why website. Urban has crafted similarly illustrated long reads about the SpaceX rocket company and the Tesla electric company, the two ventures that currently occupy most of Musk’s time as CEO.
An artist’s conception provides a speculative view of what the Tesla Semi might look like. (Jan Peisert Illustration / Peisert Design)
Getting the Tesla Model 3 electric car on the road clearly isn’t enough to occupy Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX: Today he tweeted the time frame for unveiling Tesla’s autonomous, all-electric Semi truck and a smaller pickup truck.
But wait … there’s more: The Tesla Roadster, which was the first vehicle the company put on sale, is coming back. And this time, it’ll be a convertible.
Musk’s timetable for executing the next steps of his “Master Plan, Part Deux” spilled out in a series of tweets.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk talks about the significance of the first relaunch of a Falcon 9 rocket booster. (SpaceX via YouTube)
SpaceX took nearly a year to relaunch its first “flight-proven” Falcon 9 booster, but within a year or two, company founder Elon Musk expects to be able to launch the same rocket day after day.
He also foresees a time when all the major components of a Falcon 9 rocket can be flown again — not just the first-stage booster, but also the nose cone and perhaps even the rocket’s upper stage.
That could drive the cost of a launch to less than 1 percent of what it is today — for example, $600,000 rather than the current $62 million list price for a Falcon 9 rocket launch.
“The significance of today is proving that it’s possible to do that,” Musk said.
Elon Musk muses at SpaceX’s Mission Control. (SpaceX Photo)
Billionaire brainiac Elon Musk is following up on his interest in (and wariness about) artificial intelligence by backing Neuralink Corp., a company devoted to developing neural implants, The Wall Street Journal says.
Business filings suggest that Neuralink would build devices designed to treat or diagnose neurological conditions, and conceivably augment human cognitive powers.
The Journal quoted entrepreneur-futurist Max Hodak as confirming Musk’s involvement in Neuralink, which Hodak said was still an “embryonic” venture.
A release candidate version of the Tesla Model 3 hits the streets. (Elon Musk via Twitter)
Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, is showing off a video of the company’s more affordable Model 3 electric car – but he’s also touting Tesla’s pricier models.
A clip that shows a black release candidate version of the Model 3 zipping down the street popped up this morning on Musk’s Twitter and Instagram feeds, and quickly picked up tens of thousands of views, plus thousands of shares.
In a back-and-forth series of tweets with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Musk made clear that he’s looking for much more than words from the federal government when it comes to Mars missions.
Elon Musk (left), the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, listens to President Donald Trump during a White House meeting. Corning CEO Wendell Weeks sits in the middle. (White House via YouTube)
If you can join them, you can try beating them, too. Today SpaceX and Tesla signed on to the legal fight against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, even though the companies’ billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, is a member of Trump’s business advisory council.
The brief supports a challenge to Trump’s executive order on immigration – a challenge that’s being led by Washington state. The challengers won an initial victory on Feb. 3 when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to force a suspension of the president’s immigration ban.
Nobody does a tweetstorm like Elon Musk. (SpaceX via YouTube)
Tech wizard Elon Musk’s fans hang on his every word when he tweets about the next SpaceX launch, or about the next Tesla electric car – or, it turns out, about President Donald Trump and America’s legal system.
The almost dizzying back-and-forth caught Musk’s attention, and not just because he happens to be an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa and also acquired a Canadian passport. Musk is a member of Trump’s advisory council, and in fact participated in a Feb. 3 discussion of immigration policy at the White House.
His status as a Trump adviser has generated some pushback from his fans, and today’s tweets touched on the reasons why he’s remaining on the council even though he disagrees with the president’s views on immigration. Here’s an effort to untangle the Twitter threads that the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla spun with his followers today.
Billionaire techie Elon Musk is staying on President Donald Trump’s business advisory council, even after Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down due to widespread criticism of the president’s immigration ban.
Today, Musk had a chance to air his concerns at the White House – and said afterward that he thinks “there will be progress on this matter” beyond what’s happening in court.
The Beneficial AI conference developed 23 guiding principles for AI. (Future of Life Institute)
Hundreds of AI researchers, business leaders and just plain geniuses have signed onto a statement of cautionary principles for artificial intelligence, including a requirement to build in the ability for human authorities to audit how an AI platform works.
This Asilomar conference focused on concerns about the rapid rise of AI, voiced by luminaries ranging from British physicist Stephen Hawking to Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
Musk called attention to the findings today in a series of tweets that ended up endorsing the idea of building AI tools into devices that interface with the human brain.
