Chamath Palihapitiya, the US venture capitalist, has shared a private conversation that he had with his wife on the race to gain artificial superintelligence. Speaking on a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the billionaire investor revealed that when it comes to who should control such a powerful technology, the couple believed that Elon Musk is the only trustworthy candidate. Palihapitiya, while acknowledging a personal bias due to his friendship with the Tesla CEO, argued that Musk’s grander vision for humanity sets him apart from other tech leaders.
‘Musk is least corruptible’ and independent
According to Palihapitiya, Musk is driven by goals that go far beyond Earthly concerns, citing his take on establishing human presence on the moon and reach Mars.“So there has to be – like, all of this kind of goes back to, look, my wife and I had this conversation. We’re like, if it were up to us, who can you trust to have some superintelligence. Now we’re biased because we’re friends with him, but the only person that we can trust is Elon because he seems to be like he has a bigger – like, it’s kind of like he’s like over there,” Palihapitiya said on the podcast.“He’s like, I need to get to Mars, right? And I’m going to first terraform the moon, but then I’m going to Mars and I’m going to build like a f*ing magnetic catapult. I’m going to do all this stuff. And so I just need this thing. I feel like he’s the least corruptible,” he added.
Joe Rogan says Elon Musk is ‘independent thinking’
Host Joe Rogan agreed, describing Musk as the “most independent thinking” of the current tech giants. The conversation took a sharp turn when Palihapitiya discussed other major players in the AI field. He said that while many leaders are driven by an “insane profit motive” and are beholden to Wall Street investors, Musk has empathy for people.“And I think he’s the one that has an actual empathy for people. Then there are folks where there’s just an insane profit motive. Right. They’re less in control of the businesses that they run. Those businesses are really out over their ski tips in the amount of money they’ve gotten from Wall Street and other folks who expect a return, who will put a ton of pressure on these folks,” he told Rogan.
