Elon Musk's first foray into high-level politics looked very different
Eight years ago this summer, Elon Musk took the stage at a National Governors Association meeting before a bipartisan audience bewitched by his billions and his vision for the future.
Eight years ago this summer, Elon Musk took the stage at a National Governors Association meeting before a bipartisan audience bewitched by his billions and his vision for the future.
Musk, who appeared at the invitation of then-Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican known for his moderate politics, warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence. The Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder also called for stricter government regulation of the emerging technology.
“I keep sounding the alarm bell,” Musk told the governors. “But until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal.”
Though Musk flashed some overconfidence — his prediction that in 10 years nearly all cars produced would be autonomous is not close to materializing — there also were notes of modesty. As he often did back then, Musk posited that Tesla’s stock price was too high.
Musk’s cautious and pragmatic tone that day in 2017 bears little resemblance to the disruptive and omnipresent force he’s become in Big Tech and in President Donald Trump’s second administration. There were other elements that foreshadowed the modern-day Musk’s political persona: his frustrations over how the media covered his business practices and his broader critique of government’s unwillingness to cancel regulations he believed had outlived their usefulness, for example.
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