What Keeps Elon Musk Awake At Night Other Than Electric Cars And Vessels To Mars

Insurance is all about determining points of risk and obtaining the requisite securities that mitigate them--as much as one possibly can.

That said, the changes of our world are happening so rapidly that to understand today requires greater levels of insights into the future. If you dig mildly around the internet, you'll see the top corporate leaders (those responsible for all the innovations we witness emerging around us) engaging in research and development based on theories of the future that to the layperson may seem no less than sci-fi fantasy. Look at those running Google who have been involved in the creation of Singularity University--a post-graduate school for business and thought leaders interested in leveraging tomorrow's technology into today's profits. 

One leader who has emerged dramatically as of late, and become unconventionally, and vulnerably, verbal about both the promises and perils of the future is super-tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk. Indeed, his company Tesla seeks to build the best electric cars in the world; and SpaceX, his custom-rocket company, is a high-profile competitor of the next-gen space race to Mars. In addition to the amazing developments of these two companies, news has been trickling out about Musk's investment in Vicarious: an artificial intelligence company that seeks to build machines that can think and learn like a human. 

Musk has gone so far as to recently tweet a startling statement to his 830K followers: that artificial intelligence is potentially more dangerous than nukes.

Here's an interview clip by Musk recorded a few months ago. It raises some serious and intriguing questions about the future and who's driving it. Musk's motives seem unclear: he is a brilliant entrepreneur and investor, so why would he be investing in a company like Vicarious? Is it to be a watchdog, or to hasten its technological vision for the purpose of power and profit? We cannot really know; and even in this interview, Musk holds to an air of reticence. 

These issues are not only for the corporate owners and high-profile entrepreneurs to be following, researching, and writing about--it is up to lay-people to be aware of these concerns as well, and use these unfolding new stories when planning, and insuring against, one's personal future.