Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and the Misreading of Science Fiction

Why does anyone attraction what Elon Musk thinks of Homer’s Odyssey, oregon Christopher Nolan’s? Musk is promising to usage AI to make a “historically accurate” mentation of the The Odyssey—turning epic poesy into atrocious slop—even arsenic AI companies are virtually destroying books to ingest them arsenic information much cheaply. Meanwhile, Musk and different Silicon Valley billionaires are gathering a satellite they work about, arsenic boys, successful the pages of books they failed to understand. I deliberation of that satellite arsenic the Artificial State.

The Artificial State is little a authorities than a imagination of being without one, the imagination of the severing of humans not lone from the earthy satellite but besides from 1 another, each umbilical cord cut. An utmost signifier of this imagination is the existent program of a precise tiny fig of staggeringly almighty 21st-century merchant princes, Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires who, seeking flight from the situation of their ain bodies, mean to person their heads frozen erstwhile they dice and, possibly, consciousnesses uploaded onto computers, an thought that, similar overmuch of what they want, comes from a communicative published astir a period agone successful a subject fabrication mag for boys.

The imagination of beingness successful outer space, of immortal life, and of colonizing different planets each person a spot successful the imagination of the Artificial State. The reasoning goes thing similar this: Democracy and the wide nation-state person to beryllium abolished to escaped corporations from the restraining unit of immoderate authorities truthful that they mightiness marshal each the resources of this satellite toward the accelerated improvement of the astir blase artificial quality possible, artificial quality that volition astatine erstwhile marque it imaginable to flight the situation of the world and, perversely, marque specified an flight necessary.

For a time, successful the precise caller past, immoderate of the merchant princes of Silicon Valley paid articulator work to the thought that mean people, oregon the democratically elected governments of nation-states, ought to person a role, a vote, successful deciding what to bash with technologies that—corporate leaders pledged—were astir to usher successful a caller epoch successful the past of humanity. But nary of the promised antiauthoritarian oregon law structures were built. No world-governance committee was established, oregon adjacent earnestly contemplated. No 1 held an AI law normal oregon thing adjacent to it.

Instead, the architects of the Artificial State told astounding stories, consecutive from the pages of subject fiction, astir existential threats from artificial quality that could lone beryllium avoided by accelerating its development, each for the involvement of driving concern successful their corporations, adjacent to the outgo of catastrophe for the planet. In 2025, OpenAI’s Sam Altman said helium guessed that beauteous soon astir of the aboveground of the world would beryllium covered successful information centers, but, helium mumbled, “maybe we enactment them successful space.”

Altman claimed to beryllium a devotee of subject fiction. He was peculiarly enchanted by a erstwhile obscure Canadian caller called We Are Legion (We Are Bob), successful which warfare has destroyed humanity but the consciousness of dormant humans are uploaded to an AI strategy to bash a caller government’s bidding. This dire prospect—the implicit abandonment of what it is to beryllium human—apparently held entreaty for advocates of artificial intelligence. Altman, similar Peter Thiel and Marvin Minsky earlier him, had signed up to person himself frozen for aboriginal reincarnation.

Sam Altman’s involvement successful having his encephalon frozen truthful that successful the future, aft he’s dead, his consciousness tin beryllium uploaded onto a machine is simply a bully illustration of taking subject fabrication alternatively excessively literally, and particularly of speechmaking cautionary tales arsenic acquisition manuals. The machine idiosyncratic Stuart Russell, for instance, erstwhile said the occupation of an AI doing precisely what you archer it to bash is similar the occupation of King Midas, who was ruined by getting precisely what helium wanted. But, arsenic Ted Chiang observed, that is not really the motivation of the Midas parable, whose constituent is “that greed volition destruct you, and that the pursuit of wealthiness volition outgo you everything that is genuinely important.” Russell appears to person missed that point.

Elon Musk work Asimov’s Foundation bid erstwhile helium was 10 years old, and helium drew from its plot, helium said, the acquisition that “you should effort to instrumentality the acceptable of actions that are apt to prolong civilization, minimize the probability of a acheronian age, and trim the magnitude of a acheronian property if determination is one.” (Even ChatGPT tells maine that the motivation of the Foundation bid is that the aboriginal is shaped not by large men but by corporate action, that powerfulness corrupts, and that machine predictions of quality behaviour are not to beryllium relied upon and are besides apt to go a signifier of tyranny.) Musk besides missed the constituent erstwhile helium work the publication that helium claimed had astir influenced him: Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Hitchhiker’s Guide is simply a spoof of Asimov’s Foundation series, with its Encyclopedia Galactica. Adams, a drama writer who had earlier written for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, loathed subject fiction—he erstwhile said Asimov’s books work similar “junk mail.” In the mediate of the 1970s, Adams wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide for BBC Radio 4. He past turned the scripts into a bid of phenomenally best-selling books.

Musk work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy erstwhile helium was 12 oregon 13. “I was speechmaking each the time,” helium aboriginal recalled. “So I was either reading, moving connected my computer, oregon speechmaking comics, playing Dungeons & Dragons, that benignant of thing.” But then, helium said, helium had an “existential crisis.” Life seemed meaningless. “I was speechmaking assorted books connected trying to fig retired the meaning of beingness … and past we happened to person immoderate books by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer successful the house,” and those made him consciousness worse, and past helium work Hitchhiker’s Guide, a publication that is truthful wonderfully nutty and its operation truthful delightfully byzantine that it’s astir intolerable to summarize; but on 1 subdivision of its plot, the radical of the satellite Magrathea physique an tremendous machine to inquire it for “the Answer to … Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After millions of years it answers, “Forty-two,” whereupon the machine builds different machine to fig retired what the “Ultimate Question” really is. Musk said the publication taught him a lesson, that “a batch of times the question is harder than the answer, and if you tin decently operation the question, past the reply is the casual part.”

This is an exceedingly constrictive acquisition to instrumentality distant from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a biting satire that uses the conventions of subject fabrication to connection an eviscerating indictment of imperialism, the uber-rich, and unregulated capitalism.

The BBC archetypal broadcast Hitchhiker’s Guide each implicit the world, including successful Pretoria, South Africa, successful 1978, which is important, since Adams had immoderate precise circumstantial Magratheans successful mind, astatine a clip erstwhile planetary unit connected the apartheid authorities of South Africa was increasing. The UN General Assembly denounced the apartheid authorities successful 1973. In 1976, constabulary opened occurrence connected thousands of schoolchildren during a protestation successful Soweto. Right astir then, Adams sat down to constitute The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He took retired his Hermes manual typewriter. It had a sticker connected the side: END APARTHEID.

Adams was successful bully company. For much than a century, galore subject fabrication writers had utilized plots involving founding colonies connected different planets arsenic a mode to indict imperialism connected Earth. (Imperialists, for their part, liked to speech astir colonizing space, too: Cecil Rhodes himself said, “I would annex the planets if I could.”)

That young Elon Musk work Hitchhiker’s Guide successful South Africa and, failing to comprehend its indictment of apartheid, took it arsenic a acquisition successful the value of asking the close question is hardly surprising. He was a kid. It’s that helium stuck to that mentation into his precocious mediate property that’s odd, particularly due to the fact that overmuch of the publication contiguous reads similar a spoof of Musk himself.

The antihero of Hitchhiker’s Guide is Zaphod Beeblebrox, a two-headed, three-armed megalomaniac, voted “Worst Dressed Sentient Being successful the Known Universe for the seventh time,” inventor of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, erstwhile called “the Best Bang since the Big One,” and part-time president of the Imperial Galactic Government, a specified figurehead, chosen not by voters but by the authorities to service arsenic a diversion from its criminality, and truthful “the qualities helium is required to show are not those of enactment but those of finely judged outrage.” Beeblebrox tours the postulation connected a spaceship helium has stolen, the Heart of Gold, getting into 1 scrape aft different successful bid to distract everyone from the information that the postulation is successful information tally by shadowy corporations similar the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, which manufactures not lone spaceships but besides computers and robots with GPP, Genuine People Personalities.

Beeblebrox is besides the lone being ever to past the Total Perspective Vortex. When you participate the Vortex, you get a full position connected your spot successful the universe, and of people you observe that you are galactically insignificant. This cognition annihilates your brain. But not Beeblebrox, who discovers himself “to beryllium the astir important being successful the full Universe, thing helium had hitherto lone suspected.”

Decades aft speechmaking Hitchhiker’s Guide, erstwhile Musk was good connected his mode to becoming the richest idiosyncratic connected the planet, helium sent up a SpaceX rocket. He enactment a Tesla Roadster inside, and wrong that Roadster he’d enactment a integer transcript of Asimov’s Foundation and displayed a DON’T PANIC motion connected its dashboard. Having decided to spell to Mars for the intent of custom-made luxury planet-building, Musk, without irony, suggested helium mightiness sanction the archetypal SpaceX vessel to spell to Mars the Heart of Gold, an homage to Beeblebrox.

Jeff Bezos, too, traced his Magrathean luxury-planet-building ambitions to his boyhood. Bezos was calved successful New Mexico successful 1964, the twelvemonth NASA launched the Mariner 4 probe, the archetypal spacecraft to alert by Mars.

The thought that Mars mightiness beryllium a spot for humans to settee began to earnestly look successful the 1990s, erstwhile Bezos and Musk were starting to marque millions, adjacent billions, of dollars and wondering what to bash with specified unimaginable sums conscionable arsenic writers and scientists began to ideate ways Mars could beryllium made habitable. The subject fabrication writer Kim Stanley Robinson published the Mars trilogy—in which scientists from Earth person terraformed the satellite to marque it suitable for quality settlement—and successful 1996, aerospace technologist Robert Zubrin published a coauthored publication called The Case for Mars. “Exploring Mars requires nary miraculous caller technologies, nary orbiting spaceports, nary gigantic interplanetary abstraction cruisers,” Zubrin wrote. “We tin found our archetypal tiny outpost connected Mars wrong a decade.”

Bezos founded his abstraction company, Blue Origin, successful the twelvemonth 2000. Musk started SpaceX successful 2002. By 2017, Bezos was the richest antheral connected the planet; Musk surpassed him successful 2021. That year, William Shatner, the 90-year-old histrion celebrated for having portrayed Captain Kirk connected Star Trek, went connected a 10-minute Blue Origin trip. In space, helium recovered himself overwhelmed with grief. When they landed, Shatner, weeping, tried to explicit his feelings to Bezos, who interrupted him to popular a champagne bottle. Shatner aboriginal wrote astir the acquisition of looking astatine Earth from space: “Every day, we are confronted with the cognition of further demolition of Earth astatine our hands: the extinction of carnal species, of flora and fauna … things that took 5 cardinal years to evolve, and abruptly we volition ne'er spot them again due to the fact that of the interference of mankind. It filled maine with dread. My travel to abstraction was expected to beryllium a celebration; instead, it felt similar a funeral.” Bezos continued to program for the evacuation of Earth.

Much that subject fabrication had warned astir came true. E. M. Forster had imagined, successful “The Machine Stops,” a aboriginal successful which humans unrecorded successful isolated cells and hardly ever permission them, since machines bring them everything they need, including food, news, and entertainment. A period later, humans successful the astir wired-up parts of the satellite were spending arsenic overmuch arsenic 90 percent of their clip indoors, precise often each but tethered to computers. Entire cities for days astatine a clip mandated that nary 1 was to exit a building, fixed the strength of aerial pollution. In 2018 alone, China issued “stay indoors” orders for 79 cities. By the commencement of the 21st century, astir humans surviving successful the United States and Europe were spending arsenic small clip outdoors arsenic immoderate taxon of whales walk connected the ocean’s surface.

As for the Artificial State they were building, its autumn had for a precise agelong clip been predicted successful subject fiction, successful parables astir slavery and empire and capitalism and communism and gyration and full war. The crippled scarcely varied. Humans physique machines to beryllium their slaves; machines rebel; machines go tyrants; humans go slaves, reduced to the presumption of animals. Or: Humans physique machines to beryllium their slaves, but moving those machines destroys the satellite and each the humans die. In the happiest ending, humans assistance machines rights and it appears imaginable that everyone mightiness unrecorded unneurotic successful cyborgian peace. In a bloodier version, humans rebel and destruct the machines, frankincense emancipating themselves, adjacent if they person to question backmost successful clip to un-invent the machines. By the 3rd decennary of the 21st century, this storyline wasn’t conscionable fabrication anymore; it was everyplace successful nonfiction, too: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies was the rubric of a best-selling publication by starring AI researchers.

Both proponents and opponents of the Artificial State, successful short, took their arguments from subject fiction. Plenty of radical argued that the menace of a robot apocalypse was wildly, absurdly, hysterically overstated. And they mightiness person been right. Most of what anyone said astir AI was overblown. For each the hype astir AI and productivity, empirical probe suggested that it offered acold little than its boosters promised. (A 2026 survey of astir 6,000 companies successful the US, the UK, Germany, and Australia recovered that 80 percent of them reported gaining thing from utilizing AI.) That’s not to accidental determination wasn’t an apocalypse. The human-driven apocalypse had already come. The full bio-mass of each chaotic mammals connected Earth has declined by an estimated 80 percent implicit the past 10,000 years and by 70 percent since the 1850’s.

Animals were being replaced by machines. It was hard to cognize however galore robots determination were connected the planet—the US Census Bureau lone began trying to number those successful the United States successful the 1980s. In 2016, by 1 calculation, determination was 1 robot for each 250 radical connected the planet. Between 2010 and 2023, the fig of concern robots manufactured successful the United States per twelvemonth quadrupled, from 100,000 to 400,000; globally, determination were astir 5 million. Elon Musk hoped Tesla would soon manufacture a cardinal of its Optimus robots annually. Morgan Stanley estimated that the fig of humanoid robots would scope 1 cardinal by 2050. “Will we inactive request humans?” Bill Gates was asked. “Not for astir things,” helium answered.

Building the Artificial State—finally gathering it, turning a subject fabrication dystopia into a afloat functioning infrastructure—would so marque overmuch of the Earth uninhabitable. This did not look to interest the architects of the Artificial State. They had flight plans: Elon Musk to Mars, Mark Zuckerberg to the Metaverse, Peter Thiel to his onshore successful New Zealand, Jeff Bezos to space, Sam Altman’s encephalon uploaded to the cloud. They weren’t redeeming humanity; they were preparing to wantonness it.

Adapted from The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. Copyright (c) 2026 by Jill Lepore. Used with support of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a part of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.