Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedAdam Becker: evaluation
20 Aug 2026 Machine Learning Street Talk Every Exponential Ends — Silicon Valley Forgot — Adam Becker
“has created I mean, Musk did not originate the myth of colonizing Mars but he is, you know, in the same way that Kurzweil didn't create the idea of the singularity, Musk didn't create the idea of colonizing Mars but he's certainly, you know, mister occupy Mars these days. And and it creates this idea that we don't need to care about the problems here on Earth because we're leaving, you know, and that's just not going to happen.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Adam Becker
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 20 Aug 2026
- Publisher
- Machine Learning Street Talk
Transcript context
…realize his most ambitious goals. But he has done some pretty amazing stuff. Starlink is very useful. Sometimes doing ambitious goals means that you find interesting new stepping stones and you know? But, but there's also the angle of sometimes if you wanna hire very talented people and you wanna build something, you need to create a shared myth. Maybe you're a true believer. May maybe it's just some kind of, you know, systematic thing. Maybe. Yeah. But I I think that those myths end up having harmful consequences if they are so detached from reality. Right? You know, Musk has created I mean, Musk did not originate the myth of colonizing Mars but he is, you know, in the same way that Kurzweil didn't create the idea of the singularity, Musk didn't create the idea of colonizing Mars but he's certainly, you know, mister occupy Mars these days. And and it creates this idea that we don't need to care about the problems here on Earth because we're leaving, you know, and that's just not going to happen. You know, these these these goals, even if they're not possible to realize, have consequences. And and the consequences that they have can be really horrifying. I mean, that's a lot of what my book is about. It's like, okay, these are why these goals don't work and the consequences trying to pursue them have. And and just doing a bit of psychoanalysis here. Is is is your kind of prognosis that there's an element of seeking purpose? So even folks in in, you know, working at OpenAI OpenAI or whatever, they they they want to feel that they have a grand purpose and they're and they're benefiting humanity.…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.