American author Walter Isaacson has shadowed Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk over the last three years and written his biography. The book is set to be released later this month.
In a new excerpt from the biography, Isaacson shares details of Musk's relationship with Neuralink director Shivon Zilis, with whom he quietly fathered twins in late 2021.
What To Know: Musk is the known father of nine children. His kids have several different mothers and have often been kept from the public eye. Musk's twins are the latest children to be unveiled to the world.
Isaacson shared a photo of Musk and Zilis with the twins in a X post on Wednesday and included an excerpt from his book that ran in Time on Musk's struggles with artificial intelligence.
In the excerpt, Isaacson recalls the day Musk invited him to Zilis' house for a chat where he captured the photo of the twins.
"This past March, Musk texted me, 'There are a few important things I would like to talk to you about. Can only be done in person,'" Isaacson wrote.
"He said we should leave our phones in the house while we sat outside, because, he said, someone could use them to monitor our conversation. But he later agreed that I could use what he said about AI in my book."
Musk then pondered what could be done to make AI safe, including actions that could be taken to "assure that human consciousness survives."
"The amount of human intelligence, he noted, was leveling off, because people were not having enough children. Meanwhile, the amount of computer intelligence was going up exponentially, like Moore’s Law on steroids," Isaacson said in the excerpt.
"For a moment I was struck by the oddness of the scene. We were sitting on a suburban patio by a tranquil backyard swimming pool on a sunny spring day, with two bright-eyed twins learning to toddle, as Musk somberly speculated about the window of opportunity for building a sustainable human colony on Mars before an AI apocalypse destroyed earthly civilization."
Musk and Zilis conceived the children via in vitro fertilization and do not have a romantic relationship, per reports.
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Why It Matters: Musk has a track record of unusual child reveals following periods of secrecy.
In a surprise reveal last year, Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, disclosed that she and Musk secretly birthed their second child together.
Vanity Fair discovered the news during an interview for a cover story in the magazine's April 2022 issue.
The Vanity Fair reporter heard the cries of an infant upstairs shortly after arriving at Grimes' house for the interview, which prompted the singer to reveal her daughter.
Grimes also has a son X Æ A-12 (nicknamed X) with Musk. She revealed the news of her first pregnancy via an Instagram post showing her belly in January 2020, but Musk wasn't announced as the father until several months later.
In a now-deleted X post responding to Isaacson's picture of the twins, Grimes said she was never allowed to see a photo of the children until the moment Isaacson posted the image, " despite this situation utterly ripping my family apart," she said.
Musk has varying relationships with his children. His oldest applied to have her name changed because she no longer wanted to be related to Musk "in any way, shape or form," per Reuters.
Musk has said he doesn't intend to appoint any of his children as successors of his companies or even hand over any of his voting shares.
"I am definitely not of the school of automatically giving my kids some share of the companies ... I think that's a mistake," Musk said in an interview at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council.
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Photo: Daniel Oberhaus from Flickr.
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