“Doing everything we can to help the underpopulation crisis,” Elon Musk wrote. This is how the publication on the social network X began in July 2022, and continued: “The collapse of the birth rate is, by far, the greatest danger facing civilization.”
Now, with the surprising news of the birth of his twelfth child – although he said that “it was no secret” – the technology magnate returned to the fray with a task he undertook a long time ago: evangelization about the importance of people having many children. And with the arrival of a new heir, Musk leads by example.
Fatherhood is one of the least known facets of the creator of SpaceX, a role he exercises with contradictions, challenges, presence and participation in the lives of his children. Musk is not a conventional father, it is known. But the technological genius is revealed by the future and how the advance of artificial intelligence would leave human intelligence behind.
The solution to the unstoppable advance of AI, according to Musk? Have children. “Remember my words, they are sadly true,” he concluded in X’s post.
A vision of the future
Musk has been thinking – and worrying – for more than a decade that artificial intelligence will get out of control, develop a mind of its own and be the end of humanity. The creator of Neuralink fears, since his separation from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, that chatbots and intelligence models will be “politically indoctrinated” and even become hostile to the human species.
“What actions can we take to minimize the dangers of AI and ensure the survival of human consciousness?” Musk asked. And Walter Isaacson, the author of the Elon Musk biography, remembers that moment perfectly. The appointment with the writer was at the Austin home of Shivon Zilis, the mother of the twins Strider and Azure, and of the technology magnate’s new baby, about whom no information is known other than his birth and who has been with him for 20 years. his older brothers.
There, at the side of the pool, with his legs crossed, Musk gave the twins a lift. Between some donuts and the coffee prepared by Shivon, Elon was worried. Because? The future did not let him sleep. Between the low, monotonous tones, which alternated with shrill, manic laughter, as Isaacson remembers, the tycoon pointed out that the existing amount of human intelligence was stagnating because they did not have children.
To that premise, the technological genius put another one: computational intelligence grows exponentially, following a kind of “Moore’s law on steroids.”
Moore’s Law is an observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, key to technological advancement, which implies the idea of developing increasingly powerful and efficient electronic devices.
This disparity, according to Musk, poses a scenario where the capacity of biological intelligence could be eclipsed by digital intelligence in the not-so-distant future.
While the twins tried to learn to walk while laughing, Musk returned to an idea he had taken from his love of books and reading science fiction: the conquest of other planets. The closest one? Mars. The CEO of Tesla dreams of creating a sustainable human colony “before an apocalypse destroys Earth’s civilization,” according to Isaacson.
Once again, Musk emphasized the urgency of creating new generations to counteract the low birth rate, which affects many industrialized nations. According to the businessman, insufficient fertility can put at risk the continuity of cultures and economies in countries such as France, Japan and Italy.
His personal life is a faithful testimony of how he takes charge of the problems that keep him in suspense. The billionaire made public his romantic relationships, as well as his belief in the importance of a large family, so much so that he is now the father of 12 children.
His first marriage to Justine Wilson resulted in five living children after the tragic loss of his firstborn. With the artist Grimes, Musk had three offspring, all with unusual names. Also, one of the youngest, whose mother is Zilis, an executive at her company Neuralink.
This is Elon Musk’s family
The first great love story that Elon Musk starred in dates back to the year 2000, when he said ‘I do’ to the writer Justine Wilson. From this union, his first-born daughter, Nevada Alexander, was born, who, unfortunately, died at just ten weeks old due to sudden infant death syndrome. Despite the pain, the marriage remained together and in 2004 they expanded their family with the arrival of Griffin and Xavier Alexander. Upon reaching the age of majority, the latter changed his gender and decided to legally suppress his paternal surname, cutting any type of link with him. In 2006, the joy multiplied by three with the triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian. Two years later, in 2008, Elon Musk and Justine separated.
The entrepreneur’s next romance was with the singer Grimes, with whom he began his courtship in 2018. In 2020, their first child together was born, a baby with a very original name X AE A-12, although they later changed it to AE A-XII. Before their breakup in 2021, the couple had another girl through the surrogacy method, Dark Sideral, nicknamed Y. But that was not the end of it, since in 2023 the author of Musk’s biography, Walter Isaacnoc, revealed that The businessman and the artist have another son, Techo Mechanicus, whose birth is shrouded in a halo of mystery.
