Review

AI - Artificial Intelligence

Ambition

Culture

3 November 2023

6 min read

The awe and outrage of Musk's toxic ingenuity

Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk, is a biographic rollercoaster reckons Krish Kandiah. One marked by magnificent moments and moral crossroads.

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Elon Musk, wearing a dark suit, stands on a stage to a white robotic looking surgical robot.

Elon Musk at a demonstration of the Neuralink technology in 2020.

There is something both inspiring and unnerving about Elon Musk. He is a game-changing pioneer and innovator in so many industries pivotal to our future: rockets, electric cars, solar panels, batteries, satellite Wi-Fi, and Artificial Intelligence. But he is also no stranger to scandal, controversy and allegation. In his latest biography, author Walter Isaacson explores the toxicity as well as the ingenuity that has come to be associated with the richest man on the planet. As he reveals Musk’s series of successes, and what has been sacrificed to acquire them, I found myself going on an emotional journey: from compassion to awe to outrage.

Compassion: a man familiar with misery

In the opening chapter of his book Isaacson draws attention to the trauma in Elon’s childhood. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Elon was socially awkward at school. When he once pushed back at a boy who bumped into him, he was being beaten up so badly his face was unrecognisable. When he returned from hospital Musk reports how his father reacted: “I had to stand for hours. He yelled at me and called me an idiot and told me that I was just worthless.” There are a number of similar stories from Musk’s seemingly brutal childhood. Errol Musk, Elon’s father, features heavily in a series of shocking revelations including that he slept with his own stepdaughter, fathering two children with her. The background of Musk’s chaotic childhood, his experience of domestic abuse, and his series of fractured relationships provides a context for some of the strange, indeed outrageous things catalogued in the book.

Having worked for many years with children in the care system and with refugee experience, I understand a little about the impact of trauma and how it can change the brain in profound ways. There is a great deal of evidence showing how adverse childhood experiences can cause long-lasting impact on decision-making, impulse control, relationship building, mental health management and emotional regulation. While many turn to alcohol, drugs or self-harm as coping mechanisms, others, perhaps like Musk, channel the pain into ambitions and achievements.

I found myself feeling profoundly sorry for Musk. No child should have to experience such prolonged cruelty both at school and at home. All of us need to know that we are loved and valued, independent of anything we have done or anything that has been done to us.

Awe: a man of magnificent moments

Musk’s ideas have revolutionised so many industries. The automotive industries move to electric power owes a lot to the innovation of Tesla. His Space X programme is currently changing the way we think about space travel. His company was the first to create self-landing reusable rockets and was the first private owned company to develop a liquid-propellant rocket that reached orbit; the first to launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft; the first to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; and the first to send astronauts to the International Space Station. He is also trying to revolutionise Artificial Intelligence (AI) through his company xAI - a direct competitor to Open AI even though he was one of their early backers.

Musk has a complex relationship with AI as he is not only one of the lead innovators in the field but also the most prominent of the 33,000 signatories of a letter calling for a pause to ‘Giant AI Experiments’ until there is, in Musk’s words, “a regulatory body established for overseeing AI to make sure that it does not present a danger to the public."

AI, alongside each of the other major interest areas in Musk’s work, is way beyond any dreams I ever had of a futuristic world. Musk has managed not only to imagine the unimaginable, but to find a way to get there with impressive speed, scale and sustainability values. The more I read about the innovations involved in each step of each project, the more impressed I am with the genius behind them.

Outrage: a man without a moral compass?

Despite Walter Isaacson’s clear respect for all Musk is achieving, he paints a warts-and-all picture of his book’s subject. We see a man who is ruthless in his hirings and firings, who has often treated staff and colleagues badly. In 2018, he famously called a rescue diver, helping to save teenage boys from a flooded cave in Thailand, a ‘paedo’, in what seemed to be a reaction to a snub to his offer of using his minisub.

In light of these sorts of outbursts, and his apparent desire to save the world from looming environmental disaster, it is no wonder that some people have accused Musk of having a messiah complex. Yet if he does, it is a very different mindset from the true messiah. He appears to me to be morally, emotionally and financially the polar opposite to the Jesus whose willingness to sacrifice himself on behalf of those in need was central to his claim to be sent from God. From the way Isaacson describes Musk, I see him more as a man on a mission to save himself than to save those around him.

The future? Musk, a man at a crossroads.

Isaacson closes his book with the following analysis:

“But would a restrained Musk accomplish as much as Musk unbound? Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who he is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged? Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They are reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world.”

I find this a disconcerting epilogue to the book. It suggests that we can pardon toxicity in the name of innovation, that the ends always justify the means, that morality and decency can take second place to advancement and wealth. If this stance were to be applied to, say, the development of AI, Musk’s fears of it becoming a danger to the public may sadly well be realised.

While factors such as grand ambition, the contribution to society, early years trauma, and mental health struggles may provide a robust explanation of why a person may be toxic, toxicity itself can never be excused. No amount of wealth can undo the harm toxic masculinity does to those around us. No amount of charitable giving can buy a person a generous spirit or moral compass. No amount of environmental awards can create the sort of world we really want to live in in the future – a world where people treat one another with the respect they need and deserve.

Elon Musk’s biography is unusual because he is still mid-journey. Who knows what else he may go on to achieve or fail at, to create or destroy? Will his AI revolution be a force for good, helping to create a better future for those who need it most, or will it become the behemoth of the doomsayers? What will future editions add to his biography? Is being ‘untethered’ really integral to who Musk is, or can he change? The visionary in me would love to imagine a redemption and transformation story for Musk that can unleash a compassionate generosity that could even overshadow his creative genius. The sceptic in me fears he may end up doing more harm than good.

Article

Community

Culture

Film & TV

Identity

22 September 2025

5 min read

What makes us human?

We've more in common with our ancient ancestors than we might like to think

Claire Williams

Claire Williams is a theologian investigating women’s spirituality and practice. She lecturers at Regents Theological College.

A re-enactment of an ancient 'caveman' family sitting around a camp fire.

A dramatic reconstruction of a Neanderthal family.

BBC Studios.

I recently caught up on iPlayer with the excellent BBC series Human. In it, the paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi explores 300,000 years of human evolution over five beautifully shot, evocatively presented episodes. I was transfixed by the story of these ancient human societies - of Homo habilis; Homo erectus; the hobbit-like Homo floresiensis - and of the ways that paleoanthropologists and archaeologists study the multiple human species. They walk barefoot in deep pits with what look like tiny paint brushes to dust off their finds. They are endlessly patient, and delighted at tiny scraps that I would overlook as rubbish. They see in these fragments stories of ancient lives that lived, ate, loved and died so long ago.

Take a set of footsteps fossilised into the ground in White Sands, New Mexico, discernible through their impact and weight distribution. They are thought to be those of a woman walking at speed, probably, scholars think, carrying a child. Now and again these footsteps appear to stop and stand, and in-between the right and the left foot are a small set of footprints. The mother appears to have put down the child for a moment before picking him or her back up and starting again.

This was so familiar to me, a mother of four. It reminded me of all the times I’d carried toddlers around on my hip before giving up, plonking them on the floor and then switching sides. This very human urge to care for our children, and to get tired by them, echoed through time. Although luckily for me I did not have a giant sloth chasing me, as this ancient mother seems to have done.

But the flip side of the ability to love is the ability to also reject. And the series highlighted that this less pleasant human habit – the exclusion of others – appears to be an equally core part of our existence.

Al-Shamahi asks,

‘what must it have been like to have been a hybrid child... Did these children feel like they belonged or were they teased and ostracised?’

Behind her question is a sense of deep concern about the hybrid children’s welfare all those millenia ago.

Fast forward thousands of years. Most of us went to school and know what it feels like to either be different or see someone else who is different. Imagine if a modern-day Homo sapien/neanderthalensis hybrid turned up the local primary school, would it be okay? Unlikely. We don’t look after difference particularly well. The question Al-Shamahi posed seems pertinent today as well as in palaeoanthropology terms, what would it be like to grow up a hybrid? For us today the question is similar, how do we judge what is human? Is our human status founded in the horror and aversion to difference?

The drive to surround ourselves with similarity and force others to fit is sometimes called ‘the cult of normalcy’. This behaviour only tolerates people who look, act, and represent what is familiar to you. I experience this as a neurodivergent person struggling at times to feel ‘normal’. That is why the story of hybrid children is affectively impactful. Their struggle is easy to imagine, how do they fit in?. What makes them and us human?

The little story of a mother and a child being carried (minus the sloth part) is enchanting. Is it this love for children that makes the ancient people count as human? Is it the presence of a relationship and the assumed communication between individuals that makes them human?

The risk here is to say that all people who are in families, who are parents, are the prime example of humanity and that does not fit with many lives that we would want to count as human. Love may be essential, but it cannot be a prescriptive type or circumstance. Nevertheless, the allure of love and community is strong in Human and my response to it. That familiarity with the feeling of exclusion of the hybrid child and the story of the mother and child are common. They are experiences that we can relate to concerning community and care. The series shows these human species in relationship groups, with evidence of successful community and unsuccessful community (again a familiar trait). So far, that ability to love is also the same ability to reject, to cast out the hybrid or the different human. That is unsatisfactory as the trait of what is core to humans despite the likelihood of it being at the heart of the human story.

What, then of religion? These ancient peoples who lived before language and writing yet still worshipped – their practices evident from paintings found on the walls of caves. Is this what it means to be finally human? Was it, I thought, when they demonstrated language? Was it the early signs of religion and worship? Was it to do with thinking and rationalising, deciding upon a set of gods and the rules about them? However, this cannot be. For there are people today who do not speak through choice or disability. There are those who cannot demonstrate their ability to worship, for the same reasons. Rationalising cannot be the way in which we determine humanity, for then are children, or the intellectually disabled not human? If awareness of the sacred is what makes us human, then that limits those whose cognitive abilities are different.

Christians believe that what makes us human is the image of God in us. But what is that image? It is given to humans when God made them right at the beginning of things. It is the divine something that sets us apart from trees and plants, even animals. It is a quality that God gives to humans in the creative act of making them. It is not something that humans do for themselves but something they receive from God. Could it be applied to Neanderthals or early human species? I think so. Although these early species were very different in some respects to us, they had the features of humanity that count. They had relationships, the capacity to experience awe and wonder and they loved one another (like the mother and child). The image of God could be many things but one thing is certain, it a gift from God because of his love for humans. The need for love, community and worship that is in all of us points back to this. We love one another because we are first loved by God and that is what makes us human.

Human Trailer - The Untold Story of our Human Origins - BBC

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