Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk smiles as he attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China January 26, 2016. Musk gave a public shout-out to the sharpest minds in manufacturing this week, calling on them to come help Tesla Motors Inc build a million electric cars a year by 2020. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo - RTX2D6RR (REUTERS)
When you are a billionaire tech mogul it’s hard to not be compared to those that came before.
Take Tesla chief executive Elon Musk for example.
The philanthropist often receives parallels between his life and that of the fictional Marvel character Tony Stark.
And then there is the suggestion that he is the second coming of Steve Jobs.
Although Musk is not overly thrilled by either comparison, the latter is more concerning.
Not because he doesn’t respect the Apple founder’s legacy — rather his fashion sense.
In a revealing interview with Rolling Stone published Wednesday, Musk talked about a time he was asked to wear a black turtleneck, which was the famous trademark of Jobs, during a photoshoot.
FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2008, file photo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new MacBook Air after giving the keynote address at the Apple MacWorld Conference in San Francisco. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died. He was 56. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File) (AP)
He was not impressed.
“If I was dying and I had a turtleneck on, with my last dying breath, I would take the turtleneck off and try to throw it as far away from my body as possible,” he explained.
Musk didn’t dwell on the fashion choices of millionaires for too long, with the interview quickly turning to his concerns for the dangers of artificial intelligence.
“Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI,” he said. “I keep telling people this.”
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, with Musk giving insight into what drives him.
“I try to do useful things,” he explained. “That’s a nice aspiration. And useful means it is of value to the rest of society. Are they useful things that work and make people’s lives better, make the future seem better, and actually are better, too? I think we should try to make the future better.”
And what does Musk view as better?
“It would be better if we mitigated the effects of global warming and had cleaner air in our cities and weren’t drilling for vast amounts of coal, oil and gas in parts of the world that are problematic and will run out anyway,” he said.
“And if we were a multiplanetary species, that would reduce the possibility of some single event, man-made or natural, taking out civilisation as we know it, as it did the dinosaurs.
“There have been five mass-extinction events in the fossil record. People have no comprehension of these things. Unless you’re a cockroach or a mushroom — or a sponge — you’re f***ed.”
This story originally appeared in news.com.au.
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