The Time a Jet-Lagged Musk Made Alibaba’s Jack Ma Sound Grounded
- Elon Musk and Jack Ma debate publicly onstage in Shanghai
- Star turn comes as U.S.-Chinese tensions cast a global cloud
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Elon Musk and Jack Ma matched wits publicly for the first time. And boy, they didn’t disappoint.
An onstage debate between China’s richest man and the Tesla Inc. boss left a largely Chinese audience both awestruck and dumbfounded as the pair sparred over everything from the existence of aliens to the preservation of human consciousness. Musk, alternating between tech visionary and larger-than-life Bond villain, argued that AI will soon surpass the human race; that civilization may end and hence humankind needed to explore the cosmos (specifically Mars); and that people are essentially dumb creatures circumscribed by genes.