Will Elon Musk Usher in a Utopia or a Dystopia?

[00:00:16] Speaker A: The recent technological advancements by Elon Musk's companies, from servant robots to literally catching a rocket in the air, are amazing feats of engineering. But will they make the world a better or worse place to live? And should Catholics embrace Elon's vision for the future? That's what we're going to talk about today on Crisis point. Hello, I'm Eric. Sam is your host editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I want you to just smash that, like, button. That's something we can only do because of technological advancements. So thank you, our robot overlords, for allowing us to smash like buttons. So please do that. Also subscribe to the channel. Let other people know about it. I really appreciate when you do that. You can also subscribe to our email newsletter, another technological advancement that's about 40 years old now, and that is just go to crisismagazine.com, put in your email address, and we'll send our articles to your inbox, which is mostly spam free because of technological advancements. I remember the days in the nineties where you had to manually go through all your spam. You don't have to do that anymore, and we don't spam you. So go ahead and do that too, and follow us on social media. Yes, another technological advancement. Just rsismag at all the major social media channels. Okay, so Elon Musk has obviously been in news for a while, but it's getting to the point where he has become easily one of the most influential men in the world. And he has very definitive ideas for the future. But unlike most of us, he can actually make them happen, and at least a lot of them, because he has the resources, he has the willpower, he has the discipline, he has the intelligence in order to actually make it happen. So his vision for the future matters because it will shape all of our futures. And we saw this in the last week. I mean, it's incredible. Some of the things we saw just in the last week alone from the company's Vlan Musk. The first. I'm going to pull up here real quick. And that is the now famous catch of the roster, rocket booster. I'm going to put it up here because I just like watching it. And so I'm going to watch it again, and you're going to watch it with me. So here we go. I like that guy in the background saying, let's go. I mean, that was just an incredible scene. I mean, I've seen about 35 different angles of it where the booster rocket that sent starship, SpaceX's starship, into Orbitz, came back and was caught by what they call the chopsticks. Just an incredible engineering feat. And it's important to note that this is all part of a plan for Elon's vision that life become interplanetary. What he means by that is simply that human life isn't confined to Earth, but will live on Mars, maybe the moon, maybe other planets. This is all part of his actual plan to do this. Now, another thing that came out a few days before that, to great fanfare, was when Elon talked about and introduced the upgrade, so to speak, to the Tesla Optimus robots. And so I'll play a little clip from that as well, arms and legs. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Instead of a robot with wheels. And we've made a lot of progress with Optimus. And as you can see, we started with someone in a robot suit. [00:04:13] Speaker A: And. [00:04:13] Speaker B: Then we've progressed dramatically year after year. So if you extrapolate this, you're really going to have something spectacular. [00:04:27] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So that was a. The very chilling, I will be honest, video of Elon introducing these optimus robots that are going be our servants, supposedly. And he mentioned that once they're mass produced produced, they're gonna cost me twenty thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars, which I know is a lot of money in one cents, but it's really not, because that's like a car these days. So it's gonna be something that just about anybody in the upper middle class and above can buy. And so, like I said, elon has a vision for the future, but he's making it happen. And so I really think that we have to look at this as Catholics and say, do we embrace Elon's vision? Do we reject it? What do we think about it? How do we evaluate these things under, like, catholic principles? Before I really talk about the catholic principles, I do want to mention, though, something I think a lot of us don't realize, but how much subconsciously, we are impacted by science fiction. Most of us, our views of the future, are very much touched by the science fiction we've either read or watched. Now, some of us have read a lot of science fiction when we were younger, watched a lot of science fiction, like me, I have Star Trek, Star wars, all things like that, Asimov and all those type of books. Others have not been science fiction buffs, but they still, they watch the big budget science fiction movies, the dystopian ones like irobot or Terminator or things like that. And so we're all impacted and really in science fiction, there's kind of two views of the future, typically. On the one hand, there's the Star Trek vision, which is a utopian vision. In Star Trek in the year 2054, I believe it is. Yes, I am that much of a nerd. Was it 2064? And somebody can correct me in the chat. I think it was 2054. Basically, man creates a warp drive, meaning they can go faster than light travel. And that then allows aliens, the Vulcans, to meet them, to come and greet them and say, yeah, you're not alone in the universe. And under Gene Roddenberry's version of the future, this ushers in an air of peace and prosperity. It's kind of funny when you think about how childish this is, that all of a sudden having a warp drive makes people not greedy anymore, not need money, and be peaceful and all this stuff. So it's kind of silly, but it's very deeply embedded in old Star Trek. New Star Trek, which I don't watch, I hear doesn't. Is kind of crap and doesn't necessarily abide by this, but it's a utopian vision of the future. And I think Elon very much kind of subscribes that. If you would not believe, if you read the biographies of, like, astronauts, people involved, the space program, NASA, SpaceX, stuff like that, you would not believe what percentage were impacted by Star Trek. I mean, especially this was early, this was years ago. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if 95% of people who work at NASA were at one point involved in the space, one point in another impacted by Star Trek. So people have a very utopian vision based on Star Trek and some other science fiction of the future. And I think Elon is part of that. Now, there's another part of science fiction, which is the whole dystopian. This is probably the more popular these days. I think as the world's gotten worse, people are more attracted to the dystopian science fiction. You see this in things like Terminator, which I think most people probably know the basic. But the robots rise up and destroy us or try to destroy us, live John Connor lives, or iRobot, which I, robot, go watch that again. Because the robots and I, robot, which rise up and go against humans, they look a lot like Elon's Tesla Optimus robots. I thought that was a little spooky how much they look like them. And so that's obviously a dystopian view. Now, people like Elon. If you read interviews by Elon, he does acknowledge the dystopian uses of technology, and he's worried about the AI and artificial intelligence, things like that. So it's not like he rejects that. But I don't think most tech people like, who are really like the tech giants, I think they mostly side on the Star Trek, the utopian view of the future, rather than the dystopian. In fact, they would say that the dtopian view is what they are purposely want, and so that's what they're trying to create. But also they would argue that technology is the means by which this utopia is going to happen. And so I think that's an important point to note as well. They got into technology alliance tech giants because they want a Star Trek future, not a Terminator future, and so they want to make it wherever the world is a better place, a utopia, basically, because of technology. So I think, now I just want to kind of talk about then how about the catholic view of the future? I think, first of all, I got to get this out of the way. Catholics, their view of technological advancement should be generally positive. I understand there's a lot of people, especially in the trad world, but not just trads of Catholics, who are basically have become anti technology. Any new technology they're against, any new technology they're suspicious of, they are worried about. They think it's part of the new world order, the World Economic Forum, whatever. They just think it's all negative, because obviously, we've had technology used and abused for a lot of negative things over the past few decades. And so I understand that. But here's the fact. The church has always been open to technological advancement. It's always been open to progress in a technological sense. If you look at the middle ages, this, I think we'd all agree, is probably the height of catholic culture, catholic society. Guess what? It's also the height of really, a diving deep into scientific discovery, technological advancement, progress, you know, trying to expand our knowledge of the world, of the universe. I mean, look at somebody like St. Albert the Great. Who's the great? The great teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas also. He's a doctor of the church. He was one of the greatest scientists of his day. He knew so much about the world, and we learned so much about the world through him. He was not confined just to theological knowledge, but he really understood, tried to understand the world. And this was common among, he was the greatest, but this was common among the great theologians and saints of the Middle Ages. And so it really is disturbing to me. I admit I have no patience for it. The kind of what Trent Horn calls the catholic fundamentalists. And I know he gets attacked for that, but I understand what he means. He's not talking about people who are traditionalists. He's talking about those who are embracing a kind of protestant fundamentalism that separates the spiritual and the physical, separates the idea of, like, the theological and the scientific. And I don't think that that's not Catholic. I remember that attitude as a Protestant, but that's not what Catholics should be. So we're not suspicious of scientific advancement. Now, all that being said, there's no question there is the problem of scientism in the modern world. And scientism is something that Catholics need to oppose. And that's where you basically make science like a religion, and you make it where it's the ultimate determiner of truth and dogma and things like that. Obviously, Catholics need to reject that, but we have to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. And so I really think that we need to have maintain that catholic attitude, even in the face of a lot of modern problems with science and how science is practiced. We need to maintain that basic positive attitude towards exploration, discovery, learning more about the world, learning more about the universe, and also improving the world through technology. Here's another thing. Catholics have never been opposed to the creation of inventions that help us get work done. I mean, if you think about it, the broom is a technological advancement that helps us get work done, makes things easier. You know, everything you use around the house is like that. You know, it's not just the washing machine or things, something like that, or the roomba that does the. We had one of those for a while. I got one of those. We never really thought it worked out very well, though. I don't think it was a roomba brand. But, you know, the robot vacuum cleaners, not really robots, but they go around the vacuum on their own. But there's nothing wrong with, in theory, creating things that help us to get our work done, to make work easier. Now, that being said, we do understand that there is a balance in the world. There's a balance in how we judge these things. As Catholics, the number one priority is, is that the next world is actually far more important than this world. So while we are positive about this world and things that doing advancements in this world, exploring, discover, exploring discovery, all that stuff, the next world is what's most important. And so we always have to keep that in mind. Anything that we do in this world to advance us, putting that in scare quotes that actually harms our ability to get to the next world should be rejected. And that's a key point here. So while Catholics, we embrace things of this world like that, that will advance us in this world, help us out to work less, maybe things like that. If they harm us in our ability to get to the next world, then we do have to reject them. We have to recognize anything that might harm our ability to be human, to serve God, to really be who we are meant to be, anything that harms, that we need to be suspicious of and potentially reject. And also, we have to recognize this. I said that it's okay to create things that help us with our work, make our work easier. But ultimately, we were made to work. I mean, we were made. Work came before the fall. Now, how we relate to work was affected by the fall, but we were put in charge of the garden before the fall happened. So work is a good, and work is essential to who we are. And so anything that might make us. So we don't work anymore. I think we should hold that in suspicion as well, because work is a good. We're not made for just leisure, not made for just work. Leisure is a good thing, too. Again, it's that both end of Catholicism that both work and leisure are goods, and we don't want to get rid of either. I know we don't like work because of the fall. We like leisure a lot better, but we need both. Okay, so that was kind of some principles. Now, let's talk about, though, Elon and his vision, and let's judge it kind of on those principles and judge whether or not Elon's vision of the future is compatible with a catholic vision for the future. Well, one of the primary parts of Elon's vision is to make life interplanetary. I've mentioned this already. Basically, he wants people to be able to live on humans, to live off Earth. He's targeting primarily Mars right now, but he wants to make this happen. Honestly, that in and of itself is a noble goal. I don't see how any Catholic can criticize that goal in and of itself. I mean, we just celebrated Columbus day yesterday. Columbus was a great Catholic, and what was he? He was an explorer. He went to another world. In a sense, he helped colonize that world. I mean, he was the beginnings of it. And the colonization of the new world was one of the greatest things ever done by man. And so the idea of going to new areas of the. Of the universe for people to live in, for humans live in. I mean, I think that in of itself is something that Catholics should be completely supportive of. I mean, we can argue about the prudent prudence of it, like using money for that versus using money for other things, all that stuff. I mean, it's Elon's money in this case, it's not our money, like with NASA. I mean, it's a shared thing, because, I mean, NASA is involved and things like that. But the point is, is that just the idea of colonizing other planets, that is, in my mind, just a good. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Now, I honestly think that Elon, and, I mean, he knows more than I do. He's. I am. I get all that, but I have looked into this a lot. I have read a lot about this. I think Elon greatly, greatly underestimates how difficult it will be for humans to live off planet. I mean, I just saw a post today on X where he was talking about how we get to Mars and that one of the primary barrier to it is how much it costs to ship things there. He was saying you might need a million tons of equipment on Mars in order to colonize it. And he was saying that at current costs, that would be like, I think, over a trillion, like a thousand trillion, whatever. That is quite quint trillion, whatever dollars, which is obviously feasible, but with what they're doing at SpaceX, he hopes to decrease that exponentially so that it would only be maybe a few billion dollars a year for the next 40 years. That could get all that equipment to Mars. I think, though, that. And he might. He's probably right about that. Like the idea of how much he could save on rocket fuel and the cost to ship things. That's where he shines, and I'm sure he knows the numbers, but I just don't think we know what it's like for humans to live off planet. I think there's a lot of things. I just read a book about this recently, and it's a bigger challenge than we. We want to admit. There's so many things we don't know about living. I mean, with the cosmic radiation, you know, because these plants, like something like Mars, does not have an atmosphere. So the protection we would need just being out off Earth, gravity. I mean, here's just one example, pregnancy. How a woman who gets pregnant off planet outside of Earth's gravity, we have no idea how that will impact the pregnancy, if the baby would be able to live or not in the womb. And in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if people like, maybe Elon and others, they're thinking of all artificial wombs or something like that at this point. But the point is, is that just pregnancy alone, and you can't colonize a place if you can't, if the women can't get pregnant at the colony, because it won't. It only lasts for maybe 30, 40 years. And so there's just so much. So I personally don't think there will be a colony of people living on Mars in my lifetime, in my children's lifetime, or my grandchildren's lifetime. Okay, this is my opportunity. I was waiting for a way I could bring this in. My first grandchild was born two days ago, and I am just ecstatic. And I was trying to find a way to fit this in, and I just found a way. So I'm just call me granddad now. I'm the granddad of catholic Twitter or what acts or whatever it is, but, yes. So, anyway, I don't think we'll have a colony living on Mars in my grandchild's lifetime. I wouldn't be surprised if we have people on Mars, like, you know, we land on Mars, but not a. Not a permanent colony or on the moon, actually. I mean, the moon, maybe. Maybe the moon will have, like, something like the international space Station, where people are there for. I could see that happening, actually, in my lifetime, definitely my children's lifetime, of having something, a base set up on the moon that's similar to the International Space Station is now where people are there maybe six, nine months, maybe a year, something like that. So, anyway, the point, though, is that there's nothing wrong with making life interplanetary. So something like the SpaceX, catching that booster and all that stuff, I think that's. That's a win. That's a great thing. Now, of course, that's not all of Elon's vision for the future. If that was all it was, I think all of us would probably be. At least all the reasonable people would be like, yeah, I'm on board. He also has the robots. And we just talked. We just saw that the optimist robots who will be our servants. But here's the thing is, it's not just that they are our servants. They're also marketed as our friends. Watch this clip from the introduction of this optimus robot. [00:22:25] Speaker B: It'll basically do anything you want. So it can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks, whatever you can think of it will do. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Okay, so that, I think, is scary. I mean, it literally says at the top of it, it says humanoid friend. And he and Elon mentions these ideas, these robots, as our friends. Now, that goes far beyond having something that helps us just work, because that is. This is where I think the rubber meets the road. Where things really get bad is that you go from something like a robot vacuum cleaner. You're not going to make friends with your robot vacuum cleaner. You know, a little thing going around vacuuming things. But now, all of a sudden, they're creating technological devices that look more human. I mean, you saw the images there. They don't obviously, they're obviously robots right now, but you can make them look more and more human. But here's the most important thing. They're going to act more human. You saw the one where he's the he. I said he for the robot, it is playing a game with a family, with the kids. Elon talks about them being our friend. This is an anti christian view of reality. I mean, there's just no other way to put it. Because ultimately, God created mankind in the image and likeness of God. Nothing else is creating the image and likeness of God. Here on this earth. Only man is and there. And we are made, therefore, for God. And our relationships with each other are a foretaste of our eventual relationship with God. So we are made for community. God himself, remember, is himself a community. He's a relationship of father, son and holy spirit. We are made for that in his image. And so our friends, we can only make friends with other human beings. We can't make friends with inanimate objects or like robots or anything like that. And trying to be friends with a robot is fundamentally anti human. Cause also remember, this robot is your slave. We'll call them servants because they'll sound better, but it's the equivalent of a slave, right? It's not like a robot has any rights. Now, of course, one day, I'm sure there'll be lawyers who argue for them. There's an episode of Star Trek all about this data, whether or not he has rights. But anyway, there are slaves. They're not just simply, you know, just some our friends. So if we. If they're going to be our slaves, we can't really friend them, not just because they're robots, because of that relationship, because what will happen is all of a sudden you'll start thinking of your slave as your friend, and then how will you look at your human friends when they don't do exactly what you want them to do? Because after all the robot exists to make you happy. He's going to do whatever he can. I keep saying, hey, I got to stop saying that. It will do whatever it can to make you happy, and so it will do anything you tell it to do. I'm assuming it's going to have some type of rules about, like, not pulling triggers on guns at other people, but who knows if Elon saw that yet? But the point is, is that that is fundamentally dysfunctional. We see this already with these AI romantic. I think I did a podcast on this AI romantic companions, where you have, like, an AI companion online that you. You're friends with, but it just does whatever you want. And so that gives you a such a perverted view of what relationships are like, because part of friendship is your friend doesn't do everything you want to do. Your friend isn't your slave. Your friend sometimes annoys you. Your friend sometimes abandons you. Your friend sometimes rejects you. All these things happen. These are all human things that happened. And so making friends with a robot is fundamentally just. I mean, it's messed up. It's just messed up. And, of course, I haven't mentioned the problem of the fact that these robots, they're going to obviously have controlled some type of access to the Internet and therefore have some ability for the Internet to control. There's always this. There's already this issue with the Tesla cars. There's the concern that someday some master switch will say, okay, turn off that car. You know, he's in a high speed chase, escaping the police. Okay, turn it off remotely. Well, who's to say they can't do that to a Tesla robot? Not just turn it off, but have it do something you don't want it to do. All of a sudden, you've said something that you're not supposed to say. Maybe you are online, and you said something against the government. Now, all of a sudden, can your robot grab you, hold you until police come? I mean, I don't think that's even, like, outlandish to think that we're not even talking, like, some crazy talk anymore. That's just very realistic that it could do something like that, I think. And so that obviously is a major problem, and we. And it really is a problem that's already started. Like I mentioned, the Internet, you know, the romantic companions, AI romantic companions. The Internet's already damaged human relationships. I mean, there's no question. Studies have shown there's such a high rate of depression, loneliness, all these different things. Because people are online so much, they're staring at their phones all day. They're in these fake communities. I mean, we don't see reality on Facebook or on Instagram or TikTok or on X, because everybody puts their best foot forward or they fake who they are, all that stuff. Well, this just exacerbates that. Because think about if you spend all day, you live alone, let's say you're single and you live with your robot friend, and that's your only. That's your main companion for most of the time. You are not going to be able to survive in the real world when you go. You're not going to go out of the house at some point. And really, so it really. That is very dystopian. And there's another part of this, Elon's vision that hasn't been in the news as much lately, but it's probably, I would say, is the scariest of the things EloN's looking at. Like I said, I'm totallY. The SpaceX stuff is great. I'm not really against the tesla cars, I think. I mean, I have a nephew who has one, and it's pretty cool. But I do worry about the remote control of it, things like that. And also, I'm not. I don't necessarily. I'm not convinced that electricity, electronic cars are the future, that that's actually going to be a way that we actually have the electronic electric grid and all that to do that, to support everybody having an electric car. But anyway, the robots, though, I definitely think are a problem because why? They're dehumanizing. It's when we make technology replace things that are essentially human, that's when we have a problem. And that's exactly what the Tesla Optimus robot's doing. It's not just doing work for us, it's actually now replacing human things only humans can do. Yes, a robot can be on an assembly line and can do the same things a human can do on an assembly line. I'm talking about now that next step of human companionship, of human relationship, things that literally only humans can do in a true way. I'm not saying they can't fake it. I mean, the Turing test is dumb. The Turing test is the thing that says that, you know, when you can't tell a difference between if it's a rope, like, behind a screen, if it's a robot or if it's a human, that they've passed a turing test and means they've kind of reached some level of consciousness. That's idiotic. A robot can fake we'll be able to fake like a human. You won't be able to tell that much of a difference, but it's still fake because it doesn't love you or hate you. It doesn't disappoint you or really please you. Because when it does something you want to do, it's not like, oh, wow, if, like, your wife does something for you without you asking and just does it out of love. That's a beautiful feeling. The robot's only going to do what you tell to do. Yeah, maybe the AI will figure out, oh, he likes it that we have, that this certain dinner is cooked on Tuesday nights when he gets home from dinner. My master, you know, the robot might, might realize that and do that without being asked, and the man might come home and be pleased with that, but he's not really, like, thinking, like, oh, wow, this person, this robot loves me. He might be thinking that, and if he is, that's. That's a problem. But the last thing I wanted to mention about what Elon's doing, his vision, which I think is the scariest of all, this is the neuralink, and that is the embedded, like, connection between computers and human brains, where you have a chip in your brain, essentially, and it will connect your brain. And there's some, like, you know, some defense of this is like, it could help people in situations with brain disorders and things like that. But really, this is something that I don't see any good use for. Just like I thought, think SpaceX, interplanetary life and all that stuff. I can't see anything really inherently wrong with it. I can't see anything inherently good with neuralink. I understand it might be used for people who are disabled or something like that. But the downside is just too great, because every link goes two ways. That's the key point of a link, is it's not just that the human brain is like, okay, if I want to look up, I have a wikipedia in my head, I'll know instantly all these facts. Okay, that sounds cool. That sounds very matrixy. But of course, it can go the other way. It can impact what you see, what you think, what you do, because we don't really understand. The problem is, like a lot of these futurists, because they're not christian, they don't have a true understanding of the human person. They think the brain is the mind, and the mind is the brain of. That's not true. The mind and the brain are related, but the mind is not the brain. The mind is not physical, but we all have a mind, but we don't know what will happen if you have a technology that impacts the brain. How does that mind brain relationship work? I mean, this is just scary stuff, but the idea that they could. That a chip like this could change somebody's personality, could make them more conformist, could make them more, you know, willing to do what they're told, I mean, all these things are just. I mean, it's a big no on that. I mean, this is. This is the epitome of big brother, of a dystopian future. And the fact that Elon can't see this, I just think that that shows a real. A real problem in his way of looking at a real blind spot in his way. So, I mean, ultimately, then, kind of, what's. What's the bottom line on all this? I think. I think it's wrong for us to create, like, a. Elon is either the savior or the Antichrist or people like him that, like, you know, Elon, I guess, like somebody mentioned that Elon is working with, you know, he's just same as Klaus Schwab, people like that. I just don't think that's the way it works. I think Elon, he should be praised for things that he does well, like this. This catching of that booster thing was incredible, and it's because of him. I mean, lots of people were involved, of course, but it only happened because he agreed. He said, let's do that. And just the idea of space travel and trying to expand our knowledge of the universe and of the world, these are all good things. He should be praised for that. But ultimately, we can't let people like Elon be the ones who set our vision for the future. As Catholics, we have to be very clear on what we see the future be. And so we need, as Catholics, to embrace scientific discovery, embrace scientific progress, embrace, you know, human exploration, while completely rejecting anything that's dehumanizing. I think that's the key word here, because technology, the danger of technology is dehumanizing. I mean, some would argue a lot of the technology we already have, like television, radio, even things in the home, like washing machines, things like that, they were, in some sense, dehumanizing. And I understand that argument, but there's no question. Some of these things, like humanoid friends, you know, robot friends, neuralink things like that, these are very dehumanizing things, and we need to reject them. We also had to be careful about the replacement of the real with the virtual. I mean, this is something I've talked about a lot like with being online, being online too much, we end up having. Replacing the virtual with the real. And we have to really have those real experiences at home, outside. I mean, here's just an experiment that you could do. Go out. Go somewhere and don't bring your phone, or at least keep it in the car after you get out of the car and, like, somewhere where you're going to be standing around waiting or walking, whatever. It's a completely different experience. For example, to stand in line at Lowe's or Home Depot without looking at your phone or to be, even better, be out in the woods or something, like at a park or something without your phone than is with your phone. And so do go to the restaurant, but don't bring your phone. You know, experience real life. I think that's something we have to do at all times. Okay, we got some questions and comments today, so I want to go through those. I appreciate those people who join the live chat, as always. We try, you know, grab some of the good comments and comment them, and I'll address them here at the end. Okay, we come here from. Dave. There's no utopia on earth. I don't like AI. It's hard to tell right now. Okay, Dave, that's a great point. There is no utopia on earth. I think we need to always, as Catholics, we always understand the fall. I mean, Tolkien said that our history is one long defeat. We understand that there is no such thing as utopia. In fact, the word utopia was coined by St. Thomas more, and it means no place. And it's kind of a way of saying Thomas more, saying there's no such thing as utopia. And not liking AI, I get that. I think AI, the problem is, it's a generic term for. Used for a lot of different things, some of which are fine and some of which are not. The AI that becomes more dehumanizing, that tries to imitate humanity, I think that's dangerous. But there's a lot of AI in scientific work that is actually just allows a lot of number crunching to happen without and save a lot of time. So I'm not against all AI, so. Okay, so August TV 123. Musk's products have definitely improved my life. Tesla Powerwall keeps the lights on when the power grid is down. I just bought Starlink for an Internet backup. I mean, that's, you know, I didn't bring up Starlink, but, like, Starlink is an amazing, you know, um, uh, product as well. And it allows, for example, like, he was giving out Starlink free to a lot of people in North Carolina after the hurricane, you know, allow them to be connected and things like that. So I think that that is a great point that, that we have to recognize. Also, though, following on, unfortunately, Musk isn't a Christian, so he sometimes takes too much of a utilitarian view on things, which leads him to support stuff like abortion, for example. Yes, absolutely. Musk, we have to understand who he is. He is not looking at things from a catholic worldview. And so he gets some things right, he gets some things wrong. I think he's a lot better than a lot of these people. You know, somebody like Jeff Bezos, for example, or Klaus Schwab. Bill Gates. Oh, my gosh. I mean, so much better than Bill Gates. Bill Gates has an anti human view. I think Musk has some natural virtues that come out, but I think, though, ultimately, he is too utilitarian. I mean, I do. I do agree with that. Okay, next comment. Female Casey, royals fan from Nebraska. I. First of all, I just want to. Paul, I say I'm sorry about the royals being bumped out of the playoffs by the hated Yankees. Maybe next year I would let r babysit, but not c three po. You know, there's a lot of wisdom, what you just said. R is not as human appearing fake as c three po. But the funny thing is, Musk actually compared the Optimus robots to R Po. And so I think even R is probably a little too human for me, to be honest. Okay. Sliglis says, I can't even get Siri to listen to me. It's awful. Earth is harsh enough. Mars is crazy. People in medicine know that. Even a regional hospital in a small city has, have dozens of specialists. I mean, I think that the point about Mars being too harsh is crazy. Think about this. How many people are living in Antarctica? We have all this modern technology. We are spread throughout the world. But how many people live in Antarctica? A handful, maybe an Antarctica. And nobody lives there permanently. They have bases there. But Antarctica is far, far, far more habitable than Mars. So the idea that we live on Mars as a permanent colony, I just think it just doesn't make sense. Like I said, I think the most realistic thing is a base on the moon, like the International Space Station, like Antarctica, where people are there, there's always somebody living there, but they're not there for more than maybe six years to a month, something like that. That makes sense to me because you can have scientific exploration there. You can, you can have benefits to that, maybe even do that on Mars. I mean, it's a little bit more of a long trip, and so there's issues there. Let's say we, we knock that out of the park and we get there with no problem and make it easier to get there and back again. Living there permanently, though, why don't we live on Antarctica? Antarctica permanently if we're, if we're going to live on Mars? So I think people need to realize that. What's this say? Miss, Miss Andromeda, Elton's idea with NL Neuralink is that this would be the only defense against AI gone awry. You know, I didn't realize that. I do know that Elon has mentioned many times his concerns with AI, and I'm very happy to hear that. But of course, he's involved in developing it, and I think his ideas, I'm going to develop it the right way, going to get developed. Let me do it the right way. And maybe that's true. Maybe Neuralink would protect us against AI gone awry. It just seems to me, though, once you're connected to the grid, so to speak, to the technological matrix, then AI can control you. I just don't see how it couldn't be hacked, then, by AI. If AI really ends up being this problem that people think it's going to be of taking over the world, I don't want to be connected technologically. I want to be as far away from technology as possible. I feel like that would keep me the safest. But, you know, we don't know how it's going to develop. We don't know exactly what it's going to be like. I would just say, Catholics keep hope for the future. I mean, not. Not hope in man, of course, but hope in God, that if you look at the history of the world, it's not, you know, we see progress technological. We see a lot of decline spiritually in recent, recent centuries, but we saw a lot of both technological and spiritual progress from the dark ages, as they're called, to the Middle Ages. And so it's not a guarantee, it's not like a rule of life, a maximum of the universe, that as we progress technologically, we will decline spiritually. I just don't believe that. I think there are obviously dangers of technological advancement, but I think, Catholics, we keep our eyes on the prize, which is Jesus Christ. And I think we can, we can praise good things in technology while being very wary and very careful about the dehumanizing aspects of technology. Okay, I think I'll wrap it up there. I, you know, as you could probably tell, I geek out about this stuff, but I think it is important for all Catholics. We're all going to have to deal with it, whether we're a tech geek or not. So I think we all need to be thinking about. Okay, until next time, everybody. God love.