Elon Musk is a busy man: Tesla lately disclosed the all-wheel-drive Model S with auto pilot, SpaceX just crash-landed its Falcon 9 rocket, and the billionaire this week affirmed more plans for an excursion to Mars.
So its not astonishing that Musk’s plans for a $6 billion Hyperloop giving high speed journey between US cities has been put on the backburner.
Until Thursday, that is, when the entrepreneur tweeted about a Hyperloop test track “for organizations and student groups to test out their pods.” The course will probably be developed in Texas.
“Also, considering of having an annual student Hyperloop pod racer contest, akin to Formula SAE,” Musk said.
The Hyperloop stood out as truly newsworthy in August, when Musk depicted a framework whereby travelers would be transported at top velocities through tubes developed above or beneath the ground.
Preferably, this Hyperloop could move 840 travelers every hour and connect cities less than 900 miles apart — San Francisco to Los Angeles, maybe; or loops between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. It would most likely cost about $1.35 million every traveler capsule, or $6 billion altogether, Musk said a year ago.
While Hyperloop features are worked out, in the meantime, Musk is turning his attention to artificial intelligence.
The Tesla and SpaceX’s founder has given $10 million to the Future of Life Institute to run a worldwide AI research agenda, supported by a long rundown of driving AI examiners, including the leader of Facebook’s AI Laboratory, Google scientists, and IBM Watson Group representatives.
The program will be managed by the non-profit Future of Life Institute; research will be carried out all over the globe, with trusts of awarding funds to AI analysts and related research including economics, law, ethic, and policy.
The moves comes after Musk said in October that artificial intelligence is “calling the devil.”
“I’m progressively prone to think there must be some administrative oversight, possibly at the national and global level,” Musk said amid the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department’s 2014 Centennial Symposium. “Just to verify that we don’t do something extremely stupid.”