The New York Timess Maureen Dowd recently chatted with Elon Musk at length, resulting in an out-of-this-world interview published Saturday. The South African-born futurist, whose company Tesla has soared from a stock price of $361 in mid-March to as high as $1,643 last week, didnt talk much about earnings reports or boardroom strategies. The discussion stuck to what makes Musk one of the rare businesspeople to have an ardent pop culture fanbase: colonizing Mars, robots taking over mankind, and The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

The conversation features brief appearances both by Musks girlfriend Grimes, who in her personal life goes by c, the first initial of her given name, Claire, but also the symbol for the speed of light, and their newborn son X A-12. Dowd confirmed that the infant cries like a regular earthling, not like a dial-up modem.

In looking back at the Musk-Grimes courtship we are reminded that they found one another online because they both made the same pun (Rococos Basilisk), and that it gives insight into the couples very real fear about Silicon Valleys cavalier attitude toward artificial intelligence.

Were headed toward a situation where A.I. is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now, Musk, whose SpaceX rockets recently launched Americans into orbit from Cape Canaveral for the first time in a decade (so maybe he actually knows what hes talking about?) told Dowd.

He worries his colleagues in tech do not take A.I. dominance seriously, citing that smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are. And this is hubris and obviously false.

Though a man with a vision of tomorrow, Musks views on parenthood arent quite as progressive. When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me, he says concerning X A-12, adding babies are just eating and pooping machines. Of his other five children with his first ex-wife, Canadian author Justine Musk, he spoke about taking them on the bullet train down from Beijing to see the Terracotta Warriors when he had business in China. He also created an online school for them that, he says, actually worked out pretty well.

Musk does seem truly smitten with Grimes, though, and giddily boasted that she wore Vantablack to the Met Ball, and only Stephen Colbert knew what it was.

He also spoke of his love-hate relationship with Twitter, on mixing it up with fans, and his interplanetary persona. He rejected Kara Swishers nickname The King of Mars and one-upped with I mean, emperor, come on. Of the recent Twitter hack, he said it showed once again the importance of security, but wasnt worried about his DMs leaking. My DMs mostly consist of swapping memes, he joked.

Among the people he is in regular contact with is Kanye West. Musk said hes done his best to suggest that the musician-designer focus on 2024 for a presidential run instead of 2020. (In a follow-up, Musk confirmed the two communicated after Wests very public recent breakdown. There seem to be a lot of issues, he said.)

Musk distanced himself somewhat from Donald Trump, but said he is happy to receive the Presidents praise. (He also added that Space Force is cool.) He didnt have much to say about Joe Biden, but gushed about Barack Obama. He noted that journalists like Dowd may tend to read politics into situations where none exist. I would say the amount of thought that the general public puts into politics is quite low. Theyre mostly thinking about their day and their direct relationships and their work, he said.

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Elon Musk on the A.I. Apocalypse, Being the Emperor of Mars, and Texting With Kanye West - Vanity Fair