We used to play competitive field hockey. Center halfback. Winning team and why? We and our center forward had a strategy: Yours Truly always fell back – to the least protected part of the field – rather than shadowing her.  She would invariably get the ball at some point, send it to us, who would guard it until she was in position to score, return it to her. Score! Game over. Worked every time.

It’s one thing to skate to where the puck is going, as per ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s advice. And quite another to follow the strategy/keep an eye on the field at large. Which is also potentially a winning play.

As a result of our lessons from field hockey, we personally don’t necessarily only follow where the puck is going, but rather, attempt to sort out the underlying strategy as well – and look to what else is happening on the field. For example, it was recently widely reported that Elon Musk says the US should ‘get rid of all’ government subsidies re EVs. As The Verge said, “Musk’s companies have benefitted from many different federal and state subsidies over the years, and the government is a major SpaceX customer (though SpaceX won much of that business by dramatically undercutting the prices of established players). Tesla has also found tremendous success in China after receiving lots of help from the central government there. Musk said Monday that Tesla “did not anticipate any subsidies” when the company was in its early years.

 

Uh-huh. And note to self: Musk also received government subsidies for SpaceX. According to Politico, “Overall, Musk’s companies had received $4.9 billion in government support as of 2015.”

 

There’s a reason Why Elon Musk is no longer a fan of government subsidies for electric cars. They would solely benefit his competitors. His comments that seemingly were championing taxpayers (and who doesn’t want to look like a hero?) were also a great distraction from his announcement at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit: that Neurolink – his neural implants/human-computer interface company – will be tested in humans in 2022. He certainly does look nervous in the video, even stumbling a bit when he mentions that the device can be removed safely, and what a game changer it’ll be for, say quadriplegics. It was tested in monkeys and if the true focus is in helping quadriplegics, why weren’t there quadriplegic monkeys in the test group? The implant interfaces with cellphones, and not that we need to worry about phones being hacked. Much. (Apple iPhones can be hacked with spyware even if you don’t click on a link, Amnesty International says). Given that the Tesla founder doesn’t seem to concern himself with security/hacks (Tesla Car Hacked Remotely From Drone via Zero-Click Exploit), what could possibly go wrong?

 

And wasn’t it Musk himself who was warning us ad nauseam not too long ago about the dangers of AI? Back in 2014 (Elon Musk warns about the dangers of AI, calling it ‘summoning the demon’) and again in 2017 with (his) BILLION-DOLLAR CRUSADE TO STOP THE A.I. APOCALYPSE. Said Vanity Fair, “Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley’s latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too.”

He was supposedly on a mission to save humanity from machine-learning overlords.

A good thought to keep in mind as we barrel towards Web 3.0, which might be broadly defined as an amalgam of technologies designed to consolidate the reach – and invasiveness – of tech, and Neuralink is very much in the mix. While Musk assured us that it’s a technology that’s easily removable, not sure that that would be something that you’d want to try yourself at home.

 

Given all the above, Gretzky might not have been completely on point re skating to where the puck is going, rather than where it’s been. Especially in regards to tech, which is arguably the most powerful force ever to appear on the plant. As we should all well know at this juncture, when it comes to tech and the uberlords, if you want to monitor the direction that the puck is going, very important to pay attention to the place from whence it came. Onward and – hopefully extremely cautiously – forward.