SpaceX the Alan Notes

Elon Musk, left, with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval. Photograph: Cathleen Allison/AP

“I’m not sure about the flying cars, ” Musk told the audience at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit. “If the sky was full of cars flying all over the place, it would affect how things look. It would affect the skyline. And it would be noisier and there would be a greater probability of something falling on your head. Those are not good things.

“On the other hand, you’d be able to go from one place to another faster, ” he conceded.

But he maintained that there are easier ways to gain massive improvements in travel speeds, such as moving vehicles underground to “eliminate the choke points in cities” that clog up traffic.

That’s not to say that Musk shies away from the difficult solutions to getting people from A to B. In 2013, he presented an “alpha” proposal, which he called “an open source transportation concept”, for the “Hyperloop” – an ambitious attempt to link LA and San Francisco on what Musk described as “a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table”.

The Hyperloop was ill-received as a concept, knocked for overstating its benefits while simultaneously belittling the more advanced proposals for a California high-speed rail system. But Musk clearly didn’t stop thinking about the possibility of changing how travel works beyond simply swapping petrol for electricity.

“This may seem trite, ” he told the audience, “but I honestly think tunnels should be given a lot more consideration.”

Alongside the future of travel, Musk elaborated on his belief that humanity will be the architect of its own demise in the form of super-intelligent artificial intelligence.

What would happen, he asked, if a supersmart machine decides that the best way to achieve its gains is to destroy humanity? Suppose an AI is set to the task of cleaning up our inboxes; what if it comes to the conclusion, Musk asked, that “the best way to get rid of spam is to get rid of humans?”

Citing Oxford University professor Nick Bostrom, Musk has previously warned that “we need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.

In the meantime, Musk can look forward to revealing the D in Los Angeles tonight. According to analysts at Barclays Capital, the announcement is likely to entail a four-wheel drive version of the Tesla Model S, and perhaps a semi-autonomous driving system.