Move over, Nostradamus! Here are some of Elon Musk's wildest predictions

South African-born billionaire Elon Musk has made several predictions about the future over the years. Some of them have turned out chillingly true, while the deadlines of others have passed without any hint of ever materializing.

Here are some of the things said by one of the wealthiest men in the world about the coming future.

Musk became internationally famous for founding Tesla, a company focused on developing electric vehicles and clean energy. As quoted by The Verge in 2016, the South African billionaire has claimed that one would be able to summon one of his cars from anywhere in the United States.

The founder of Tesla believes electric cars will become the most popular personal vehicle within the decade, as reported by Yahoo! Finances. The same piece cited OPEC’s estimations that the switch from fossil fuel would be more gradual and will probably occur circa the 2040s.

However, everything points that we’re heading there. What sounds less likely is Musk’s boast on Twitter in 2021, predicting that Tesla would eventually become bigger than Apple.

Elon Musk called artificial intelligence the “biggest existential threat” and “summoning the demon” back in 2014, according to The Washington Post. He has claimed on Twitter that this technology is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

The South African millionaire claimed during an interview with Business Insider in March 2022, that artificial intelligence gone wrong is one of the things he’s most afraid of, along with extremism and declining birthrates. He has stated on Twitter that humanity will probably start seeing the dangers of artificial intelligence around 2030.

Musk declared in 2016, during the annual Code Conference, his belief that humanity is actually living in a simulation. The Tesla founder’s argument is based on the idea that, as realistic video games become more complex, it’s logical to think that they might become indistinguishable from reality.

This doesn’t explain how we can tell we are living in a simulation. The same conclusion can be reached about how we aren’t living in the real world, though. It’s probably better not to think about it too hard.

Cryptocurrency is here to stay, as Elon Musk said during the 2021 Code Conference. The South African billionaire, one of the wealthiest individuals alive, claims that at this stage “it’s impossible to kill crypto.”

Musk’s comments in the past about cryptocurrency have made the market fluctuate several times, solely based on his words. In March 2022 Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum spiked after the Tesla founder posted on Twitter that he trusts these bitcoins, instead of selling them.

Neuralink is one of Elon Musk’s passion projects, according to Fortune. The South African billionaire assures that it's working on a memory chip that will grant users the ability to save memories like pictures on a computer, have human-to-human telepathy and help paraplegics to walk again.

Nonetheless, several scientific publications such as The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review have debunked these claims saying that they are unlikely without more data to essentially impossible.

It’s no secret that the South African billionaire is interested in space travel. One of his most notable companies is SpaceX, which is focused on airspace. “My goal is not to send myself up. My goal is to open up space to humanity… and become a multiplanet species,” Musk declared in 2021 during the Code Conference.

Musk has predicted that space tourism will become normalized. This is occurring, in part, due to the efforts of SpaceX. The BBC reports that the company is set to send Japanese millionaire Yusaku Maezawa to space in 2023. However, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin is an example that Musk is not alone in his million-dollar space dreams.

Not only that, but the former CEO of Tesla believes that by 2029 humans will set foot on Mars, exactly 60 years after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.

A National Geographic interview from 2016 reveals that Musk estimates that by the 2060s, there could be a million humans living on the surface of the red planet. Only time will tell if this and other predictions will become true.