Comment by freyir

The goals are an AI that can augment itself (project 2) and defend itself (project 3). I've found Musk's fear of AI to be a little overblown, but this is nuclear weapon type rationalizing: "AI could be end the world as we know it, so we'd better race to create it first."

It's interesting that Projects 2 and 3 would make great businesses even if they only got halfway to "existential threat" level AI. Then there's project 4, version 0.1 of Musk's "we're all living inside a simulation" claim. Musk as creator of worlds.