Personally-- I think that Musk is neither important to technological progress nor likeable (to any reasonable person). Those who buy into the idea that he is important to technological progress-- even factoring in his wealth-- have fallen for his con.

You'd be hard pressed to name a single project of his which has made it into the mainstream and significantly improved everyday life. The only one-- tesla EVs-- was not even founded by him and is still a far ways off from achieving his goal of replacing diesel vehicles.

His other projects seem to be having significant trouble in achieving their goals. And of course, many, many, MANY, of his promises have been broken.

Even if you like the man personally, you cannot deny that he can't be taken at his word. The fact he has failed to live up to his promises is an empirical fact, and so the ability of any of his technologies' to become mainstream should be met with skepticism before you take him at his word.

Prediction:

Electric Vehicles and self driving vehicles won't take off except as public transportation, which will usurp cars after they are phased out.

I think this post exposes a weakness in the common definition of consciousness as "awareness of oneself" and other variations of that definition. Is conscious experience necessarily tied to having awareness? And is awareness necessarily needed for an ASI to perform the feats of the singularity?

I agree with what OP used as a definition in another comment, consciousness defined as the capacity to experience. Under this definition, there's really no reason to assume that a super intelligent AI would need to be conscious. There is nothing explicitly telling us that conscious EXPERIENCE is a necessity towards intelligence

Boy are you pretentious