Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and chairman of X (formerly known as Twitter), appeared as a guest on Saturday Night Live. revealed.SNL) He has Asperger's syndrome.
“I'm not going to make much eye contact with the cast tonight. But don't worry, I'm good at running 'humans' in emulation mode,” he joked.
Mr. Musk was likely referring to two common symptoms of ASD: not making eye contact with others, and “autism masking” (research has shown that this term is a term that people with ASD a neurotypical person's behavior that they try to imitate and hide (a specific aspect of their condition).
In an interview aired at TED2022, Musk went into further detail about the symptoms he experienced.
“Well, I think everyone's experience is a little different,” Musk said during the interview. “But I think for me, the social cues weren't intuitive. I mean, I'm just very bookish and I didn't understand them… Maybe other people would understand them intuitively.” I think I can…what something means. I tended to take things very literally, meaning the words that were spoken were exactly what they meant.”
In hindsight, Musk added that having Asperger syndrome may have helped his career. “I think it probably has some value from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night by myself programming a computer,” said Musk, now 52. He had been importing symbols into his computer all night. ”
