Dear Mr. Musk, Can I Have My Book Back Please?

Two years ago my students sent the team developing the Tesla Bot a letter, together with a bunch of books they thought they'd find useful. They're still waiting for a reply

Image: Midjourney, inspired by the cover of Look to Windward

What was I thinking? Two years ago I packaged up one of my prize possessions — a signed copy of Iain M. Banks’ Look To Windward — and mailed it to Elon Musk, care of Tesla.

With hindsight it was a pretty dumb move. But it’s one that seemed to made sense at the time. And I must confess that the book itself was a bit of an afterthought — the icing on the cake of a bigger plan.

This was just after Musk had announced plans for developing the “Tesla Bot.” It was August 2021, and that year’s Tesla Day was the launch point for an audacious new initiative from the company — a “friendly” humanoid robot that would “eliminate dangerous, repetitive, and boring tasks”.

I was teaching my Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future class at the time and we were deep into discussions around emerging technologies and the fine line between what entrepreneurs can do, as opposed to what they should do. And not surprisingly, the Tesla Bot featured rather prominently.

This is a class that, despite its name, focuses on socially responsible and beneficial innovation. It’s also one that embraces students from a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds, and that encourages participants to develop their own ideas around what responsible innovation means. So it came as no surprise that opinions on the Tesla Bot ranged from “amazing” to “have they not seen any movies?” (and yes, that is a literal quote from one of my students).

Most of the class expressed curiosity and excitement threaded through with concerns that, unless the Tesla Bot team went on a “how to innovate responsibly” crash course, this could end very badly.

And so we came up with a plan.

The Moviegoer’s Guide class draws heavily on my book Films from the Future — like the class and despite the title, it’s a book about socially responsible and beneficial innovation. It is also a book that has quite a lot to say about some of the more complex challenges of creating robots that have embedded AI.

Given the book’s unique relevance to what Musk and his team were trying to create, we started talking as a class about sending the engineers working on the Tesla Bot a gift to guide them on their way — a bunch of copies of the course text!

This would probably have started and ended as an in-class joke, had I not got a box of copies of Films from the Future sitting in my closet. As they weren’t doing much good closeted away, we decided to ship the box out to Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto, marked for the attention of the Tesla Bot team.

It was a brilliant plan. The Tesla Bot engineers would read the book, watch a bunch of kick-ass sci-fi movies, thank the class profusely for their help, and go on to create an incredible, yet socially responsible, humanoid robot.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not opening the box of books for a start.

Of course, we don’t know if that was the case. But the class never got any acknowledgement or thanks for the 27 copies of Films from the Future that were shipped out. And there never has been any indication from the Tesla Bot team that they read the class’ covering letter, despite it being supportive of what they were doing:

Dear Tesla Bot Team,

We were very excited to see Elon Musk’s announcement about the Tesla Bot last week. We must confess though that we’re also a little anxious—we’ve seen how this story plays out in too many sci-fi movies, and it’s not good!

However, we have a plan: We’re currently learning about socially beneficial innovation by watching and discussing a bunch of sci-fi movies in class, and thought that the book we’re using is just what your team needs to help make sure that the Tesla Bot is a little less I Robot, and a little more Bicentennial Man.

We hope you enjoy the book (there are plenty of copies to go around), and best of luck in creating a really-cool Tesla Bot that doesn’t decide that the one thing it really can’t stand, is people!

Of course, the team were probably far too busy creating their dream bot to read a letter from a bunch of undergraduate students — never mind the enclosed book.

But I’m invariably disappointed when my students make the effort to do stuff like this and it lands on deaf ears — and this was no exception.

What disappointed me nearly as much though was the loss of my signed copy of Look to Windward!

The box that was shipped out to the Tesla Bot team should have held 28 copies of Films from the Future. But just to be a little cheeky, I swapped out one of them for my personal, signed copy of Look to Windward. I even put a note in it for Elon, and marked it for his attention.

I thought it would be amusing to hide the book amongst the others, and it was an addition that might just have sparked enough interest to get a response for my students. Musk is an Iain M. Banks fan, and I took a gamble that copy of one of his books, signed by the author, would get his attention.

Clearly not.

I suspect that the box of books was never opened, and that it’s languishing in a store room somewhere, all 27 copies of Films from the Future with their Iain M. Banks companion, just waiting to be discovered.

The thing is, if it is, I’d like my book back please. It’s not a big deal for a billionaire I know, but it was something I treasured.

But I’d far rather the Tesla Bot team read the remaining 27 books, and let my students know that they appreciate the gift.

And maybe, just maybe, work a little harder to create a robot that exemplifies what they should do, and not just what they can do.

27 copies of Films from the Future, together with the cover letter signed by 54 students in ASU’s Moviegoer’s Guide to the Future class, all set to be sent to the Tesla Bot team. Fall 2021

The “hidden” gift of a signed copy of Iain M. Banks’ Look to Windward — this was moved down a layer or two before shipping

And the final package, ready to go … but never to be seen again!