Yes, he's a believer. This belief in discounting the reasoning gap between humans and software is why Musk is both up at night worrying about evil AI taking over the world (it may already be too late!) and also genuinely believes that autonomous driving is a "solved problem" that just needs some of the rough edges removed (just a couple of years away!).
It's like there is this enormous gulf that most others can see, but to Elon it's invisible.
So don't let anyone tell you that philosophy and theology don't matter. We are witnesses a multi-billion dollar bet being made on the basis of some extreme views about the nature of man, and because this appears to be a core belief of Elon, I doubt he will ever update his priors to make more effective investment decisions based on feedback from real-world tests. He will always view this as a project that is almost-ready with just a few technical glitches to overcome.
It's like there is this enormous gulf that most others can see, but to Elon it's invisible.
So don't let anyone tell you that philosophy and theology don't matter. We are witnesses a multi-billion dollar bet being made on the basis of some extreme views about the nature of man, and because this appears to be a core belief of Elon, I doubt he will ever update his priors to make more effective investment decisions based on feedback from real-world tests. He will always view this as a project that is almost-ready with just a few technical glitches to overcome.