Wealthy people are just like you and me: they, too, have big dreams. For Valve president Gabe Newell, it’s super yachts; for Metal Gear designer Hideo Kojima, it’s outer space, apparently.
The ongoing Musk v. Altman trial has revealed that, in an email exchange from 2018, Newell asked fellow billionaire Elon Musk if his buddy Kojima could please get a tour of SpaceX. “Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear series, a real visionary in our field) was here at Valve talking about his new game [Death Stranding], and he mentioned the importance he places on future work in AI…he was talking about how much he wants to go into space, and I offered to introduce him to you,” Newell wrote to Musk on Halloween.
“Sure, it would be great to meet Hideo Kojima and he’s welcome to see the rocket factory,” Musk responded a cool, noncommittal two days later. Whether Kojima got his SpaceX tour remains unknown.
Kojima really, really wants to go to space. As reported by Vice, Kojima wrote in his book, The Creative Gene, “If I could have just one wish in my life—if I could cast a magic spell and make anything come true—without hesitation, it would be this: ‘I wish to go to space before I die.’ It doesn’t have to be anything as extravagant as a trip to the moon or Mars. I would be satisfied with only a brief orbit, just beyond Earth’s atmosphere, where I can gently brush against outer space. I would give up anything to make that wish come true: my current place as a game designer, which I’ve built up for forty-five years; I’m even prepared to throw away my family or my own life. That is how powerfully I—or rather we—yearn for the cosmos.” As of today, Kojima’s dream has not been realized.
In the same email inviting Kojima to SpaceX, Musk went on to talk about “highly confidential” progress in neuromodulation, citing a procedure that involved implanting approximately 6,000 electrodes into a monkey’s brain—“just like Neuromancer,” Musk wrote. If Kojima did indeed tour SpaceX, was he permitted to see the lab-bound monkeys as well? Did they stir something sinister deep within him?
Musk concluded the message with details about his degree of involvement with OpenAI at the time, which is likely what led the email to be publicized in the ongoing lawsuit. Not that we really care about that part.
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