“I won’t make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight. But don’t worry, I’m pretty good at running ‘human’ in emulation mode,” he joked.
“Well, I think everyone’s experience is going to be somewhat different,” Musk said during the interview. “But I guess for me, the social cues were not intuitive. So I was just very bookish, and I didn’t understand. … I guess others could sort of, intuitively understand … what was meant by something. I would just tend to take things very literally, like, the words, as spoken, were exactly what they meant.”
In hindsight, Musk added, he thinks having Asperger’s syndrome may have helped him in his career. “I think there’s maybe some value also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers just by myself,” said Musk. “And I think most people, most people don’t enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night.”