Not just out of touch, but downright psychopathic in my opinion. I used to greatly admire Larry Page. He seemed like a really smart, driven, level-headed guy. When the news came out that he was basically fine with AI wiping out humanity, as it would just be the natural evolution of intelligence, and to fight against that would be "speciesist", all I good think was "what a psycho".
And I really don't think I'm exaggerating Page's opinion on this, though I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
Incredible back story here if I can trust Gemini on this as that dates back to over 10 years ago when Musk accused Larry Page of being too obsessed with bringing about AI and hence co-founds OpenAI... the irony of course being that OpenAI raced ahead while Google has been conservative
I'm willing to bet he's speciesist in relation to actual, existing species of other animals
Extreme wealth seems to cook people's brains.
Counter point - accumulating extreme wealth seems to require a cooked brain. I genuinely believe that level headed people are unable to reach more than a few million in accumulated wealth as they'll clearly see how much more that money would benefit others compared to themselves.
Counter counter point - we've constructed a society that provides excess rewards to people with cooked brains and antisocial behavior
There is a theory that the industrial and information revolutions rewarded certain types of neurodiversity more than what you was natural, I think that is entirely plausible.
While some of those traits may be prone to antisocial behavior, given the right social cooking conditions, they are also natural so I don't think people with those traits shouldn't be considered "cooked" from from brith either.
There are also seemingly neurotypical people who win the lottery and get cooked, I think it mostly comes from alienation because wealth changes how others around you act.
I think I'm with the other commenter on this one. It's a fundamental truth that only a rare, and very off-kilter, personality will earn their first $100m dollars and think "Gosh, I need more money!" Then continue working long hours to become billionaires despite already having enough to retire to a private island with a full time maid and butler or spend their life on philanthropy.
To these people it starts to feel obvious that Ayn Rand was right, because Ayn Rand would have agreed with them. They come to feel that they were rewarded because they are more righteous than others, and they are more righteous than others because they were rewarded. Capitalism becomes a religion, rather than a means to an end and money becomes it's own goal instead of a symbolic token that represents real wealth. The piece of paper is now worth more than the things it can buy.
Eventually, due to the broken feedback loop that social order was meant to provide but no longer does, they lose the common moral boundaries that tie them to other men completely and become a special kind of sociopath.