Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and chairman of X (previously often called Twitter), revealed throughout a visitor look on Saturday Night time Stay (SNL) that he has Asperger’s syndrome.

“I received’t make a number of eye contact with the solid tonight. However don’t fear, I’m fairly good at working ‘human’ in emulation mode,” he joked.

Musk was doubtless referring to 2 widespread signs of ASD: lack of eye contact with others, in addition to “Autism masking” (per analysis, the time period refers to behaviors that individuals with ASD use to attempt to mirror the mannerisms of neurotypical individuals and conceal sure points of their situation).

In an interview aired at TED2022, Musk talked in additional element concerning the signs he’s skilled.

“Properly, I feel everybody’s expertise goes to be considerably completely different,” Musk mentioned through the interview. “However I assume for me, the social cues weren’t intuitive. So I used to be simply very bookish, and I didn’t perceive … I assume others may kind of, intuitively perceive … what was meant by one thing. I’d simply are likely to take issues very actually, like, the phrases, as spoken, have been precisely what they meant.”

In hindsight, Musk added, he thinks having Asperger’s syndrome might have helped him in his profession. “I feel there’s possibly some worth additionally from a expertise standpoint, as a result of I discovered it rewarding to spend all night time programming computer systems simply on my own,” mentioned Musk, now 52. “And I feel most individuals, most individuals do not take pleasure in typing unusual symbols into a pc by themselves all night time.”