The giant metaphor that Elon Musk forked out for

Elon Musk, the outspoken founder of SpaceX and new best buddy of President-elect Donald Trump, is everywhere lately. He also seems keen to make his mark in the art world, boasting on his social media platform X that “two years ago I commissioned an art piece”. The sculpture, titled MetaFork in the Road, first popped up at the Burning Man festival and later appeared at Tesla AI Day—an artificial intelligence event—in Palo Alto in late 2022. This giant piece of cutlery was made by Denver-based Hunter Leggitt Studio, which states online that the work is “a whimsical 30ft tall and 4,500lbs steel installation representing the classic metaphor for a deciding moment in life when a choice between presented options is required”. Musk added on X that he “had to make sure that civilisation took the path most likely to pass the Fermi Great Filters”, an obtuse reference to a theory about the emergence of intelligent life. The sculpture is now installed at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, but there are further editions of the piece for sale, according to the studio. We can’t wait to see one on the White House lawn.