7 Celebrities Who Have Autism

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and chairman of X (formerly known as Twitter), revealed during a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) that he has Asperger’s syndrome.

“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.

Musk was likely referring to two common symptoms of ASD: lack of eye contact with others, as well as “Autism masking” (per research, the term refers to behaviors that people with ASD use to try to mirror the mannerisms of neurotypical people and hide certain aspects of their condition).

In an interview aired at TED2022, Musk talked in more detail about the symptoms he’s experienced.

“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, now 52. “And I think most people, most people don’t enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night.”