Tesla's Elon Musk debated Alibaba's Jack Ma in China. The audience was spellbound

Elon Musk and Jack Ma matched wits publicly for the first time. And boy, they didn't disappoint. An onstage debate between China's richest man and the Tesla Inc. boss left a largely Chinese audience both awestruck and dumbfounded as the pair sparred over everything from the existence of aliens to the preservation of human consciousness. Musk, alternating between tech visionary and larger-than-life Bond villain, argued that AI will soon surpass the human race; that civilization may end and hence humankind needed to explore the cosmos (specifically Mars); and that people are essentially dumb creatures circumscribed by genes. But Musk, who appeared discombobulated at times following a late trans-Pacific flight, met his match in a fellow billionaire who parried him at every turn.