Comment by tptacek
6 hours ago
I think a lot about how there's a very plausible alternate history where Elon Musk controls most of the frontier of AI.
6 hours ago
I think a lot about how there's a very plausible alternate history where Elon Musk controls most of the frontier of AI.
I've thought about that, too, but it would require that all of the key individuals at OpenAI would have been willing to stay at OpenAI under his ownership.
That seems unlikely to me given how divisive he is. OpenAI already had one existential leadership crisis without Musk. I doubt it would have fair better under his notoriously difficult leadership. If he had wrestled control away, I would expect an exodus of employees going to new companies.
They're willing to work under the current snake, even got him back after he was removed, so why not musk?
They are both snakes (IMO), but they are different kinds of snakes. I can see why to some Sam is acceptable while Elon wouldn’t be (and vice versa). It’s also convenient to be more lenient toward the snake’s shortcomings when you becoming extremely rich depends on it.
Haven't they hemorrhaged a lot of the founding talent in the years since? Now it is full of ex-Meta ad-tech people trying to find a way to make it actually turn a profit.
There but for the grace of god go we...
The following dates for the start of the statue of limitations were the most plausible:
1. 2019 capped-profit restructuring + 1B MSFT investment
2. 2023 Microsoft expansion / reported 75%-then-49% economics
3. 2024/2025 PBC restructuring
AFAIK it has not been reported as to exactly what the jury found, but IIUC the 2019 date is consistent with their findings.
That's poor for Musk, but it makes sense. He was arguing 2023. I think it is a valid argument.
But he had to know that 2019 was very much in play (and is likely the most logically consistent).
This is very squishy law.
This is what he Grok hopes to become, but probably too late
Fifth place is fine, when the numbers and power in question are that large.
And how much worse things would be if that had come to pass?
why would he run Anthropic?
As I understand it, Anthropic exists in part as a quirk of how Dario Amodei's experience at OpenAI went. In the world where Musk controls OpenAI, I don't think you can assume Anthropic splinters off the same way (for overdetermined reasons! I'm not saying Musk is a better manager.)
Hmm, my understanding is that Dario split over insufficient focus on safety at OpenAI (which, admittedly, could just be the PR-friendly reason) -- something that Elon is also clearly not big on.
Safety not only seems to be an anti-priority at xAI given what we've seen come out of it, even at OpenAI Elon seemed not that concerned with safety, leading to that entertaining incident with a "golden jackass" trophy: https://xcancel.com/abc7newsbayarea/status/20546984193823543...
Almost certainly Dario would still have split from under Elon too, but also very likely that Elon would have immediately thrown a barrage of IP / NDA / trade secret / non-compete violation lawsuits to cripple Anthropic and keep it from reaching the frontier.
1 reply →
You speak as if Elon Musk didn't buy tons of AI chips for full self driving (Dojo) and COMPLETELY flub it.
It's the same as always. Musk himself is an awful business man. He relies upon buying the success of others and taking over. Outside of that, he's kind of awful. Initiatives started by Musk himself almost inevitably fail.
Tesla wasn't "successful" before he "took it over" (read: invested most of their seed capital and ran the actual day-to-day operations).
SpaceX, founded entirely by him alone, is also the most valuable space technology company on earth, so...
Well sure. But that's not AI chips or FSD. The subject of this whole topic.
Within this realm of AI, Musk has constantly invested and failed. Dojo, xAI, Grok. His newest idea is leveraging SpaceX money to put data centers in Space.
Good luck with that.
4 replies →
10 years returns S&P 500 (index of all those better than Musk): 261% Tesla: 2700%
Disclaimer: My portfolio is 65% Tesla.
GME also beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. Is this evidence that Ryan Cohen is a business genius?
Tesla has been a meme stock for about five years now, maybe more. Its valuation correlates with Musk's abilities as a showman and media figure, not a businessman.
4 replies →
I'd argue that Tesla's stock price is more about con artist acumen than business acumen.
TSLA currently has a P/E of ~375. That's extremely overvalued. There's no possible objective reason for TSLA to have such an extreme ratio. Even if you think Robotaxi is going to be a massive success, it would have to completely devour Lyft, Uber, and traditional taxi services all combined to even get half way to justifying that P/E, and considering the already major distrust in Tesla's FSD, I just don't see that happening.
The math doesn't math. People buy TSLA because they want to be part of Elon's cult, not because of anything to do with Tesla as a company.
1 reply →
So you are personally invested in this and openly admit to it. And yet expect me to take a discussion with you seriously?
Normally the way this works, is you excuse yourself away from a debate for being too financially involved in the situation, knowing that your financial bias is too overwhelming.
2 replies →
I absolute abhor the man but I think this is silly. No doubt that he has had luck and help, but he is still a good businessman. He's certainly an asshole (almost certainly dark triad territory), but I think that can be a benefit when creating a business.
It isn't helping him in this fight vs Sam Altman, AI investments or the like.