Comment by CobrastanJorji
7 hours ago
Another tactical move is to just stop. You're allowed to exit the AI business. Nobody's forcing you to keep throwing money into the furnace. Just be a rocket company. All of the xAI founders left. Your product's brand name is mud. Just stop doing that and build spaceships.
You misunderstand Musk's motivation. This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology. One of the main reasons he exited OpenAI was the fact that the other co-founders wanted to create a structure where no one, Musk included, would be able to seize full control of the company. That was the thing that prompted him to leave, which tells you a lot about what he really wanted in the first place.
But he also falsely assumed that OAI would die without his money. Yet, they managed to pull through, and Musk is now on the outside looking in with very little influence in the AI space. xAI is his desperate attempt to get back into the game. That is why he won't give up.
> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology.
I think he just wanted to have a sci-fi future, and because many other people think similarly he has tapped into that shared desire and has been succeeding.
Looking at things from the other side, musk is good at making physical things, where other companies are weak.
Grok in a tesla car is actually well integrated and kind of nice. You can ask the car about things to do, and it will drive you there.
> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology
That's too flattering. It's about ego.
Agreed - if you read any Elon books that’s a part of it. He always had someone to prove himself to from his dad to the world. It’s almost Michael Jordanesque except business wise.
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I’m a big fan of Musk. One of the few criticisms I have is how xAI is also inconsistent with original OpenAI mission. I had imagined xAI as en effort to correct and fully embody all original values of OpenAI and that Elon says they betrayed. That makes his criticism weaker and I understand why some can think it was all about control. In his words:
"I'm the reason OpenAl exists. I came up with the name. The name OpenAl refers to open source... The intent was - what was the opposite of Google? It would be an open source non-profit."
I sometimes feel xAI wants to live up to those open values so I always celebrate when they decide to engage in open source. They still don’t fully embrace it. Perhaps because they think is not practical or will make them less competitive?
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Doesn't saltman effectively have full control of the company?
no
He needs to be able to skew the worlds AI towards racism and whatever else he believes at the moment.
What happened to the rule about steelmanning? I know it's chic to post super hot takes about what we assume a persons intentions are, and I know there are plenty of "if you can't see how bad they are you're the problem" type justifications; I know the supposed goal of empathy is tossed aside at first hint of disagreement whether real or perceived, and I know there is "evidence" of justification for hatred/dismissal. Yet still there is self-righteous presumption bandied about in a negative way that violates that steelman rule. Justified of course by the idea that there are no negotiations with terrorists, no association with Nazis, no forgiveness or understanding given to the Other.
I just don't get it, I'm sorry.
What rule about steelmanning? We’re commenting online, not writing peer reviewed research.
And yeah, some people lose the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but actions have consequences.
Elon doesn’t just get to kill hundreds of thousands of poor people by eliminating USAID and expect everyone to treat him the same way.
He’s made enemies for life, and he deserves it.
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> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology
It's very comforting to know for those reasons he'd never be able to become POTUS; although there's still a way, I hope he never gets to know about it. Otherwise, he'll make it a fascist land.
It is my limited understanding that as much as many of us groan at the notion of Spacex becoming "an AI-first company", markets in general, and Musk investors in particular, are slurping it up. Musk is very very very good at promising the sky. I don't think he can backtrack, he always digs in further - and it has historically worked well for him. He will drop AI only when the next big hype thing comes along and he hitches a ride on that train.
I don’t know, I wouldnt be suprised if he finds a way. All the tools around, he just have to make a jump in the quality. With GLM as example they should be able to het to opus level and cut the costs
This is what a normal company might say.
xAI is not a company, it’s a financial instrument. The growth potential as perceived by investors is there to prop up the stock price.
The stock market would not like that, though.
Does he even need to care about that at this point? He retains majority voting control over SpaceX so nobody can stage a hostile takeover. And he’s given his employees an opportunity to cash out if they wanted to.
He hasn't needed to worry about money for a long long time. Arguably his entire life. But he is incredibly greedy and narcissistic and desperate to fill the hole in his soul with more.
> You're allowed to exit the AI business.
Isn’t it more fun to fight the incumbents, the behemoths, the goliaths?
Elon is the richest (and by extension most powerful) person in the world. How is he the scrappy underdog in any context?
xAI is no David.
Relative to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the AI space? Absolutely.
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A $2,500,000,000,000.00 startup. An underdog really.
> Your product's brand name is mud.
It is?
Yes, to the average person grok is known for generating csam, mechahitler, and undressing people for sexual harassment.
And to tech people it’s now known for stealing your files.
Reddit is not “the average person”
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As a social media site they need to understand content for recommendations and they allow people to ask questions about posts for free. Along with having a large amount of data that can be trained on xAI has good reason to continue developing AI.
Twitter (and others) had an algorithmic feed long before LLMs.
These don't actually seem like "good reasons" to me.
Before using large language models, they used language models. Large language models perform better, at the cost of being more expensive to run.
They bought a lot of GPUs. They could still do these things on that hardware with someone else's model.
They could use other people's models running on their hardware while renting most of the existing capacity to others. The real issue is that their leadership is delusional and their stock is literally based on this shared delusion and acknowledging reality would gut their ability to raise new funds and destroy paper wealth based on delusional returns that are never going to happen.
But how will Musk stay a trillionaire without fake AI hype?
> Just be a rocket company
According to SpaceX's own filing documents, you are incorrect. They must be principally an AI company to justify anything close to their current valuation.
The rocket business is hardly profitable. The whole valuation is based around grok and space datacenters. He needs to keep pumping the hype or else we are in for the worlds biggest crash.
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Renting his boatload of GPUs to Google, Anthropic, et al
He doesn't have _that_ many. And they're also not _his_, he just got them from NVidia.
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>just stop.
Thats not how AI psychosis works.
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LLMs have nothing to do with any of that.
And if they did, you still don't need to be developing a Twitter-bot LLM and/or nudify image model to support your rocketry projects.
Your name is fantastic for AI conversations. Well done.
Ironic username.
Ah yes, rockets, famously invented in late 2024 after LLMs became popular.
Life sure changed when Elon invented the PID controller!
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Musk bought Twitter looking to build an “everything app,” the western WeChat. AI came along and promised an end to apps via an agentic OS that does what its user wants and vibes whatever it needs to accomplish that as it goes along. The agentic OS is basically the same thing as the “everything app,” and I doubt Musk will let go of that.
> Musk bought Twitter looking to build an “everything app,”
I thought it was mostly on a whim that turned out to be binding, and the 'everything app' plan came later?
> Musk bought Twitter looking to build an “everything app,”
Part of me thinks he knows he lying and is just trying to drum up money and the other part thinks he's one of the most delusional and uninformed people in tech.
He’s a fast-talking dingbat.
That is probably the best solution too!
That would be a strategic move.