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Re: xAI

#241

Post by simondotau »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #193
3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Tesla was launched to transition the world to sustainable energy (not that electric cars do that up close, but never mind). - SpaceX was launched to make us a multiplanetary species. - Twitter was bought to fight the woke mind virus that is destroying the world. - And now xAI will understand the Universe. One of the clear rules of PR for Musk is that whatever he says it must involve at least one whole planet, ideal…

- Tesla was launched to capture free regulatory credits and launder them to the top 3 ICE auto makers, eventually making a halfway decent EV along the way - SpaceX was founded to capture more free government money in the form of billion dollar NASA contracts / contracts with DOD for spy satellites / etc. - Twitter, Saudi money mostly - xAI ?????

– Tesla was launched prior to regulatory credits. The ICE makers, not Tesla, lobbied for the credits system. There's no evidence that these credits did anything other than give Tesla more capital to build factories faster, accelerating their trajectory from debt to profit. Tesla's current financial success is unprecedented low COGS and enviable automotive gross margins, directly as a result of good engineering (superbottle, octovalve, whole body castings, etc).

– Even if SpaceX existed to "capture free government money" the result which matters is US taxpayers saving tens of billions of dollars because of how much cheaper SpaceX was compared to all alternatives. SpaceX has also cut off billions of dollars of US taxpayer money getting exfiltrated to Russia, whether directly (e.g. access to ISS) or indirectly (e.g. ULA buying RD-180 engines).

– Or maybe facts exist

– What's there to get? Like anyone else, Elon has opinions and some amount of money. They're not necessarily your opinions or your amount of money. But the principle remains the same.

Re: xAI

#242

Post by simondotau »

jjaken wrote: post #219
stillsut wrote: post #128

> The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe. People are misinterpreting this as the research goal. No, it's an implicit negation of an ethos - AI Ethics, Trust & Safety, ESG, Politically Correct - that have dominated decision making in product and hiring in tech for the past decade. Whether or not you agree with him, it's hard to deny that Musk is the only one offering researchers an escape fro…

Does Musk still attract A+ pedigree? I wouldn’t be caught dead working for someone so tech illiterate.

Do you have a specific example? I know there were certainly a number of enterprise high-availability types who expressed scorn for Elon's move-fast-and-break-things approach to tearing away at the bloat of Twitter (both technical and corporate). Personally my observations of his handling of Twitter has made me more impressed at his tech literacy, not less.

I don't know a single person on earth who can speak on the full gamut of "tech" topics without revealing themselves "illiterate" on at least some of them. I've no doubt Musk is not some singular exception to this rule.

Re: xAI

#243

Post by saagarjha »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #103
saagarjha wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting flamebait and then editing your post to goad people into downvoting it for being flamebait so you can cry about Hacker News trying to silence you is intellectually dishonest.

I was downvoted first, and then edited it. Way I see it, what I responded to is flamebait, and what I said it common sense. I think it says a lot you're trying to spin it the other way around. No, no one wants to get his comment downvoted and cry about it. That's an assinine misrepresentation. But what could I expect from the permanently offended brigade.

Seems pretty familiar to me. First you post something that you want to say and hope people agree with it. They don't, so you then put something on the end like "the woke liberals disagree with this". Obviously this just makes everyone upset, both the actual woke liberals and people who are not woke liberals but don't care for this kind of drivel, and they downvote you even harder. Then you can point at your comment and now go "I was going to speak something profound but the woke liberals brigaded it. Obviously it would be upvoted if they didn't come here and target me!"

Re: xAI

#244

Post by simondotau »

jeremyjh wrote: post #220
naasking wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where this downward spiral is happening. Sure, Twitter doesn't look to be doing so well. Is one data point sufficient for this spiral?

Full Self Driving?

Anyone thinking that FSD is evidence of a "downward spiral" isn't paying attention. There's plenty of objective evidence about the state of FSD and while I'm sure there can be broad disagreement about how far from "done" it is, there's no doubt it's trending in the right direction.

Re: xAI

#245

Post by jeremyjh »

simondotau wrote: post #244
jeremyjh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full Self Driving?

Anyone thinking that FSD is evidence of a "downward spiral" isn't paying attention. There's plenty of objective evidence about the state of FSD and while I'm sure there can be broad disagreement about how far from "done" it is, there's no doubt it's trending in the right direction.

Is that why they've stopped publicly reporting disengagement data and stopped seeking certification in California?

Re: xAI

#247

Post by madbkarim »

numbers_guy wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who wants to bet it's going to end up launching a "me too" generative AI product. You mean after Musk explicitly, piblicly said that’s what he was going to do, and make it anti-woke as its main differentiating feature? Pretty good bet.

[flagged]

> almost every study is deemed too controversial for ChatGPT

Mind to share some of the studies?

Re: xAI

#248

Post by simondotau »

skilled wrote: post #2

If only Elon hadn't splurged the 40+ billion on Twitter, he could've been stacked with H100's right about now.

Perhaps, though if Tesla's Dojo project proves successful, they wouldn't really have much need for H100s.

Re: xAI

#249

Post by simondotau »

chasing wrote: post #174
jchw wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure why this stands out to so many people. I believe the percentage of programmers who are women is something like 5-8%. Even being kind of generous, out of 12 people that would still not make an entire person. Demographics might differ for AI researchers or other STEM fields adjacent but in general it seems odd to be surprised when it's literally how things have been for at least decades. Not saying this…

Every report I see indicates that ~20-25% of software engineers in the US are women. For example: https://www.celential.ai/blog/percentage-of-female-software-... https://www.zippia.com/software-engineer-jobs/demographics/ Provide other data if you think that's wrong.

This is true for employees in mainstream careers. Unfortunately it seems to not hold when looking at major open source projects, where gender diversity is routinely below 10% female. The picture gets even worse when proportioning representation by the quantity of changes/commits, where female representation is well below that.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.08763.pdf

Re: xAI

#250

Post by simondotau »

jeremyjh wrote: post #245
simondotau wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone thinking that FSD is evidence of a "downward spiral" isn't paying attention. There's plenty of objective evidence about the state of FSD and while I'm sure there can be broad disagreement about how far from "done" it is, there's no doubt it's trending in the right direction.

Is that why they've stopped publicly reporting disengagement data and stopped seeking certification in California?

Sure, you can guess at motives behind two among countless thousands of business decisions. Or you can observe progress of the FSD Beta software released to customers.
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