Grok 4 • Hacker News Board

Re: Grok 4

#291

Post by sitkack » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 12:56 AM UTC

SJMG wrote: post #264

rpdillon wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bit of an illusion here because gas prices take into account a tax for road maintenance, which EVs are currently avoiding. Eventually the system will have to catch up because road maintenance requires money.

While electric vehicles do cause more road wear, applying that tax to most consumer vehicles is the joke. Road wear is completely dominated by semi-trucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law The simplest method is to raise the HVUT, but we have so much data, we could assess miles driven * axel weight and charge a graduated fee based on that.

The WA state tabs on my Leaf which weighed less than Volvo station wagon were literally 4x higher because of EV taxes.

Re: Grok 4

#292

Post by czl » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 9:50 AM UTC

unshavedyak wrote: post #282

czl wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Months ago this model would have promoted Trump, but now it'll call Trump disastrous for the economy. There’s a well-known quote often attributed to economist John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

Yea but this example wasn't of the facts changing. It was of opinions changing. Musk had one opinion months ago, and a different one now. The bot explicitly searched twitter for the current opinions of someone with a history of less than stable actions (i'm trying to be generous for sake of neutrality) . This bot isn't at the whims of the corporate oversight or advertisements, or even direction of a CEO - the bot is…

This isn’t just about opinions randomly changing. Musk’s views seem to have shifted in response to changing facts -- like the passage of a major spending bill, whichtie directly into his concerns about government debt. So it's not surprising that his stance evolved over time.

The way the bot reflects his views is a bit awkward, I agree. I assume it’s something the Grok team will want to improve. One possible reason for the behavior is that if Twitter data was used during training, and Musk is a dominant voice there, the model may have learnedto rely heavily on his posts -- especially if that helped it predict or score better during training.

To Musk’s credit,he’s pushed for more transparency. That at least lets people see these odd behaviors and raise questions. With other models, like OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s, it’s harder to tell when something similar might be happening.

And while Musk definitely says someoff-the-wall things, his track record overall is hard to ignore-- whether one agrees with him or not.

Re: Grok 4

#293

Post by radium3d » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 6:16 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #194

Rebelgecko wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>their gas cost savings estimates are actually quite low compared to the real savings you will achieve I ran the numbers for myself and they literally weren't. They overestimated how many miles/yr I drove and underestimated how much I pay for electricity. There's plenty of other reasons to prefer EVs, but if you live somewhere with expensive electricity then fuel cost isn't one of them. In the sedan world you're like…

> but even small SUV are getting 30-40 mpg nowadays. The Pacific Northwest begs to differ. With all the hills in Seattle my subcompact 1.6L Turbo barely got 20MPG driving around like a grandma. Our electricity is cheap, but I drive less than 5000 miles a year so I'm not making the money back on my EV basically ever.

So you're an outlier who drives well below the average miles per year in the USA. Obviously this isn't going to work for every customer but it IS a conservative estimate for the average.

Re: Grok 4

#294

Post by radium3d » Sat, Jul 19, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #219

radium3d wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla focused its pricing on drivers of gasoline vehicles, and their gas cost savings estimates are actually quite low compared to the real savings you will achieve. It was annoying when you already drive an EV and are buying a Tesla though to have to uncheck the savings option to see the pre savings prices. They changed it now so by default it only includes the $7500 and no longer automatically checks the gas saving…

> Based on my experience I highly recommend everyone buy any EV if you drive an ICE vehicle. Even charging at DC fast chargers still saves money, but if you can charge at home, you are really missing out on savings big time and it's time to look seriously into it In the US this depends on where you live. There are several places where home electricity is expensive enough and gas is cheap enough that a hybrid is cheap…

I live in one of the most expensive areas (SoCal) and it's /still/ cheaper than gas.