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xAI joins SpaceX

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Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#931

Post by _fat_santa »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #867
senko wrote: post #120

As a SpaceX fan, I am saddened by this news. The only reason for xAI to join SpaceX is to offload Elon's Twitter debt in the upcoming IPO.

The Twitter debt is not that big in the grand scheme of things. Twitter has been absorbed into his AI company some time ago. SpaceX is a big business. And despite the decline, Tesla is also still a big business. Both generate quite a few billions in revenue. The staggering amount of money Elon Musk raised for doing AI stuff is quite a bit more than what he ever expended on the Twitter value implosion. I think we can…

> X.ai is controversial mainly because of Musk.

I would argue that they have earned their own controversy independent of Musk with all the shenanigans they pulled building out their data centers, namely their illegal use of gas turbines to power the whole thing.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#932

Post by thrtythreeforty »

overfeed wrote: post #723
rainsford wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also shouldn't overlook the fact that the proposal entirely glosses over the implication of the alternative benefits we might realize if humanity achieved the incredible engineering and technical capacity necessary to make this version of space AI happen. Think about it. Elon conjures up a vision of the future where we've managed to increase our solar cell manufacturing capacity by two whole orders of magnitude an…

> But being able to pull if off implies an ability to do a lot more interesting things. Those interesting things won't pump up the perceived value of Musk companies to stratospheric levels - or dare I say - to the moon. He needs the public to believe that to earn the trillion-dollar package from the Tesla-Twitter-SpaceX conglomerate, even if the latter turns out to be the only profitable arm of the conglomerate.

"TwitslaX"

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#933

Post by AlexC04 »

qaq wrote: post #241
SimianSci wrote: post #113

The Goalpost shift continues, If elon were working for me, I would have fired him for having never delivered on any of his projects. Hyperloop > Neuralink > Self-Driving Cars > Robotaxi fleets > Personal Robots > Orbital Datacenters > [Insert next]

hmm Tesla shipped millions of cars SpaceX launches 90% of space payloads, Starlink is working well. Thats hard to categorize as never delivered on any of his projects

According to google Tesla has shipped 8 million cars total since inception. It is valued at 1.32 Trillion as of today. Which is roughly $165,000 per shipped vehicle.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#934

Post by perlgeek »

rybosworld wrote: post #70

> The basic math is that launching a million tons per year of satellites generating 100 kW of compute power per ton would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs. Ultimately, there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth. > My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space. This is so obviously false. Fo…

Another aspect: GPUs depreciate very fast. There's not much use case for building GPU satellites and expect them to last for 10-20 years.

So let's say you expect them to do useful work for you for maybe 2 or 3 years? You have to amortize the launch cost and the build-it-for-space premium in a relatively short time frame. And then what? Reentry? With all the pollution that comes with it?

Also, what orbit do you use? Low-earth orbit is already getting pretty full, with starlink and similar constellations taking up quite some space and increasing collision risk. The higher you go, the more your launch costs go up, and the higher your latency. In higher orbits, atmospheric drag doesn't de-orbit failed satellites quickly, increasing risk of Kessler syndrome.

All in all, I don't buy it.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#935

Post by pie_flavor »

_fat_santa wrote: post #931
jillesvangurp wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter debt is not that big in the grand scheme of things. Twitter has been absorbed into his AI company some time ago. SpaceX is a big business. And despite the decline, Tesla is also still a big business. Both generate quite a few billions in revenue. The staggering amount of money Elon Musk raised for doing AI stuff is quite a bit more than what he ever expended on the Twitter value implosion. I think we can…

> X.ai is controversial mainly because of Musk. I would argue that they have earned their own controversy independent of Musk with all the shenanigans they pulled building out their data centers, namely their illegal use of gas turbines to power the whole thing.

If by illegal you mean a spelled-out loophole that the EPA only decided they didn't like in retrospect. Businesses are run by people that think this is a level of forward-thinking-ness that they aspire to, not something to be avoided. (Source: my own CEO.)

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#936

Post by UltraSane »

andruby wrote: post #805
bgnn wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is, Elon has SpaceX and xAI. He can create an illusion of synergy and orders of magnitude advancements to boost the market cap and pocket all the money. He realized long time ago you don't need to deliver to play the market cap game, in fact it's better if you are selling a story far in the future rather than a something you can deliver now.

exactly. This smells like a way to boost the SpaceX IPO to meme-stock premiums

That seems to be exactly what the goal is.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#937

Post by perlgeek »

gcanyon wrote: post #903

> orbital data centers I'm not a rocket scientist, but how do they plan to dispose of all the waste heat? The ISS carefully maintains its temperature, and it's not running racks-full of servers. edit to add: this guy, who is a rocket scientist, explains exactly why it's a terrible idea, and yes, heat management is one reason. https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...

They don't. It's a con / financial engineering, to hide the losses from Twitter.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#938

Post by UltraSane »

dartharva wrote: post #874
bgnn wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is, Elon has SpaceX and xAI. He can create an illusion of synergy and orders of magnitude advancements to boost the market cap and pocket all the money. He realized long time ago you don't need to deliver to play the market cap game, in fact it's better if you are selling a story far in the future rather than a something you can deliver now.

What'd be the point of inflating market caps like this when it's obvious they'll crash the moment the owner tries to liquidate any of it before the promises are kept?

Rich people use stock as collateral for loans.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#939

Post by perlgeek »

chippiewill wrote: post #365
ohyoutravel wrote: post #171

I am concerned, and haven’t seen anyone else point this out yet, that Musk will move Grok’s CSAM generation capabilities to space to be beyond the reach of terrestrial policing. Does this create some sort of legal loophole here so Musk can do this with impunity?

Ground stations would be the major problem. Maybe if Elon launched himself and the dev team into orbit and didn't use any ground stations and just Starlink terminals he could start getting into legal loopholes.

At that point, country could just sanction the company, so that it's illegal for its citizens to pay them any money. Seems like a standard thing to do to a company that breaks laws and that you cannot otherwise reach.

Re: xAI joins SpaceX

#940

Post by jillesvangurp »

_fat_santa wrote: post #931
jillesvangurp wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter debt is not that big in the grand scheme of things. Twitter has been absorbed into his AI company some time ago. SpaceX is a big business. And despite the decline, Tesla is also still a big business. Both generate quite a few billions in revenue. The staggering amount of money Elon Musk raised for doing AI stuff is quite a bit more than what he ever expended on the Twitter value implosion. I think we can…

> X.ai is controversial mainly because of Musk. I would argue that they have earned their own controversy independent of Musk with all the shenanigans they pulled building out their data centers, namely their illegal use of gas turbines to power the whole thing.

That's part of the way he runs that business. Other AI data centers aren't necessarily a lot better; or at best just toeing the line of what is allowed rather than sticking their green energy commitments (or silently backing away from those).

I'm actually not that upset about AI data center energy usage. I see this as a short term and costly scaling measure with a minor impact (considering overall wasteful energy practices) that is an obvious target for large and rather obvious cost reductions the second this market gets profitable. The only reason that isn't happening from day 1 is all the red tape currently being put in place to actively slow down the demise of fossil fuel based generation.

Cost reductions here mean switching to a cleaner form of energy for the reason that that can be a lot cheaper than burning expensive gas in an expensive generator. Any large scale user of energy is going to be optimizing their energy opex if it saves them lot of money. If they survive long enough to matter, of course. If you are using energy by the tens/hundreds of gwh per year that is not going to be small amounts.

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