6 ms·
I don't understand how and why Grok would be related to "understanding the nature of the universe", as Musk puts it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they ba
by lionkor 2y ago
I don't understand how and why Grok would be related to "understanding the nature of the universe", as Musk puts it. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they basically just burned more cash than any human should have to buy Nvidia GPUs and make them predict natural language, right? So, they are somewhat on-par with all the other companies that did the same.
This is not innovation, this is baseless hype over a mediocre technology. I use AI every day, so it's not like I don't see its uses, it's just not that big of a deal.
- 7bit 2y ago[flagged]
- crocowhile 2y agoYou must be new to Elon's modus operandi.
- kubb 2y agoYou don’t understand the Musk business model. It has been the same for years. His wealth doesn’t come from his products, but from his fanbase buying his stock. The purpose of everything he does is to influence the public opinion to make him the tech genius of today in the collective psyche. Of course, he needs to do impressive things, stuff that a normal person wouldn’t have the resources to achieve. It’s similar to Mr. Beast’s channel on YouTube, just on a way bigger scale. Do things that people can’t see anywhere else. Musk’s money will come from his fans. And ETFs, trust funds and such will amplify this when he reaches a certain market cap. His crypto coins are the exact same scheme. Once you stop thinking in classic business school terms, it starts making way more sense. Some of his ventures actually produce value! But that’s not where the money comes from. It comes from the belief, the adoration and the celebrity status that he has. This is the real power in today’s world. People need to know you from the screen. This clout catapulted him to the government of the US, made him the most wealthy man in the world and given him the license to do anything he wants publicly without repercussions.
- rvnx 2y agoThere is an exception: Tesla FSD (the US version, not the horrible EU version) this is rather cool and impressive, and unbeaten in the market for now. Though free and open-source solutions are not that bad like https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo https://github.com/ApolloAuto/apollo But the build quality of a Tesla car itself, omg. It feels like a carton box with an amazing battery.
- kubb 2y agoSee my other comment. Some of his ventures do produce value. That’s not where the money comes from.
- l33tc0de 2y ago[flagged]
- boxed 2y ago> His profits don’t come from his products, but from his fanbase buying his stock. SpaceX is private, Starlink makes real money from real users. > Everything he does is done to influence the public opinion to make him the tech genius of today in the collective psyche. Well that's clearly not right. He's doing a lot of things to make himself seem like a total tool that we should all boycott no matter how good the products are. If he actually did what you say, he wouldn't be burning all these bridges.
- kubb 2y agoThe bulk of his wealth is the Tesla stock. I know that SpaceX produces value. Some of his ventures do. But the image of a genius entrepreneur is way more valuable than any government contract he might get. Remember he was way less crazy before his market cap skyrocketed. Now he can afford being polarizing as a PR strategy once his fanbase has reached a certain critical mass. He’s been constantly testing what works.
- sebzim4500 2y ago
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoThere are two answers to this. Answer 1: Some people think that LLMs are a path to the singularity, a self-improving intelligent program that will vastly exceed human intelligence and will be able to increase its knowledge exponentially, quickly answering all answerable scientific questions. Answer 2: LLM companies need to keep the hype train rolling. I didn't watch the whole clip; I jumped around a bit, but I noticed that every time Musk interjected something, it was to exaggerate what was previously said. "Grok contains the whole internet"—"the whole of human knowledge, actually!" I think that both answer 1 and answer 2 apply to Musk. He seems to believe that they're building a god-like entity, and he also needs to keep the money train rolling.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Lutger 2y agoThere's a more short-term goal for Grok, which is to replace what is left of the federal government with AI. That will significantly boost the money train, but is also a utopian (for some, dystopian for others) goal of replacing the expensive 'deep state' with a slim set of impartial algorithms.
- lionkor 2y agoGlad I don't live in the US, that sounds like a miserable idea.
- widdershins 2y agoLLMs don't seem to be very impartial so far. Quite the opposite in fact, they're entirely beholden to the prejudices of their trainers.
- sebzim4500 2y agoThankfully grok does not seem to have the bias the Elon promised on twitter.
- 2y ago
- Davidzheng 2y agoIt's cringe but not so much more than deepmind's OG "solve intelligence then use it to solve everything else"
- butifnot0701 2y agoI feel like that's part of what Elon is flexing. Teslabot was late comer compared to competitors like BD. Elon is showing off he can marshal enough resources and talents to be on par (kinda) with state of the art products in crazy time. That's been most of his superpower so far - not breakthrough tech that didnt exist before. We've had rockets before.
- mjamesaustin 2y agoI don't like Elon either, but not only has SpaceX created breakthrough tech that didn't exist by landing an orbital class rocket, as of today still nobody else has done it. Landing a rocket was considered impossible and unthinkable 10 years ago, and then SpaceX completely changed the game. And they're reinventing rocket tech again with Starship by catching it midair.
- jprd 2y agoWe can all thank Gwynne Shotwell for this though.
- melodyogonna 2y agoGwynee Shotwell works for Elon Musk.
- everfrustrated 2y agoHave you listened to her interviews? You can find some on YouTube. I'm sure she has been very helpful in navigating the US govt/NASA bureaucracy and winning SpaceX deals, but she's clearly not a visionary.
- GoatInGrey 2y agoIt still blows my mind that nobody has meaningfully replicated the Falcon 9 after thirteen years of it flying commercially.
- TFYS 2y agoThe number of people that have the capital and connections required to even attempt such things is very small, so it's not necessarily Musk's abilities that made those things happen, just the combination of having the power to allocate enough resources and an interest in such things.
- DHolzer 2y agoI work in AI and love the technology. But all the hype and grandiose claims make it awkward when people ask what I do, and it makes hiring harder when experienced developers hear 'AI development' and walk away - even though it's mostly just solid full-stack engineering work.
- lionkor 2y agoI am always looking for roles, and I have pretty good full stack experience (a few years of C++, C#, some JS, TS, backend and frontend web, C, Zig, Rust, built a few hobby compilers and other stuff). I apply to pretty much every job that sounds reasonably good in terms of work-life balance, but I completely ignore anything that says AI. I really, really, really do not want to be part of a company that lies to itself, and so far all AI companies look like they are. It's not AGI. It's not gonna be AGI. Ride the hype train, cash out and lay off 80% of the workforce and jump on the next hype train, whatever. But don't hope that people who want a stable job want to hop on something that delivers such a shaky definition of value.
- stuartjohnson12 2y agoEven if you're an AI-skeptic, it's hard to argue that companies building AI customer support for example aren't en route to improving the whole "calling your ISP's team in India" experience.
- lionkor 2y agoAbsolutely, but that doesn't seem to be most companies I see
- croes 2y agoMusk promises revolution and sells evolution. Promises FSD, sells EVs. Promises Mars colony, sells self landing rockets and sattelite internet. Promises faster tunnel boring, sells smaller tunnel boring machine that drills smaller tunnels. Promises less corruption and bureaucracy, just fires people.
- glimshe 2y agoOverpromising and underdelivering are the cornerstones of advertising/marketing/sales. "Use this deodorant and a gorgeous woman will want you". Do you know why people do it? Because it works.
- croes 2y agoThat's great for a startup, but bad for nuclear weapons and financial data.
- starspangled 2y agoIn fact governments are among the worst offenders I can think of in over promising and under delivering. And that's not just Trump's government either, how's this whopper? https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/06/12/joe-biden-cure-cancer-campaign-richmond-bolduan-sot-ath-vpx.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/06/12/joe-biden...
- awongh 2y agoI absolutely hate the Elon hypetrain, but I also don't understand the social media hate I see for AI, like comparing every ChatGPT answer to one wasted bottle of water. Can we stop for a second and just marvel at a new piece of human ingenuity? Let's not give Elon too much credit, but I think that AI as a whole helps us all understand the nature of intelligence, and therefore humans' place in the universe. One of the fundamental questions of human existence is: what does it mean to exist and think? Every time we build a new human-like thing it helps us understand the context of our own existence. (Not just computers or AI, but also airplanes, factories, etc.) True AGI would force us to rethink what it means to be a thinking human being, and I think current LLMs already should and do.
- lionkor 2y agoLLMs don't make me question what we know about humans and thinking. They are really good at convincing us that they're good, but really, that's other humans building stuff to convince us that it's good. There is no intelligence here, other than the perceived intelligence of predicting words intelligent people have written previously.
- psytrancefan 2y agoIt does make me question humans and thinking but in the opposite direction. It is like sitting down at a piano, sight reading a piece from sheet music and then someone who has no idea what they are talking about claiming you composed the music on the fly. Then when you point out the sheet music they just double down on some bullshit as to why they are still right and that is still composing even though obviously it is not.
- ngneer 2y agoBest analogy so far. I am adopting this for the next wave of "wait until the next model" and "but humans hallucinate, too" comments. Yes, when we feed back our own output (language on the web) into ourselves, things become tricky to tease apart, and it would seem like intelligence to us. Then again, the mechanical turk appears intelligent, too. If we point out how it works, then the "magic" should vanish.
- torlok 2y agoIs this the first time you're hearing Elon Musk speak? His entire public presence consists of stuttering out vapid stentences like these.
- psytrancefan 2y ago[flagged]
- KTibow 2y agoIt's not much better than DeepSeek's old slogan "Unravel the mystery of AGI with curiosity. Answer the essential question with long-termism."