Elon Musk Takes a Fatalistic View Toward AI (youtube.com) 199
Elon Musk sat down with California comedian Joe Rogan on Thursday evening for a 2 1/2-hour podcast [YouTube video] that touched upon everything from flamethrowers and artificial intelligence to the end of the universe. Talking about AI, a subject Musk has long been very vocal about, he said artificial intelligence could turn out to be terrible or it could end up being great, but one thing that is certain is that it will be beyond human's control. From a report: "You kind of have to be optimistic about the future. There's no point in being pessimistic," said the head of Tesla and SpaceX. "I rather be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right. [...] It's not necessarily bad, but it's going to be outside of human control. It's going to be very tempting to use AI as a weapon, said Musk. "It will be used as a weapon. The on ramp to serious AI will be more humans using it against eachother. That will be the danger."
Musk says he has tried to convince people to slow down where AI is concerned and regulate it, but nobody listened. "The way that regulation works is slow. Usually there will be some new technology that will cause damage or death, there will be an outcry, there will be an investigation," said the Tesla CEO. "Years will pass, there will be some insight committee, then rule making and oversight and eventually regulations. This all takes many years. This is the normal course of things." Musk used the example that it took ten years for seatbelts to become required, even though the number of deaths were obvious. He says this time frame doesn't work for AI. "We can't wait ten years to the point where something is dangerous to do something about AI. It will be too late," said Musk.
Musk says he has tried to convince people to slow down where AI is concerned and regulate it, but nobody listened. "The way that regulation works is slow. Usually there will be some new technology that will cause damage or death, there will be an outcry, there will be an investigation," said the Tesla CEO. "Years will pass, there will be some insight committee, then rule making and oversight and eventually regulations. This all takes many years. This is the normal course of things." Musk used the example that it took ten years for seatbelts to become required, even though the number of deaths were obvious. He says this time frame doesn't work for AI. "We can't wait ten years to the point where something is dangerous to do something about AI. It will be too late," said Musk.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Alternative headline: Joker and Joe Rogan sit down for cerebral masturbation.
Quite seriously, don't get me wrong, but wake me when we ever come up with something we call AI that deserves the name. Just because we know what intelligence is doesn't mean we have any idea how to do it.
Everyone knows what a saxophone is. If someone points at a saxophone, you'll be able to say that yes, this is a saxophone. But tasked with drawing one, completely, with all the valves and holes and everything in place, usually it
Re: So? (Score:1)
This is the most misguided thing I've ever heard as you've excluded the one thing needed to identify a saxophone, someone telling you it's called a saxophone in the first place. That's what the "learning" part of AI is, teaching it what to look for and what it's called in the communication verbiage of the user. Musk maybe wrong about apocalyptic doom of AI, but he is right about legislation dragging their feet until it's too late. Hell, we're still trying to get internet regulations right and we're heading
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No, because the concept of learning within the confines of AI isn't really "learning". This is the fundamental problem, it's been sold as being an agent of learning but binary is finite and that finite limit prevents us from creating true AI.
Organics and biology may have similar limits but its scope does allow for Human Intelligence. And I would wager that 1's and 0's on a microchip will never compare to what millions of years of evolution I.E recoding and reprogramming to produce the concept of intelligenc
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You haven't heard of botnets I take it?
They may not be true AI, but they are a problem, and they're beyond regulating.
Now take that and make it a AI bot network. Now we're fucked as bandwidth is consumed and the internet literately drowns under the AI taking over every machine with ANY trivial exploit. It will make Spectre and Meltdown look like serious nightmare fuel. Fortunately most botnets are rooted in simply hijacking systems for cryptomining or ransomware rather than anything productive.
But I kid you
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Not only are botnets not true AI, they’re not any kind of AI whatsoever. Unrelated topic.
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The piece you're missing is that whatever ends up being called "AI", it does not have to be the kind of AI YOU envision in order to do a right proper job of causing havoc.
It can be "dumb AI" and still have large impacts on society.
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
wake me when we ever come up with something we call AI that deserves the name
I think the point is that it will be too late to debate strong AI once strong AI exists. This is not like other technologies that we invent and then get to debate the social consequences over next several decades. No one may be around to wake you up. . .
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Our problem is that nobody has built intelligence yet (..)
Depends on your definition of intelligence. Personally I tend towards "problem solving ability", and in that sense a Pac-Man ghost moving the other way to avoid you after you've picked up a power pill, is essentially no different from you ducking down to avoid an object thrown at you. So in that sense, AI has been with us ever since we've built 'thinking' machines that have some problem-solving ability.
Does it matter whether it's grey cells, a pre-programmed rule set, or some complex type of pa
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We don't. There's no even a definition of one which everyone agrees with. We are as close to real AI (which is now called AGI because AI is all the hype nowadays and no one wants to admit that the AI that we have is just stupid algos) as we were 40 years ago.
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And so far, we failed miserably at it.
We have failed so hard that computers are beating humans at thinking games.
We have failed so hard that computers are beating humans at games that require natural language.
We have failed so hard that computers are beating us at finding bugs in classic computer games to beat them in record time.
We have failed so hard that computers are often outsmarting the humans that set rules for them when they attempt to force a certain outcome through machine learning.
We need to keep failing better and harder.
Not all that complex a problem. (Score:2)
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AI will not destroy humanity as predicted by musk (Score:2)
and other notable "influencers", because AI will be too busy fighting the "Grey Goo" predicted by Bill Joy and other notable "Influences"
Elon Musk is a nutjob (Score:3, Informative)
But he's a billionaire so it's called "eccentric". Sort of like Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud.
And smoked pot (Score:5, Interesting)
But he's a billionaire so it's called "eccentric". Sort of like Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud.
And he apparently smoked pot during the interview...
The newswires are all ablaze right now about Musk smoking pot in public(*), noting that the stock is down 5% in pre-market trading, and sure enough the stock is down 16 points today.
I admit that seems pretty stupid on his part.
(*) Which is apparently legal in the time and place where he did it, but still...
Re:And smoked pot (Score:5, Informative)
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Not likely, though Musk may lose his security clearance (if he actually has one) which will make it hard for him to manage those government contracts for the super secret stuff they launch.
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There’s also the complication that marijuana remains illegal federally.
Put down the bong before you read the Internet, your comprehension is MUCH better...
Re:And smoked pot (Score:5, Interesting)
But he's a billionaire so it's called "eccentric". Sort of like Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud.
And he apparently smoked pot during the interview...
The newswires are all ablaze right now about Musk smoking pot in public(*), noting that the stock is down 5% in pre-market trading, and sure enough the stock is down 16 points today.
I admit that seems pretty stupid on his part.
(*) Which is apparently legal in the time and place where he did it, but still...
The stock is really down because a CxO left after a month on the job, but the media seems to be playing it up like the weed smoking caused it.
Re:And smoked pot (Score:4, Interesting)
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And he apparently smoked pot during the interview...
You mean took a whiff of a joint and the world blew it out of proportion? Yeah burn him. How dare he. Sell your stock. Return your cars. He's not the hero we deserve!
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Yes and that seemed to be all that the good old news media cared about, clickbait headlines. It is a bit sad I think.
eccentric (Score:1)
That hasn't much to do with it. (Score:1)
The new CFO suddenly leaving was the real news. His statement as to why he was leaving was your typical not-wanting-to-burn-bridges-but-I-need-to-get-the-fuck-out-of-here public statement.
I've seen the financials, and just what's been released publicly would scare the shit out of me if I were the CFO. I can only imagine what the internal books look like.
*Yes, companies BS the SEC ALL the time. They don't have the resources to investigate the tens of thousands of public companies.
**Auditor statements are g
Re:eccentric (Score:4, Insightful)
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Read "Armada" by Ernest Cline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ever seen that famous Apple commercial [youtube.com] about the misfits, the rebels, the round pegs in the square holes? If you haven't: be sure to watch until its conclusion.
I admire Elon Musk greatly, because he IS one of these people. While the world at large thought "electric cars will arrive some day", and 1 or 2 car manufacturers had some concept cars out, Musk was busy gathering a team and push the envelope. And big name car manufacturers were forced to put their models out left & right, but years
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How are the two related? One is a fraudster whose business failed after the fraud was exposed and is currently facing legal action. The other is a billionaire because he successfully started and ran and continues to run multiple companies.
He's called eccentric because the english language has a lot of finesse and he fits the definition of being eccentric. Nothing he has done would qualify for the definition of nut job a term that is typically reserved for people who are no longer functioning normally and a
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How are the two related? One is a fraudster whose business failed after the fraud was exposed and is currently facing legal action. The other is a billionaire because he successfully started and ran and continues to run multiple companies.
It says a lot that it's not immediately obvious to which you refer at any point in that sentence.
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Actually it says a lot that you compare the two.
Slow down? (Score:1)
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You can regard T1 as a causal loop rather than a many worlds interpretation. The terminator inadvertently ensured its own existence by leaving behind its broken remains. John O'Connor inadvertently ensured his own existence by sending his daddy back. There was also some photo at the end which I can barely remember but was also evidence of predestination.
In T2, the characters believed their future could be changed, and believed they had successfully prevented judgement day, at least in their world. Th
Bunch of nonsense (Score:2)
Sometimes things like seatbelts come along and a company installs them in their cars. Some industris will self regulate to keep the government out of it.
That didn't happen in the auto industry. Seatbelts were not standard equipment until they were mandated by the government. Same with airbags.
In an interesting twist, I grew up in the country. My brother got in a horrible car accident in the winter with no seatbelt. You know what. If he were buckled in, he would have probably frozen to death. Instead, he was able to exit the car and walk to a nearby house.
Assuming that story is true it is merely the exception that proves the rule. Seatbelts are proven to save lives and it is a rare accident indeed where not using one would be the safer option. There is a chance you might survive without it but the probabilities overwhelmingly do not favor that outcome. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
As an example, air bags are required by law for the driver and passenger. However, there are no laws for side air bags.
That's true but it became
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Ever car in the ditch is an SUV and all the FWD vehicles merrily travel by.
This is a steaming hot fabrication and probably some wishful thinking on your part.
Where I live, in the heart of American Siberia, that does actually seem to be the case. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that 4WD can give people a false sense of security. They forget that extra drive wheels only help if at least one of those wheels has traction.
The real "danger" with AI: Evolution (Score:2, Interesting)
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No truly intelligent machine will have any drive to do anything. Unless you hard wire such impulses into them, they'd prefer to sit idle.
If you're afraid they'll evolve themselves, don't worry. In their quest to be more efficient they'll remove any of those hardwired impulses.
Why would a machine care about exploring the universe? Because we told it to?
Why would a machine want to kill all humans? Because it has a shiny metal ass?
Any artificial intelligence advanced enough to pose a persistent threat to h
He also.. (Score:1)
Out of our control, sure.... but so what? (Score:4, Interesting)
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-Military makes drones that can repair themselves, can fly without human refueling, and are designed to fire on the 'enemy.'
-The war ends, but the drones can't be stopped. The drones repair themselves and build new drones.
-The drones are designed to 'learn' how to survive in a war situation, and progressively make themselves more and more difficult to destroy.
-Instead of mines as a dangerous civilian-killing product of war, we now have flying, shooting, difficult-to-stop weapons hunt
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Why, if they are supposedly "intelligent" are they incapable of recognizing that the war is over?
Because the "enemy" (us humans) still exist.
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> why artificial intelligence is supposedly somehow any more terrifying than natural intelligence
ELI5: Because people fear what they don't understand.
The current level of Artificial Ignorance (a.i.), which is mis-labeled as artificial intelligence (A.I.), is nothing more then a glorified N-dimension table lookup. It isn't obvious what the data values mean. Yeah, good luck, debugging THAT.
> why it should ever be assumed that any general purpose AI would be somehow likely to have an agenda that we wou
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Can someone please explain to me why artificial intelligence is supposedly somehow any more terrifying than natural intelligence already is when the latter is applied to nefarious ends
Uneven availability of technology is a key enabler of oppression. The more lopsided application the more it's able to be wielded as a means for having your way with those who don't have it.
Underlying equation doesn't change. "AI" (separate from bullshit passing as AI today) acts as an accelerant making uneven availability worse than would otherwise be the case.
and why it should ever be assumed that any general purpose AI would be somehow likely to have an agenda that we would actually consider to be corrupt or wrong?
People are already accusing algorithms with non-racist objective functions of being racist.
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AI, separate from bullshit passing as AI to today, is nothing more than what it says: intelligence that happens to be artificial.
There is even less of a reason to fear it than there is to fear anything else man made, because with other man made things, the thing to fear is not the thing itself, but the person who might use that thing with nefarious intent.
AI, however, should think for itself... and so could not be used by anybody for any purpose that it did not itself think was appropriate. There i
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AI, separate from bullshit passing as AI to today, is nothing more than what it says: intelligence that happens to be artificial.
What I meant by this is mistaking the "classification rut" for useful intelligence.
There is even less of a reason to fear it than there is to fear anything else man made
I currently fear "AI" is in fact being used against my interests to maximize corporate profits at my expense and increasingly leveraged to systematically suppress "undesirable" speech on global scale.
the thing to fear is not the thing itself, but the person who might use that thing with nefarious intent.
I don't subscribe to the notion technology is neutral and all problems are political. I think this is way too simplistic a view.
The very existence of some technologies can bring about conditions which change the calculus by wh
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Well yes, to be honest... because AI stands for "Aritificial Intelligence", and if it doesn't think for itself, then it's not actually intelligent, is it?
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An artificial intelligence is possibly scary for a few reasons. First and probably foremost is that since we don't know precisely what governs our own morals and how to engineer a new mind, early AI's could be completely self centered, altruistic, or apathetic in any combination or extreme. As such we can't really judge how they would react to anything. Humans don't by and large don't have a great track record with dealing with the unknown.
The second thing that makes AI scary for us is that it is quite poss
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Only if we were a nuisance to it. We don't after all, tend to go out of our way to exterminate all ants everywhere... we only go after them when they are actively interfering in our own affairs.
So what do you imagine these AI's trying to do that humans are interfering with that it would want to destroy us?
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If AI and humans wanted the same resources there could be conflict. That's really just the most obvious issue. What I would definitely place my bets on though would be some group of humans being militantly opposed to AI and actively trying to destroy it. It would then come down to how well the AI could cope with the existential risk, no matter how small.
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Can someone please explain to me why artificial intelligence is supposedly somehow any more terrifying than natural intelligence already is when the latter is applied to nefarious ends
Mainly scalability and plasticity.
Imagine the worst human villain ever. You can be quite certain that he'll still be operating on a couple kgs of wetware, very similar to your own, pulling ~20W ( https://psychology.stackexchan... [stackexchange.com] ) tomorrow, next week from now or even a year from now.
AI can communicate at speeds approaching the speed of light ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), run in a highly distributed yet coherent fashion, employ GWs of power for computation and have an utterly unknowable way of proc
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Can someone please explain to me why artificial intelligence is supposedly somehow any more terrifying than natural intelligence already is when the latter is applied to nefarious ends, and why it should ever be assumed that any general purpose AI would be somehow likely to have an agenda that we would actually consider to be corrupt or wrong?
It's terrifying mainly because I want to decide where to swerve when the time comes. That choice isn't given to the driver with autopilot on... or AIpilot.. or whatever, IMHO, tech addonn that Tesla is toying around with.
Personally, I would have focused on making a solid ride, THEN work on the autopilot stuff. That aspect of software is a whole new reason to buy later models, and to avoid lawsuits--even with dumbass drivers ignoring the proper autopilot protocol.
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A guinea pig is a mammal and on some biological level, I feel a connection to it—but a spider is an insect, with an insect brain, and I feel almost no connection to it. The alien-ness of a tarantula is what gives me the willies. To test this and remove other factors, if there are two guinea pigs, one normal one and one with the mind of a tarantula, I would feel much less comfortable holding the latter guinea pig, even if I knew neither would hurt me.
Now imagine that you made a spider much, much smarter—so much so that it far surpassed human intelligence? Would it then become familiar to us and feel human emotions like empathy and humor and love? No, it wouldn’t, because there’s no reason becoming smarter would make it more human—it would be incredibly smart but also still fundamentally a spider in its core inner workings. I find this unbelievably creepy. I would not want to spend time with a superintelligent spider. Would you??
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No... but neither do we go and try to exterminate all ants everywhere, even when they are not otherwise in the way of what we might wish to achieve.
So what do you imagine AI's wanting to do that humans might be in the way for?
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I fail to see why you would conclude that is the only possible outcome of artificial intelligence.
AI is just intelligence that happens to be artificial.... there is no more of a rational reason to be afraid of what it might attempt to do than there is to be afraid of artificial limbs.
I think what we all want to know is (Score:2)
... if the AI will be a pedo? Musk is skilled in detecting those things I hear.
Elon Musk & Joe Rogan 2 1/2-hour podcast (Score:3)
Elon Musk smokes cannabis during interview with Joe Rogan, before imagining what it's like to be a horse [independent.co.uk]
You can call me Al... (Score:1)
BS (Score:2)
Enjoyed the interview (Score:1)
Re:Musk is just high... (Score:5, Informative)
For the record:
* The whole sequence started out with Musk asking, "Is that a joint?" Just like your average hardcore pothead who doesn't know what a joint looks like, right?
* After a reminder that it's legal in California, Musk hesitantly takes it, examines it, then takes a tiny puff, then shakes his head no.
* Comments start filling up the Youtube thread from actual pot smokers complaining:
OZGUN ST-PIERRE: Dudeeee wtf he didn’t inhale
tg300050 he didnt inhale
Samuel Gobrecht +OZGUN ST-PIERRE some people just dont like how it makes them feel
Obviously he doesn't know how to smoke
NO T H O T S NOOOO ****ING WAY
Geo Hurtado Inhale!!!!
* Topic changes back to cars.
* Later, topic changes back to pot. The conversation is, to quote:
OMG, pillory him!
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LOL, after all this time you've been insisting you didn't short the stock, now you're saying you did?
Did you cover? I bought this morning at 256,11. Up nearly 5% as of now.
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No, you're lying.
Hopefully some day you'll learn the difference.
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Sure, I'll defend the guy too..... (Score:2)
If you really want a better picture of who Elon is, you might start with the article Wired magazine did on him in their U.K. edition recently. They interviewed a number of people who knew him in the past and worked around him. From that. it's clear to me the guy was/is a total workaholic who views sleep as the enemy. With regard to SpaceX, a rocket scientist they interviewed said when he first met Elon, the guy came off as very intelligent and interested in doing something with rockets, but had no real conc
Re:Sure, I'll defend the guy too..... (Score:4, Informative)
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Does he say stuff that is unbecoming? Sure. I think most of us do. Should we expect mo
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"He can talk pretty well on space travel, battery density etc. "
Yes he can "talk well", that is it. You obviously aren't an engineer either, because you would know that what he "talks about" is completely transparently BS. That is the problem I have with people like you: you are just fanboys, with no knowledge of who is really innovating. You just like shiny stuff.
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Then why was he so vapid and high for the rest of the time? Is that how he normally is? I've never listened to the clown at any length, but I did see a bit of the shitshow yesterday after people were laughing about it. The dude was high out of his mind or just out of his mind.
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Meanwhile, back in reality, Tesla is on a roll [insideevs.com]. They now make over half the world's EV battery capacity. Model 3 margins were positive in Q2 even without AWD and P, which are high-margin options. And despite the hype about "6000 per week", Tesla's actual production goal for this quarter is 50-55k, which is 4k per week average, which they're well on track for.
But on the other hand, the CEO took a half-arsed puff on a joint when offered, shook his head no, and talked about how he doesn't like pot because it
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And despite the hype about "6000 per week", Tesla's actual production goal for this quarter is 50-55k, which is 4k per week average, which they're well on track for.
Yea that's probably pretty easy to do when you stop giving a shit about safety, QA, and production standards.
Are their cars still losing bumpers in the rain and randomly crashing into firetrucks/jersey barriers? Oh wait, nevermind, because I found this cool "easter egg" that makes my doors flap to a certain song; that's far more important to me as a consumer than having a quality, safe vehicle to transport my family in. Look at the shiny!
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Tesla is on a roll, yeah... Just like China was "on a roll" during the Great Leap Forward. It is rolling alright, straight down the hill and into bankruptcy.
Just like with the older, more expensive models, Tesla shills keep the narrative that Tesla is "demand constrained".
At the same time, we know that production number, after that famous last week in June, is down at around 4k cars a week for "model 3", RAMP-UP or no RAMP-UP. Despite this stubborn fact that production has stalled at this low number, the w
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Bears repeating. [teslarati.com]
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And also, the reason he left wasn't "illegal shit", but because Tesla didn't like his privatization ideas and ignored him [cnbc.com] (he was hired to help with the privatization)
He should have listened to at least one earnings call before accepting the job. Namely, he appears to have misunderstood going private as a means for fundraising. Tesla has repeatedly (endlessly) said - to the endless disbelief of shorts - that it has no interest in fundraising with dilution, and that it only plans to fund further capital exp
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Rei will come in and tell you how you're wrong.