A bullied kid finds refuge in sci-fi and fantasy books. This kid builds a mental fantasy world where they get revenge on their tormentors. In this mental fantasy world, every self-serving thing they do is “righteous”, because it undoes the harm that was done to them. Their manifesto is a mish-mash of ideas from the books, but twisted to make them into the good guy.

Some of these kids eventually grow up and meet people who are kind to them. They find positive lessons in real human social interactions. They leave their protective fantasy bubble behind. They eventually learn to seek justice where there was injustice.

Others never grow up. They end up seeking to fight injustice with a new form of injustice. Only this time, they get to be the tormentor.

Tesla has a problem. Its sky-high valuation is based on the potential upside from “visionary” sci-fi future programs. However, the narratives are losing credibility.

Once upon a time, Robotaxi and Optimus sounded like visionary futuristic ideas. However:

We now live in a world where Waymo exists, and autonomous taxi hasn’t proven to be as socially transformative as promised. No huge latent market exposed. Aslo, Tesla is lagging behind.

We now live in the world where Unitree exists, and is shipping! Again, Tesla is on the back foot. The technology no longer seems quite so futuristic. Disruptors usually disrupt from down-market— that puts BYD cars and Unitree robots in the better position.

With a merger, the joint sci-fi future proposition is colonies on Mars. That one is likely to stay in the future for a long time. From a stock valuation point of view, the goal is for the promise to be forever in the future. That way, the investor thinks the upside is still to come. Once the promise is delivered, it’s time to cash out.

Fantastic write up. To what degree is all of capitalism actually built on this premise? Why can't I buy the same damn running shoes I bought in 2015? Why can't I buy a dumb TV?

> autonomous taxi hasn’t proven to be as socially transformative as promise

That's because they are still super expensive - more expensive than Uber!

That's probably partly because the technology is very expensive, but also because they have no competition. Both of those will eventually change.

If you apply Occam’s razor, this explanation stands out.

> "We need an approach to make sure AI doesn't destroy the world and wipe humanity to extinction."

"Yeah, and quotas on web scrapers!"

—— I see it as:

“Let’s do a study on abstract future concerns.”

Vs.

“Let’s take action on concrete present-day concerns.”

I hate this kind of thing too, but realistically this is every newspaper/digital that I’ve subscribed to ever. In a way, I get it. The new media landscape has put traditional news organizations in an existential crisis. I would hate to see world where the only way they could exist is under someone like bezos.

An easy way out might be to just ask the candidate how they got from one step to another. That way you can differentiate between “toxic, so smart i can’t communicate” and “non-toxic, so smart that i honestly thought the step seemed trivial, but would be happy to explain if i was mistaken about that”.

When the author says “crimes”, I didn’t take it to mean a literal criminal enterprise, but instead casual-speak for something like “bad governance”. It’s like if you saw some bad programming practices and casually called them “programming crimes” to avoid.

Similarly, when the author says “trash bag”, I don’t take it to mean a literal trash bag.

Well then it's up to interpretation. We differ at that. When someone says financial crimes, there is no second meaning to it

Sure, indiscriminate tokenmaxxing is a gamble that can pay off sometimes. However, I think that the decision to take any gamble should be made by someone who will bear responsibility for the downside as well as the upside. I would prefer to search for new usages in a more strategic way. I agree that experimentation is a great way to learn if done intelligently and with limits. Full “Monte Carlo” makes sense when ops are cheap enough. It seems some orgs don’t think tokens are cheap enough yet.

    >  I would prefer to search for new usages in a more strategic way

I think this is very, very hard for orgs to do.

Looking back at the Internet, who would have thought that it would eventually create a Netflix, Amazon, Shopify, Spotify, Google Maps, etc. Just wild the things that ended up coming out of pushing bits over a wire with few simple protocols.

In an ideal world, you make strategic bets, but I can also see the case for the opposite this early in the lifecycle of a technology. You just don't know until you try.

Mid/late 2023, it wasn't at all obvious that it would take over coding that fast.

People talked about streaming years before Netflix. Online maps apps date back to the 1990s. E-commerce as well.

I definitely get the impression that many people thought it would eventually create shopping, streaming, and mapping sites.

I think people were less likely to have predicted things like social media or YouTube, though those weren't ideas sprung from a vacuum either.

If it were that simple and obvious, Blockbuster would have beat everyone to streaming. Sears would have digitized their catalog and used their vast brick-and-mortar stores as fulfillment centers for same-day shipping.

None of these shifts were obviously the right bet and many organizations lost because they missed the opportunity. Now orgs are on the same horizon and I can see why they don't want to miss this window.

Blockbuster actually did try to beat everyone to streaming. Notably, Blockbuster and Enron [1] entered into a 20-year partnership for online video delivery.

Sears was a different story, in that they were a real estate company with a store front and retail real estate took a nosedive due to ecommerce. But that's a different discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

That reads a bit like: an equal role in external politics, but not in internal church politics. It’s hard to have a role in politics if you don’t have a voice.

>>I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"

Perhaps, but at the moment AI is at the forefront of the pre-regulation land grab.