Thank you for pointing out that Musk did not actually found Tesla. He got involved about a _year_ after it was founded.
As I understand it, after he started calling himself a founder he pointed out that he had unlimited money and lawyers, so the actual founders gave up on trying to have him stop saying it.
Musk founded SpaceX with the help of Thomas Mueller and Chris Thomson. Mueller had experience designing, building and flying rockets. Elon offered to provide the funding if these two would provide their experience as co-founders.
Elon also admitted to having Aspergers which might account for some of his apparent lack of empathy, emotional understanding and control.
He is a flawed human just like the rest of us. Not some superhuman genius like his fans believe. His fan base does not help but instead enable his excesses.
All true, but realistically, what are the chances that Tesla under original ownership would make it in the market? 0.000001, perhaps? Even ChatGPT agrees. ;-)
@Paul Jurczak. Then he could have claimed that he was the savior of Tesla, and virtually no one would have disputed it. I would say it's a sign of his colossal ego that, instead, he chose to blatantly lie and say that he _founded_ it, which is both false and absurd.
All potentially contributing factors. Another one that isn't explicitly mentioned, however, is that billionaires like him are completely sheltered from consequences of their actions. Unless they have already blown up their empire in a spectacular fraud and thus lost all their wealth and power (e.g., Madoff, SBF), when do the super-wealthy ever see repercussions?
Musk makes outlandish claim after outlandish claim seemingly timed to push up his stock prices at critical moments, has given himself a massive pay-out at the cost of investors, broken legal contracts, simply not paid rent for Twitter's offices, contaminated and damaged nature reserves with his explodirockets, slandered other people, sold assisted driving as self-driving while admitting it is only assisted driving in the fine print, has had the "auto-pilot" turn off a fraction of a second before a crash so that legally the driver was in control when it happened, the list goes on.
I do one of those, I am likely either in prison or ruined. What exactly in his last four decades of life would have convinced him that he cannot do absolutely whatever pops into his head and get away with it? I would call this a warped worldview, but it really isn't, because he is truly immune from consequences as long as he remains that rich. Other people are as ants to him or, as he may put it, non-player characters. Drugs or not, social media or not, he is only that dangerous because we collectively allow such concentration of wealth in one person to exist in the first place.
Due to a rather difficult childhood, where I had to grow up fast, I have mostly been correct on my first impressions of people- I never thought musk was smart, in fact I think he’s quite average in intelligence. But, like trump, he is a narcissist and sociopath. And they often get ahead by using people and lying. The first time I heard him speak years ago ( about his “self driving” cars) I knew he was a liar. So unfortunately my instincts were correct again.
He has gone mad! He has so much, that he has nothing. His spin out of control is harming people and Donald Trump is no different! They need to be stopped!
A lot of traditional conservatives never wanted him around because it turns out the guy with over a dozen kids with many different women who wants to relocate everyone to Mars and create an AI superintelligence that's essentially God while putting every working class person in the world permanently out of work is inconsistent with Christian family values
Hi Marcus, I've been following you and chatting with you here and on LinkedIn occasionally. You are a real scientist, unlike those hypsters in Silicon Valley, so you bring a healthy dose of skepticism in regard to LLM. But let's not kid ourselves, Elon has always been an overhyped, talentless hack that just happens to fail up. He's always been an ass to his employees and never cared about saving the planet. This is who he's always been underneath.
Elon also doesn't seem to be listening to advice on fully autonomous driving.
Elon's commitment to a vision-based system only is difficult to justify. Other manufacturers often use a more diverse sensor suite, including vision-based, radar, and LiDAR. These three provide redundancy and improved performance in various conditions, while avoiding a single point of failure.
King Musk has obviously never driven in a Tule fog. I did it once, driving I-80 from Sacramento back home to the SFBA.
It lasted about a half hour and I was terrified the entire time. It was like driving in a cotton ball. I couldn't even pull off and park because I couldn't see anything except a diffuse red glow from the taillights in front of me. If someone had gone off an embankment I'd have been a statistic.
Gary, I find a lot of your AI postings to be slightly inflammatory and highly biased, IF NOT both ACCURATE and NECESSARY. but this one... this one is 100% ON POINT. I applaud you for it, for speaking Truth to Power. Musk is unchained, and not in a good way. There is a demon within him, and it is being unleashed upon America and the world, for the most part utterly unchecked. thank you sincerely for this sober perspective and insight.
I'm still a ketamine believer. Elon has always been emotionally unstable, but this is something else. It just screams drug abuse to me. Elon stopped getting regular drug tests from NASA in 2021, and that's also when he started seriously going off the deep end.
In March of 2024 Elon admitted to self medicating with ketamine in an interview on CNN. An interview with Don Lemon. And he said some doctor gave him a prescription for it. With his wealth he can get just about any prescription he wants. Your belief is true.
I’ve been calling him the new Howard Hughes for over five years now. It’s playing out even more badly than I expected. Just replace storing his urine in jars with dressing up like his rapper persona, Zip2 Absen-T Daddy.
I live in SF Bay and have acquaintances whom Musk attempted to recruit over the years, and his private work style could only be generously described as untethered, screaming at people to name their price.
I don’t agree to the K idea. It used to be 420, now it’s K, next it will be Sass or DMT. It takes time and preparation, and he doesn’t seem like that person. He is perhaps simply an untethered manic with major Narcissism.
He’s constantly looking for the next thing to buy or appropriate. The only difference between him and Delorean is how much he is funded by the rest of the auto industry to handle carbon credits.
What’s the upside to what he is doing? The attempted layoffs are a joke (not to the people involved, but to the budgets involved). He’ll realize that there are only downsides unless he is just power hungry.
As much as I disagree with Gary Marcus about AI, I strangely find myself agreeing with him in all the other matters. Thank you for this article.
Agree with Gary Marcus about AI, and about Musk who has in a very short time put himself among the leaders of generative AI with Grok 3.
Ah, yes... the group of leaders claiming everything actually IS a nail.
The speed of growth of the size of his head has exceeded escape velocity
Thank you for pointing out that Musk did not actually found Tesla. He got involved about a _year_ after it was founded.
As I understand it, after he started calling himself a founder he pointed out that he had unlimited money and lawyers, so the actual founders gave up on trying to have him stop saying it.
Musk founded SpaceX with the help of Thomas Mueller and Chris Thomson. Mueller had experience designing, building and flying rockets. Elon offered to provide the funding if these two would provide their experience as co-founders.
Elon also admitted to having Aspergers which might account for some of his apparent lack of empathy, emotional understanding and control.
He is a flawed human just like the rest of us. Not some superhuman genius like his fans believe. His fan base does not help but instead enable his excesses.
All true, but realistically, what are the chances that Tesla under original ownership would make it in the market? 0.000001, perhaps? Even ChatGPT agrees. ;-)
@Paul Jurczak. Then he could have claimed that he was the savior of Tesla, and virtually no one would have disputed it. I would say it's a sign of his colossal ego that, instead, he chose to blatantly lie and say that he _founded_ it, which is both false and absurd.
Agree with "savior of Tesla" vs. "founder of Tesla" argument. I haven't claimed anything to the contrary, see "All true" in my comment.
All potentially contributing factors. Another one that isn't explicitly mentioned, however, is that billionaires like him are completely sheltered from consequences of their actions. Unless they have already blown up their empire in a spectacular fraud and thus lost all their wealth and power (e.g., Madoff, SBF), when do the super-wealthy ever see repercussions?
Musk makes outlandish claim after outlandish claim seemingly timed to push up his stock prices at critical moments, has given himself a massive pay-out at the cost of investors, broken legal contracts, simply not paid rent for Twitter's offices, contaminated and damaged nature reserves with his explodirockets, slandered other people, sold assisted driving as self-driving while admitting it is only assisted driving in the fine print, has had the "auto-pilot" turn off a fraction of a second before a crash so that legally the driver was in control when it happened, the list goes on.
I do one of those, I am likely either in prison or ruined. What exactly in his last four decades of life would have convinced him that he cannot do absolutely whatever pops into his head and get away with it? I would call this a warped worldview, but it really isn't, because he is truly immune from consequences as long as he remains that rich. Other people are as ants to him or, as he may put it, non-player characters. Drugs or not, social media or not, he is only that dangerous because we collectively allow such concentration of wealth in one person to exist in the first place.
Due to a rather difficult childhood, where I had to grow up fast, I have mostly been correct on my first impressions of people- I never thought musk was smart, in fact I think he’s quite average in intelligence. But, like trump, he is a narcissist and sociopath. And they often get ahead by using people and lying. The first time I heard him speak years ago ( about his “self driving” cars) I knew he was a liar. So unfortunately my instincts were correct again.
He has gone mad! He has so much, that he has nothing. His spin out of control is harming people and Donald Trump is no different! They need to be stopped!
A lot of traditional conservatives never wanted him around because it turns out the guy with over a dozen kids with many different women who wants to relocate everyone to Mars and create an AI superintelligence that's essentially God while putting every working class person in the world permanently out of work is inconsistent with Christian family values
It may be opposed their values, but none of them is speaking up.
Making them complicit. And hypocrites, also, though this doesn't bother them because... God is on their side.
Hi Marcus, I've been following you and chatting with you here and on LinkedIn occasionally. You are a real scientist, unlike those hypsters in Silicon Valley, so you bring a healthy dose of skepticism in regard to LLM. But let's not kid ourselves, Elon has always been an overhyped, talentless hack that just happens to fail up. He's always been an ass to his employees and never cared about saving the planet. This is who he's always been underneath.
What about the tanking stock price of the rest of the magnificent 7?
future essay!
Elon also doesn't seem to be listening to advice on fully autonomous driving.
Elon's commitment to a vision-based system only is difficult to justify. Other manufacturers often use a more diverse sensor suite, including vision-based, radar, and LiDAR. These three provide redundancy and improved performance in various conditions, while avoiding a single point of failure.
Musk makes the simple argument: Humans have no lidar. We drive with sight alone, permitting the deaf to drive.
Competition in Austin this year between Waymo lidar and Telsa vision should decide the issue in all sorts of weather and times-of-day.
King Musk has obviously never driven in a Tule fog. I did it once, driving I-80 from Sacramento back home to the SFBA.
It lasted about a half hour and I was terrified the entire time. It was like driving in a cotton ball. I couldn't even pull off and park because I couldn't see anything except a diffuse red glow from the taillights in front of me. If someone had gone off an embankment I'd have been a statistic.
He's an arrogant ass.
Gary, I find a lot of your AI postings to be slightly inflammatory and highly biased, IF NOT both ACCURATE and NECESSARY. but this one... this one is 100% ON POINT. I applaud you for it, for speaking Truth to Power. Musk is unchained, and not in a good way. There is a demon within him, and it is being unleashed upon America and the world, for the most part utterly unchecked. thank you sincerely for this sober perspective and insight.
I'm still a ketamine believer. Elon has always been emotionally unstable, but this is something else. It just screams drug abuse to me. Elon stopped getting regular drug tests from NASA in 2021, and that's also when he started seriously going off the deep end.
In March of 2024 Elon admitted to self medicating with ketamine in an interview on CNN. An interview with Don Lemon. And he said some doctor gave him a prescription for it. With his wealth he can get just about any prescription he wants. Your belief is true.
I’ve been calling him the new Howard Hughes for over five years now. It’s playing out even more badly than I expected. Just replace storing his urine in jars with dressing up like his rapper persona, Zip2 Absen-T Daddy.
If you’re going to keep up the Wokist pieces, could you start another Substack for them?
You hit this on the mark.
I live in SF Bay and have acquaintances whom Musk attempted to recruit over the years, and his private work style could only be generously described as untethered, screaming at people to name their price.
I don’t agree to the K idea. It used to be 420, now it’s K, next it will be Sass or DMT. It takes time and preparation, and he doesn’t seem like that person. He is perhaps simply an untethered manic with major Narcissism.
He’s constantly looking for the next thing to buy or appropriate. The only difference between him and Delorean is how much he is funded by the rest of the auto industry to handle carbon credits.
What’s the upside to what he is doing? The attempted layoffs are a joke (not to the people involved, but to the budgets involved). He’ll realize that there are only downsides unless he is just power hungry.
That, I think nobody disagrees with.
Untethered.
Your article insults President Musk. He and his grandpa are the only persons who can make America white again.