This is much more true of the “other side” than “Musk and like ilk”. The hate against Musk and X is primarily because a lot of people on one political side hate that they’re no longer steering public discourse. Also the current X does far less steering (in any direction) than the censorship heavy regime of the past.
I have no direct proof of the latter, other than I think it was a little weird that he suddenly was fully onboard with Dogecoin until he wasn't very shortly after.
Why did Elon suddenly go so hard against OpenAI and now Apple? Because he was planning to, and then did, launch his own AI business.
That said, I do think that the name "OpenAI" does kind of imply non-profit, so I guess you could argue that there's some dishonesty there.
He very well may be, but he is also seemingly human (sometimes, at least). He provided the major funding with a certain goal in mind. It would be hard for any human to not be unhappy to see that go to waste.
I mean, if you bought your friend a house to provide them with what you saw as needed shelter, and then said friend decided to tear down the house and use it as fuel for a fun weekend campfire, you'd probably be unhappy too – even though logically it isn't for you to decide; you chose to give it away. 'Tis the way of the irrational human.
Elon is a human but he's also a businessman, and he should know that these kinds of decisions are decidedly not-personal. Elon probably has some degree of empathy and feelings, but businesses themselves do not, businesses are sociopathic.
If this were some 22 year old who just got some VC money, I'd be a lot more sympathetic, but at this point Elon had been in business for decades and had made many billions of dollars doing it. He should have known that unless it was in some kind of binding contract everything is liable to change.
ETA:
I know it comes off as cynical, but I will never have even a 0.01% of the success that Elon has, but I feel anyone who has been in the working world long enough eventually discovers that businesses kind of have to be evil, at least to some degree.
Businesses will treat you like "family", and they will try really hard to convince you that they're "family" or "friends" because they buy you lunch occasionally, but they are fundamentally not. You don't just fire a family member because you don't feel like you're getting sufficient ROI on your investment with them or because the economy takes a nosediv, you don't just snatch away their health insurance the second they do something wrong.
Elon, at this point, shouldn't really think that people he's doing business with are any more honest than any other company. If I am aware of this, he should be too.
Just as you should know that your friend's choice wasn't personal. He didn't tear down the house to spite you, he simply felt a fun night of sitting around the campfire would be a better use of the materials. He wasn't thinking about you at all. And why would he? It has nothing to do with you.
If you give away something to someone else, of course you know they are free to do with it as they see fit. That doesn't mean you won't have feelings towards what they do with it, though. A human can be upset about something even while knowing there is no logical reason to be upset about it. The human is inherently irrational.
But maybe the main reason that it doesn't map is because your analogy involves a transaction between two people.
Organizations are not people. Let me repeat: organizations are not people. Businesses aren't people, charities aren't people, churches aren't people. A transaction from one organization to another organization is not the same as a transaction between me and a friend.
An organization is comprised of people but that's not the same thing. Most individual people have empathy, companies are sociopathic. Most people wouldn't kick their family member out of the house because they don't meet a "bottom line", but a company will do it without blinking.
As I said, Elon is a businessman and he has absolutely no excuse for not knowing this.
Right, OpenAI was founded with the intent of being a charity. Specifically, to give all the people of the world access to AI that he (and other founding members) felt would otherwise end up in the hands of a small number of people.
Which is why Musk saw a conflict of interest when he at Tesla also wanted to develop AI for non-charitable purposes. As such, he stepped away from OpenAI to ensure that OpenAI was able to continue in its mission without being clouded by Tesla thoughts.
But then OpenAI locked up the AI in the hands of a small few anyway. This is where Musk became unhappy about the state of affairs.
> But maybe the main reason that it doesn't map
There is no reason to think it doesn't map. Perhaps the struggle here is in not realizing that OpenAI was intended to be a charity?
> Organizations are not people. Let me repeat: organizations are not people. Businesses aren't people, charities aren't people, churches aren't people.
In fact, they are just people. Remove the people and everything represented by those labels completely disappears.
It was opened to be a non-profit, not a charity.
It doesn't map, I'm not sure what else there is to tell you. If I had a conversation with any non-profit (e.g. a church or a university or an AI non-profit) I wouldn't assume that anything they tell me is completely honest.
If I had a conversation with a friend I would be more likely to believe him. It really doesn't map at all.
> In fact, they are just people. Remove the people and everything represented by those labels completely disappears.
They really aren't. Like, they fundamentally are not people.
A person would feel bad about firing 12,000 people in an afternoon, but Google the company did exactly that (while still giving the executives bonuses no less). If you want to call a corporation people, then they are the most sociopathic monsters imaginable.
I think it's much simpler, a corporation is an entity that is composed of people, but in the same way I wouldn't consider a skin cell "a person", I wouldn't consider an organization "people".
It is legally structured as a non-profit, but the directional intent was to offer charity. There is no onus for it to forever hold that intent – it is quite free to tear down the house, metaphorically, if it wants - but it would be quite natural for someone instrumental in funding it to be a charitable endeavour would be unhappy about the change in direction.
> If I had a conversation with a friend I would be more likely to believe him.
Are you under the impression that Musk has no familiarity with the remaining board? They are, for all intents and purposes, friends. Feel free to split hairs between BFFL and Facebook friends if you must, but you wouldn't offer anything of value in doing so.
> Like, they fundamentally are not people.
Like, they well and truly are fundamentally people. Groups of people, to be sure, but people all the same.
> A person would feel bad about firing 12,000 people in an afternoon, but Google the company did exactly that
The person who fired those 12,000 people almost certainly did feel bad.
Google, if you want to think of it as some kind of distinct entity, absolutely did not fire anyone. It has no capability to fire anyone – or do anything. It has no tangible existence. How could it possible fire someone? Only people can fire other people.
These weren't just discussions between friends at a bar or something. These were business meetings and should have been treated as such.
If I were giving my friend a house, it would have likely been done considerably more informally.
> Like, they well and truly are fundamentally people. Groups of people, to be sure, but people all the same.
You're handwaving away an important distinctions; a group of people is not the same as a person.
A group of people is much more capable of working non-empathetically than an individual. This is why we have the term "mob mentality".
> The person who fired those 12,000 people almost certainly did feel bad.
It wasn't a "person". It was certainly a group of people. This might seem like splitting hairs but it's a distinction that I really do think needs to be emphasized.
> Google, if you want to think of it as some kind of distinct entity, absolutely did not fire anyone.
"Google", as defined as the board of executives that run the company, did fire 12,000 people. I seriously doubt a "person" did it, the group did. A group is not a person, even if every single individual in that group felt bad for the 12,000 people they fired, the group still made the decision to do it.
A collective seems to lack empathy. An individual doesn't.
With respect, I take it you have never been involved in business before? Discussions between friends at the bar (or, stereotypically, the golf course) is exactly how this kind of thing usually gets going. Perhaps you have the more intimate details of OpenAI's establishment, in which I'd love to hear it, but it is quite likely that it happened exactly like that.
Again, I think we agree that Musk has no logical basis for being unhappy, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't become unhappy. Humans become unhappy about things that are logically not upsetting all the time. Feelings are not based in any kind of rationality.
> It wasn't a "person".
It was almost certainly an individual person who did the firing – maybe alongside another person for the sake of legal accountability, but the hundreds of thousands of people still working under the Google banner sitting around the table to enact the firing would have been a pointless waste of time and did not happen.
> "Google", as defined as the board of executives that run the company, did fire 12,000 people.
A board overseeing something at Google scale absolutely would not concern themselves with firing anyone who isn't in the C-suite. That would not be an effective use of time.
It is possible they recognized that 12,000 people needed to go, and they almost certainly would have negative feelings towards it. How could they not have negative feelings towards it?
Fair enough. Then they should have been treated as business from the get-go. Again, this wasn't a bunch of 20 year olds with VC money, if most business is conducted at bars and/or the golf course then they should have been aware of it.
> It was almost certainly an individual person who did the firing – maybe alongside another person for the sake of legal accountability, but the hundreds of thousands of people still working under the Google banner sitting around the table to enact the firing would have been a pointless waste of time and did not happen.
I guess I assumed that they voted on it based on budgeting requirements. Sure, a single person probably signed the papers but I don't really think that's a distinction with a difference.
> A board overseeing something at Google scale absolutely would not concern themselves with firing anyone who isn't in the C-suite. That would not be an effective use of time.
I didn't think that the executive board was looking over reviews and saying "John Smith in DevOps needs to go" or anything like that, I figured that they had financial numbers for the quarter and said something like "we need to lay off N% of the staff in order to stay profitable". I doubt that Sundar Pichai just decided to do that on his own, if nothing else a decision like that probably required some oversight.
> It is possible they recognized that 12,000 people needed to go, but they almost certainly would have negative feelings towards it. How could they not have negative feelings towards it?
I'm sure that the individuals responsible for the firing feel bad, I never disputed that (and I mentioned that in the comment you are responding to), but that's kind of my point. They feel bad about it but they were able to rationalize it and do it anyway because it's "just business", which is why I don't think businesses (or any large organization) are people. I doubt all the people managing Google are sociopaths, I'm sure that they have some degree of empathy, but I think large organizations are exceptionally good at overriding individual empathy.
I mean, extreme example, but I doubt most of the people managing the Catholic church are onboard with child sexual abuse, but the group running it still worked hard on covering this stuff up as a means of protecting the group. I'm sure each individual involved in those coverups felt bad about it, but they still did it, and I don't know that it's something that they would do outside of the organization.
There was no doubt some legal council involved, if that's what you are implying. Business doesn't really get any more formal than that. It's not some magical place where life is completely different. It's just people being people like any and ever other. Likewise, if that is what you mean, I'm sure you'd retain legal representation in the purchase of the house as well. I've never heard of anyone buying a house without a lawyer.
> this wasn't a bunch of 20 year olds with VC money, if most business is conducted at bars and/or the golf course then they should have been aware of it.
Aware of what? I think we agree that Musk knew full well that OpenAI abandoning its mandate was possible, if that's what you're referring to. That doesn't mean he has to be happy about it.
The 12,000 people let go from Google always knew that they could end up on the chopping block. All employees understand that. That doesn't mean they cannot be unhappy about it. Logically, there is no reason why they should be unhappy about it. But I fully expect most, if not all, of them were unhappy anyway - understandably so.
> I guess I assumed that they voted on it based on budgeting requirements.
And then probably went to bed crying, because who is happy about being up against such budget constraints? It's a terrible situation to be in. I don't think this picture that they are unfeeling monsters holds any merit. There is some small chance that they truly are all emotionless autists, but probably not.
> I don't know that it's something that they would do outside of the organization.
If it were one of those individual's child that committed the same act, you don't think they would try and excuse what their child did in much the same manner? They might not be happy about it, but there is, indeed, value in protecting the group (in this case the family unit). I think we can point to all kinds of cases where individuals have tried to do just that.
Unless an individual truly lives off in the woods all by themselves, never seen by another human, there will always be groups. While you may technically have a point in a vacuum that groups can command certain behaviour, I'm not sure there is a meaningful distinction to be made. A group-less society doesn't happen.
They're actually not required in Florida. My parents and my sister didn't get a lawyer when buying their houses. I'm sure that they exist in Florida but I honestly hadn't heard of people getting lawyers for buying a house until I moved to New York.
> The 12,000 people let go from Google always knew that they could end up on the chopping block. All employees understand that. That doesn't mean they cannot be unhappy about it. Logically, there is no reason why they should be unhappy about it. But I fully expect most, if not all, of them were unhappy anyway - understandably so.
Fair enough, though I'd like to point out that it's not quite apples to apples. Yes, most employment in the US is technically at-will, so we all bend over and take it and just pretend that there's not a power imbalance, but I do think that there's a somewhat more implied stability for a typical W2 job (though I think 2022 and 2023 might have killed that delusion for most people). I take W2 jobs specifically because I'm extremely risk-averse, so when I've been laid off it felt a little more...unfair I guess? Like if I wanted the rug pulled from under me I could have started a business.
But your point is reasonable enough. I will admit that I do have some trouble having a ton of sympathy for the richest man in the world having his feelings hurt.
> I don't think this picture that they are unfeeling monsters holds any merit.
I very explicitly said that they felt bad, so I don't really know why you repeated this multiple times because it's not something I ever disagreed with. Whether or not every single human involved with a bad decision feels bad about it, it still happened because, again, an organization is not a person. I don't think most of the people who work at Google (or any large company) are unfeeling monsters. I'm claiming that the bureaucratic collective itself is.
> Unless an individual truly lives off in the woods all by themselves, never seen by another human, there will always be groups.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. There's a difference between "formal organizations have different (and worse) morality than a transaction between two humans" is radically different than saying "I think that the only way people are moral is to live in a unabomber shack".
I feel even a relatively thin layer of bureaucracy can effectively allow a lot of people to launder their guilt through the line of "it's just part of the job".
Do I actually think he's able to? No, not really, but I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong.
Though I keep using the personal "he", which lets be honest is not really accurate. Elon hires some smart people who do the actual work, and like most people who are high enough in the corporate ladder, doesn't really do anything other than be the face of the brand.
The thing is, this isn't some random 20 year old posting meme, this was (at the time) like the second richest guy in the world with a lot of social media presence and as such I do think he needs to be more careful about stuff that's "just a joke bro!" For better or worse, people do trust these billionaires as financial geniuses and I don't think "I was just messing" is a terribly good excuse.
Those are joke numbers? It might have started as a joke but money is money.
It's not as if there were nothing to say in that line; there is, and has been for some decades. But Musk is flagrantly and self-evidently ignorant on the subject, and in consequence has never been worth listening to on it, because all he has to say is how it upsets him personally. No one cares, and his money is the only reason anyone bothers pretending - and he plainly can't tell the difference, even after turning in a 0/10 performance against a 3/10 lightweight like Don Lemon.
I grant there may be things Musk is good at, but none of them has been evident of late, and none of them, very plainly, is this. If you insist on idolizing, one hopes out of mere self-respect at least you would choose a worthier idol than he.
If you want to hear replies from her supporters, good luck getting through a few hundred blue check marks. Compare this to something like https://x.com/RonDeSantis, which is an full of adulation for the guy.
In my estimation, X is tilted pretty far right at this point, simply because paid blue check marks are a sign of pride or shame, based on your political affiliation.
At the same time letting corporations thought-police (usually written on the wind of whatever crusade the mobile vulgus, of one variety or another, is on about this week) speech is so epically stupid it is almost funny. Musk latches on to this like he is some soothsayer of some impending 'takeover' when he is just exploiting a different facet.
CEOs loving free speech? You mean the idea of a free press that can report on their misdeeds? Consumers with the ability to raise flags about products and companies? Whistleblowers? Protestors and boycotters? Union organizers? What CEO would ever want to discredit free speech by turning it into a clown show of racists and woo-woo nutjobs?
Fake news across the board in social media[0]. The pre-Musk regime did the opposite.
[0]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/01/facebook-youtu...
No, it's not. It's Musk and his ilk that hate media, hate reporters, hate when their dirty tricks are brought to light.
> The hate against Musk and X is primarily because a lot of people on one political side hate that they’re no longer steering public discourse.
This is PARTIALLY true but misleading. We're upset that he has decided that fascists, racists, and Nazis need to have their hateful views shared. As a society we've ben working on equality for decades, so this is a major step backwards.
> Also the current X does far less steering (in any direction) than the censorship heavy regime of the past.
This is also not true. Only hate speech was removed from Twitter. Now it's people Musk doesn't like.
Discussing the lab leak theory or writing news pieces about Hunter Biden were “hate speech”? I don’t like the idea of some label like “hate speech” because it is highly subjective. We have the notion of free speech in the US constitution because it is so fundamental to a functioning democracy. Giant social media platforms are no different from your electrical utility - if they censor, it has impact similar to us not having foundational rights like in the first amendment.
Harmful disinformation.
> or writing news pieces about Hunter Biden were “hate speech”?
Evidence for this?
> I don’t like the idea of some label like “hate speech” because it is highly subjective.
No, it's not. Saying one group of humans is somehow inferior, racism, sexism, calls for violence, these are clear and unacceptable. Your comfort is not more important than a safe public space for all citizens. Even the constitution doesn't allow unlimited speech, so that's not an argument against this. Further, the constitution doesn't apply to private companies limiting user activity on their own sites. I don't have to let you put signs on my lawn.
"My life may be mediocre by comparison but at least I dont ....like Elon"
The thing is, Musk's political ideology is "whatever strokes my ego". Always has been, and the same applies for a lot of other billionaires, especially California types[0]. Most political ideologies are not going to bend themselves to your whims because they're too busy actually saying something. Narcissists will be eternally disappointed by them.
On the other hand, fascism isn't a political ideology at all. You can love-bomb specific people who are desperate for power and control with it because fascism fundamentally doesn't say anything. Every other ideology will eventually tell you 'no', but fascists will say whatever is necessary to get critical power players on board with shutting down democracy and stifling dissent.
> Also the current X does far less steering (in any direction) than the censorship heavy regime of the past.
Musk's Twitter is far more blatant at pushing right-wing political narratives than it was under Jack. Furthermore, Musk is not a free speech extremist. He looooves firing people at Tesla and SpaceX who say anything critical of the company they work for. This is not how you run a successful business, this is how you stroke the Great Leader's ego. This even leaked over into Twitter's moderation policies, which were changed multiple times to justify the banning of ElonJet, an account that was created specifically to embarrass Musk for flying private jets.
[0] In general, I find California's blue state credentials to be highly suspicious. This is the state that gave us Ronald Reagan, after all.