Call me Disruptor!

Not so long ago Elon Musk was pushing for a moratorium on AI.  He felt Google was too far ahead in the game.  Now he is launching his quest for "maximum-truth-seeking AI" in TruthGPT which he unveiled in a Twitter interview with Tucker Carlson.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, as the old saying goes.

I covered the idea of artificial intelligence a couple times since Geoffrey Hinton broke with Google earlier this year.  It has become the existential crisis of the 20's similar to the Y2K bug of the late 1990's when everyone thought computers would break down with all those zeros popping up in the year 2000.  In the end nothing happened, which was a bit anticlimactic given all the fear that was generated.

Elon however is pitching his quest for AI as the ultimate truth, which no doubt he would like to copyright.  His interview is filled with the gobbledygook we've come to expect from him, spouting out malapropisms and coming up with fetching hyphenated phrases in an effort to sound a lot smarter than he actually is.  It works on a show like @TuckerToday where the former Fox talk show host interviews such luminaries as Andrew Tate and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  So, whom exactly is Elon aiming at?

Mostly I think Elon likes to hear himself talk so he sets up interviews with straw men where he will get very little push back.  He's gotten burned a couple times like when he claimed he knew coding and had no idea what "Python script" was.  Not that I know but then I don't pretend to be a programming genius.  

It's hard to assess just how much a danger Elon Musk is.  He often does a good job of shooting himself in the foot, as has been the case with Twitter.  He writes off his vindictive outbursts to Asperger's Syndrome.  A condition that was revealed during his lengthy defamation suit when he called a rescue diver a "pedo" because the lead diver wouldn't use his mini-submersible to rescue the kids trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand.  It became a blanket excuse for the "strange things" he says and posts in social media.  However, one gets the feeling he is perfectly aware of what he is saying and that he is purposely serving as a "disruptor" on the global stage.

I hadn't heard this term until I watched Glass Onion last year, but it has been around for a while and often used to describe Musk in a positive sense.  This was one of the better scenes in the movie, in which the tech billionaire explains his raison d'etre to the flamboyant detective, but Benoit Blanc wasn't buying it and neither should we in regard to Musk or any of these tech tycoons.  They are only in it for themselves, maliciously using people to feed their insatiable lust for power.

AI is the latest tool at their disposal and Musk will get as much mileage as he can from it in his quest to be the world's first trillionaire.  Tesla is fast approaching that magic 12 zero mark, although his EV company has a long way to catch up to Apple, which is worth an estimated $3 trillion!  But, Tim Cook doesn't own Apple and therefor doesn't get to reap its profits the way Musk does Tesla and SpaceX.  

This self-styled Tony Stark from Iron Man has managed to accumulate an astonishing amount of wealth in an incredibly short time.  He first became a billionaire in 2012 when he debuted on the Forbes Billionaire List at $2 billion.  The previous year he was valued at $680 million.  That's quite a jump and corresponds roughly with the bailout package he got from the federal government to keep Tesla afloat during hard times.  After a rough ride in 2022, he's back to being number one on the list with an estimated wealth of $240 billion.

What's amusing about this guy is that he apparently doesn't own a house, yet made his mother sleep on the floor of a garage in a pre-fab house he had built near his Space X headquarters in Houston.  His mother has been urging him not to go through with his scheduled "cage match" with Mark Zuckerberg, who has been practicing Jiu Jitsu with mixed martial artists and looks ripped.  A challenge Musk issued himself, and has since brought in MMA trainers to get him in shape.  You simply can't make this shit up!

I don't think anyone has properly addressed how Elon came to be so rich so fast and that he can afford to take $200 billion hits and bounce back so quickly.  He's taking a huge chunk of the profits from his companies which would mean other shareholders get virtually nothing by comparison.  Not to mention the technicians and workers.  He is currently being sued for $500 million by the Twitter workers he stiffed on severance pay.  Yet, we are to believe he will use this AI for egalitarian purposes?

Usually when someone hordes this much money he has an ulterior motive.  He can't rule any individual country so it seems he wants to make himself the world's greatest influencer by cozying up to political despots and promoting questionable autocratic presidential candidates like Ron DeSantis, although he probably wishes now he hadn't.  Governor Ron is definitely not ready for prime time.  Musk also appears to be doubting his relationship with Putin.

Here again inconsistency has been his stumbling block.  Blame it on Asperger's Syndrome, if you will. One moment he is staunchly defending Ukraine and the next he is urging Zelenskyy to give up occupied territory in the name of peace.  Even his most ardent followers have a hard time figuring out where he is coming from.  With Napoleonic flair he retorts, "You are assuming that I wish to be popular."  Well, duh, why did you buy Twitter?

Yep, we are dealing with a "disruptor," in the worst sense of the word, not someone in search of universal truth.  His aim appears to be to break the system and thereby reap the spoils from a world in chaos.  AI is simply his latest imaginative tool to convince his followers that he is somehow doing all this for the public good.