Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?

[jon0844]

It's no different to bitcoin. People are still willing to invest when the stock is rising (which it seems to do whenever Elon says anything, no matter how stupid) and I bet they're all thinking they'll get out before it all goes wrong.

Some notable sales of stock have taken place, but it does seem like people are thinking they know better and will wait just one more day... just like people do with the meme coins, where you know it's all going to crash but you can win big if you time things right.

It just shows how many stupid and/or greedy people there are out there, but Tesla is quite unique in that so many people are invested that they can either bail out and possibly lose out, or pretend to believe the hype and get more people onboard who will push the value up.

I have to assume they have some trigger when they'll cash out - or they're going to lose big.

I can see how Elon can pretend AI is the next big thing, but AI is another bubble with lots of fraud that will come out in the wash when that all goes south, and when he speaks of his cars being so intelligent and powerful that they will 'get bored' (yes, he said that on the earnings call) and robots doing everything, and flying cars, I think his luck is going to run out.

But, we've seen this multiple times before and Tesla is still doing fine.

 

[JohnMcL7]

Even though Musk/Tesla don't have a great brand image at the moment I still see compliments for how well their cars drive and the performance so I still find it strange they're abandoning them pretty much for the self driving taxis and optimus robots which which are a long way behind others and despite the magic claims of AI fixing all the self driving problems rapidly, I can't see that happening as they claim. The car division of course is not looking good now either:

Although Tesla only publishes quarterly sales figures and does not divide those up by region, slightly more granular data is available from some countries via monthly new car registrations. And the numbers for October, when compared year on year to the same month in 2024, should be alarming.

Sales fell by double-digit margins in Sweden (89 percent), Denmark (86 percent), Belgium (69 percent), Finland (68 percent), Austria (65 percent), Switzerland (60 percent), Portugal (59 percent), Germany (54 percent), Norway (50 percent), the Netherlands (48 percent), the UK (47 percent), Italy (47 percent), and Spain (31 percent).

Tesla’s European and Chinese customers are staying away in droves

Sales tank as investors get ready to decide whether to make Musk a trillionaire.

arstechnica.com

On a more exciting note I did get to see my first Cybertruck in an Aberdeen shopping centre although sadly no demo drives.

 

[jon0844]

They can't drive on UK roads. There is a well known influencer/YouTuber that imported one and flouts the law but they can't be on our roads because they're deadly to everyone else.

 

[JohnMcL7]

They can't drive on UK roads. There is a well known influencer/YouTuber that imported one and flouts the law but they can't be on our roads because they're deadly to everyone else.

Yes, I'm well aware they can't be on the UK roads hence I was surprised to see one here....I was joking about taking it for a drive

 

[brad465]

X recently made all accounts have an "About" section that reveals their location. The biggest revelation seems to have been how so many pro-Trump/MAGA accounts seem to be located in Asia, parts of Africa, and other locations not in the US.

Elon Musk's X rolls out feature that shows users' country of origin – then suddenly removes it

Will the feature that reveals where exactly a user is posting from make a return?

mashable.com

If you were perusing Elon Musk's X late Friday night, you might have seen a brand new, highly anticipated feature roll out.

X visitors were able to go to any users' profile page, click on their join date to view a new "About this account" page which revealed exactly which nation an account was based. This information differed from the usual "Location" detail on an X profile page, as it showed exactly where an account was posting from based on their IP address, not what the user input themselves.

 

[brad465]

And this, is one of many reasons why AI regulation needs to exist:

Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes

The BBC has seen several examples of it undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.

www.bbc.co.uk

Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
The BBC has seen several examples of it undressing women to make them appear in bikinis without their consent, as well as putting them in sexual situations.
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment, other than with an automatically-generated reply stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson said it was legislating to ban nudification tools, and under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tech would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people in the UK viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI images.
Grok is a free AI assistant - with some paid for premium features - which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reaction or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
It has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making a sexually explicit clip of Taylor Swift.
Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, said X or Grok "could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to", adding they "appear to enjoy impunity".
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," she said.
XAI's own acceptable use policy , externalprohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement to the BBC, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of UK users encountering illegal content on their platforms, and take it down quickly when they become aware of it.
Additional reporting by Chris Vallance.

 

[jon0844]

And this, is one of many reasons why AI regulation needs to exist:

Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes

The BBC has seen several examples of it undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.

www.bbc.co.uk

The sad thing is that doing all the dodgy AI porn stuff (including some very likely underage stuff) is probably getting Elon many more subscriptions - which he'll use to prove there's demand for Grok and AI in general.

 

[takno]

The sad thing is that doing all the dodgy AI porn stuff (including some very likely underage stuff) is probably getting Elon many more subscriptions - which he'll use to prove there's demand for Grok and AI in general.

The mystery is why so many train and bus companies, government departments and local authorities are so keen to be associated with this.

I was X-bombed from the Lothian Buses website, just trying to get information about what was running where on new years eve. The worst thing being that the tweet itself didn't contain any information, just a link back to the website I'd just come from.

 

[Egg Centric]

And this, is one of many reasons why AI regulation needs to exist:

Woman felt 'dehumanised' after Musk's Grok AI used to digitally remove her clothes

The BBC has seen several examples of it undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.

www.bbc.co.uk

Actually it's one of the reasons it shouldn't exist (at this stage anyway) - the only way we're going to be able to reign this sort of thing in with such immature technology is keeping the rate of innovation as high as possible, not strangling it where we are through well meaning dictats.

 

[takno]

Actually it's one of the reasons it shouldn't exist (at this stage anyway) - the only way we're going to be able to reign this sort of thing in with such immature technology is keeping the rate of innovation as high as possible, not strangling it where we are through well meaning dictats.

Right. Is there some kind of 50-100 year timeframe after which we will be allowed to constrain this technology so that it can be harnessed for good rather than evil?

 

[Egg Centric]

Right. Is there some kind of 50-100 year timeframe after which we will be allowed to constrain this technology so that it can be harnessed for good rather than evil?

At the point at which it becomes reasonably mature. Otherwise you just look ridiculous like the EU, an impotent King Canute driving all the progress and expertise elsewhere.

May as well try and regulate long division.

 

[takno]

At the point at which it becomes reasonably mature. Otherwise you just look ridiculous like the EU, an impotent King Canute driving all the progress and expertise elsewhere.

I don't see much chance of the technology becoming mature on its own. Certainly as long as Musk is in charge it's likely to be stuck in the mould of an sad edgy teenager.

 

[jon0844]

The mystery is why so many train and bus companies, government departments and local authorities are so keen to be associated with this.

I was X-bombed from the Lothian Buses website, just trying to get information about what was running where on new years eve. The worst thing being that the tweet itself didn't contain any information, just a link back to the website I'd just come from.

The problem is that a lot of people still have accounts (many refusing to acknowledge it being X now) and companies have invested a lot in the software that manages all posts, including private messages but also monitoring themes via keywords to analyse the general feeling from customers.

Some firms use Meta services and some are dabbling with Bluesky but X still works well if you can ignore the regular posts and notifications from Elon even though you don't follow him.

 

[AlterEgo]

Actually it's one of the reasons it shouldn't exist (at this stage anyway) - the only way we're going to be able to reign this sort of thing in with such immature technology is keeping the rate of innovation as high as possible, not strangling it where we are through well meaning dictats.

I don't see what the material difference is between an AI doing this from a prompt and someone clicking a few buttons on Photoshop. People have been able to generate naked images of people they know for a few decades.

 

[Egg Centric]

I don't see much chance of the technology becoming mature on its own. Certainly as long as Musk is in charge it's likely to be stuck in the mould of an sad edgy teenager.

It doesn't need Musk to make it mature, I'm saying once it's reasonably mature it could be possible to regulate it, but until then any attempts will be self defeating.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jan 2026 ==

I don't see what the material difference is between an AI doing this from a prompt and someone clicking a few buttons on Photoshop. People have been able to generate naked images of people they know for a few decades.

There's no difference in principle (fakes have existed for 100s of years I'd imagine, originally with paint and canvas probably!) - it's the simplicity of creating one now. But that doesn't stop regulation not being a magic bullet...

 

[jon0844]

It's also taking a photo and being able to change the clothing (and background, other people added in etc) and then generate a video.

We've moved way beyond what someone can do in Photoshop.

But, yes, there have been people doing awful things for years.

 

[takno]

It doesn't need Musk to make it mature, I'm saying once it's reasonably mature it could be possible to regulate it, but until then any attempts will be self defeating.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jan 2026 ==



There's no difference in principle (fakes have existed for 100s of years I'd imagine, originally with paint and canvas probably!) - it's the simplicity of creating one now. But that doesn't stop regulation not being a magic bullet...

If the technology isn't mature enough to be demonstrably safe, there should be laws in place to prevent the public from being exposed to it. The idea that democratically-elected governments should be unable to control massive industries because a bunch of billionaires got together and invented a mantra that "rules make the computers cry" is pretty dismal.

I'd say there is a huge and growing problem with the technology sector in that it can't simply can't provide an acceptable answer to the questions of what its for, and why the rest of of society should continue to indulge its petulance, its money-grabbing and its anti-people behaviour.

 

[jon0844]

Tech companies support and lobby Governments that won't regulate them. Regulation is bad and stifles growth, according to them.

 

[JamesT]

Tech companies support and lobby Governments that won't regulate them. Regulation is bad and stifles growth, according to them.

History would tend to support that view. Compare the growth over the last few decades of the US which has had that much more relaxed approach in many areas of life, with the EU that has taken a much more regulatory approach.

 

[PGAT]

History would tend to support that view. Compare the growth over the last few decades of the US which has had that much more relaxed approach in many areas of life, with the EU that has taken a much more regulatory approach.

Obviously if large businesses lobby for what they want and see growth, an economy which consists of them will see growth. That doesn't necessarily mean it will translate into a desirable outcome for everyone else.

 

[Egg Centric]

If the technology isn't mature enough to be demonstrably safe, there should be laws in place to prevent the public from being exposed to it.

I fundamentally disagree. As I hope does the ghost of William Huskisson.

 

[brad465]

History would tend to support that view. Compare the growth over the last few decades of the US which has had that much more relaxed approach in many areas of life, with the EU that has taken a much more regulatory approach.

Growth isn't always a good thing: if it doesn't benefit a critical mass of the population, you get huge inequality, that then breeds populists on multiple extremes, and if really bad, a revolution. Then of course the Roaring 20s was a huge growth boom, but the lack of regulation that enabled it also caused The Great Depression. Also, looking at how much public and private debt in the US and other countries has exploded in recent decades, but most especially since 2008, can this growth seen really be considered that?

Yes, there is such a thing as over-regulation or improper regulation, but perhaps if we used the terms "rights, standards and protections" instead of regulation, then we realise why it matters.

 

[Egg Centric]

Growth isn't always a good thing: if it doesn't benefit a critical mass of the population, you get huge inequality, that then breeds populists on multiple extremes, and if really bad, a revolution. Then of course the Roaring 20s was a huge growth boom, but the lack of regulation that enabled it also caused The Great Depression. Also, looking at how much public and private debt in the US and other countries has exploded in recent decades, but most especially since 2008, can this growth seen really be considered that?

Yes, there is such a thing as over-regulation or improper regulation, but perhaps if we used the terms "rights, standards and protections" instead of regulation, then we realise why it matters.

Propose some useful regulation that would help with AI being used to make fake nudes of celebrities and/or children without being overbearing as heck and that we have the technical ability to implement.

I think you're wishing for something that at this stage doesn't exist.

I can think of legislation that might be practicable when it's a more mature technology. Not now though.

 

[brad465]

Propose some useful regulation that would help with AI being used to make fake nudes of celebrities and/or children without being overbearing as heck and that we have the technical ability to implement.

I think you're wishing for something that at this stage doesn't exist.

I can think of legislation that might be practicable when it's a more mature technology. Not now though.

Any AI program that does things like that is fined, then if this doesn't stop it, banned from operating in the relevant country, unless the architect is able to put demonstrable safeguards in place themselves. If something cannot be run/used without serious harm to people, it can't be used until it is safe.

If the architects/owners are not happy about that, then they have incentive to innovate the right tools in place. To take another example, we haven't yet allowed driverless cars full reign of the road because the technology hasn't been fully up to standard yet. There is legislation that potentially allows them onto the roads later this year, but only if the vehicles meet set safety standards. By your logic the first driverless car models could have gone onto the road and carried passengers the second they came off the production line, and could continue no matter how many accidents took place as "don't worry, the technology will get better, we just don't know when yet."

 

[JamesT]

Growth isn't always a good thing: if it doesn't benefit a critical mass of the population, you get huge inequality, that then breeds populists on multiple extremes, and if really bad, a revolution. Then of course the Roaring 20s was a huge growth boom, but the lack of regulation that enabled it also caused The Great Depression. Also, looking at how much public and private debt in the US and other countries has exploded in recent decades, but most especially since 2008, can this growth seen really be considered that?

Yes, there is such a thing as over-regulation or improper regulation, but perhaps if we used the terms "rights, standards and protections" instead of regulation, then we realise why it matters.

It may be true, that growth doesn't benefit everybody. But I was responding to a comment about regulation stifling growth. Now correlation is not causation, but the US has clearly been the more dynamic economy for many years. Where is the European equivalent of Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, etc.?
Debt has exploded on both sides of the pond, so I don't see how that comes into a comparison of the two approaches.

Propose some useful regulation that would help with AI being used to make fake nudes of celebrities and/or children without being overbearing as heck and that we have the technical ability to implement.

I think you're wishing for something that at this stage doesn't exist.

I can think of legislation that might be practicable when it's a more mature technology. Not now though.

It’s already a criminal offence to non consensually share intimate images, whether real or fake. That’s the behaviour that’s objectionable, doesn’t matter what tool was used to create it.

 

[jon0844]

History would tend to support that view. Compare the growth over the last few decades of the US which has had that much more relaxed approach in many areas of life, with the EU that has taken a much more regulatory approach.

I'm not for stopping innovation but it's quite concerning that so many US based tech companies are now doing some very bad things, including what Tesla has been able to get away with, but also including X, Facebook (well Meta in general), Google and so on.

All businesses need constant growth and that's pretty much impossible without doing things that impact a lot of people - either those employed or those buying and using products and services.

Regulation is something that is needed in a capitalist society. The EU has actually helped the US benefit from many new rules and laws even if the USA hasn't passed the same rules, simply because EU compliance can often spread beyond its borders.

 

[Egg Centric]

Any AI program that does things like that is fined, then if this doesn't stop it, banned from operating in the relevant country, unless the architect is able to put demonstrable safeguards in place themselves. If something cannot be run/used without serious harm to people, it can't be used until it is safe.

If the architects/owners are not happy about that, then they have incentive to innovate the right tools in place. To take another example, we haven't yet allowed driverless cars full reign of the road because the technology hasn't been fully up to standard yet. There is legislation that potentially allows them onto the roads later this year, but only if the vehicles meet set safety standards. By your logic the first driverless car models could have gone onto the road and carried passengers the second they came off the production line, and could continue no matter how many accidents took place as "don't worry, the technology will get better, we just don't know when yet."

Explain "does things like that" more precisely. Almost any program that can produce an image (AI or not) can in principle produce those kind of images. You could even hand craft one in a text editor.

The incentives are already there to make this stuff safer. Stupid legislation won't add to them, it just makes it harder to experiment and iterate.

 

[GusB]

I can think of legislation that might be practicable when it's a more mature technology. Not now though.

What legislation are you thinking of and why shouldn't it be applied now rather than when the technology becomes "more mature"?

 

[Egg Centric]

What legislation are you thinking of and why shouldn't it be applied now rather than when the technology becomes "more mature"?

Well we need to decide exactly what we want to make illegal but for instance taking the most obvious example of the child porn it's been making (if it actually has been, for obvious reasons I'm not going to look up what it's been doing and sometimes these things are very sensationalised) - we make being a public service that creates child porn using AI illegal, with something extremely close to strict liability for whoever runs such a service (some exemptions for hacks or whatever).

We can't introduce this law now because it's pretty much impossible to prevent it with current technology and the only way we'll develop technology that could stop it is to keep it legal. Any attempt to ban it will just mean more pragmatic places like China will continue developing it and we'll leech expertise to them. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. If however we keep working on it I'm reasonably sure we can identify it with any arbitrary degree of accuracy over time and at that point we can have a conversation over what we want to ban.

I see a lot of parallels in the attempts to ban exporting >56 bit RSA encryption (iirc) in the 90s by the USA. Didn't work well for them.

 

[GusB]

Well we need to decide exactly what we want to make illegal but for instance taking the most obvious example of the child porn it's been making (if it actually has been, for obvious reasons I'm not going to look up what it's been doing and sometimes these things are very sensationalised) - we make being a public service that creates child porn using AI illegal, with something extremely close to strict liability for whoever runs such a service (some exemptions for hacks or whatever).

We can't introduce this law now because it's pretty much impossible to prevent it with current technology and the only way we'll develop technology that could stop it is to keep it legal. Any attempt to ban it will just mean more pragmatic places like China will continue developing it and we'll leech expertise to them. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. If however we keep working on it I'm reasonably sure we can identify it with any arbitrary degree of accuracy over time and at that point we can have a conversation over what we want to ban.

I see a lot of parallels in the attempts to ban exporting >56 bit RSA encryption (iirc) in the 90s by the USA. Didn't work well for them.

If you could put that lot into English, we might be able to understand what you're saying. It's all gobbledegook as far as I'm concerned