Elon Musk - Part Four - CyberCab, RoboVan, And AI Nobel Prizes
Trump Talks Tariffs In Detroit, While Musk Puts Out New EV Prototypes
What a day it was here in Detroit, Michigan. Former President Donald Trump laid down the law regarding his tariff policy in the automotive and other industries, requiring reciprocal tariffs for China and every other major car-making country. Meanwhile, Trump’s new shotgun-riding companion, Elon Musk, introduced two new Teslas at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California.
Trump's new campaign strategy seems to involve dealing with the realities of business with the here and now, while Musk creates a vision of the future with EVs, space, and robots.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm29x5ke9jdo
Even the New York Times's Maggie Haberman recognized Elon Musk’s new branding of “Dark MAGA,” although she downplayed the impact, referring instead to poll shifts caused by Musk’s SuperPac, America PAC.
And there is no question that Elon Musk is putting his money where his mouth is with America Pac, offering $47 per signature for his Dark MAGA voter registration drive.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/musk-pac-signature-47-pay-refer-swing-state-voters-sign-petition-rcna174310
GM and China are also in the CyberTaxi market, making Trump’s comments here in Detroit especially interesting.
In the next section, I will discuss key features of the CyberCab to show how AI learns. Since current AI models believe cars have steering wheels and regular doors and not gull wings, it is very difficult to get the AI to render those images until Grok and other AI tools learn more about CyberCab.
We have often taken you to the Tank and Automotive Command (TACOM) in Warren, Michigan, and reported that RoboCop was filmed in Detroit. A key feature is the bulletproof wheels of the DARPA vehicles that were developed there.
Unless Grok knows about our TACOM research and reports, Grok will continue to produce car renderings of CyberCab without bulletproof wheels. Eventually, Grok will learn of our research and reports from the TACOM, and it will begin to render CyberCabs with bulletproof wheels.
Journalist George Webb walking the “Thomas Crooks Green Mile” at a Trump Rally in Warren, Michigan wondering why the FBI has only found a few pictures of Crooks in the 100 minutes before the Trump Assassination Attempt with thousands of cameras present at the event.
Continued…
We are only a few days into this merger of Trump’s pragmatism and Musk’s product prototypes for the future, but it certainly has shaken up the polls.
The political commentators have moved from harping on “MAGA is evil, and every MAGA supporter is a white supremacist” to “What the hell is Dark MAGA?”.
But Dark MAGA is still a little like Elon Musk’s Grok AI. Nobody knows yet quite what it means.
Even though Elon Musk’s Grok AI doesn’t accurately depict the new CyberCab he announced yesterday, giving the CyberCab a steering wheel in the Grok AI rendering above, AI works by making mistakes and then being corrected by humans.
But young, successful entrepreneurs have flocked to the “Dark Maga” label, shunning the just MAGA label of just five days ago.
Musk seemingly has rekindled the Steve Jobs philosophy if designing at large ght speed, and quickly correcting mistakes as a winning strategy.
This engineer and prototype at all costs, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes attitude is also at the base of AI computing, especially with Elon Musk’s Grok AI tool. Trump’s tariff strategy for China also seemed to exhibit the same laissez faire attitude with tariffs ranging from 25% to 1000% percent if needed.
If someone types into Grok after getting this picture, “CyberCabs don’t have steering wheels”, hopefully Grok doesn’t produce a picture of a steering wheel in its next iteration. But Grok improves the MAGA logos and leaves the steering wheel in the CyberCab.
You can see here that AI is an interactive process. When a human makes several attempts to get the picture he or she wants, AI learns by making mistakes. But all Trump voters are watching Elon Musk and his CyberCab launch at Warner Brothers. The light speed engineering and prototype until something blows up attitude approach gets our attention at a critical time in the Presidential race.
When I go back to the Grok AI drawing board, and I add the request to add CyberCab’s gull wings to the AI rendering, I get a great rendition of CyberCab’s spoke-less wheels, but not a true rendering of CyberCab’s gull wings.
The CyberCab is less than a day old in the public domain, so the AI mistakes are very obvious like the steering wheel and the gulls wings opening at a 45% angle instead of vertically. But with every prompt request, the AI gets better and better. Is that the same process that’s going on to define “Dark MAGA”?
ChatGPT won’t permit the use of celebrity likenesses, so the result is much less realistic. So Grok AI is rapidly gaining on the gigantic lead that Open AI’s Sam Altman’s ChatGPT had only a week ago.
After a few tries, I can see Grok getting better at generating the image I want. In a sense, through repeated retries, I am teaching Grok about the CyberCab and how to render it. Is that how Musk is defining “Dark MAGA” as well?
You get the idea. By tomorrow, thousands of CyberCab renderings will have been requested, and Grok AI will be much better than today. And thousand more attempts will be made in defining “Dark MAGA”.
Some black voters and Hispanic voters have identified with the “Dark MAGA” theme, resonating the fact MAGA doesn’t mean racism, it means opportunity for people of color.
Young voters have co-opted “Dark MAGA” to represented the youth sector has not been enthusiastically activated by Musk.
“Dark MAGA” certainly has resonated with adventure series fans of Batman, Avengers, and X-Men do to the futuristic nature of Musk’s thinking and MegaProjects.
Comedians immediately spoofed Trump and Musk riding in a wilding out if control Dark MAGA CyberCab - yet another interpretation of Dark MAGA as wild and crazy science.
https://x.com/nfkmobile/status/1844479623595454637?s=46&t=Zc6sbU3M2Pfbjaolc8QVPw
The message of this comic seems to suggest a ride in a Dark MAGA cyberteuck turns rhythmless white men into black, super rappers, but I’m sure that’s just the AI talking.
Young women are identifying with Dark MAGA as a sign of rebellion against their parents mores. More on this trend as it continue to develop.
Perhaps Trump will even go to Warner Brothers to take a ride in a CyberCab, and then the stock of internet images will be far superior with a reality-based reference model. Trump is going to Indio, California in the next few days (will he plug my Indio series at gwebb.substack.com?).
Back at the AI Grok drawing board, has already learned in four days that Dark MAGA doesn’t mean printing the words “Dark MAGA”, it means printing MAGA in black. That’s a subtle but important distinction.
The early AI mistakes are humorous when a concept like CyberCab is only a day old, but the idea of Musk and Elon riding together as Avengers is obviously something Grok has no problem with now.
You can see the current Grok AI doesn’t know that CyberCab has no steering wheel. Gull wings are a tricky concept for Grok because only DeLoreans, Tesla Model X, and a 1950s Mercedes had them. But Grok and ChatGPT will both get much better over the next few days at depicting CyberCabs. And that’s what today’s Nobel Prize is about—AI and something called “backpropagation.”
In this example, the “loss” occurs with the steering wheel and gull wings. Grok AI will keep trying thousands of times over the next week, and it will incrementally improve. I think this is exactly the Elon Musk strategy for explaining Dark MAGA to people: Try an explanation, and then see what happens. Then, gradually improve the explanation before election day comes.
And Geoffrey Hinton is the winner of the Nobel Prize for that concept today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton#:~:text=In%20a%202018%20interview%2C%20Hinton,%2C%20so%20it's%20his%20invention%22.
Just in time to explain what “Dark MAGA” is to people. We will see how good Grok gets over the next few weeks at our Dark MAGA Studios here in Michigan.
You can see that Grok knows Elon Musk a lot better than it knows Journalist George Webb!
When you throw in “Dark MAGA Studios”, Grok AI really flips out! That’s because the phrase “Dark MAGA Studios” has never been typed into Grok before.
Somehow by adding Summerfield Road and Michigan, Grok was able to find more images that get closer to a rendering of me. I can’t explain this yet unless the “token” created for “George Webb” now has the attributes Summerfield and Michigan attributed to it.
When I add the insection of Summerfield and Secor and the Schoolhouse Cafe because Grok knows nothing of those two places, it probably creates new tokens for both new phrases but completely ignores those tokens in generating the image.
When I add Lambertville, the same discounting occurs for the new token, and Grok just knows Michigan has pine trees, so it adds them to the background.
The same discounting occurs when I add Cabelas and the Water Slide Hotel. Grok doesn’t know the Dark MAGA Studios is close to Cabelas and the Water Slide Hotel, but it will learn. So much for AI Nobel Prizes for one day.
Well, Grok got the hair and sunglasses right. Smile. But not on the second try.
ChatGPT seems better at putting multiple concepts together.
And when I add “Summerfield Road”, ChatGPT makes a new concept film noir theme with “Dark Summerfield”, an interesting random combination of two separate entities.
Ok, Dark Summerfield, it is. I guess I have to grow the beard.
I grok you, George!
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