Tesla's Earnings: Elon Musk's Future and Other Takeaways The Wall Street Journal
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Tesla's Earnings: Elon Musk's Future and Other Takeaways - The Wall Street Journal
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During last nights earnings call with investors, Elon Musk threw out an all-time late-night dorm room bong sesh of an idea: what if AWS, but for Tesla?
Musk, who loves to riff on earnings calls, compared the unused compute power of millions of idle Tesla vehicles to Amazons cloud service business. If theyre just sitting there, he mused, why not put them to good use to run AI models? (Also, have you ever really looked at your hands? No, I mean really looked?)
Theres a potential... when the car is not moving to actually run distributed inference, Musk said. If you imagine the future perhaps where theres a fleet of 100 million Teslas and on average, theyve got like maybe a kilowatt of inference compute. Thats 100 gigawatts of inference compute, distributed all around the world.
So, to summarize, you buy a Tesla. Its your property. But Musk wants to freely use the unused compute power in your vehicle for... something? Possibly AI-related? Hopefully not the blockchain. (Tesla is an AI company now, by the way. Musk said so himself during the call.)
Would Tesla pay you for this? Unclear
Would Tesla pay you for this? Unclear. After all, this is Musk at his most hypothetical. Still, I wouldnt put it past him to just try to take compute power from his customers vehicles without consent or compensation. GM was giving your driving data to insurance companies without your consent! Baby, its a free-for-all.
But before we can even treat this as a serious idea, we need to figure out if its even possible. I reached out to Sam Anthony, former chief technology officer at Perceptive Automata, a now-defunct company that built modules for self-driving cars to allow them to do theory of mind tasks.
Anthony said, as a concept, its perfectly possible to split large computing tasks out over lots of small nodes. Weve seen it done with Bitcoin mining or Folding@home, a distributed computing project to develop new therapeutics. But just because something is possible doesnt necessarily make it a good idea.
Anthony said there are two main issues that make cars and electric cars, in particular imperfect nodes for a distributed computing project. First, you have to rely on the cars battery, or if its plugged in, the charging stations energy source, for power. And that power usually doesnt come free, with owners paying retail rates for electricity. Second, connectivity and speed are a big issue in distributed computing, Anthony said.
Inference in particular is a part of the [machine learning] workflow where your speed is essential.
Inference in particular is a part of the [machine learning] workflow where your speed is essential, he added.Youre not doing a ton of offline inference overnight, youre answering questions as theyre asked this is the big inference issue the AI companies are running into right now which makes the connectivity and availability issues of cars (which, you know, move around) even more of an issue.
In Musks mind, the distributed network would only work when the cars are parked or otherwise immobile. Still, Anthony argues that no one would willingly create a distributed computer architecture out of millions of car ECUs (electronic control units) unless they were somehow forced to do it.
Its somebody with a very weird looking hammer imagining the existence of deeply implausible nails, he said.
To be sure, computer scientists have been trying to create fast computers out of many small, idle nodes for a very long time. One of the earliest examples was SETI@home, in which Berkeley researchers thought they could find extraterrestrial life by tapping a volunteer network of distributed computers to analyze radio data. So why not a Tesla@home?
To be sure, computer scientists have been trying to create fast computers out of many small, idle nodes for a very long time
For one thing, the more geographically distributed the nodes, the harder it is to get them to work in concert with one another, said Phil Koopman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who co-authored a book about supercomputers.
Like Anthony, Koopman acknowledged that the project could work as long as the vehicles were plugged in while computing to avoid draining the battery. Good Wi-Fi was also a necessary component, so the Tesla would likely need to be parked at home overnight for the distributed network to function properly. But even then, youd likely run into obstacles while growing the project in order to make it useful for AI computing.
Scalability to that size is always challenging and rarely succeeds to the degree it is worth doing that instead of building a data center, Koopman said. The devil is in the details, so Id want to see some serious experimental confirmation it is viable.
Musk loves to pontificate on whats possible in a future overrun by autonomous connected vehicles. Things like a 24/7 robotaxi service in which your vehicle is out earning you passive income while you sleep sound awesome in theory. But when the rubber meets the road, Musks big ideas tend to deflate.
For now it is an interesting idea, Koopman said, but we need to keep in mind that most cool ideas like this do not pencil out to be practical.
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Elon Musk wants to turn Tesla's fleet into AWS for AI would it work? - The Verge
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk never actually made it into the ring, but Zuckerberg still dealt a blow to the Tesla CEO by surpassing him on the list of the worlds richest people.
Zuckerberg is now the third richest person in the world with a net worth of $171 billion, jumpingabove No. 4 Musk, who has a net worth of $168 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Meta CEO has gotten tens of billions of dollars richer since the start of the year, according to Bloomberg, in part because of the stellar performance of Metas shares.
Although his official salary for a decade has remained steady at $1, Zuckerberg is Metas largest and controlling shareholder, with more than 350 million shares, according to the companys most recent proxy statement. Metas shares have skyrocketed about 40% since January, giving Zuckerberg paper gains of about $49 billion on the shares he owns or controls.
Meanwhile, one of Musks main sources of wealth, Tesla stock, is struggling. Shares have plummeted 43% since the start of the year, making it the worst performing company in the S&P 500. Musk owns just over 715 million Tesla shares, according to the companys most recent proxy statement, and their value dropped by $76 billion since January.
Teslas lackluster stock performance comes after the company reported its first year-over-year sales decline since the pandemic earlier this month. Over the weekend, the company also cut the price of several vehicles along with its Full Self-Driving software.
Even notable Tesla bulls have recently cast doubt on the companys direction and are expecting answers from Musk on Tuesdays earnings call.
But while Musks flagship company backslides, he is still trying to secure a $45 billion pay package, after a judge struck it down in January (when it was worth $56 billion). Musks big payday could put him above Zuckerberg by net worth, but its unclear whether thepackage will be approved by shareholders at the companys proxy meeting in June.
The two billionaire executives have been at odds for years. In 2016, Meta contracted SpaceX to launch a satellite that wouldve brought internet access to sub-Saharan Africa. The rocket exploded on the journey, prompting Zuckerberg to write on Facebook that he was deeply disappointed. After Musk bought Twitter (now X), Zuckerberg was quick to launch Threads, a look-alike competitor, which Musk later called eerily quiet.
Their conflict escalated in June when Musk challenged Zuckerberg in a post on X.
Im up for a cage match if he is lol, he wrote at the time.
Zuckerberg, who has recently taken an interest in martial arts, seemed to take the challenge seriously and was ready to set up the fight. He later called it off, saying Musk wasnt serious about getting into the ring.
Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon wont confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead, Zuckerberg wrote on Threads. If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me.
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While Bolsonaros motives are obvious, Musks are perhaps less so. Bolsonaro has always been a reactionary agitator uncommitted to civility and constructive democratic engagement. He might even believe that if he can sufficiently muddy the waters of Brazilian democracy, he can push the courts to overturn his ban on seeking elected office. Musks right-wing turn, while in the making for a long time, has only become extremely pronounced in the past few years. His tweets are riddled with pejorative references to woke culture that resonate with a right-wing base trained to abhor political correctness, and he has dabbled in antisemitic conspiracy theories and re-platformed some of the most vile, hateful people in America.
He insists this is his prerogative in Brazil too, where some 40 million peopleor about 18 percent of the population in Brazilaccess X at least once a month. Earlier this month, in response to a court order demanding that X block an undisclosed number of accounts or face heavy daily fines, Musk made clear that he would not only ignore the ruling, which he calledaggressive censorship,but lift restrictions on previously suspended Brazilian accounts. He also urged Brazilians to resist Moraes, whom he referred to as a dictator holding Lula on a leash, and suggested both were part of some corrupt bargain of political self-protection. The spat temporarily called into question whether Starlink, Musks satellite internet company, would continue to operate in Brazil, where it has facilitated illegal mining and logging operations. During a speech at the site of the future Museum of Democracy in Rio de Janeiro on April 19, Moraes subtly jabbed Musk by noting that the countrys justice system is used to fighting foreign mercantilists who treat Brazil as a colony, as well as extremist and antidemocratic politicians who prefer to subjugate themselves to international interests. By that point, X in Brazil had quietly reversed itself, signaling it would abide by all judicial orders even as Musk escalated his online attacks against Moraes.
Musk most likely identifies with the trollish, macho authoritarianism that is the stock-in-trade of bolsonarismo and doesnt like the idea of the Brazilian government restricting his company in any way. There is nothing high-minded about his position. Mr. Musk is not a moral reference for defending freedom of expression, Paulo Abro, the executive director of the Washington Brazil Office, told me, adding that X executes numerous content removal orders around the world and Musk himself does not criticize dictatorial governments when his economic interests take precedence. His positions on Brazil are biased and are being used as a smokescreen for his business interests in the country. The basic problem for X is that the limits placed on its operations in Brazil are in accordance with local law, not the jurisprudence Musk carries around in his head.
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Elon Musk Is Now Meddling in Brazil's Democracy, Too - The New Republic
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Before there was Elon Musk, there was William Crapo Durant. Billy Durant, as he was known, built one of the worlds biggest makers of horse-drawn carriages, bought control of Buick, co-founded General Motors, was forced out of General Motors, co-founded Chevrolet, regained control of General Motors, speculated on stocks, lost control of General Motors a second time, started Durant Motors, went bankrupt in the Depression, opened a bowling alley, suffered a stroke and died penniless in 1947.
Its highly unlikely that Musk, one of the worlds richest people, will die penniless, but in other respects he and Durant have a lot in common. They are, or in the case of Durant were, both brilliant, restless builders of empires and defiers of convention who experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of business.
I talked to some experts on the wild early days of the automobile to see what Musk and the rest of us could learn from that period of ferment and creativity. One thing I found out is that the world is not always kind to visionaries with self-control issues. Durant flamed out at G.M. twice. In contrast, the prudent organization man who eventually succeeded him, Alfred Sloan, went from success to success. Renowned institutions bear his name.
To Understand the Future of Tesla, Look to the History of G.M. was the headline on a 2018 article in Harvard Business Review by Steve Blank, a serial tech entrepreneur who has taught entrepreneurship at Stanford and other universities.
Referring to 1920, the second time Durant lost control of G.M., Blank wrote:
While everyone around him acknowledged he was a visionary, Durants one-man show was damaging the company. He couldnt prioritize, couldnt find time to meet with his direct reports, fired them when they complained about the chaos, and the company had no financial controls other than Durants ability to raise more money. When the stock collapsed, Durants ownership share was at risk of being taken over by the bankers he owed, who would then own a good part of G.M. The board decided that the company had enough vision they bought out Durants shares and realized it was time for someone who could execute.
Founders often fail as managers, Blank noted. As Tesla struggles in the transition from a visionary pioneer to reliable producer of cars in high volume, he wrote in 2018, one wonders if the generous compensation plan that the Tesla board awarded to Musk that year would be better spent finding Teslas Alfred P. Sloan.
I called up Blank. He told me that the flaws in Musk that he identified that year remain. When youve been right in the beginning, you think youre right forever, he said. You surround yourself with people who think youre a genius forever. You run by whim rather than strategy.
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Opinion | Elon Musk Wouldn't Be the First Car Company Founder to Flame Out - The New York Times
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