June 10, 2025 • 29 mins
On this week’s episode, host David gathers Max Chafkin and Dana Hull to go through the latest developments in the aftermath of the Elon Musk-Donald Trump explosion last week. After two (!) emergency episodes in as many days last week, things seem to have calmed down between the South Africa native and the US president—but there are still signs of friction. Will Trump ever be able to forgive the insults Musk hurled at him on social media (as in, Trump should be impeached a third time)? Can he afford not to?
In the midst of all the drama, it’s easy to forget that this week will reportedly see a milestone event for Tesla: the June 12 launch of a robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. The operation will be small to start, with just 10-20 cars serving a limited area, according to the company. But the timing of the event is eyebrow raising. Not only does it come on the heels of Musk’s tweet-storm meltdown, it also happens a mere week after a Bloomberg story outlining a lethal crash involving a self-driving Tesla. The crew discuss just how long the odds are for robotaxi success.
To end, Chafkin has brought a feud to the program. This week it’s Musk against his own chatbot, Grok. Why is he so disappointed with his digital companion this time? The answer includes a screen short, a left wing meme and an artificial intellgence with a surprising lack of digital critical thinking.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star. A
star is born Elon On Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are up
pay in four fos.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Us of that.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elon.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
A lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Muskets Tuesday,
June tenth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. So the Wild Feud,
the feud to end all feuds between Elon and the
President appears to be sick down a bit for the moment.
Saalacious posts are being deleted. Nice thaties exchanged, but the
(01:06):
damage to their alliance is done and will break it
all down. Also, a big date is upon us this Thursday.
Tesla will apparently finally start its long awaited Robotaxi service
in Austin, Texas. Now, the torching of several self driving
waymos in La is perhaps an ominous sign for the launch,
as is the bombshell report by our very own Dana
(01:27):
Hall about a lethal accident involving in Tesla AND's self
driving mode. But perhaps for Muscinco it is an opportunity
to draw attention to something other than his brawl with Trump.
Then at the end, we're gonna have a little feud watch.
So lots and lots to go through, and let's get
to it with our regulars, the aforementioned Dana Hall and
(01:48):
Max Chafkin. Hello to you both.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, David, happy to be here.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Good day, David.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
How are you guys doing you look you're smiling again.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Max, I mean, crazy week last week. I'm still I'm
still still a buzz.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You're still a glow. So we spoke. You did an
emergency pod on Thursday with Josh, and then you and
I did the Friday one. Stuff keeps happening. Although I
guess maybe tacking back in the other direction bring us
now up to speed.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, we I mean I think we started to kind
of hint at this in our conversation on.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Friday Elon Musk, I mean.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
You know, pretty quickly started to at least turn the
the the dial down it. He deleted the most incendiary tweet,
the one about Jeffrey Epstein. He I believe deleted the
tweet calling for Donald Trump to be impeached.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
He's deleted at least two.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
He's also gone back to sort of something resembling his
regular scheduled programming. At the end of last week, he
like just started tweeting about, you know, a big win
for Starlink and Dominica, you know, the Islands, I guess,
which I thought was kind of funny because it's like, Okay,
here's the world, here's we're huge, where the world leader
does not hate me. But in any case, he's been
(03:09):
talking about his companies again. He is also sort of
amplifying Trump administration messaging on the protests. I believe he
praise tweeted a jd Vance statement as well as a
Donald Trump truth. He refollowed Stephen Miller for those who
are following that driving.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Got so so yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I mean, he's sort of trying to edge his way
back into the good grades of Donald Trump without explicitly apologizing.
He hasn't done that or really come close to doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Now Trump is still keeping him at arms length, though.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Trump was asked yesterday about Elon Musk's drug use, and
he answered the question in a way that seemed very diplomatic.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
We should just listen to that, David, I think, yeah,
let's do that.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
There was this New York Times report that he did
not want to talk about Elon Musk, that alleged that he,
towards the end of his time in the White House
was blurring the lines between recreational use of drugs and
medicinal Do.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You think he ever had drugs here at the White House?
I really don't know. I don't think so. I hope not.
Look I wish him well. You understand, we had a
good relationship, and I just wish him well, very well.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Actually, I mean it's not exactly a total denial, but
he also said he didn't see anything concerning you know.
To me, that's sort of a rear that tells you
that this feud is still going on, although it does
appear that Donald Trump's to turn that down down as well.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
A day or so earlier, the Washington Post had I
think this is over the weekend, reporting that Trump in
phone calls with some of his advisors and such, had
called Musk a big time drug addict. So yes, certainly
a very differ tone here in this in this press conference.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It's a different thing to say I never saw somebody
take drugs versus I know he's not a drug addict,
right like, So there's like he could have denied it
in a more complete way, although he does back up
Elon's denials to some extent.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, now, Danna, we missed you last week and we
didn't get your hot takes towards the end of the week.
So as you are observing at all, what is what
is your take from there?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I was.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I was off at the end of last week, trying
to be like a normal person. So I was following
this like tit for tat back and forth sort of
on my phone, but not in real time, and then
it was very hard to play catch up anyway. It
was it was just sort of crazy. But I thought
that Trump's what Trump said in that clip, I wish
him well. I wish him very well. Actually it's like,
(05:48):
is he wishing him well because he thinks he's a
drug addict, or is he wishing him well because the
relationship is over, or is he wishing him well because
he still needs him to finance the midterms? Like it
was just just an interesting, interesting response.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
My reading of that was door number three. I wish
him well. Muski's working very hard to try to simmer
things down, and I'm gonna take a step in that
direction as well. I wish him well so that he
keeps sending me miney.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, you know, my hot take was it totally reminded
me of the whole pedo guy thing from twenty eighteen
when like Elon, with zero zero proof whatsoever, basically just
like went on this rampage and called this cave rescuer
a pedo guy, and like then doubled down on it
and just he's like when Elon is certain that he's
(06:37):
right about something, or when he's upset or when he
feels like he's being attacked, he just goes thermonuclear.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And specifically you're referencing the Epstein thing.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, like this is a thing like Elon is like
obsessed with his idea that people are our pedophiles.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's the pedo guy insults all over. I mean, the
allegations around Jeffrey Epstein It's exactly the same insult, except
the difference. I see one of those guys, one of
those guys as president, and one was a guy who
had you know, been on TV once exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But for him to level this at the president and
to do the twofer of he's in the Epstein files
and that's why they haven't been released and he should
be impeached, I was like, Wow, Okay, someone really needs
to like step in and take his phone away. In
the old days, that would have been Sam Teller, his
chief of staff. I don't know who takes the phone
away these days. Is it Katie Miller?
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Is it somewhere else?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Like I would love to just know, like the apparatus.
And then there was a lot of reporting about how
this datane was reached because of intermediaries, and I'm like, well,
who exactly is the who exactly are the intermediaries at
this stage of the game.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's Bill act and Kanye West And that's a non
on Twitter Alaska or whatever. He was like, hey guy, Hey, Elon,
I think you should cool down. And Elon was like,
you know, that sounds like a pretty smart IDEA random
guy with a couple hundred Twitter followers.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
You know, one thing I've been thinking about in the
sober light of day.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know, we have as we've been talking about the
Elon Trump kind of relationship a lot of Trump reporters,
including Josh Green, who was on the podcast last week.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I said I told you so, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I have said I told you so yeah. And I
am happily eating crow. Although I do think we're starting
to see that my take that this relationship may continue,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Want you want to share the crow with other people.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Yeah, it's not like as bad as did last week.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I do wonder if Elon is sort of a combination
of like one of these Trump advisors who were sort
of chewed up and spit out by the White House
and a world leader. You know, Elon is part Scaramucci
and part Kim Jong Um. And I say that because Elon,
because that's quite a merging, has leverage, you know, and
(08:48):
we saw it over We saw it last week when
he was threatening to to you know, cancel the Dragon program.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
He has the kind of like the you know, campaign donations,
Dragon all those things are right, but Max, at the
same time, you can't tell me that he doesn't have
more to lose in all this than than Trump. No,
he totally does.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
But I just think there's a way to reach kind
of a equilibrium where they are neither friends nor enemies,
which is kind of the way it works with all
these world leaders, where Trump one day will be hinting
at the possibility of nuclear war, the next minute saying
I love this guy, you know. And we've seen it
with Kim Jong Um, We've seen it with Ajijenping, We've
seen it with Vladimir Putin, where he will swing rather
(09:30):
wildly in the context of a negotiation. And I kind
of think that's a little bit of what we saw
last week.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I would just like to point out that we had
all this bs for so many episodes about the cage
match and what the real cage match was, and David,
this was the cage match. This is the true cage match.
Trump on like Bannon in one corner, Katie Miller and
another I.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Don't know, Like it's just Bannon is Trump's cup man?
Who who's Musk cup Man? Yeah, that's it's not It's
not Katie Miller, Zachman or Cacumen or Zachman the ref. No,
it's true. It's the cage match to end all cage matches,
and now they just write each side has gone to
their respective corners at least for the time being. Okay, now, Dana.
(10:18):
On Thursday, Tesla has a big day of sorts, the
launch of the vaunted robotaxi. Tell us or remind us,
I should say about the specifics and what's at stake
here for Tesla and Musk.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I don't want to go overboard and say it's like
a big launch of it, you know. Bloomberg has reported
My colleagu Ed Ludlow has reported that Tesla was sort
of eyeing June twelfth as the day that they would
begin some kind of robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. We
don't know if this is paid customers, if it's employees,
if it's just like delivering you know, vehicles from the
(10:56):
factory to new owners. We know that Tesla has been
FSD on supervised on some Austin streets downtown, but like
there's no event, Like no, I don't know of any
investor or cellside Wall Street analysts who's gotten like an
invitation to some big show. So it could be like
a very soft launch and you know, people within Austin
(11:18):
and terms like Austin City officials have been pretty mum
about it. So there's still just like a lot that
we don't know. I mean, if you live in Austin, Texas,
give us a holler because we're trying to figure it out.
I mean, I was thinking should I go to Austin,
and then I'm like, well, I don't know what I
would actually see because I just think that they are
trying to tamp down expectations a little bit. So what
exactly this will be?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And by the way, so for those listeners in Austin, Texas,
they should write into us Max at what is our
address again, Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
At Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And give us any hot tips on that. But I
do wonder Max if Dana's last point is exactly it
that this went from a year or so ago to
be Matt, this is going to be big. It's gonna
be huge. We're gonna have bunkeding up all over the
stadium and it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
A big knowledge just launch you could possibly imagine. And
and it's particularly noteworthy because this is a company, this
is a guy who is kind of known for these
big events. Elon Musk really likes to do these grand shows.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Why he's going to be so bitter that he misses
the screaming his name and.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
And you know, they started to signal this during the
earnings call.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We talked about this on our the episode that we
did immediately after the last Tesla earnings. We're talking about
ten to twenty taxis with teleoperation a very restricted area.
It also sounded like on the earnings call that they
are are kitting these things out with more sensors than
at least the standard model. Hy has so a lot
(12:45):
of reasons to not look at this as a true commercial.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Launch, and really not anywhere near a true commercial launch.
But you know, maybe who knows.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I'm prepared to be surprised because that's what Elon Musk does.
But we have not seen any signs that this is
going to be a big event, and in fact, I
think it's gonna be the kind of thing where investors,
maybe not on Thursday, but start to ask, hey, didn't
he promise that we would have a commercial launch?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Didn't he promised it? Didn't We friggin bid this price
of the stock up a whole heck of a lot
based on all this isn't you know, and so but
you know what one of the interesting things is is
they always seem to forget that they had bid them,
they did price the stock up, and then when it doesn't,
if it doesn't come to pass, then they just go, well,
we're just gonna bid it up on some some other thing.
(13:34):
As you say, Max, coming down the road. Now, Dana,
tell us a little bit about a story, a fantastic
story that you and friend of the Pod Craig Trudel,
had last week about something that is related at the
very least, you know, tangentially related to this whole Robotaxi launch.
Hit us with the details.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so this was just sort of a horrible, tragic
tale of how a seventy one year old grandmother in
Arizona was killed by a Tesla and it all came
to late in a very weird sequence of events, which
was in October, NITSA announced that they were investigating Tesla
(14:14):
FSD because of four separate crashes where the vehicle with
FSD engaged seemed to have difficulty where there was fog,
dust or glare. And they listed these four crashes and
one of them was pedestrian fatal fatality pedestrian Arizona. And
I was like, wait, what, Like a tesla using FSD
(14:35):
killed a pedestrian, Like I didn't hear about that, Like
what was that? And we asked tesla, we asked NITSA,
we asked for more details. Nobody had anything. And so
then I went to my old friend public records, which
you know, I just can't stress enough the importance of
digging for public records. And I filed a Public Records
Act request with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and
(14:56):
I was like, do you have any details about this
crash where apparently at Panestia was killed. And I asked
for the crash report, photographs, and any camera footage taken
from vehicles at the scene, and like lo and behold,
several months later, in like late March, I got back
this trove of data, including the video footage of the
(15:17):
crash taken from the tesla itself. And I have to say,
like I have looked at a lot of crash footage
and a lot of crash reports in my time as
an automotive reporter, I've never gotten back footage from a
tesla like this. I mean, the state trooper who had
the wherewithal to download it right at the scene has
my kudos, And so we just got back this like
(15:38):
really harrowing footage, and it showed that sun glare was
the issue that the Tesla that was driving could not
see in front of it because of the glare on
the camera. And this was all the more intriguing to
me because on the last earnings call, Elon was specifically
asked about sun glare and gave this like very long
winded response about it. So it all the stars just
(16:00):
kind of a line where we had all these elements.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh, but the long wind did response was what, hey,
don't sweat it. We got it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It was basically like, we've solved this problem. We had
this breakthrough recently, we can bypass the image processor, we're
doing photon counting.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Well. So this is one of the questions I had
for you, which is this accident did happen a couple
of years ago. So is there any confidence out there,
not just among Elon in his inner circle, but among
broader Tesla followers that they indeed have made advancements and
developments that would fix such a problem.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, I mean to be clear, you know, Tesla is
always updating its hardware stack and its software stack, and
so what version of hardware and software the Tesla that
was involved in this fatal crash had in November twenty
twenty three versus now, I don't really know because I
asked Tesla if they could tell me, like what was
(16:55):
the hardware version and what was the software version? And
they didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Did Tesla respond at all to anything you ask them?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
No, I mean I said, to a long list of
questions to several executives. But you can it's reasonable to
presume that, yes, the current use out there is a
different version. Maybe they've solved it, maybe they haven't. Doesn't matter,
Like this woman is dead and NITZA is investigating this
crash as part of a potential defect investigation. And you know,
(17:25):
we only know about this crash because Tessel reported it
to NITSA.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Dan of course, NITSA being National.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Right basically the men and women who regulate the transportation sector. Now, Max,
as Dana is saying here, regardless of what happens with
the technology going forward, that's not going to bring this
woman back. Of course, humans, as we've discussed, and that
as we've argued about in the past human drivers kill
(17:55):
thousands of people a year on the road, and I
should also say, as the story points out, but I
guess the question is, is society ready to accept the
deaths caused by the robots the same way it's willing
to say, Hey, God, awful, horrible that this human driver
killed someone else. But it's just part of the you know,
(18:15):
just the way things go.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Obviously society is not ready to accept that. There are
two problems here. One is that Tesla has all of
these statistics about the number of miles driven by what
it calls full self driving parentheses supervised FSD supervised. Those
statistics are interesting, but they are not the same as
(18:37):
what Tesla is purporting to launch in Austin or anywhere else,
which is the same system but without a human in.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
The loop, the exact same system.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Yeah, and that's what Elon Musk has been saying.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So just sounds the supervised and gets ready.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
For the lack of supervision.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
FSD unsupervised basically.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
But in the nitty gritty of it, all you're doing
is stripping out one we.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Heard a couple of I mean, there are a few
modifications that they're that they appear to be making in
Austin because it's not ready. But my point is where
we're taking one thing and attempting to make a judgment
about another thing that is different, and that is different
and in like a hugely important way. The second thing
(19:20):
is like, these self driving systems are very limited. They
are only used on certain roads at certain times of day,
and they deliberately exclude difficult situations, so like snow splare
maybe they turn off when they can't handle it, and
so we actually don't know like human accidents. Although they
(19:43):
add up to a lot, it is not a lot
in terms of miles driven, and we don't know how
those limitations, the limitations that are in those self driving
systems today, and that people use them in specific ways, right,
they don't necessarily use them if they're in a really
chaotic cy driving situation, the kinds of situations in other words,
(20:03):
that are more likely to lead to accidents. So these
statistics are interesting, but they don't necessarily prove anything. And
that's why it's kind of so crazy that Elon Musk
is attempting to just kind of do this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Than any final points on this before we move on.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, I just think that there's going to be a
lot of questions about the rollout, the parameters of it.
You know what happens if there is an accident in Austin.
Is the city of Austin going to do anything or
the county or the state of Texas or nits And
then meanwhile, this defect investigation into how the vehicles perform
in things like fog and sunglair is ongoing, and I
(20:42):
think it's just telling that, you know, when we talk
about Trump and Musk and like the levers and the
copramot that each have on the other, Like what is
NITSA going to do here? Like are they just going
to wrap up this investigation and say Tesla told us
everything's fixed and this investigation dies on the line or
does it continue? So that's another thing to keep watching on.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
One other thing about Dana's story, and this is kind
of important when you're talking about cities like Austin.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Do read it. By the way, it ran as a
big take, a bloomber big take last Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Oh so one important thing also about the story is
av systems. Autonomous vehicle systems have trouble with non vehicles,
so with pedestrians, with cyclists, and with children, and like,
this is not the first time an autonomous vehicle has
killed a pedestrian. That that of course happened with an
uber autonomous vehicle, like about eight years ago or so.
(21:35):
And of course cities are driving environments where you have
lots and lots of pedestrians, where the interaction between pedestrians
and cars is really important. We've seen issues in San
Francisco where autonomous vehicles have severely hurt a pedestrian. It
was a cruise vehicle that dragged someone under its wheel
and as a result, CRUs essentially shut down its entire
(21:56):
av operation. We've also seen these kind of interactions with
pedestrians that are not necessarily dangerous but are problematic for
the autonomous vehicles, where pedestrians just sort of get in
their way, try to mess with them, try to confuse them.
And so I would expect that if this rollout happens
on any kind of scale, there are going to be
(22:17):
things like that, there are going to be issues with
protesters or with people just kind of messing with slash
vandalizing these vehicles, and like it's just creating like a
lot of different vectors for chaos or something worse. And
I think that's one of the reasons why this is
such a limited launch to start with. This is only
ten to twenty cars.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Listen, I think for sure those things are going to happen,
especially as you roll out more of these things. I mean,
it's interesting to me, Unlike you, I happen to pretty
much firmly believe that human drivers are lousy and that
if given the opportunity, the robots will eventually do it
better than us. But you're also starting to convince me that,
you know what, we the humans may never allow the
(23:01):
robots to be tested enough to get to that point.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And that is that's like one of the reasons when
you talk to people in the industry who are skeptical,
that is their skepticism. They're not saying the robots could
never do this, we could never get there. It's that
the things we would have to do are things we
are not going to be willing to do. Like, are
you going to be willing to accept a technology that
kills pedestrians at a higher rate than human drivers?
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I mean initially or maybe total?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Like fer people die, Well, what a fewer people in
cars die, but more pedestrians die? Would you know that's
still of course not Okay, Well that's going to be
a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Well they call the whole thing off, all the robo
taxi launch off.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, I guess the question is like, are you willing so?
Roughly forty thousand people die in traffic accidents every year
in the United States. Alcohol, drug use, and speed and
not wearing seatbelts are all huge factors in these crashes.
But the premise of autonomous driving is that we can
get to crash zero, but on the way to crash zero,
(24:03):
are we happy if robots like end up killing people?
I don't think so. I mean, so that's the calculus
that everyone's trying to make. And what was so sad
about this crash is it's like a double fault accident,
right like Tesla's legally is always says that the driver
has to maintain control at all times. So clearly the
driver was not paying attention and did not realize that
(24:24):
the glare was really bad, and perhaps they should have
slowed down or moved over before coming upon all these cars.
But then also f Steve was apparently engaged per Nitza
and that didn't see all the warning signs either, including
cars that were pulled over with hazard lights on. I mean,
there were a lot of stationary objects that one would
think an FSD system would have seen.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean, this is the kind of scenario where I mean,
and again we don't know for sure, it's very dangerous
anytime you get out of your car on the highway,
it's very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
Yes, but this does sound like.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
A scenario where a human driver might have done a
better job. And like we're like, as Dana is saying,
there's lots there's a lot of context around this that
that a human driver might pick up. It's also kind
of upsetting that the pedestrian who got out of the
car was attempting to help, was attempting to kind of
like you know, direct traffic around this incident, and in
(25:16):
a way that like again maybe a human driver, a
tentive human driver anyway, is able.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
To avoid and avoid this tragedy.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
All Right, I'm sure next week we will have a
bit of a recap of just exactly what transpires down
there in Austin hard pivot now Max hard hard pivot
to a mini feud that has been thrown off that
(25:46):
is a shard of sorts of the feud to end
all feuds. Tell us about it.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yeah, Elon versus Rock.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Now, this isn't the first time Elon and his favorite
chatbot have beefed in public, but there was in the
kind of like back and forth over Elon Musk and
the Trump administration. Grock cited a tweet from Elon Musk
(26:14):
that was that was fake. It essentially Grock essentially fell
for a meme. I'm gonna try to avoid getting too
far into the meme because I don't want to defame anyone,
but it's a left wing meme without a lot of
basis around Elon Musk and a love triangle within.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
The Trump administration. Grock cited this tweet from.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Elon purporting to be for this and acting as if
it was real, and Elon wrote, O f FS, which
means for sake, this is fake and.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
With some sort of emoji.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, I can't remember that.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Like the hanging hands, what's the one where they had
you put that hand, which to me just screams of groc.
I'm so so disappointed in you, so like you.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Gra is not a person, I just want to say,
and we should not be anthropomorphizing uh Rock or any
other AI.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
It's just a It's just like a it's like a
spell checker or something. You cannot fall in love with
your spell checker. You cannot be mad at you can't
be disappointed in it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
On the other hand, it is kind of funny that
Elon Musk is simultaneously saying that these that this AI
is basically gonna like lead to a super intelligence and
at the same time baby getting into.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
These baby steps Max baby steps. By the way, I did,
something came to me. Uh, if there is truly a
detent between Musk and Trump and coming days, there's no
better place to end it or or or I should
say to Ring in that detent than at the military parade.
And it happens. I think you have Musk at some
point in one of the tanks and then he just
(27:50):
suddenly pops up from the turret, right, I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
The cyber truck.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
I mean that's cyber truck could bear. It's like the
Cyberg gets Russian warlord.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Dam Yes, exactly, Uh, Cyberg, that's good. We should send
that over to them.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
But look, this is a lesson that you can't believe
every screenshot you see on the internet, and you definitely
shouldn't believe every screenshot cited by an Ai Chapbop and
El almost knows that well, so, which is why you
know why he's disappointed.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So disappointed, very very disappointed, Max, Dana, thanks as always.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Thanks David, Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong and edited by
Anna Masirakas, Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Percell fact checks.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The elon Ing theme
is written and performed by Taka yes Suzawa and Alex
Sugi Eira. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and
Sage Bowman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big things.
(29:00):
As always to our supporters, Joel Weber and Brad Stone,
I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See
you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star. A
star is born Elon On Mars Juthan Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are up
pay in four fos.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Us of that.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elon.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
A lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Elon, Inc. Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Muskets Tuesday,
June tenth. I'm your host, David Papadopolis. So the Wild Feud,
the feud to end all feuds between Elon and the
President appears to be sick down a bit for the moment.
Saalacious posts are being deleted. Nice thaties exchanged, but the
(01:06):
damage to their alliance is done and will break it
all down. Also, a big date is upon us this Thursday.
Tesla will apparently finally start its long awaited Robotaxi service
in Austin, Texas. Now, the torching of several self driving
waymos in La is perhaps an ominous sign for the launch,
as is the bombshell report by our very own Dana
(01:27):
Hall about a lethal accident involving in Tesla AND's self
driving mode. But perhaps for Muscinco it is an opportunity
to draw attention to something other than his brawl with Trump.
Then at the end, we're gonna have a little feud watch.
So lots and lots to go through, and let's get
to it with our regulars, the aforementioned Dana Hall and
(01:48):
Max Chafkin. Hello to you both.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hey, David, happy to be here.
Speaker 5 (01:52):
Good day, David.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
How are you guys doing you look you're smiling again.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Max, I mean, crazy week last week. I'm still I'm
still still a buzz.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You're still a glow. So we spoke. You did an
emergency pod on Thursday with Josh, and then you and
I did the Friday one. Stuff keeps happening. Although I
guess maybe tacking back in the other direction bring us
now up to speed.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yeah, we I mean I think we started to kind
of hint at this in our conversation on.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Friday Elon Musk, I mean.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
You know, pretty quickly started to at least turn the
the the dial down it. He deleted the most incendiary tweet,
the one about Jeffrey Epstein. He I believe deleted the
tweet calling for Donald Trump to be impeached.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
He's deleted at least two.
Speaker 5 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
He's also gone back to sort of something resembling his
regular scheduled programming. At the end of last week, he
like just started tweeting about, you know, a big win
for Starlink and Dominica, you know, the Islands, I guess,
which I thought was kind of funny because it's like, Okay,
here's the world, here's we're huge, where the world leader
does not hate me. But in any case, he's been
(03:09):
talking about his companies again. He is also sort of
amplifying Trump administration messaging on the protests. I believe he
praise tweeted a jd Vance statement as well as a
Donald Trump truth. He refollowed Stephen Miller for those who
are following that driving.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Got so so yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I mean, he's sort of trying to edge his way
back into the good grades of Donald Trump without explicitly apologizing.
He hasn't done that or really come close to doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Now Trump is still keeping him at arms length, though.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Trump was asked yesterday about Elon Musk's drug use, and
he answered the question in a way that seemed very diplomatic.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
We should just listen to that, David, I think, yeah,
let's do that.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
There was this New York Times report that he did
not want to talk about Elon Musk, that alleged that he,
towards the end of his time in the White House
was blurring the lines between recreational use of drugs and
medicinal Do.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
You think he ever had drugs here at the White House?
I really don't know. I don't think so. I hope not.
Look I wish him well. You understand, we had a
good relationship, and I just wish him well, very well.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Actually, I mean it's not exactly a total denial, but
he also said he didn't see anything concerning you know.
To me, that's sort of a rear that tells you
that this feud is still going on, although it does
appear that Donald Trump's to turn that down down as well.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
A day or so earlier, the Washington Post had I
think this is over the weekend, reporting that Trump in
phone calls with some of his advisors and such, had
called Musk a big time drug addict. So yes, certainly
a very differ tone here in this in this press conference.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
It's a different thing to say I never saw somebody
take drugs versus I know he's not a drug addict,
right like, So there's like he could have denied it
in a more complete way, although he does back up
Elon's denials to some extent.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Okay, now, Danna, we missed you last week and we
didn't get your hot takes towards the end of the week.
So as you are observing at all, what is what
is your take from there?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I was.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
I was off at the end of last week, trying
to be like a normal person. So I was following
this like tit for tat back and forth sort of
on my phone, but not in real time, and then
it was very hard to play catch up anyway. It
was it was just sort of crazy. But I thought
that Trump's what Trump said in that clip, I wish
him well. I wish him very well. Actually it's like,
(05:48):
is he wishing him well because he thinks he's a
drug addict, or is he wishing him well because the
relationship is over, or is he wishing him well because
he still needs him to finance the midterms? Like it
was just just an interesting, interesting response.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
My reading of that was door number three. I wish
him well. Muski's working very hard to try to simmer
things down, and I'm gonna take a step in that
direction as well. I wish him well so that he
keeps sending me miney.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Yeah, you know, my hot take was it totally reminded
me of the whole pedo guy thing from twenty eighteen
when like Elon, with zero zero proof whatsoever, basically just
like went on this rampage and called this cave rescuer
a pedo guy, and like then doubled down on it
and just he's like when Elon is certain that he's
(06:37):
right about something, or when he's upset or when he
feels like he's being attacked, he just goes thermonuclear.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And specifically you're referencing the Epstein thing.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, like this is a thing like Elon is like
obsessed with his idea that people are our pedophiles.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
It's the pedo guy insults all over. I mean, the
allegations around Jeffrey Epstein It's exactly the same insult, except
the difference. I see one of those guys, one of
those guys as president, and one was a guy who
had you know, been on TV once exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But for him to level this at the president and
to do the twofer of he's in the Epstein files
and that's why they haven't been released and he should
be impeached, I was like, Wow, Okay, someone really needs
to like step in and take his phone away. In
the old days, that would have been Sam Teller, his
chief of staff. I don't know who takes the phone
away these days. Is it Katie Miller?
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Is it somewhere else?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Like I would love to just know, like the apparatus.
And then there was a lot of reporting about how
this datane was reached because of intermediaries, and I'm like, well,
who exactly is the who exactly are the intermediaries at
this stage of the game.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's Bill act and Kanye West And that's a non
on Twitter Alaska or whatever. He was like, hey guy, Hey, Elon,
I think you should cool down. And Elon was like,
you know, that sounds like a pretty smart IDEA random
guy with a couple hundred Twitter followers.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
You know, one thing I've been thinking about in the
sober light of day.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
You know, we have as we've been talking about the
Elon Trump kind of relationship a lot of Trump reporters,
including Josh Green, who was on the podcast last week.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
I said I told you so, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
I have said I told you so yeah. And I
am happily eating crow. Although I do think we're starting
to see that my take that this relationship may continue,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Want you want to share the crow with other people.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Yeah, it's not like as bad as did last week.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
I do wonder if Elon is sort of a combination
of like one of these Trump advisors who were sort
of chewed up and spit out by the White House
and a world leader. You know, Elon is part Scaramucci
and part Kim Jong Um. And I say that because Elon,
because that's quite a merging, has leverage, you know, and
(08:48):
we saw it over We saw it last week when
he was threatening to to you know, cancel the Dragon program.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
He has the kind of like the you know, campaign donations,
Dragon all those things are right, but Max, at the
same time, you can't tell me that he doesn't have
more to lose in all this than than Trump. No,
he totally does.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
But I just think there's a way to reach kind
of a equilibrium where they are neither friends nor enemies,
which is kind of the way it works with all
these world leaders, where Trump one day will be hinting
at the possibility of nuclear war, the next minute saying
I love this guy, you know. And we've seen it
with Kim Jong Um, We've seen it with Ajijenping, We've
seen it with Vladimir Putin, where he will swing rather
(09:30):
wildly in the context of a negotiation. And I kind
of think that's a little bit of what we saw
last week.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I would just like to point out that we had
all this bs for so many episodes about the cage
match and what the real cage match was, and David,
this was the cage match. This is the true cage match.
Trump on like Bannon in one corner, Katie Miller and
another I.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Don't know, Like it's just Bannon is Trump's cup man?
Who who's Musk cup Man? Yeah, that's it's not It's
not Katie Miller, Zachman or Cacumen or Zachman the ref. No,
it's true. It's the cage match to end all cage matches,
and now they just write each side has gone to
their respective corners at least for the time being. Okay, now, Dana.
(10:18):
On Thursday, Tesla has a big day of sorts, the
launch of the vaunted robotaxi. Tell us or remind us,
I should say about the specifics and what's at stake
here for Tesla and Musk.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
I don't want to go overboard and say it's like
a big launch of it, you know. Bloomberg has reported
My colleagu Ed Ludlow has reported that Tesla was sort
of eyeing June twelfth as the day that they would
begin some kind of robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. We
don't know if this is paid customers, if it's employees,
if it's just like delivering you know, vehicles from the
(10:56):
factory to new owners. We know that Tesla has been
FSD on supervised on some Austin streets downtown, but like
there's no event, Like no, I don't know of any
investor or cellside Wall Street analysts who's gotten like an
invitation to some big show. So it could be like
a very soft launch and you know, people within Austin
(11:18):
and terms like Austin City officials have been pretty mum
about it. So there's still just like a lot that
we don't know. I mean, if you live in Austin, Texas,
give us a holler because we're trying to figure it out.
I mean, I was thinking should I go to Austin,
and then I'm like, well, I don't know what I
would actually see because I just think that they are
trying to tamp down expectations a little bit. So what
exactly this will be?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
And by the way, so for those listeners in Austin, Texas,
they should write into us Max at what is our
address again, Elon Inc.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
At Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And give us any hot tips on that. But I
do wonder Max if Dana's last point is exactly it
that this went from a year or so ago to
be Matt, this is going to be big. It's gonna
be huge. We're gonna have bunkeding up all over the
stadium and it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
A big knowledge just launch you could possibly imagine. And
and it's particularly noteworthy because this is a company, this
is a guy who is kind of known for these
big events. Elon Musk really likes to do these grand shows.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Why he's going to be so bitter that he misses
the screaming his name and.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
And you know, they started to signal this during the
earnings call.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
We talked about this on our the episode that we
did immediately after the last Tesla earnings. We're talking about
ten to twenty taxis with teleoperation a very restricted area.
It also sounded like on the earnings call that they
are are kitting these things out with more sensors than
at least the standard model. Hy has so a lot
(12:45):
of reasons to not look at this as a true commercial.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Launch, and really not anywhere near a true commercial launch.
But you know, maybe who knows.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I'm prepared to be surprised because that's what Elon Musk does.
But we have not seen any signs that this is
going to be a big event, and in fact, I
think it's gonna be the kind of thing where investors,
maybe not on Thursday, but start to ask, hey, didn't
he promise that we would have a commercial launch?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Didn't he promised it? Didn't We friggin bid this price
of the stock up a whole heck of a lot
based on all this isn't you know, and so but
you know what one of the interesting things is is
they always seem to forget that they had bid them,
they did price the stock up, and then when it doesn't,
if it doesn't come to pass, then they just go, well,
we're just gonna bid it up on some some other thing.
(13:34):
As you say, Max, coming down the road. Now, Dana,
tell us a little bit about a story, a fantastic
story that you and friend of the Pod Craig Trudel,
had last week about something that is related at the
very least, you know, tangentially related to this whole Robotaxi launch.
Hit us with the details.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, so this was just sort of a horrible, tragic
tale of how a seventy one year old grandmother in
Arizona was killed by a Tesla and it all came
to late in a very weird sequence of events, which
was in October, NITSA announced that they were investigating Tesla
(14:14):
FSD because of four separate crashes where the vehicle with
FSD engaged seemed to have difficulty where there was fog,
dust or glare. And they listed these four crashes and
one of them was pedestrian fatal fatality pedestrian Arizona. And
I was like, wait, what, Like a tesla using FSD
(14:35):
killed a pedestrian, Like I didn't hear about that, Like
what was that? And we asked tesla, we asked NITSA,
we asked for more details. Nobody had anything. And so
then I went to my old friend public records, which
you know, I just can't stress enough the importance of
digging for public records. And I filed a Public Records
Act request with the Arizona Department of Public Safety and
(14:56):
I was like, do you have any details about this
crash where apparently at Panestia was killed. And I asked
for the crash report, photographs, and any camera footage taken
from vehicles at the scene, and like lo and behold,
several months later, in like late March, I got back
this trove of data, including the video footage of the
(15:17):
crash taken from the tesla itself. And I have to say,
like I have looked at a lot of crash footage
and a lot of crash reports in my time as
an automotive reporter, I've never gotten back footage from a
tesla like this. I mean, the state trooper who had
the wherewithal to download it right at the scene has
my kudos, And so we just got back this like
(15:38):
really harrowing footage, and it showed that sun glare was
the issue that the Tesla that was driving could not
see in front of it because of the glare on
the camera. And this was all the more intriguing to
me because on the last earnings call, Elon was specifically
asked about sun glare and gave this like very long
winded response about it. So it all the stars just
(16:00):
kind of a line where we had all these elements.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Oh, but the long wind did response was what, hey,
don't sweat it. We got it.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
It was basically like, we've solved this problem. We had
this breakthrough recently, we can bypass the image processor, we're
doing photon counting.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Well. So this is one of the questions I had
for you, which is this accident did happen a couple
of years ago. So is there any confidence out there,
not just among Elon in his inner circle, but among
broader Tesla followers that they indeed have made advancements and
developments that would fix such a problem.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Yeah, I mean to be clear, you know, Tesla is
always updating its hardware stack and its software stack, and
so what version of hardware and software the Tesla that
was involved in this fatal crash had in November twenty
twenty three versus now, I don't really know because I
asked Tesla if they could tell me, like what was
(16:55):
the hardware version and what was the software version? And
they didn't respond.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Did Tesla respond at all to anything you ask them?
Speaker 3 (17:01):
No, I mean I said, to a long list of
questions to several executives. But you can it's reasonable to
presume that, yes, the current use out there is a
different version. Maybe they've solved it, maybe they haven't. Doesn't matter,
Like this woman is dead and NITZA is investigating this
crash as part of a potential defect investigation. And you know,
(17:25):
we only know about this crash because Tessel reported it
to NITSA.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Dan of course, NITSA being National.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Right basically the men and women who regulate the transportation sector. Now, Max,
as Dana is saying here, regardless of what happens with
the technology going forward, that's not going to bring this
woman back. Of course, humans, as we've discussed, and that
as we've argued about in the past human drivers kill
(17:55):
thousands of people a year on the road, and I
should also say, as the story points out, but I
guess the question is, is society ready to accept the
deaths caused by the robots the same way it's willing
to say, Hey, God, awful, horrible that this human driver
killed someone else. But it's just part of the you know,
(18:15):
just the way things go.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Obviously society is not ready to accept that. There are
two problems here. One is that Tesla has all of
these statistics about the number of miles driven by what
it calls full self driving parentheses supervised FSD supervised. Those
statistics are interesting, but they are not the same as
(18:37):
what Tesla is purporting to launch in Austin or anywhere else,
which is the same system but without a human in.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
The loop, the exact same system.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
Yeah, and that's what Elon Musk has been saying.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So just sounds the supervised and gets ready.
Speaker 5 (18:51):
For the lack of supervision.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
FSD unsupervised basically.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
But in the nitty gritty of it, all you're doing
is stripping out one we.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Heard a couple of I mean, there are a few
modifications that they're that they appear to be making in
Austin because it's not ready. But my point is where
we're taking one thing and attempting to make a judgment
about another thing that is different, and that is different
and in like a hugely important way. The second thing
(19:20):
is like, these self driving systems are very limited. They
are only used on certain roads at certain times of day,
and they deliberately exclude difficult situations, so like snow splare
maybe they turn off when they can't handle it, and
so we actually don't know like human accidents. Although they
(19:43):
add up to a lot, it is not a lot
in terms of miles driven, and we don't know how
those limitations, the limitations that are in those self driving
systems today, and that people use them in specific ways, right,
they don't necessarily use them if they're in a really
chaotic cy driving situation, the kinds of situations in other words,
(20:03):
that are more likely to lead to accidents. So these
statistics are interesting, but they don't necessarily prove anything. And
that's why it's kind of so crazy that Elon Musk
is attempting to just kind of do this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Than any final points on this before we move on.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah, I just think that there's going to be a
lot of questions about the rollout, the parameters of it.
You know what happens if there is an accident in Austin.
Is the city of Austin going to do anything or
the county or the state of Texas or nits And
then meanwhile, this defect investigation into how the vehicles perform
in things like fog and sunglair is ongoing, and I
(20:42):
think it's just telling that, you know, when we talk
about Trump and Musk and like the levers and the
copramot that each have on the other, Like what is
NITSA going to do here? Like are they just going
to wrap up this investigation and say Tesla told us
everything's fixed and this investigation dies on the line or
does it continue? So that's another thing to keep watching on.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
One other thing about Dana's story, and this is kind
of important when you're talking about cities like Austin.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Do read it. By the way, it ran as a
big take, a bloomber big take last Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Oh so one important thing also about the story is
av systems. Autonomous vehicle systems have trouble with non vehicles,
so with pedestrians, with cyclists, and with children, and like,
this is not the first time an autonomous vehicle has
killed a pedestrian. That that of course happened with an
uber autonomous vehicle, like about eight years ago or so.
(21:35):
And of course cities are driving environments where you have
lots and lots of pedestrians, where the interaction between pedestrians
and cars is really important. We've seen issues in San
Francisco where autonomous vehicles have severely hurt a pedestrian. It
was a cruise vehicle that dragged someone under its wheel
and as a result, CRUs essentially shut down its entire
(21:56):
av operation. We've also seen these kind of interactions with
pedestrians that are not necessarily dangerous but are problematic for
the autonomous vehicles, where pedestrians just sort of get in
their way, try to mess with them, try to confuse them.
And so I would expect that if this rollout happens
on any kind of scale, there are going to be
(22:17):
things like that, there are going to be issues with
protesters or with people just kind of messing with slash
vandalizing these vehicles, and like it's just creating like a
lot of different vectors for chaos or something worse. And
I think that's one of the reasons why this is
such a limited launch to start with. This is only
ten to twenty cars.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Listen, I think for sure those things are going to happen,
especially as you roll out more of these things. I mean,
it's interesting to me, Unlike you, I happen to pretty
much firmly believe that human drivers are lousy and that
if given the opportunity, the robots will eventually do it
better than us. But you're also starting to convince me that,
you know what, we the humans may never allow the
(23:01):
robots to be tested enough to get to that point.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And that is that's like one of the reasons when
you talk to people in the industry who are skeptical,
that is their skepticism. They're not saying the robots could
never do this, we could never get there. It's that
the things we would have to do are things we
are not going to be willing to do. Like, are
you going to be willing to accept a technology that
kills pedestrians at a higher rate than human drivers?
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I mean initially or maybe total?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Like fer people die, Well, what a fewer people in
cars die, but more pedestrians die? Would you know that's
still of course not Okay, Well that's going to be
a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Well they call the whole thing off, all the robo
taxi launch off.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, I guess the question is like, are you willing so?
Roughly forty thousand people die in traffic accidents every year
in the United States. Alcohol, drug use, and speed and
not wearing seatbelts are all huge factors in these crashes.
But the premise of autonomous driving is that we can
get to crash zero, but on the way to crash zero,
(24:03):
are we happy if robots like end up killing people?
I don't think so. I mean, so that's the calculus
that everyone's trying to make. And what was so sad
about this crash is it's like a double fault accident,
right like Tesla's legally is always says that the driver
has to maintain control at all times. So clearly the
driver was not paying attention and did not realize that
(24:24):
the glare was really bad, and perhaps they should have
slowed down or moved over before coming upon all these cars.
But then also f Steve was apparently engaged per Nitza
and that didn't see all the warning signs either, including
cars that were pulled over with hazard lights on. I mean,
there were a lot of stationary objects that one would
think an FSD system would have seen.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I mean, this is the kind of scenario where I mean,
and again we don't know for sure, it's very dangerous
anytime you get out of your car on the highway,
it's very dangerous.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
Yes, but this does sound like.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
A scenario where a human driver might have done a
better job. And like we're like, as Dana is saying,
there's lots there's a lot of context around this that
that a human driver might pick up. It's also kind
of upsetting that the pedestrian who got out of the
car was attempting to help, was attempting to kind of
like you know, direct traffic around this incident, and in
(25:16):
a way that like again maybe a human driver, a
tentive human driver anyway, is able.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
To avoid and avoid this tragedy.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
All Right, I'm sure next week we will have a
bit of a recap of just exactly what transpires down
there in Austin hard pivot now Max hard hard pivot
to a mini feud that has been thrown off that
(25:46):
is a shard of sorts of the feud to end
all feuds. Tell us about it.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Yeah, Elon versus Rock.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Now, this isn't the first time Elon and his favorite
chatbot have beefed in public, but there was in the
kind of like back and forth over Elon Musk and
the Trump administration. Grock cited a tweet from Elon Musk
(26:14):
that was that was fake. It essentially Grock essentially fell
for a meme. I'm gonna try to avoid getting too
far into the meme because I don't want to defame anyone,
but it's a left wing meme without a lot of
basis around Elon Musk and a love triangle within.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
The Trump administration. Grock cited this tweet from.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Elon purporting to be for this and acting as if
it was real, and Elon wrote, O f FS, which
means for sake, this is fake and.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
With some sort of emoji.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
Yeah, I can't remember that.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Like the hanging hands, what's the one where they had
you put that hand, which to me just screams of groc.
I'm so so disappointed in you, so like you.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Gra is not a person, I just want to say,
and we should not be anthropomorphizing uh Rock or any
other AI.
Speaker 5 (27:07):
It's just a It's just like a it's like a
spell checker or something. You cannot fall in love with
your spell checker. You cannot be mad at you can't
be disappointed in it.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
On the other hand, it is kind of funny that
Elon Musk is simultaneously saying that these that this AI
is basically gonna like lead to a super intelligence and
at the same time baby getting into.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
These baby steps Max baby steps. By the way, I did,
something came to me. Uh, if there is truly a
detent between Musk and Trump and coming days, there's no
better place to end it or or or I should
say to Ring in that detent than at the military parade.
And it happens. I think you have Musk at some
point in one of the tanks and then he just
(27:50):
suddenly pops up from the turret, right, I mean.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
The cyber truck.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
I mean that's cyber truck could bear. It's like the
Cyberg gets Russian warlord.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Dam Yes, exactly, Uh, Cyberg, that's good. We should send
that over to them.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
But look, this is a lesson that you can't believe
every screenshot you see on the internet, and you definitely
shouldn't believe every screenshot cited by an Ai Chapbop and
El almost knows that well, so, which is why you
know why he's disappointed.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So disappointed, very very disappointed, Max, Dana, thanks as always.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Thanks David, Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong and edited by
Anna Masirakas, Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Percell fact checks.
Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The elon Ing theme
is written and performed by Taka yes Suzawa and Alex
Sugi Eira. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and
Sage Bowman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big things.
(29:00):
As always to our supporters, Joel Weber and Brad Stone,
I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and
review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See
you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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