Musk Has Shot Himself In The Foot
With a bazooka.
The Musk-Altman court case is nothing short of hilarious. Musk is angry that Altman runs a for-profit AI company, while he himself runs an openly for-profit one. He is also rather miffed that Altman isn’t developing an AI for the betterment of humanity, as was OpenAI’s founding goal, all while his AI’s most prominent feature is the violation of women and girls and the generation of child sexual abuse material. Yet Musk seems totally unaware of this painfully deep hypocrisy. As usual, Musk’s cavernous ignorance, utter stupidity, and blatant superficiality were also on full display. Despite being a founding investor in OpenAI, Musk admitted in court that he “did not read the fine print” of an OpenAI term sheet Altman had sent his way in 2018 when Musk stepped off the OpenAI board. The opposing lawyer retorted in dismay, “It’s a four-page document.” Yowch. But don’t go thinking Sammy Boy comes across well either. This lawsuit is also airing his manipulative leadership and wild greed for everyone to see. No one is coming out of this fight clean. But there was one detail that came to light that I simply can’t get out of my head. One that destroys the load-bearing myth of Musk’s and Tesla’s entire narrative.
When taking the stand under oath, Musk told the court that Tesla has no plans to pursue AGI.
That is completely at odds with what he has repeatedly claimed publicly and with what he has told Tesla shareholders.
Back in 2023, he claimed that Tesla may have “figured out some aspects of AGI”, as he believes that Tesla vehicles now have “a mind”. In 2024, he predicted AGI would arrive in 2025, heavily implying his companies would be the ones to achieve it. When that didn’t happen, he predicted that AI would surpass human intelligence by the end of 2026, again with the heavy implication that his companies would lead the way. As recently as this March, he claimed that Tesla would be “one of the companies to make AGI” and “probably the first to make it in humanoid/atom-shaping form”. What’s more, Tesla’s most important projects, FSD, Robotaxis and the Optimus robot — you know, the projects that make Tesla so valuable to investors — all depend on eventually unlocking AGI to function correctly.
So, either Musk lied under oath, or he has committed a Theranos-level amount of fraud.
It’s also possible that he is so damn stupid, ignorant and careless that he doesn’t understand AI, AGI or what on Earth is going on at Tesla. Now, while that very well may be true (read more here and here), such an admission would warrant his immediate ousting as CEO.
Either way, Musk has been forced to tell the truth or face genuine legal repercussions, and in doing so, he has trapped himself between a rock and a hard place.
But this disclosure goes quite a bit deeper than ‘He said Tesla would have AGI, and now he is saying they won’t.’ You see, Tesla’s entire roadmap, future prospects and current valuation all depend on it unlocking AGI.
