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