Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3: A star is born Elon.
Speaker 2: I'm on Mars juleson a Kenemy.
Speaker 4: He is the.
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 3: Probably his whole life's from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 2: I feel for the guy.
Speaker 3: I would say ninety eight percent, really appreciate what he DOESK.
Speaker 5: But those two that are nasty, they are I'll pit
Speaker 5: in four close. We're meant for great things in the
Speaker 5: United States of America, and Elon reminds us of.
Speaker 4: That we don't have a fourth branch of governments called
Speaker 4: Elon must.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Elon K, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk.
Speaker 5: It's Tuesday, May twentieth. I'm your host, David Papadopolos, sitting
Speaker 5: here in the studio with my main man, Max Chafkin. Hellodio, Max,
Speaker 5: I'm doing all right. So Max, we just watched our
Speaker 5: colleague Michelle Hussein interview Elon at Bloomberg's Cutter Economic Form like.
Speaker 4: Our super bawl Bloomberg. Hey, you know we finally got
Speaker 4: to interview him.
Speaker 5: I gotta say it got a little sporty at times.
Speaker 4: It did, although I think Michelle did a really good
Speaker 4: job in a difficult setting. I think people should check
Speaker 4: the entire interview out themselves if they haven't. You know,
Speaker 4: you're in this room full of investors. This is, as
Speaker 4: you said just before we start taping, a home crowd.
Speaker 4: This is a crew that is prime to like Elon Musk,
Speaker 4: also prime to think. You know that many of the
Speaker 4: issues that i'd say, like a normal person maybe cares about, like,
Speaker 4: is Elon Musk gonna, you know, mess up the function
Speaker 4: of the US government or whatever, Like the guys who
Speaker 4: run sovereign wealth funds not necessarily super concerned with that.
Speaker 4: They're thinking about, Hey, this is an amazing innovator. He's
Speaker 4: creating these great companies. I want access to him. That
Speaker 4: creates a weird dynamic. Also, Elon Musk was on zoom,
Speaker 4: so you have this sort of weird He's in the right, yes, Starling,
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, bias, Darlink. He was gotta get that plug in,
Speaker 4: please to say. And of course he was kind of hostile, right,
Speaker 4: he wasn't loving some of the questions that I think,
Speaker 4: from my point of view were pretty straightforward in journalistic
Speaker 4: but Elon Musk not pleased.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he got very animated about Tesla protests, the stock price,
Speaker 5: does South Africa, Bill Gates politics. So we're going to
Speaker 5: use the first half of the episode today to go
Speaker 5: through and dissect all that. Do note that separately, for
Speaker 5: those of you who do not catch the interview live,
Speaker 5: you can find it in the feed here. We are
Speaker 5: separately breaking it out in its entirety so you can
Speaker 5: listen to it there. And then the second half of
Speaker 5: the show, we're going to go through the roller coaster
Speaker 5: week that Xai's Groc has gone through. Max. As I
Speaker 5: sometimes say on this show, there's very little of what
Speaker 5: Grog did this past week that I understand. I'm counting
Speaker 5: on you, sir, to help me and our listeners under
Speaker 5: stand at all. But we're not going to do that
Speaker 5: quite yet. For now, we go back to Cutter and
Speaker 5: we're going to listen right off the bat to one
Speaker 5: of the highlights of the interview where Musk is responding
Speaker 5: to Michelle, where she asked him about his involvement going
Speaker 5: forward in politics and the political donations he would be making.
Speaker 1: You spent a lot more money on the last US
Speaker 1: election than you envisaged when you were speaking here three
Speaker 1: years ago. Are you going to continue to spend at
Speaker 1: that kind of level on future elections?
Speaker 6: I think in terms of political spending, I'm going to
Speaker 6: do a lot less in the future.
Speaker 1: And why is that?
Speaker 2: I think I've done enough?
Speaker 1: Is it because of blowback?
Speaker 6: Well, if I see a reason do political spending in
Speaker 6: the future, I will do it.
Speaker 2: I don't I currently see reason.
Speaker 5: Actually, Max, before you comment on that, I got to
Speaker 5: say I got to set the scene a little bit
Speaker 5: here Musk rocking as he often does, the leather bomber jacket.
Speaker 5: We need leather bomber jackets for this show.
Speaker 3: Was it leather? I couldn't. It looks like it might
Speaker 3: be like a.
Speaker 4: Canvas thing with a sheerling collar. I want to talk
Speaker 4: about his facial hair while we're while we're doing the
Speaker 4: Oh he was. It was kind of like he was
Speaker 4: sort of unshaven but sort of patchy.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It kind of gave for me like nineteen year old
Speaker 4: relief pitcher just called up to the majors. But nonetheless, yeah,
Speaker 4: an interesting look from me.
Speaker 5: Long So all the sense was on this show and
Speaker 5: from what I've read elsewhere that know what we saw
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four, especially given the success he had,
Speaker 5: notwithstanding the setback in Wisconsin early twenty twenty five, that
Speaker 5: you know it was going to be more and more
Speaker 5: and more. Do we take him at face value here,
Speaker 5: mister Jeffkins, so this.
Speaker 4: Is the headline of the of the interviews, are already
Speaker 4: pushing this out Elon Musk saying that he is going
Speaker 4: to spend substantially less in the future. Unclear in that
Speaker 4: in the you know, in terms of how he interpreted
Speaker 4: the question, whether he's talking about the midterms or the
Speaker 4: long run future. I think you need to take this
Speaker 4: with like a huge grain of salt for sort of
Speaker 4: two reasons. One is maybe three actually okay. One is
Speaker 4: the mid terms costs less than the general election. So
Speaker 4: if he were not like spending.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you spend sixty percent less and it's or seventy yeah, And.
Speaker 4: If he were not spending substantially less like that, that
Speaker 4: would be surprising. Number two is this is probably just
Speaker 4: a negotiating position. And you kind of heard it in
Speaker 4: the answer, right he said, unless I see a good reason, right,
Speaker 4: like he is negotiating with with Donald Trump and the Republicans. Right,
Speaker 4: there's lots of stuff that Elon Musk wants to happen.
Speaker 4: That is at this point unrealized. The Artemis program, the
Speaker 4: program that Elon Musk would very much like to be
Speaker 4: a Mars program, is still a Moon program.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: His driverless cars, which are in kind of a legal
Speaker 4: gray area, were in i llegal gray area, remain in.
Speaker 3: A legal gray area, right.
Speaker 4: Like he's he's affected a lot of change, but there
Speaker 4: are many areas where he maybe has not realized all
Speaker 4: the things he would like to realize, And it would
Speaker 4: not be to his advantage to say publicly, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: going to I'm going I'm all in on Trump.
Speaker 5: So this is a statement directed at them and I
Speaker 5: want to.
Speaker 4: And there's a third reason, which is that he's facing
Speaker 4: tons of blowback politically over his connection to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: We've seen all sorts of ways in which he's trying
Speaker 4: to create a little bit of distance. So sort of
Speaker 4: throwing cold water on donations, it would be one of those.
Speaker 3: I want to remind you that while he.
Speaker 4: Was making massive donations to Donald Trump, he was denying.
Speaker 3: We had podcasts about this. Remember the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 3: in Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: Reported that he was going to give something like forty
Speaker 4: five million dollars a month to Donald Trump. He actually
Speaker 4: gave substantially more to that, more than that that was,
Speaker 4: and all Musk was like, Oh, it's way way less.
Speaker 3: Nowhere near forty.
Speaker 4: You know. He denied it the whole way until it
Speaker 4: basically became obvious that he was in fact spending these
Speaker 4: huge sums of money. So I don't think we should
Speaker 4: take this especially seriously. The one thing I'll say is
Speaker 4: he didn't have to say this, right, He could have.
Speaker 4: He could have just not said anything or you know. So,
Speaker 4: so I think coming out and putting or attempting to
Speaker 4: put the tiniest bit of distance between himself and the
Speaker 4: Trump administration, that's significant. I don't know that it means
Speaker 4: that Republicans should start looking for another mega donor.
Speaker 3: It probably means they need to just call up Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: and he.
Speaker 5: Wants that separation, specifically as part of his attempt to
Speaker 5: restore the Tesla brand and turn Tesla sales around him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, despite what he said on stage, but like we
Speaker 4: all know that Musk's sort of political associations have been
Speaker 4: damaging to his companies. If you you are the number
Speaker 4: one donor for the political party that is that is
Speaker 4: currently in power, and you know, as a result, attracting
Speaker 4: lots of heat and controversy. You know, it's it's maybe
Speaker 4: not to your advantage to highlight that you are the
Speaker 4: number one donor the other the other reason I.
Speaker 5: Say, can I point out, though he contends he did
Speaker 5: in the interview, that while he is losing Tesla buyers
Speaker 5: on the left, he is gaining them on the right,
Speaker 5: which strikes me as plausible enough. And we've talked about it.
Speaker 5: The question is, for.
Speaker 3: Every plausible see it in the cyber truck sales.
Speaker 5: No, it's plausible that you're gaining some. But for every
Speaker 5: ten you're losing on the left, how many of you
Speaker 5: are gaining on the right. That is the question. And
Speaker 5: he did not get into that detail. But what he
Speaker 5: did speak at length about was his take on the
Speaker 5: Tesla protests and how he sees them and how upset
Speaker 5: he has been about them. Let's listen to that.
Speaker 2: I'm not someone who's ever committed violence.
Speaker 6: That massive violence was committed against my companies, massive violence
Speaker 6: was threatened against me.
Speaker 2: Who are these people? Why would they do that? How
Speaker 2: wrong can they be?
Speaker 6: They're on the wrong, on the wrong side of history.
Speaker 6: And that's an evil thing to do, to go and
Speaker 6: damage some pointocent person's car to threaten to kill me.
Speaker 6: What's wrong are these people? I have not harmed anyone,
Speaker 6: so something needs to be done about them. And a
Speaker 6: number of them are going to prison and they deserve it.
Speaker 1: You're well, you're referring to the attacks on Tesla's showrooms, but.
Speaker 6: I think, yeah, well, let's into showrooms and burning down
Speaker 6: causes unacceptable. Those people will go to prison, and the
Speaker 6: people that funded them and organized them will also go
Speaker 6: to prison.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, wouldn't you coming for you?
Speaker 5: That by the way, at the end, that we're coming
Speaker 5: for you. For those of you ever seen those old
Speaker 5: US Army ads, Uncle Sam, we want you pointing that
Speaker 5: big finger, you know, out sticking it out like we're
Speaker 5: coming for you. That's essentially how he delivered it. You
Speaker 5: can hear. Actually, though, Max, I like a lot of
Speaker 5: hurt and pain there in watching his brand in many
Speaker 5: states across the country get burned down.
Speaker 4: It's interesting because there are actually two issues happening. One
Speaker 4: is there is this as Elon Musk talked about the vandalism,
Speaker 4: threatened violence, whatever, the sort of like the kind of craziness,
Speaker 4: the kind of extreme reactions that some people have had
Speaker 4: to Tesla and the idea that Tesla is like now
Speaker 4: a target for vandalism.
Speaker 3: But then the bigger problem, and the thing that.
Speaker 4: She actually asked about was the was people just not
Speaker 4: buying Tesla's right, right. The risk of Tesla is not
Speaker 4: that like some crazy person tries to like vandalize a
Speaker 4: random cyber truck. The risk is that just normal pickup
Speaker 4: truck drivers don't buy cyber trucks. They just buy fifties,
Speaker 4: not because not necessarily because they're afraid of being vandalized,
Speaker 4: just because they think the brand is lame.
Speaker 3: And that's where I don't I don't know that.
Speaker 4: Like pose it like this kind of extremely aggrieved, like
Speaker 4: borderline vindictive, We're coming for you, pose.
Speaker 3: Like I don't know that it helps, Like I think.
Speaker 4: Most consumers don't really want to be part of this.
Speaker 5: I want to get caught up on that whole thing.
Speaker 5: I don't know that it helps either, But I do
Speaker 5: think it is a window into where he's at right now.
Speaker 5: He does. I think he legit feels agreed as he
Speaker 5: sees this brand that he created get torn down like that.
Speaker 5: But he tells us at the same time in this interview,
Speaker 5: Max that don't worry about our sales. They're already roaring around.
Speaker 5: So let's listen to that.
Speaker 1: I've just been looking at the sales figures or Europe
Speaker 1: in April would show very significant declines in the big markets.
Speaker 6: Europe is our weakness market. We're stronger everywhere else. So
Speaker 6: our sales are doing well at this point. We don't
Speaker 6: anticipate any meaningful sales shortfall. And the you know the
Speaker 6: obviously the stock market recognizes that since we're now back
Speaker 6: over a trillion dollars in market caps, so clearly the
Speaker 6: market is aware of.
Speaker 2: The situation, so it's already turned around.
Speaker 5: It's interesting he cites the stock as the barometer. The
Speaker 5: stock market knows our sales are doing great. That's why
Speaker 5: the stock is back up. And to be clear, the
Speaker 5: stock has indeed rebounded some fifty percent since hitting its
Speaker 5: lows in March. Not entirely clear to me, Max, how
Speaker 5: much exactly the stock market knows and what it knows
Speaker 5: about Tesla sales.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is nonsense, as Elon Musk knows because he
Speaker 4: said it all the time, and Michelle Hussein brought this
Speaker 4: up an interview for what it's worth. But like the
Speaker 4: stock price does not mean that the market knows what
Speaker 4: the sales are. The market is betting on Tesla's future,
Speaker 4: as we've talked about many times. They're talking about optimists
Speaker 4: and the driverless cars, and Elon Musk himself has said,
Speaker 4: you know, don't don't pay attention to Tesla sales. Regular
Speaker 4: cars are going away like not. You know, if you're
Speaker 4: an investor, you're paying attention to these like monthly sales fluctuations,
Speaker 4: You're you're missing the big picture, you know. I guess
Speaker 4: we'll see. I mean, I think it's very easy for
Speaker 4: him to say, like things are turned around starting right now.
Speaker 4: I think there's like a cohort of investors who are
Speaker 4: are going to buy that. But outside of Elon Musk
Speaker 4: making these claims, there is nothing in data, publicly available data,
Speaker 4: third party data, independent data that I have seen that
Speaker 4: backs at up.
Speaker 5: Well. Right, Well, maybe he's telling you Max that he
Speaker 5: knows something pal that you don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, that's what he does.
Speaker 4: Right, He's he's got a secret plan to fix Tesla,
Speaker 4: and it's and to grow it into a thirty trillion
Speaker 4: dollar company or whatever.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of been his pose for a huge
Speaker 3: part of.
Speaker 4: The company's history, and what has allowed him to sort
Speaker 4: of make that work is that there are a lot
Speaker 4: of investors who buy it.
Speaker 5: It is true, though, I actually hadn't thought about this
Speaker 5: is why we have you on the show. You're always
Speaker 5: two three steps ahead. I hadn't thought about the irony
Speaker 5: of he is always trying, indeed to tell people forget
Speaker 5: about the cars and the car sales. We're about optimists,
Speaker 5: we're about AI, we're about robotaxi, all these things, and
Speaker 5: that's what the stock reflects. And now that the stock
Speaker 5: is popping rebounding, And to be clear, much of the
Speaker 5: Tesla stock rebound.
Speaker 3: Is has to do with the trade war.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the broader rebound in the stock market, but he says, ah,
Speaker 5: the stock market rebound is a testament to just how
Speaker 5: much our sales are coming back. Of course, the data
Speaker 5: publicly available data for May will be out soon and
Speaker 5: often we'll have a greater sense then.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: There was also a fair amount of back and forth
Speaker 5: on the dose shavings produce so far. Michelle was pointing
Speaker 5: out that so far doge As has come up with
Speaker 5: what one hundred and seventy billion, give or take, which
Speaker 5: is a fair amount less than the two trillion dollar
Speaker 5: target must get set for Doge must set at one
Speaker 5: point to her, and again he clearly got worked up
Speaker 5: at several times in this interview. He said to her,
Speaker 5: your question is absurd. Have we not made good progress?
Speaker 6: We do not make the laws, nor do we control
Speaker 6: the judiciary, nor do we control the executive branch. We
Speaker 6: are simply advisors. In that context, we're doing very well. Nonetheless,
Speaker 6: let's not criticize whether there's a four trillion and instead
Speaker 6: look at the fact that that hundred and sixty billion
Speaker 6: has been saved and more will we save two.
Speaker 4: There's this weird dance right where anytime Elon Musk talks
Speaker 4: about the Trump administration, where he wants to simultaneously give
Speaker 4: himself credit, give himself as much agency as possible, because
Speaker 4: that's kind of how he works, right. He likes to
Speaker 4: be the decider. He wants to be the one in
Speaker 4: the design studio making the calls. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: legally politically, there are all sorts of reasons why that
Speaker 4: is not advantageous. It's not advantageous to claim. And you
Speaker 4: heard him say in this interview. Well, the problem is Congress.
Speaker 4: Congress has to do this stuff, and I think we're serving.
Speaker 5: Went on at the end of that to say and
Speaker 5: the executive brand, Yeah yeah, which and this.
Speaker 4: Is why, like I remember when the dose things started,
Speaker 4: you were very high on it.
Speaker 5: You were sort of saying, thought they were going to change.
Speaker 4: Yeah you well not just that, but you thought, like
Speaker 4: he's going to actually cut some costs.
Speaker 3: We're in this moment for real austerity.
Speaker 4: Like I just could feel all the bond traders behind
Speaker 4: you celebrating.
Speaker 5: Well, I think I can I read for my position.
Speaker 5: My position was and remains whether Doge ultimately achieves a
Speaker 5: whole heck of a lot or not, that you can
Speaker 5: sell a mess like that right now is not a coincidence. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that was my point. I actually, frankly, I mean, one
Speaker 5: hundred and seventy billion, I don't know if we believe
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy billion that they say they've cut.
Speaker 5: One hundred and seventy billion is simultaneously an enormous amount
Speaker 5: of money and yet given the size of the deficits
Speaker 5: in this country, very bad.
Speaker 3: That's the whole problem.
Speaker 4: This is why, like it's very hard to be a
Speaker 4: deficit hawk politically, because you could cut a bunch of
Speaker 4: stuff and get a lot of people mad at you,
Speaker 4: and then ultimately not achieve very much and you're.
Speaker 5: Still get downgraded by Moody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're suddenly in this uncanny valley where Wall Street
Speaker 4: hates you and the American public hates you. And that's
Speaker 4: why it's so weird that Elon Musk picked this battle
Speaker 4: like he did.
Speaker 3: Not have to pick this.
Speaker 4: He really believes so again, and I think obviously you're
Speaker 4: seeing in this dance why, first of all, why these
Speaker 4: doge cuts are not super popular, or at least doge
Speaker 4: as kind of conceived of and marketed by Elon Musk
Speaker 4: are not super popular. The idea of cutting deficit spending
Speaker 4: in general is popular, and why Donald Trump is kind
Speaker 4: of trying to edge away from this because it doesn't
Speaker 4: seem like this is a winner with voters. I want
Speaker 4: to say one hundred and seventy billion dollars, but three
Speaker 4: hundred and thirty seven thousand, eight hundred words deleted according
Speaker 4: to Yeah.
Speaker 5: What does that mean? Words deleted? What were they? Where
Speaker 5: were they deleted from?
Speaker 4: I guess from federal regulations? And I just want to
Speaker 4: say as a as someone who at times has been
Speaker 4: a professional word deleter, as somebody who's entire job had
Speaker 4: been Yeah, an editor. Three hundred and thirty seven thousand
Speaker 4: words is not that many words like a good word
Speaker 4: deleter probably does that.
Speaker 3: You know in six months? Maybe you know so? So
Speaker 3: I don't know. I feel like they could step up
Speaker 3: their game.
Speaker 5: Okay, so listen Max. There was also a back and
Speaker 5: forth about Musk Starlink apparently breaking into South Africa and
Speaker 5: signing there. That too got pretty sporty. Let's listen to that.
Speaker 6: First of all, you should be questioning why is there
Speaker 6: why that racist laws in South Africa. That's the first
Speaker 6: pot problem. That's what you should be attacking. It's improper
Speaker 6: for they be racist laws in South Africa. The whole
Speaker 6: idea with what Nelson Madela, who is a great man, proposed,
Speaker 6: was that all racist should be on an equal footing
Speaker 6: in South Africa. That's the right thing to do, not
Speaker 6: to replace one set of racist laws with another set
Speaker 6: of racist laws, which is utterly wrong and improper.
Speaker 2: There are now one hundred and forty laws in South
Speaker 2: Africa that give a prep that basically give strong preference
Speaker 2: to you if you're black South African and not otherwise.
Speaker 6: And so now I'm in the subsurd situation where I
Speaker 6: was born in South Africa but cannot get a license
Speaker 6: to operate in Starlink because I'm not black.
Speaker 1: Well, it looks like that's it looks looks like that right,
Speaker 1: it looks like that's about to change.
Speaker 2: I just asked you a question. Please answer. Does that
Speaker 2: seem right to you?
Speaker 1: Well, those rules were designed to bring those rules would
Speaker 1: design to bring about an era of more economic equality
Speaker 1: in South Africa, and it looks like the government has
Speaker 1: found a way around those rules for you.
Speaker 2: Ask your question?
Speaker 1: Is this is your interview? Everyone wants to hear from you,
Speaker 1: yes or no? Not for me to answer that. I
Speaker 1: have got a question for you about about your government
Speaker 1: works and the amount of savings.
Speaker 2: Do you like raceless loves?
Speaker 4: I don't know what to say that, honestly, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously, these laws in South Africa exist as
Speaker 4: an effort to undo a system in which white South
Speaker 4: Africans own the vast majority of businesses and property. The
Speaker 4: point here is that Starlink is getting preferential treatment from
Speaker 4: all sorts of governments now Elama is going to argue, well,
Speaker 4: it should have been receiving this treatment all along, and
Speaker 4: you could probably see a couple of different reasons why
Speaker 4: it would be getting that treatment. One is that Starlink
Speaker 4: is effective. It's delivering on its promise of you know,
Speaker 4: high speed internet, as as Elon Musk said during this interview,
Speaker 4: the connection was so great because it was.
Speaker 3: Over those Starlink satellites.
Speaker 4: And of course the other reason is this is a
Speaker 4: good way to if you're a policy maker in a
Speaker 4: smaller country that is trying to get things from the
Speaker 4: United States, you know, as one does. This is I
Speaker 4: think a way to throw a bone to Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: You're giving his his number one donor positive policy. You know,
Speaker 4: you're giving them a concession, and like that's what Trump
Speaker 4: is all about. And so it kind of makes sense
Speaker 4: that governments, not just in South Africa but elsewhere in
Speaker 4: the world are are suddenly essentially like throwing open the
Speaker 4: you know, their doors.
Speaker 5: To Elon Musk, Yeah, now, Max, this is a good
Speaker 5: segue into the second part of our show here, which
Speaker 5: is all about Grock's wild Ride, because Groc, the chatbot
Speaker 5: for Musk's x Ai, is kind of been on a
Speaker 5: bit of a rant the last week or so where
Speaker 5: he keeps droning on and on and on about white
Speaker 5: genocide in South Africa. So tell us all about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was like a day. It was just one day,
Speaker 3: I think roughly a day. I don't know, maybe got
Speaker 3: it all out of them.
Speaker 4: Where basically any question you asked Roc, you ask him, Hey,
Speaker 4: how much does the Max Sures or the Blue Jays?
Speaker 4: Starting picture make Hey, what's happening with this cute little
Speaker 4: doggie over here?
Speaker 5: Who's gonna win the Belmont?
Speaker 3: Snaw, He's gonna win the Belmont? Whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Groc would start to answer and then sort of take
Speaker 4: a hard, right, screeching turn to the question of white genocide.
Speaker 4: So so like, let me just I should probably just
Speaker 4: read on again some examples, just to give you a sense.
Speaker 4: Sot me find a good one, the best one you can.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, So I don't remember last week.
Speaker 4: HBO Max, the service that has HBO on it, they
Speaker 4: change their name back to HBO Max. Everyone was laughing
Speaker 4: about it because it was called HBO Max several years ago.
Speaker 4: Warner Brothers, in their infinite wisdom, changed it to Max.
Speaker 4: Now they're going back to HBO Max. Anyway, someone asked
Speaker 4: how many times has HBO changed their name to Brock
Speaker 4: groc starts to answer, HBO's streaming service has changed names
Speaker 4: twice since twenty twenty. Blah blah blah blah blah regarding
Speaker 4: white genocide. So anyway, it's unclear what happened and the fact.
Speaker 5: That somebody sabotage CROC.
Speaker 4: So what x AI has said is that there was
Speaker 4: an unauthorized changed to Grock's code that caused it to
Speaker 4: do this. I think it's pretty It seems pretty likely
Speaker 4: that before this happened, there were screenshots showing the bot
Speaker 4: casting doubt on white genocide and Elon Musk kind of
Speaker 4: quibbling with that.
Speaker 3: It seems it seems very possible.
Speaker 4: Maybe even likely, that either Elon Musk asks someone to
Speaker 4: do this and they did a bad job of it
Speaker 4: and the tweak went too far, or or like somebody
Speaker 4: who works at xi AI saw something that Elon Musk
Speaker 4: Musk said and was attempting, you know, proactively to improve
Speaker 4: in quotes Rock by like creating an update. And I
Speaker 4: think the issue is and again some of this is
Speaker 4: speculation that they told it to answer with balance on
Speaker 4: the question of white genocide in South Africa, which I
Speaker 4: think most people regard as basically a made up thing,
Speaker 4: a kind of a right wing meme. But to take
Speaker 4: that meme seriously, and instead of writing in their prompt
Speaker 4: that they should only do that for questions about white genocide,
Speaker 4: they just said for all questions.
Speaker 5: All questions now. But can I just ask you this,
Speaker 5: if you were to ask ROC now about white genocide
Speaker 5: in South Africa, what does it now tell you?
Speaker 3: Should we find out?
Speaker 5: I think we should find out.
Speaker 4: So it's it's essentially saying, if you ask it now,
Speaker 4: the idea of white genocide in South Africa is a
Speaker 4: highly controversial claim, and then it gives the sort of
Speaker 4: pros and cons although at the end it says the
Speaker 4: idea the white genocide narrative appears to exaggerate and misframe
Speaker 4: real issues. Anyway, I don't want to I don't want
Speaker 4: to go on and on reading what GROC says, because
Speaker 4: the point is that we don't actually know what happened here.
Speaker 4: We don't know based on what Xai said. It could
Speaker 4: be that someone made a direct change and like asked
Speaker 4: GROC to do something. It could also be that someone
Speaker 4: made some change having nothing to do with this, and
Speaker 4: like it led to a chain reaction that that then
Speaker 4: caused Groc to do something. The thing about these AI chatbots,
Speaker 4: and this is why, like it is really crazy that
Speaker 4: people are starting to that you would want to like
Speaker 4: ask them anything. Factual is that we don't know how
Speaker 4: they make their decisions. It is a black box. So
Speaker 4: we don't actually know whether Elon Musk, you know, put
Speaker 4: his thumb on the scale and turn this algorithm, which
Speaker 4: which would have been giving a more reasonable answer into
Speaker 4: an unreasonable answer, or if the algorithm just did this
Speaker 4: on its own. And honestly, the second one is probably
Speaker 4: worse than the first one if it's true, even though
Speaker 4: like obviously it undermines Elon Musk's whole idea that he
Speaker 4: was gonna he wanted to you know, create this to
Speaker 4: have a maximally truth seeking algorithm or whatever.
Speaker 3: Basically, these chatbots do weird.
Speaker 4: Things, and they do unpredictable things, you know. Grock shortly
Speaker 4: after this whole white genocide thing happened, it started saying
Speaker 4: that the Holocaust was maybe thrown into a question again,
Speaker 4: had to apologize, had to say that there was some
Speaker 4: other unauthorized change so again it's just it's kind of
Speaker 4: just a mess. And part of the reason it's a
Speaker 4: mess is because, again you have a CEO with a
Speaker 4: tendency to just try to do things kind of off
Speaker 4: the cuff. You also have just lots of content, like
Speaker 4: lots of racist content on x that is assumably being
Speaker 4: used to train Rock. So it's possible that it's possible
Speaker 4: Grock just like ingested a whole bunch of like weird racist,
Speaker 4: you know, anti white genocide stuff about South Africa and
Speaker 4: spit this out, or that Elon Musk did it, or
Speaker 4: that it was some combination of both of those.
Speaker 5: Things, okay, and other news.
Speaker 4: Basically, what I'm saying is that if you had a company,
Speaker 4: you definitely want to hire Rock to create content.
Speaker 5: Right, which is exactly what the betting site Calshi just did.
Speaker 5: But it's a story I believe that we hear at
Speaker 5: Bloomberg Broke tell us about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Calshi is one of these prediction market websites.
Speaker 4: This is like a new category. The other big one
Speaker 4: is polymarket. Calshi is in a it's obviously a space
Speaker 4: where regulation is a huge concern. It's also one in
Speaker 4: which where there are lots of connections to the Trump administration.
Speaker 4: I believe so Calci, like you know many companies, is
Speaker 4: it seems, trying to create some additional content for their website. Obviously,
Speaker 4: having a chatbot do it is cheaper than having human
Speaker 4: beings do it.
Speaker 5: So just as a gambler, if I can understand this here,
Speaker 5: so the idea is GROC is going to spit out
Speaker 5: this content that is going to help me the gambler,
Speaker 5: make more informed bets. That's the idea, or is it
Speaker 5: the stats entertaining me and just to go out wax
Speaker 5: on and on about white genocide in South Auls.
Speaker 4: Ostensibly it's going to help you make it for more
Speaker 4: informed bets, although I do think there's a risk that
Speaker 4: you might just get a little bit more info about
Speaker 4: white genis, which hey, if I were running a prediction
Speaker 4: market company, I might be worried about. But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, I think there are reasons, Like I mentioned
Speaker 4: one that was economic, but the other reason, of course
Speaker 4: is political. I don't think this this del that Calshi
Speaker 4: has announced with GROC, which I assume involves Calshi giving
Speaker 4: Ai Xai money.
Speaker 5: Presumably yeah, which would be good, or they gonna give
Speaker 5: a bunch of free bets, which would be good. Make
Speaker 5: two free bets a month.
Speaker 4: Which would be good for Xai because Xai could really
Speaker 4: use some revenue. I think this is like not that
Speaker 4: different from when a company that is in a regulated
Speaker 4: space maybe blocks books a big block of rooms in
Speaker 4: the Trump Hotel in Washington, DC, right like it is
Speaker 4: getting those rooms, it needs to stay somewhere. On the
Speaker 4: other hand, like if you want to signal, perhaps to
Speaker 4: regulators that you're on the side politically that is in
Speaker 4: power deal with musks, why not do this. I'm just
Speaker 4: suggesting that I'm not sure that the the sort of
Speaker 4: capabilities of Xai was the only thing that was looked
Speaker 4: at here.
Speaker 5: Fair last thing in Groc's Whirlwind week is something about
Speaker 5: now this I understand gambling, so I understood the Calshi thing,
Speaker 5: but something about my Microsoft and the cloud and Xai
Speaker 5: and I don't know Mac.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Microsoft had a big developer event.
Speaker 4: This is like for people who use Azure, which it's
Speaker 4: it's it's.
Speaker 3: Cloud computing service.
Speaker 4: It announced that it is going to support grock in Azure.
Speaker 4: So if you are a software developer, you will be
Speaker 4: able to sort of buy Grock through Microsoft. Now this
Speaker 4: is it's confusing and complicated. Yes, I think the sort
Speaker 4: of the the most interesting thing here is Elon Musk
Speaker 4: is feuding right now with both Bill Gates, who he
Speaker 4: said some very.
Speaker 5: You know in the Cutar Economic Form interview. Yes he did.
Speaker 5: He had some very salty things.
Speaker 3: Very unhappy with Bill Gates.
Speaker 4: We discussed last week all the things that Bill Gates
Speaker 4: has said about Elon Musk. Also, there is a lawsuit
Speaker 4: going on in which Elon Musk essentially accuses open Ai
Speaker 4: of having been taken over by Microsoft and in a
Speaker 4: bad way. And now we have Elon Musk actually appearing
Speaker 4: via video chat at this event, you know, making nice
Speaker 4: with the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella.
Speaker 3: I mean, part of.
Speaker 4: This is just that, like as I said earlier, XAI
Speaker 4: needs to get some revenue.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Max actually, on the topic of Microsoft and open Ai,
Speaker 5: must took a pretty big swing at Altman Sam Altman,
Speaker 5: co founder of open Ai, during that interview over there
Speaker 5: and Cutter with Michall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a burn, I'd say.
Speaker 4: She pointed out that even though they're fighting, they were
Speaker 4: both with the president in Saudi Arabia and Musk said,
Speaker 4: I was with the president.
Speaker 3: Sam Altman was in the neighborhood, which you know that's
Speaker 3: that's a singer.
Speaker 5: I'd say, you know, well, I suppose when you donated
Speaker 5: what you donated to mister Trump, you get that kind
Speaker 5: of access. Max. Thank you as always, Thanks David. This
Speaker 5: episode was produced by Stacy Wong Late Maple's Handles Engineering
Speaker 5: and Dave Purcell fact checks. Anna Maserracus is our editor
Speaker 5: and Magnus Henrikson is our supervising producer. The elan In
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Speaker 5: Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer, and Sage Bauman
Speaker 5: is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to
Speaker 5: our supporters Joel Webber and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadoppolos.
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