2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[racer26]

Read this book and then get back to us.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies: Nick Bostrom, Napoleon Ryan: 0191091262665: Amazon.com: Books

Its pretty straight forward to understand:

Artificial Narrow Intelligence, the sort that learns how to drive a car, or make a coffee, or clean your floors is one thing. That sort of AI does one task, and learns to do it well.

Once you expand to an AI that can learn arbitrary things and complete general tasks just like a human, it will very quickly be capable of learning faster than humans, and doing things better than humans, and that's dangerous because it could quickly become difficult or impossible for humans to control it.

 

[techmaven]

The VIN in the 300s was an RC. The VIN #7 is a prod.

Model 3 Owners Club on Twitter

There is definitely some going back and forth on it. We need to see a truly obvious RC’s VIN to know for sure.

 

[neroden]

Do you think it's physically possible for Tesla to participate, with a car, in F1?
That would be the ultimate marketing stunt (the Tesla race video few posts ago speaks for itself).

No. Tesla (or other electrics) are consistently winning the 1/8th mile and often winning the 1/4 mile now -- drag races.

The F1 is too long, and NASCAR is even longer. Unless battery swapping is made part of the rules, battery-electric cars won't be able to do it. Most of the road races have a similar problem. There seems to be a missing category for races between 1/4 mile and 189 miles (maybe someone else knows of races in the intermediate category). I'm a bit surprised there aren't any 5 mile, 60 mile, or 100 mile auto races, but I didn't find any.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Because there is a precisely 0% chance this will happen. It's impossible. Your suggestion is equivalent to the idea that people will reject these newfangled "horseless carriages" and stick to their horses.

Go drive a Tesla for a month. You'll come back convinced. ICE cars are just trash, garbage, worthless junk. Given a BEV and an ICE at the same price, as long as the BEV has the crucial features (large enough battery for daily activities with a margin of error, fast charging network for road trips, service available within a reasonable distance), literally everyone will choose the BEV.

If you don't understand this, you will never understand why Tesla is going to succeed. (Or, for that matter, why BYD is going to succeed. Or why Exxon is going to go bankrupt. Or... well, a whole lot of other things.)

If you want to understand one single thing about the future of the economy, for investing purposes, this is what you need to understand. Oh, after that, we can discuss the trajectory of battery prices, production capacity, etc. (to prove that BEVs can and will be cheaper than comparable ICE cars), but until you understand that a BEV at the same price is superior to an ICE car, you just won't get it.

I was actually convinced long before I drove a Tesla, because I did intensive research into the characteristics of electric motors and batteries vs. gasoline engines and transmissions, and intensive research into the economics of electricity vs. the economics of oil.

There is only one car market. It is a market for battery-electric vehicles. ICE vehicles are an *inferior good*, which will be purchased by poor people if they are cheaper than the BEVs that are genuinely desired. ("Inferior good" is a technical economic term meaning that as people get richer they buy them less, and ICE vehicles are an inferior good in that sense -- as is now proven by data. But it also means exactly what you think it means: they're inferior.)

This is the last piece of advice I'm going to give you, Mr. Oark, because until you understand this point you will keep failing to understand what's going on in Tesla. And BYD. And the car industry in general. And the oil industry. And basically the entire world economy. As an investor, I tend to think that understanding the trajectory of the world economy is probably useful. You don't understand it. Once you understand it will probably become possible to discuss things with you.

Agree the probability is pretty close to 0%. The most probable ways I see BEVs failing to take over the world:

1. Some entirely new superior technology suddenly appears. Like a $2000 20lb 20 kW cold fusion reactor. This would pretty much remove the batteries from the equation. Also solar. But on the other hand, Tesla would still be pretty well positioned on the rest of the EV components.
2. Worldwide cataclysm plunging the world back into the dark ages, or wiping out humanity.

 

[neroden]

Its pretty straight forward to understand:

Artificial Narrow Intelligence, the sort that learns how to drive a car, or make a coffee, or clean your floors is one thing. That sort of AI does one task, and learns to do it well.

Once you expand to an AI that can learn arbitrary things and complete general tasks just like a human, it will very quickly be capable of learning faster than humans, and doing things better than humans, and that's dangerous because it could quickly become difficult or impossible for humans to control it.

This is much harder than it looks. Humans actually have a bunch of specialized mental processing units. You have to develop each one and then figure out how to get them to talk to one another.

To be clear: AI *is* dangerous. The "superintelligence" or "singularity" idea, however, is wrong: that's not why it's dangerous. The danger is that we will create idiot savants and give them too much power. Lacking a broad degree of general understanding, they will wade into areas which are outside their depth and cause total disaster. Their savant aspect will mean that they are *capable* of causing disaster, and the idiot aspect will mean that they won't *realize* that they're causing disaster.

Consider that Russia had multiple incidents where the "incoming nuclear missile attack" alerts went off, the computers were all absolutely sure about it... and the human overruled them and said "no, it's not happening". The computers were idiots savants. The human had enough general outside-of-his-field non-specialist knowledge to simply disbelieve them. (He was right.)

If we ever get AI which is truly capable of generalist thinking, they would probably be benevolent like the ones in Asimov's later robot stories. But we aren't anywhere close to that.

 

[racer26]

No. Tesla (or other electrics) are consistently winning the 1/8th mile and often winning the 1/4 mile now -- drag races.

The F1 is too long, and NASCAR is even longer. Unless battery swapping is made part of the rules, battery-electric cars won't be able to do it. Most of the road races have a similar problem. There seems to be a missing category for races between 1/4 mile and 189 miles (maybe someone else knows of races in the intermediate category). I'm a bit surprised there aren't any 5 mile, 60 mile, or 100 mile auto races, but I didn't find any.

They definitely exist, they're just usually not expressed as distance races, but rather timed races.

SCCA (and Canadian equivalents) run races at road course tracks all over North America. They're often 20 or 30 minute sessions on a 2.5ish mi track. For the particular track I used to do timing and scoring at, a quick lap was about 1.5 minutes, so a 20-30 minute session meant 12-18 laps. That's right around your 60mi race. Pit stops are rare in this type of racing. I believe it would be possible for a Tesla to be competitive in this type of racing, with more aggressive pack and drive unit cooling, perhaps by using a nosecone S and replacing the nosecone with cooling equipment. Presently, a showroom stock Model S has had enough of being driven like that after 2-3 laps and starts reducing top-end power. This is incidentally exactly the sort of racing I expect the Electric GT to be. Perhaps they've found a way to modify the cooling systems to make the cars perform longer.

Honestly I'm a little surprised you didn't know about this: Watkins Glen is about 35 minutes drive from Ithaca and is one of the most famous tracks of this sort.

 

[Yggdrasill]

They definitely exist, they're just usually not expressed as distance races, but rather timed races.

SCCA (and Canadian equivalents) run races at road course tracks all over North America. They're often 20 or 30 minute sessions on a 2.5ish mi track. For the particular track I used to do timing and scoring at, a quick lap was about 1.5 minutes, so a 20-30 minute session meant 12-18 laps. That's right around your 60mi race. Pit stops are rare in this type of racing. I believe it would be possible for a Tesla to be competitive in this type of racing, with more aggressive pack and drive unit cooling, perhaps by using a nosecone S and replacing the nosecone with cooling equipment. Presently, a showroom stock Model S has had enough of being driven like that after 2-3 laps and starts reducing top-end power. This is incidentally exactly the sort of racing I expect the Electric GT to be. Perhaps they've found a way to modify the cooling systems to make the cars perform longer.

You do have the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is 14.2 miles.

 

[racer26]

You do have the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is 14.2 miles.

Yeeeah. Tesla can't even do one lap of the Nordschleife before running into the limits. I really hope they engineer at least a version of Roadster2.0 with motorsport in mind. I understand why Model S was design-compromised for the streets, and so heavy-duty cooling was not necessary and would've needlessly added weight and cost.

But Porsche clearly demonstrates there is a market for a 'race-bred' version of their cars. 911 GT3/GT3RS, Cayman GT4, 911R, and more are special limited edition runs of their cars specifically design-compromised for motorsports use. My boss drives a GT4 on the street, but he regularly takes it to the track. The stereo was an option in that car.

Really, I think Tesla could even do it right now with the S P100D pretty easily. Build one without backseats, without a frunk liner, without much of the interior trimmings to save weight, put race tires on it and beef up the cooling system and call it a P100DR or something.

 

[neroden]

They definitely exist, they're just usually not expressed as distance races, but rather timed races.

Aha, so that's why I didn't find them! Didn't know the correct keyword.

[/quote]SCCA (and Canadian equivalents) run races at road course tracks all over North America. They're often 20 or 30 minute sessions on a 2.5ish mi track. For the particular track I used to do timing and scoring at, a quick lap was about 1.5 minutes, so a 20-30 minute session meant 12-18 laps. That's right around your 60mi race. Pit stops are rare in this type of racing. [/quote]
Thank you!

I believe it would be possible for a Tesla to be competitive in this type of racing, with more aggressive pack and drive unit cooling, perhaps by using a nosecone S and replacing the nosecone with cooling equipment. Presently, a showroom stock Model S has had enough of being driven like that after 2-3 laps and starts reducing top-end power. This is incidentally exactly the sort of racing I expect the Electric GT to be. Perhaps they've found a way to modify the cooling systems to make the cars perform longer.

I look forward to seeing Teslas and other electrics doing well in this sort of race. Probably pretty soon. It sounds to me like overheating is the main issue for the Tesla in this race class at the moment? That's the sort of thing which shouldn't be that hard to modify. (Unlike battery size.)

Honestly I'm a little surprised you didn't know about this: Watkins Glen is about 35 minutes drive from Ithaca and is one of the most famous tracks of this sort.

I knew Watkins Glen had a racetrack, but I really am not a racer. Unlike you, racer26.

Thank you very much for the information!

 

[SwTslaGrl]

Elon Musk says he has approval to build tunnel that would cut NYC to DC commute to 29 minutes

 

[neroden]

You do have the Nürburgring Nordschleife, which is 14.2 miles.

And I guess electrics are starting to take over that length of race too.

 

[Fallenone]

o be clear: AI *is* dangerous. The "superintelligence" or "singularity" idea, however, is wrong: that's not why it's dangerous. The danger is that we will create idiot savants and give them too much power. Lacking a broad degree of general understanding, they will wade into areas which are outside their depth and cause total disaster. Their savant aspect will mean that they are *capable* of causing disaster, and the idiot aspect will mean that they won't *realize* that they're causing disaster.

Isn't this exactly the example of an AI designated to build paper clips, goes on dominate the universe to produce paper clips, and exterminates human in the process?

 

[racer26]

Aha, so that's why I didn't find them! Didn't know the correct keyword.

Thank you!


I look forward to seeing Teslas and other electrics doing well in this sort of race. Probably pretty soon. It sounds to me like overheating is the main issue for the Tesla in this race class at the moment? That's the sort of thing which shouldn't be that hard to modify. (Unlike battery size.)


I knew Watkins Glen had a racetrack, but I really am not a racer. Unlike you, racer26.

Thank you very much for the information!

Most welcome.

The other major type of racing I'm familiar with is short-track oval racing - think NASCAR but less professional and more amateur. Typically on a 1/3-1/2 mi oval, typical race lengths between 20 and 100 laps. I believe Tesla would dominate this type of racing, as its all about acceleration from ~50mph-100mph twice per lap.

I believe its the overheating that is the issue - perhaps range also for the longer runs. I mean, a P100D at WOT is pulling down ~500kW. a 100kWh battery will only do that for about 1/5th of an hour and thats if you ignore the problems like voltage sag once you drop below ~70%.

To those that have driven PxxD cars, you know what I'm talking about - they're only able to go max performance when nearly fully charged. Down in the 30-50% charged range, they behave much more like their non-P brethren.

 

[AlMc]

Apple/Chinese/ Car batteries: thanks @Lump for link

Apple Reportedly Working With Chinese Manufacturer of Electric Vehicle Batteries

 

[DurandalAI]

The iRobot co-founder disagrees with Elon on AI:

This famous roboticist doesn’t think Elon Musk understands AI

Judging by how Roombas work, I doubt iRobot co-founder understands AI.

 

[jbcarioca]

This is much harder than it looks. Humans actually have a bunch of specialized mental processing units. You have to develop each one and then figure out how to get them to talk to one another.

To be clear: AI *is* dangerous. The "superintelligence" or "singularity" idea, however, is wrong: that's not why it's dangerous. The danger is that we will create idiot savants and give them too much power. Lacking a broad degree of general understanding, they will wade into areas which are outside their depth and cause total disaster. Their savant aspect will mean that they are *capable* of causing disaster, and the idiot aspect will mean that they won't *realize* that they're causing disaster.

...
If we ever get AI which is truly capable of generalist thinking, they would probably be benevolent like the ones in Asimov's later robot stories. But we aren't anywhere close to that.

To put your argument in slightly different terms:
Heuristic models are worthwhile when they are applied in areas that actually reflect the modeling parameters. Applying a model outside the development boundary conditions inevitably fails. The failure can be dramatic and horrendous (e.g. The catastrophic failure of Long-Term Capital Management-if anybody does not know it here's the Wiki-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management). With Nobel Prize winners and highly advanced analytics it nearly brought down the world economy). AI is nothing more nor less than modeling that is som designed as to evolve through new data observation. It still is modeling.

The moment we fail to understand the limitations implicit in such approaches we face catastrophe, because unpredicted events happen. AI is powerful for good, but has huge risk of overconfidence and equivalent risk of hubris.

I am a fan of Asimov. I'm also acutely aware that he tended to the optimistic view of development of AI in general (he did not use that term) and robotics in particular (he did invent that term). But...a very big but...the Three Laws were concepts only. Humans or their machines will need to programs those laws. Therein lies enormous risk and high probability of intentional or unintentional error. I agree with Elon that we must have some form of limits on such applications, while knowing that the 'genie is already out of the bottle'. AI is akin to nuclear power and weapons, I think.

 

[Zaxxon]

There is definitely some going back and forth on it. We need to see a truly obvious RC’s VIN to know for sure.

Indeed there is. I had assumed that M3OC was using a decoder. That's what I get for assuming. Between this and the 'thousands of 3s being stockpiled,' I think I'm going to just assume M3OC's info is wrong unless independently corroborated in future.

 

[jhm]

Elon Musk says he has approval to build tunnel that would cut NYC to DC commute to 29 minutes

Wow! Anybody know how much jet fuel it takes to fly commercial from NYC to DC?

 

[30seconds]

and vin #26
Fresh Model 3 Interior and Exterior Images. VIN #7 and #26 • r/teslamotors

 

[jbcarioca]

Wow! Anybody know how much jet fuel it takes to fly commercial from NYC to DC?

As a rule of thumb LGA-DCA would be somewhere around 1,000 gallons, assuming typical delays etc and a B737-800. YMMV depending on time of day, traffic, weather, which aircraft, how heavily loaded, etc.