Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[st_lopes]

If you look at the event from a pure recruiting perspective, then the outcome you want is to get **just** get the brightest, youngest and highest bandwidth minds. I think they've excited that crowd in spades.

Also, I think the android idea is way out there time-wise. But also think about the kinds of products that Tesla will be making in 5 to 10 years. Most likely Tesla will have solved cars; it is a bit crazy to think, but largely they'll have a ton of compute, AI researchers and data scientists clamoring to solve bigger and bigger problems.

While I don't know exactly how the thinking went to arrive at this idea, it might have been something along these lines...

0. hey, so, we have come a long way with this FSD thing and we had to build a huge, wait, many huge datacenters full of GPUs/DPUs and soon, like 10 or so more ~2 week cycles, we think we'll solve FSD so we'll have a ton of compute left over and slightly bored engineers; what will we do with that?
1. DaaS (Dojo as a Service) comes to mind
2. Yeah, ok, but we'll still have a huge amount of AI compute left over; what then?
3. We'll continue to improve FSD, ya'know re-train, bigger models, better and better and all that
4. Yeahhhhh no, we'll still have an immense amount of compute, we need something bigger.
5. Well OpenAI is trying to solve AGI right, how about we contribute to that?
6. Ugh, still crazy amounts of compute, we need something in house that will be so amazingly, blindingly hard to solve
7. Ok, crazy idea, remember that robot Rosie from the Jetsons?
8. I like where this is going....go on!
9. Well, traffic sucks and mundane driving sucks, but so does all those chores and crappy low paying jobs and if a robot does all of that, it could be sustainable than a human doing it from an energy cycle perspective
10. Gotcha, make it look cool, possibly dance, bring it up on stage and I'll talk to it with a simple slide on specs

The world’s most resilient businesses literally do what you are describing on a regular basis. “What have we built? How can we extend its use. How do increase the addressable markets of our core competencies?” Rinse. Repeat. Become a sustainable generational business. It’s when you stop trying to push your boundaries and expand to new markets that you stagnate and die.

I think in Musk's view the point of solving the sustainable energy problem is so that the future has a higher probability of being good. Originally, Tesla's mission was to accelerate sustainable TRANSPORT, but this was later broadened to sustainable ENERGY, which of course is inclusive of transportation. So there is precedent for Tesla clarifying an broading its mission. Perhaps, we should start talking about SUSTAINABLE LIVING

The concept of sustainability has been broadening for the last few years to include sustainability of life and health in general.

Blue collar careers are often directly correlated to late life health issues or long term strains on our health systems.

One of the clearest examples of this broadening is the Al Gore Fund, which has built a reputation for its climate change investments, but has been making more and more investments in health tech and technologies focused on longevity and improving quality of life broadly. One recent investment of there’s is Alayacare, an ERP for home-care workers.

Optimus really isn’t that far removed from the mission. Especially when you consider Elon’s broader mission across all of his businesses.

 

[mrmage]

The world of man has been designed for bipedal locomotion and bimanual operations with a shape and size of a typical person. A robot built to those parameters is much more versatile than purpose-built designs. This is analogous to roads, which have been designed for navigation visually and the reason why Tesla switched to visual sensors for FSD.

A robot that vacuums the carpet on my multi-story house needs to climb stairs and open doors. A robot that washes my car needs to open the door, walk down a few steps and open the gate first. To deliver a package to my parents, the robot needs to fit inside the car and hand the package to them or leave it at their door by climbing up a few steps. Reaching my condominium requires two hands, to press the button for the floor while the security key is inserted.

Most human tasks are too complicated for many years from now. But there are enough simple tasks that involve navigating a dynamically created map of the space around it. This is right up Tesla's alley. As robots gets better at these tasks, DOJO will be used to train the robot to handle additional scenarios.

I'm not sure how Tesla will get the training data (for FSD, Tesla is using human supervision to collect incidents), but I can see rapid iterations through future versions of DOJO and auto labeling playing a key part in this.

The market for robots that can navigate the world of people should be far greater than the size of the automobile market, but they won't factor into Wall Street's outlook on Tesla for years. If Tesla pulls this off though, it will ensure Tesla continues with exponential growth far beyond this decade.

 

[CLK350]

Remember Honda's Asimo walking/talking humanoid robot unveiled in 2000. It had good intentions and alot of practical applications, however was discontinued in 2018.

Honda retires its famed Asimo robot

Asimo, Honda’s adorable, humanoid robot, is no more. The company announced it would cease production of the robot in order to focus on using Asimo’s technology for more practical use in nursing and road transport.

www.theverge.com

Just as Tesla advanced the auto, transportation and energy sectors, Tesla will advance the humanoid. The others will simply ask "what happened?"

After Asimo came Boston Dynamics dance party last December - I'm looking forward to watching the TeslaBot(s) redo its dance routine* this time for real by December '22, with the added twist of a humanoid intro to demo the Dojo's "semi sentient" abilities.

(*) Together with NN derived imitations or variations of popular moves, like the moonwalk, human partner walzes, tango, etc, and unscripted new ones too

 

[Words of HABIT]

The world’s most resilient businesses literally do what you are describing on a regular basis. “What have we built? How can we extend its use. How do increase the addressable markets of our core competencies?” Rinse. Repeat. Become a sustainable generational business. It’s when you stop trying to push your boundaries and expand to new markets that you stagnate and die.

The concept of sustainability has been broadening for the last few years to include sustainability of life and health in general.

Blue collar careers are often directly correlated to late life health issues or long term strains on our health systems.

One of the clearest examples of this broadening is the Al Gore Fund, which has built a reputation for its climate change investments, but has been making more and more investments in health tech and technologies focused on longevity and improving quality of life broadly. One recent investment of there’s is Alayacare, an ERP for home-care workers.

Optimus really isn’t that far removed from the mission. Especially when you consider Elon’s broader mission across all of his businesses.

White collar sedentary lifestyle is the new smoking. Personally, never smoked, having slaved over a computer for 30 years for 10 hours per day, multiple heart attacks ensued, finally made me leave my successful albeit stressfull position to work outdoors as a part time labourer and after six months could not be in better health and physical condition.
Life expectancy in US is at a 20 year low (due to covid, but also other factors such as sedentary lifestyle).
When Tesla Bots are in our homes, lets hope these humanoids allow us to do the outdoor physical things we love to do, and not just to pamper us.

 

[EVCollies]

There is a fair amount of work being done and good progress in developing AI for radiology applications such as mammography. I warn trainees that radiology and pathology may not be the best specialties to choose for a future career.

I bet radiologists would love to offload screening mammograms for high medicolegal risk. If a machine could produce a report that did not require a physician to sign, they would happily let AI take that risk.

I bet we will always have AI assist the physicians that will need to sign off on the reports, as they assume the responsibility.

As an oncologist for 30 years, I am pretty good at reading my own films and can occasionally scoop the radiologist, but their input, particularly in tumor board, is invaluable. Watson For Oncology is great for understanding simple early stage cancers but cannot grasp the edge cases of more advanced later malignancies. I have embraced all the wonderful advances computers have added to medical care, but do not believe they will replace any provider, only help us practice medicine at a higher level.

 

[Buckminster]

Now that the dust has settled - a few threads that might suit your needs:

Project Dojo - the SaaS Product?
Tesla AI day
Tesla humanoid robot

• MODs - can you please change the title to "Tesla Bot / Optimus"

Dojo discussion
Artificial Intelligence
HW3 to HW4 Upgrade
Tesla all but confirms Cybertruck production delay until 2022
FSD to be made available to other auto manufacturers
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is coming

Worth watching for Douma's enthusiasm:

 

[H Mak]

I got a Thai takeaway tonight and mine was the 3rd Model 3 parked outside the restaurant. Also on the way there I passed a Model X. Now admittedly, this is somewhat unusual for Liverpool, but still.

No demand.

 

[Skipdd]

So the question becomes how to fight it effectively. I believe Gene was on the right track, but either he has a company and personal image he’s loathe to break or he wanted to out clever Gordon, and simply lost a lot of the clear punching power.

Ignore the the bit of the truth and just address/attack/refute the individual lies.

Gordon, Tesla does use video from their vehicles. Example; the talk they did about taking bits of video data from multiple vehicles that have traveled the same intersection and overlaying those images to create a rich environment.

Simply just listing all the ways in which Tesla used video data blows up the script Gordon has created.

I remember seeing someone do that a while back - maybe Rob M. - and Gordon got really flustered because it destroyed the false narrative he’d built around a single nugget of truth. The problem was that Rob? didn’t take it far enough, didn’t put the nail in the coffin per say.

If nobody takes this guy apart in a simple, logical, systematic way, he’ll just keep on doing what he’s doing and get away with it.

Agree with one addition. The rebuttal needs to start with, “…they are not lies, you are misrepresenting what was said…” then the factual takedown. The mistake many have made is to acknowledge the small truth, and then pivot. Since the intent of Gordon is purposeful, no ground should be given.

 

[EnzoXYZ]

Ummm....One dumb human comes to mind right now

IMO, the likes of these guys are extremely smart and extremely creative. They actually know all the ins and outs of Tesla and is able to pick and choose what supports their narrative. It’s why they keep moving the goal post and at time preemptively suggest the next “impossible” achievement. I would not be surprised if he actually reads this board and consume all YT videos of Musk & company. You have to know the subject matter extremely well to do his job- deceive the general investment community. The scary part is this also includes “professional” investors. I remember in high school visiting my friend at their house. His dad was a managing partner at Oppenheimer and he too had the likes of CNBC on with Wall Street Journal/ Financial Times on the table. My younger self was a bit naïve and ate up all the CNBS junk. Did he also? Probably shaped his thinking at a minimum.

This forum is really an amazing place real information.

 

[StealthP3D]

Well, it sounds good but there is a problem.

A malicious app can a) harvest your personal data and/or outright spy on you b) convert your phone into a bitcoin mining unit or c) trick you into being robbed by stealing your identity credentials.
These scenarios are all bad.
Bad but not lethal.
A sufficiently malicious robot app can cause the Tesla Bot to harm you badly or perhaps even kill you.
Sure, Tesla can do a lot of safe-guarding and simulation too weed out dangerous stuff. Tesla can and will probably build in a lot of safety-stuff at the very core level of the robot OS.
But, in the end, the ethical risk and existential risk to the company for allowing Tesla Bots to be used in a harmful way is just ... monumental.

I'm not particularly worried Optimus could become malicious. I'm pretty sure Tesla will hard-code a "safe" word or expression into Optimus that will cause it to freeze in it's tracks until another, equally unlikely, phrase is uttered to reset Optimus. It's important these phrases be something that would be extremely unlikely to be uttered accidently, except as safe phrases.

I would suggest: "Gordon Johnson has a superior analytic ability." and "The increasingly wealthy TSLAQ community."

 

[FS_FRA]

No demand for Model Y in Frankfurt Germany.

An antibody test result might work for the private jet crowd.

No. The rules apply to everyone equally. If he was given special treatment, then this was done by breaking the rules.
Travellers from the US need to be vaccinated to avoid quarantine.

 

[traxila]

View attachment 699461
I’m interpreting this post from Elon as sarcasm. Given that I like many of us am sitting on substantial capital gains in TSLA, I worry about the possibility of a black swan event. One of the primary worries is something happening to Elon. I know he’s had Covid once already but doubtful he is vaccinated. I seriously find myself worrying that he could get significantly ill or even die from covid. Maybe I just need to pull the trigger on some long-horizon $400-500 puts.

If this is your worry then I suggest you manage your taxes best as you can and sell.

 

[st_lopes]

White collar sedentary lifestyle is the new smoking. Personally, never smoked, having slaved over a computer for 30 years for 10 hours per day, multiple heart attacks ensued, finally made me leave my successful albeit stressfull position to work outdoors as a part time labourer and after six months could not be in better health and physical condition.
Life expectancy in US is at a 20 year low (due to covid, but also other factors such as sedentary lifestyle).
When Tesla Bots are in our homes, lets hope these humanoids allow us to do the outdoor physical things we love to do, and not just to pamper us.

Absolutely valid point. Though a lot white collar health outcomes are much more centered on lack of reasonable exercise balancing the sedentary lifestyle.

I should have said any career. Though I come from a blue collar background (I’m the first generation of white collar in my family) and majority of my extended aging family are in horrid health due to the repetitive and dangerous jobs they toiled through.

 

[StealthP3D]

I think Musk is being awfully conservative, understated in this response. He could make a stronger case that the Tesla Bot project will support Tesla in pursuit of its mission. Specifically, Tesla Bot will help Tesla
1) Attract and retrain top AI and robotics talent
2) Engage and motivate talent in creative, lateral thinking along the frontiers of AI and robotics
3) Challenge Tesla talent to build verbal and nonverbal communication bridge with humans (critical to highly adaptive vehicle autonomy)
4) Build more realistic simulation environments for testing of autopilot safety
5) Accelerate manufacturing ramp up and avoid risk to auto manufacturing workforce, including testing of ergonomic risks peculiar to the human form
6) Generate brand awareness and public enthusiasm for all Tesla products
7) What else?

Perhaps Musk did not want to enumerate all these ways the Bot will aid Tesla in its mission, but I thoroughly expect that Tesla will make these connections as they develop Bot. The challenges and opportunities are huge. Tesla will be among the first organizations to realize these advantages, which best positions them to succeed in their core mission.

Elon wisely avoided aligning the development of a robot with replacing factory workers. Otherwise analysts and others would use setbacks in robot development to punish TSLA share price. And UAW union would feel even more threatened. It's best to just let people imagine ways to employ a robot for their own personal purposes.

 

[Artful Dodger]

and thousands of amps needed to fuel power it.

IDIOM POLICE: "Work with me here, people!"

P.S. 112 MW of power to run Dojo at 1.1 exaflops. :O

 

[Iain]

No demand for Model Y in Frankfurt Germany.

No. The rules apply to everyone equally. If he was given special treatment, then this was done by breaking the rules.
Travellers from the US need to be vaccinated to avoid quarantine.

There are no special rules. I know because it's my job. Crews do have different rules compared to passengers and every Country has it's own rules. On wednesday i fly from Houston to Zurich. Crew needs no covid test and since we are all vaccinated we don't have to quarantine. Pax's have to have a Covid test 72 hrs before departure and do not need to quarantine since they are vaccinated. A week later we fly to London and again the crew needs no Covid test but the Pax do. Again no one needs to quarantine since we are all vaccinated but on day 2 we all do a Covid test. There are no special rules for the wealthy.

 

[wipster]

View attachment 699461
I’m interpreting this post from Elon as sarcasm. Given that I like many of us am sitting on substantial capital gains in TSLA, I worry about the possibility of a black swan event. One of the primary worries is something happening to Elon. I know he’s had Covid once already but doubtful he is vaccinated. I seriously find myself worrying that he could get significantly ill or even die from covid. Maybe I just need to pull the trigger on some long-horizon $400-500 puts.

That photo could be called "The Blast Supper"...

 

[Artful Dodger]

So Tesla's new mission statement should be "improving the probability that the future is good".

As they start developing new products in the future that are off-track, a new statement like that might work better.

Elon is sandbagging the contribution of a robot workforce to accelerating the transition to renewable energy. 90%+ of the caloric energy in commercially available food is derived from the transportation and chemical fertilizer imputs. To a first approximation, we are essentially coal/gas/oil-powered beings:

https://sustainability.emory.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/InfoSheet-Energy26FoodProduction.pdf

Robots can they can run directly on wind and/or solar energy. Robots don't commute (which requires energy, takes roadspace, needs more manufacturing for transports). Robots can work 24/7/365 (likely a 95%+ duty cycle), whereas humans work just 2,000 hrs in a year (about a 22% duty cycle).

Further, you have to train 5 humans to get the equivalent yearly duty provided by one robot. But you only have to train one robot (the others just get copies of the neural net). The input/output asymmetries comparing human workers to robots are stark. Elon knows this.

BTW, photosynthesis is only 3% efficent in converting solar energy into chemical energy. If you then choose to feed that plant-captured energy to an animal, and feed that animal to a worker, you cut the net solar efficency to 0.03% (which is why we have so much land devoted to agriculture).

Commonly available solar panels are 15-20% efficient. So, a robot powered by solar needs about 500x less land to support its energy requirements vs feeding a human worker. Ironically, meat consumption has been shown to scale linearly with higher wages. I'll leave it to you to decide if biological workers are actually SLOWING the transition to renewable enery.

I submit that much of our potential value as human workers lies on the TRAINING side.

Cheers!

 

[mltv]

Volkswagen ID.3 Bursts Into Flames In The Netherlands

This Volkswagen ID.3 burst into flames after a woman from the Dutch city of Groningen disconnected it from the curbside charger.

insideevs.com

 

[Singuy]

Volkswagen ID.3 Bursts Into Flames In The Netherlands

This Volkswagen ID.3 burst into flames after a woman from the Dutch city of Groningen disconnected it from the curbside charger.

insideevs.com

Video was from 7 days ago, not a peep from anyone. 50k views and nothing. CNBS however report on rumors from some obscure blog post from some Chinese's uncle if it's Tesla related.