Theranos, fraud and (not) Tesla

[Singuy]

Just watched The Inventor: out for blood about Theranos. A good watch for all.

Which made me appreciate how Elon didn't spend on traditional marketing (less faking). And the fact that autopilot has a high likelyhood to go the way of Theranos. A good thing about Tesla is that its mission is about EV and not autopilot. So the main source of income is not dependent on autopilot success.

How I believed Theranos could've turned out differently is if they didn't sell the promise of the Edison at first. Instead just automate the labwork and focus on providing cost effective bloodworks for everyone. I wonder if they could've undercut their competitors if they managed to automate all the labworks using traditional machines first. This is more akin to what Tesla is doing. Focus on the traditional money maker first and then use the spare money on R&D to fund the AI/Edison research. As I believe both tech can come to fruition if given enough time... just not the typical 3 years to exit timeline that Silicon Valley usually work on.

The "Fake it till you make it" problem might've worked for the purely digital products. But once your tech crosses over to the physical world this model has a higher chance to fail because things happens a lot slower in the real world.

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Theranos as if Tesla is a similar company. It's not fraud or fake to have aspiration for a tech, then demonstrate it with hundreds of thousands of customers, and then see it improve months after months.

7 Months ago my EAP fail at 90 degree turns, cannot merge on and off ramp, and definitely cannot navigate in a parking lot without anyone in the car. We now see FSD computer picking up street lights which was not present 7 months ago. This is REAL progress we can see and try out. Elon didn't hide the result of FSD, then show us a computer generated car navigating in FSD mode and call it a real car. The CEO of Theranos had intention to fraud by using systems desiged by other companies, lie about it, and also spit out entirely wrong lab results. Elon never lied to anyone about FSD. He's pretty clear at what progress he has made because a few months later, he'll upload it into hundreds of thousands of car for people to try it out. "But he lied about having FSD at X time and didn't!". Yeah, it's called not hitting deadlines. Every car company right now are having difficulty hitting their EV deadline they made up years ago.

So unless I'm driving a fake car that can make fake 90 degree turns and I'm somehow imagining the entire thing because Tesla pays me secretly under the table, Tesla/FSD is NOT Theranos.

 

[KarenRei]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Theranos as if Tesla is a similar company. It's not fraud or fake to have aspiration for a tech, then demonstrate it with hundreds of thousands of customers, and then see it improve months after months.

7 Months ago my EAP fail at 90 degree turns, cannot merge on and off ramp, and definitely cannot navigate in a parking lot without anyone in the car. We now see FSD computer picking up street lights which was not present 7 months ago. This is REAL progress we can see and try out. Elon didn't hide the result of FSD, then show us a computer generated car navigating in FSD mode and call it a real car. The CEO of Theranos had intention to fraud by using systems desiged by other companies, lie about it, and also spit out entirely wrong lab results. Elon never lied to anyone about FSD. He's pretty clear at what progress he has made because a few months later, he'll upload it into hundreds of thousands of car for people to try it out. "But he lied about having FSD at X time and didn't!". Yeah, it's called not hitting deadlines. Every car company right now are having difficulty hitting their EV deadline they made up years ago.

So unless I'm driving a fake car that can make fake 90 degree turns and I'm somehow imagining the entire thing because Tesla pays me secretly under the table, Tesla/FSD is NOT Theranos.

Best. Fraud. Ever.

Tesla's ability to make people thinking that they're driving new awesome electric cars, while they're really sitting on shipping crates and holding a steering wheel in the air, is really amazing. I don't know what sort of drugs or neural interfaces they use to pull off this illusion, but it's really impressive!

 

[Singuy]

Best. Fraud. Ever.

Tesla's ability to make people thinking that they're driving new awesome electric cars, while they're really sitting on shipping crates and holding a steering wheel in the air, is really amazing. I don't know what sort of drugs or neural interfaces they use to pull off this illusion, but it's really impressive!

We are actually AI created by neurolink to defend Tesla. Some work better than others. Factchecking is actually an early version of AI because we are more human like mimicking average intelligence. Factchecking however is blowing our cover because the poster is obviously not human.

 

[Beltsbear]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Theranos as if Tesla is a similar company. It's not fraud or fake to have aspiration for a tech, then demonstrate it with hundreds of thousands of customers, and then see it improve months after months.

On the surface to people who have just been fed a lot of Tesla FUD, the comparisons can seem close. The FSD claim from HW2, then HW2.5, now finally HW3 add to that feeling. Theranos went from the Edison, all the way to the Edison 4, slowly adding real capability to the machine. The difference is Elizabeth Holmes claimed she had all kinds of things when she did not. They said they were using their machine (Edison) but were not . They claimed a new secret technology but never had anything at all unusual.

I don't agree they are the same, but I can see how someone who has not looked into both cases could believe that.

 

[Lessmog]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Theranos as if Tesla is a similar company. It's not fraud or fake to have aspiration for a tech, then demonstrate it with hundreds of thousands of customers, and then see it improve months after months.

7 Months ago my EAP fail at 90 degree turns, cannot merge on and off ramp, and definitely cannot navigate in a parking lot without anyone in the car. We now see FSD computer picking up street lights which was not present 7 months ago. This is REAL progress we can see and try out. Elon didn't hide the result of FSD, then show us a computer generated car navigating in FSD mode and call it a real car. The CEO of Theranos had intention to fraud by using systems desiged by other companies, lie about it, and also spit out entirely wrong lab results. Elon never lied to anyone about FSD. He's pretty clear at what progress he has made because a few months later, he'll upload it into hundreds of thousands of car for people to try it out. "But he lied about having FSD at X time and didn't!". Yeah, it's called not hitting deadlines. Every car company right now are having difficulty hitting their EV deadline they made up years ago.

So unless I'm driving a fake car that can make fake 90 degree turns and I'm somehow imagining the entire thing because Tesla pays me secretly under the table, Tesla/FSD is NOT Theranos.

Wildly off topic (MODS delete or move if you like) :
I just finished reading a book by SVT producer Bosse Lindqvist about a documentary he made a couple of years ago about a BIG SCANDAL at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska sjukhuset (academic and hospital branches in high regard) concerning flagrant research fraud on a scale commensurate with A. Wakefield of anti-vaxx infame (who was belatedly stripped of his doctorate and license to practise medicine) on the part of one P. Macchiarini -- and much worse, the coverup and silencing of those brave enough to blow the whistle.

Now, that is a fraud and a scandal of global dignity! The powers that be are (hopefully were, past tense) entrusted with selecting the Nobel laureates for medicine and physiology. Dr M was apparently a skilled surgeon and superstar as such, but not any kind of scientist. It appears that he went ahead and transplanted plastic tracheae (a highly sensitive organ keeping alien matter out of the airways) into patients who were not in acute danger for their lives but rather selected for their PR value as young parents or toddlers, totally without ethical permits and before any tests at all were performed on animals (and the one test on rats was shown to be presented in a highly misleading manner, and done AFTER several of his human patients had failed; The Lancet withdrew that paper). He operated in UK, RU, ES, IS and SE and was notoriously hard to contact on any one of his four phones, refusing to comment on any hard questions. Every one of his transplants failed horribly, by the way.

To my simple mind Dr PM is a con man chasing fame, to the detriment of his human "guinea pigs". He even led a prominent US TV reporter up the path. Benita was doing an interview and fell in love with the powerful personality he projected, and he made her believe that Pope Franciscus would personally wed them in the Vatican in great style -- until she found out that PF had a state visit in Paraguay that very day ... And anyway, Dr Paolo was not even divorced.

It seems one single patient survived his cures, thanks to other medics reversing the procedure.

Please people, don't conflate all those other rumors about fakes and frauds to apply to Elon Musk. If there's one man I trust to be honest, it's him.

By the way, I wonder if Elon has heard something about another Lame Duck (Donald) being on a slippery slope? Just a leap of my imagination ...

 

[Causalien]

It is not clear to me that Theranos' original idea could be realized within a foreseeable future. I can imagine that the original founder(s) secured the original investors' support by describing their probably sincere belief that they could realize their plans. Things went downhill quickly when this turned out not to be immediately possible and management then decided to deceive both customers and investors about their inability to progress towards their promised goal. (I use mild language here, because the case is still under investigation).

Tesla's FSD technology is similar in the sense that management basically says it is a solved problem, while there is widespread skepticism elsewhere - especially with respect to the timeline for actual FSD.

But that is where the similarity stops. With the current approach and current advances there is objective and substantial improvement to Tesla's FSD technology.

And notably, also if only able to cope with a given fraction (e.g. 65%) of traffic situations, it can still be marketed and sold as such. This is fundametally different from e.g. Theranos' syphilis tests (that was bought by real people and) which would only detect 65 out of 100 actual cases of syphilis.

Secondly, a Tesla with FSD enabled does not have a Mechanical Turk hidden inside, its FSD is actually doing what it appears to be doing. This is the crucial difference between Tesla and Theranos, which has been found to deliberately defraud investors and put people's health and lives at risk.

The Turk - Wikipedia

I agree with you. The other aspect of it is about the founder. There are serious doubts about Holme's technical expertise. It seems that she doesn't really have the medical know how for the whole thing and hence couldn't see a clear path towards how to do it. Mechanical and software is Silicon Valley's forte, but the medical part. Contamination, analaysis is where it fell short.

But, if Tesla were limit with only FSD as its selling point and only have a 3 year runway to release. They will be forced to do some shady things just like Theranos. I think in this alternate reality, the Theranos moment for Tesla would've happened around the time their deal with Mobile eye broke and is switching to Nvidia. When the first version based on Nvidia came out and became worst than before. A full on press attack of similar stories would've broken a pure AI startup.

 

[Causalien]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Theranos as if Tesla is a similar company. It's not fraud or fake to have aspiration for a tech, then demonstrate it with hundreds of thousands of customers, and then see it improve months after months.

7 Months ago my EAP fail at 90 degree turns, cannot merge on and off ramp, and definitely cannot navigate in a parking lot without anyone in the car. We now see FSD computer picking up street lights which was not present 7 months ago. This is REAL progress we can see and try out. Elon didn't hide the result of FSD, then show us a computer generated car navigating in FSD mode and call it a real car. The CEO of Theranos had intention to fraud by using systems desiged by other companies, lie about it, and also spit out entirely wrong lab results. Elon never lied to anyone about FSD. He's pretty clear at what progress he has made because a few months later, he'll upload it into hundreds of thousands of car for people to try it out. "But he lied about having FSD at X time and didn't!". Yeah, it's called not hitting deadlines. Every car company right now are having difficulty hitting their EV deadline they made up years ago.

So unless I'm driving a fake car that can make fake 90 degree turns and I'm somehow imagining the entire thing because Tesla pays me secretly under the table, Tesla/FSD is NOT Theranos.

Theranos's story is just very similar to a lot of startup's story. The lesson is the consequence of "Fake it till you make it" mentality and how one compromise in your integrity in the beginning leads to a spiral down. A lot of the "evil" things and "lying" originally came from one small compromise. Somewhere in E.Holme's mind, everything is perfectly explainable and I bet you she constructed her reality as one that's in assault from the media.

Not saying that Tesla is like Theranos. It is more the fact that a lot of startup in the beginning are like Theranos. Ask any startup founder, most of them have gone through that phase where they feel like a fake. That's the fake it till you make it moment.

 

[Singuy]

Theranos's story is just very similar to a lot of startup's story. The lesson is the consequence of "Fake it till you make it" mentality and how one compromise in your integrity in the beginning leads to a spiral down. A lot of the "evil" things and "lying" originally came from one small compromise. Somewhere in E.Holme's mind, everything is perfectly explainable and I bet you she constructed her reality as one that's in assault from the media.

Not saying that Tesla is like Theranos. It is more the fact that a lot of startup in the beginning are like Theranos. Ask any startup founder, most of them have gone through that phase where they feel like a fake. That's the fake it till you make it moment.

E. Holme became a criminal when she knowingly produced false numbers and running tests behind the scene using commercially available machines and calling it her results. If she didn't commit fraud and just stick with the truth(only 2 test kind of work and we are tweaking it, and no one should take our results seriously and we are not going to have patients depend on our results for diagnostics) then they would be fine. E. Holme can say "we will have the Edison do 200+ tests by X such and such date" and not make the deadline is equivalent to Elon's we will have FSD ready by X amount of time and not make the deadline.

I have kickstarted many projects. Most did not meet their deadline. One project was late by a year and got slightly less things than promised due to unforeseen manufacturing cost. I am not going to say any of these companies committed fraud.

There is one 3d printer company I didn't back, but the developer actually embezzled half of the money to build his own house. That's fraud.

The only thing I guess bears can make a point that Tesla is doing that's borderline unethical is having customers train their neuro network. They have proved that AP miles driven is safer than no AP so currently it's not unethical. But when AP becomes more dangerous than normal driving than bears have a point of this act being unethical. The grey area then becomes this. If Tesla tells people AP is more dangerous than normal driving to use at your own risk, then it's fine. If Tesla tells you AP is safer than driving but it's not, then that's equivalent to Therano's practices.