Tag: Elon Musk

‘GrokX’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Elon Musk is not very adept in business if he can’t see what is obvious — he could use Twitter’s established userbase to corner the consumer-facing AI market.

Now, there are signs he’s thinking about this because an Grok prompt is now organic to the X / Twitter app. But why not collapse all these features into one whereby you could absolutely not avoid seeing Grok when you tweeted. There would be one central hub UX whereby you would have the option to use Grok when before you wanted to tweet something.

Or something.

If you made Grok free and sold ads against people’s use of it like you do now with tweets then, there you go, you make a lot of money. AND you get a lot of buzz from the fact that about 200 million users use Grok as their native AI without having to go anywhere else.

It’s a very simple solution to a number of structural problems facing Twitter at the moment. Change the name to GrokX and get all that buzz AND you instantly become a name brand AI service for average people who use Twitter on a regular basis but only vaguely even know of the other AI options out there.

But what do I know. Just because it’s obvious and easy to do, doesn’t mean anyone will listen to me.

A Generative AI Equivalent of ‘Toy Story’ Is Less Than 18 Months Away

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is clear to me that the first Hollywood genre to be totally “disrupted” by generative AI will be animated movies. As such, it will probably be produced by some plucky startup without a direct connection to the Hollywood system. But it will knock everyone’s socks off to the point that everyone will realize that Hollywood as we know it is about to be totally upended.

We have to prepare for the prospect that it will be the arts that will be the first to fall to generative AI. It will be Hollywood that may be so completely upended that there simply won’t be any human jobs left. And it could happen far, far quicker than any of us could possibly imagine.

I continue to believe that this particular clusterfuck will cause a massive resurgence in live theatre, from Broadway all the way down to local community theatre. People may even begin to give value to such a human-created experience to the point that instead of watch an personalized AI generated movie in the comfort of one’s home, people will go out of their way to see live theatre.

Or something. I can’t predict the future. But this particular scenario definitely at least seems possible. It definitely seems as though we’re zooming towards something akin to a “Petite Singularity” within about two years. Or, if you really wanted to get dark about it — we’ll have a perfect storm of The Fourth Turning in politics and the Petite Singularity in technology starting in late 2024, early 2025.

X Marks The Spot

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m old enough to remember how before MySpace, there was Prodigy. That was the online service, back in the day, that caused itself serious problems when it decided to charge users for its most popular feature — email. The service never fully recovered.

All the talk on the part of Elon “Space Karen” Musk about charging users a basic fee to use the X / Twitter service reminds me of Prodigy. The key issue for me is social media is very much old news. Everything is about AI now. In fact, rather than charging users for X, I would suggest Musk figure out a way to organically add AI into X to the point that it’s something that users of the service use everyday.

Social media has no buzzy these days and it’s dumb to try to re-invent the wheel, or, even worse, to charge for something that plenty of other companies are willing to give away for free. It’s all very curious.

But Musk has managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat before. So, I suppose it’s possible that he’ll manage to turn X into an “everything app” like he apparently wants to do so bad. I’m just leery. If this was 2012, then, yeah, maybe he might be able to pull it off.

But it’s 2023 and everyone’s mind space is dominated by AI. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Could Elon Musk Pull ‘X’ Off?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now that Elon Musk has changed Twitter’s name, I can begin to imagine a scenario whereby he might manage to turn “X” into the “everything app.” He has vision, if nothing else.

But there is a huge obstacle to this particular situation — AI.

All this talk of turning X into the “everything app” seems very 2012, very passe. The AI era is careening towards us at an alarming rate and I would suggest that by late 2024 the effects of AI will start to be seen in the economy. All this talk of social media will be rather moot.

There was a moment in time when if Musk was doing what he’s doing now with Twitter / X that it really could put a “dent in the universe” but, lulz, I have my doubts now. In fact, if Musk really wants to do something interesting with X, I would propose he made an AI prompt native to the service. Now THAT would be a way to propel X to next-level status.

It definitely will be interesting to see how things play out. It’s at least possible that there really is a -very narrow – window of opportunity for Musk to transform Twitter / X into an “everything app.”

I still have my doubts, however.

Turns Out, Everyone Online Just Wants 2012 Twitter Again

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s definitely interesting how people are getting so excited about Threads when it’s just a less-feature-rich Twitter clone that happens to be fused to Instagram. That’s it. There’s nothing all that great about it –but for one thing: it has a a lot of people (already) the vibe is really good.

Just my opinion, folks.

That’s it — that’s all Threads has going for it — people and vibes.

It’s not like there’s any particularly interesting feature set that might make people choose it over Twitter. I mean, I’ve come up with a really cool, really feature rich social media platform that no one cares about, so lulz.

Anyway.

I suspect everyone should really just enjoy the good vibes while they last. Put enough humans in the same space virtually and all hell is going to break loose eventually. If I had to make a bet, I would suspect that it’s probably going to be Trump coming to the service that ultimately turns it into just another Twitter. Or, it might be a lot more gradual.

It could be that all the smug liberal infotainment types spooging their pants over Threads will gradually realize they hate it just as it becomes a Twitter clone on a vibe basis, too. People are so dumb. They act like This Is The End of Social Media History and they have nothing to worry about ever again when it comes to how hateful social media is. All they have to do is just use Threads and they will have an eternal 2012 to enjoy.

Ugh.

AI & Our Coming ‘Mindfulness’ Overlords

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve given it some thought and, really, there is only one thing that humans can do that AI can’t do — use judgement. In fact, given how from a capitalists point of view, it is the very brutal nature of AI and chatbots that make them so attractive so it is inevitable that as the revolution progresses that we’re all going to realize that judgement is valuable.

I could see it happening this way — soon enough, because humans are lazy, we defer 99% of our decisions, economy, culture and politics to AI. But the one thing that we couldn’t defer to an AI would be good judgement. In short, “mindfulness” might suddenly become a very lucrative profession.

I don’t know exactly how this would all play out, but if there comes a point when almost all human activity is done through a blackbox AI, then the time of someone with good judgement to help manage and guide that AI would be very valuable.

Here’s where we come to something really intriguing — is it possible that if we create the “Other” via AI, that some attempt to unite Humanity might arise in an effort to unify our response to AI. At the moment, it’s difficult for the US to do anything about AI because if we do, then some other country, maybe Estonia, will swoop in and do all the kinky AI stuff we blanch at doing and we’ll fall behind.

But if there was some sort of global response to AI, then we would all be on the same page as to who would be the people we used to use AI in a “mindful” manner.

Could Twitter Morph Into A Chatbot Service?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve given it some reflection and it definitely seems as though Space Karen could surprise us all and do something pretty amazing with Twitter. At its heart, Twitter is a text-based system with a prompt. It seems obvious that you could somehow rig up a chatbot natively and organically to the service’s existing UX and do something astonishing.

I’m not smart enough to figure out the specifics just yet — like, how you would make money . But imagine you sit down in front of Twitter 2.0 and instead of turning to Google to answer a question, you ask a Twitter LLM whatever it is you want. Just a back-of-the-envelope imagining of this concept suggests that the possibilities are endless.

If you could make a Twitter LLM compelling enough, people might even be willing to pay for it. Or something. I still am very dubious about the idea that you’ll be able to turn LLMs into subscription services. That seems like a daydream of the elite who don’t want to have to put up with something as pedestrian as ads.

But if you could fuse the existing Twitter userbase with a LLM, it’s a very intriguing idea. For no other reason than Twitter would be adding to its existing service, rather than having to eat its own, like, say Google. All of this is fast moving target, so it could all go a lot of different ways.

Apparently, Space Karen has already incorporated an AI company, so as such there might be some ready synergy between it and Twitter a lot sooner than one might otherwise think.

Contemplating Kara Swisher’s Theory That Elon Musk Is Turning Twitter Into The ‘New’ Fox News

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Fox News is a national embarrassment, but maybe not in the way you think. The embarrassment is not it is force feeding Americans seditious propaganda, it’s that A LOT of Americans want that agenda. They are wilful in their consumption of hate.

So, if it wasn’t Fox News doing it, someone else would be doing the exact same thing — if not worse.

Which leads us to Kara Swisher’s idea that maybe Elon Musk is maybe trying to somehow turn Twitter into a new and improved MAGA Nazi media outlet. I suppose this is possible, but I think the thing we would have to keep an eye out for is Musk assembling some sort of editorial staff.

If he did that then,yeah, Ms. Swisher is probably right. But given how fucking old most of the people who watch Fox News are, I don’t think there would be a one-to-one replacement. The new “Red Pilled” Twitter might be something for younger people, but even if somehow Fox News went under the slack would be picked up by OANN and Newsmax, not Twitter.

Who knows. I think the Ms. Swisher’s idea has come credibility, but only time will tell how much.

Elon Musk Really Could Blow It

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing tired of Elon Musk’s bullshit. He wants to be the Red Pilled “main character” of Twitter everyday and it’s a lot to deal with on a regular basis. Now, I would prefer that Twitter remain the nation’s virtual town square where people of both sides of the political debate and discussion issues.

And, yet, every day, Musk tries to out Trump, Trump and I find myself hoping that Twitter rival Post starts to get the features I expect from Twitter. I hate the idea that yet another element of American life will be siloed for political reasons but it definitely seems inevitable.

There comes a point when you just don’t want to use a service where you’re being “owned” every day by people who are fucking Nazis. It’s darkly dumb that MAGA Nazis always think they’re being “shadowbanned” when, in fact, they’re just boring and the people they hate so much — people like me — don’t really feel like acknowledging that they tweeted anything at all.

And it’s always the most sincere, earnest MAGA Nazis like fucking “Catturd” who get upset about shit like this. “Oooh, Elon, I’m being shadowbanned, please make the people I hold with such contempt give me validation by saying nice things about me on Twitter.”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so idiotic.

Anyway, for the moment Musk is fine. Post simply isn’t something I can use full time instead of Twitter. But that might change. Or, it could be that all of this is going to be moot soon enough with the chatbot revolution and the potential of a coming Singularity.

Is Elon Musk A Modern Day Henry Ford? (And Not In A Good Way)

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Henry Ford changed the lives of millions of people in a practical, beneficial way. He was also an astonishing antisemite. So spare me the fanboy whining about how we can’t criticize Elon Musk just because of all the “cool” things he’s up to.

The more Musk leans into being a MAGA Nazis golden child, the more dangerous he becomes — and more danger not just America, but the entire globe faces. He’s adding to an already unstable situation in the United States by being a MAGA Nazi “edgelord” on the very service that he owns.

All of this is part of a broader, even more alarming trend — MAGA Nazis are politically and culturally ascendant. They hate to admit it because they’re about the catch the car again because then they would have to admit that maybe their rage over the “woke cancel culture mob” is…a little too much?

Anyway, I’m growing more and more alarmed by Elon Musk’s shenanigans. He’s really helping to make the next election — or the time immediately after the next election — a potentially extremely dangerous not not just for Americans, but the globe as a whole.