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Elon Asks How Long Before New Wave of Bots Become Hitler

Elon Musk has reacted to a story about bots in The Verge by tweeting “what the meantime to Hitler is for these bots,” referring to an ugly incident Microsoft experienced with its Tay bot in March.

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Elon Musk at AGU meeting

Elon Musk has a fatal attraction to artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, AI will play an important role in things like future autonomous driving systems. On the other hand, Musk frets about the horrific implications of AI controlled warfare. He has referred to the advent of artificial intelligence as “summoning the Devil.”

An article in The Verge about how companies are trying to harness basic AI technology to help them sell products has gotten Musk’s attention. Soon, bots will be everywhere, The Verge story says. “We’ll buy flowers with bots, we’ll order car service with bots, we’ll plan vacations with bots. We’ll engage with more brands, more effectively, all with bots.”

To be fair, the bots The Verge is talking about are really little more than a new type of user interface that allows customers to communicate directly with computers. When ordering a cheeseburger at a local fast food restaurant, we will soon be able to speak our preference to a bot rather than dealing with a real person or pressing an icon on a touchscreen. That may seem fairly innocuous. Below is a video of such a bot that is under development at Burger King.

 

Microsoft is leading the way. It unveiled a host of new bots at its annual Build conference on March 30. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s suggests that the new paradigm is “conversation as a platform.” Users will be able to interact with the bots using natural language, directing them to complete certain tasks.

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Microsoft’s first foray into the bot-sphere didn’t go so well. Twitter users turned the technology back on itself earlier in March. Within a day, they trained Microsoft’s Tay to become a venomous, racist, neo-Aryan, much to the chagrin of Microsoft. Elon Musk took to Twitter early on Monday to respond to the latest article on The Verge.

Clearly, the road to an AI future is fraught with danger. One of the reasons Musk and Sam Altman created OpenAI last year was to channel the development of AI technology so that is serves the better interests of mankind. That may be a tall order.

Source: The Verge, Feature photo credit: agu.org via YouTube

 

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Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations

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tesla diner
Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.

The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.

Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:

On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.

Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.

Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand

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Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.

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Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings

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A red Tesla Roadster driving around a turn
(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.

Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to BloombergShares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.

Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.

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However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.

S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.

Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.

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At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.

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Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming

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Credit: Tesla | Model 3 Owner's Manual

Tesla’s long-standing saga regarding its door handles and a manual release has entered its latest chapter, and as a result, a big change is coming.

On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) denied Tesla’s petition that was seeking a defect investigation into roughly 180,000 Model 3 vehicles for an issue involving the emergency mechanical door release.

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NHTSA said that Tesla’s petition did not present evidence of a safety-related defect in the door handles or their emergency releases. Instead, the agency determined that it would rather solve the issue of the lack of labeling or location of emergency mechanical door releases and the federal safety rules that govern them.

Essentially, the NHTSA wants to create and enforce rules that would require automakers to make emergency door latch releases more clearly labeled in a car. Despite a Tesla having manual door releases on all four passenger doors, many people do not know they exist or how they work.

Tesla addresses door handle complaints with simple engineering fix

In recent times, Tesla has faced some criticism involving its door handles, specifically because some occupants have reported that they are unable to exit their vehicles after losing power. The door handles on a Tesla are electronically operated, but in the event that the 12V battery dies, there is a manual release that can be used.

The NHTSA only identified a single complaint involving the mechanical door releases: a 2022 Model 3 owner said the release was concealed and unlabeled after the vehicle lost power after a front-end collision. It has also already started to create a separate rulemaking process to make emergency door-egress systems more obvious.

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It should be noted that all Teslas have mechanical emergency door releases, but they are placed in various locations as the vehicles have aged and been redesigned from year to year. Refer to the safety manual for your vehicle if you have any confusion about where the emergency releases are and how they work.

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