DOGE Plan to Push AI Across the US Federal Government is Wildly Dangerous
There are already many instances of AI-driven governance gone wrong, writes Ben Green. DOGE may offer a new case study.
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Well at least there is no clear conflict of interest /s
Well, his AI is the only I he has...
I know you’re joking, but it’s really dangerous to assume your enemy is an idiot. He isn’t stupid, he’s evil. If he were stupid he would not be the richest man in the world clawing still more gold into his hoard.
If he were stupid he would not be the richest man in the world
No, stop.
You are conflating wealth with intelligence.
Do you know how easy it is to have money multiply itself in high enough quantities? It's hard to overstate just how difficult it would be to have the wealth of Elon Musk and somehow not make money. You would have to make several multi-million dollar bad investments per day for decades, and even then, you're still not likely to run out of cash any time soon. If Elon Musk did absolutely nothing for the rest of his life (and god, we could only hope) the interest and dividends his wealth passively generates for him would be enough for all of his children and grandchildren to live lavishly luxurious lives.
Elon is not a genius. He's actually a complete fucking moron who got very, very lucky and has excellent timing. If it were not for the success of PayPal in the early dotcom days, we would never have heard from this guy again.
It intelligence is wealth than why did Eistein and any of the other hundreds of scientists whose discovery our world rests upon all without becoming billionaires?
Also has been bailed out by Peter theil more than once. Theil is on the other hand extremely deft and cunning and straight up evil.
I had the same argument with me grandpa. I said Elon is an idiot and he asked me why I hate him and argued that he is smart because he is so rich. I’m sure this is coming from Fox News which also portrays Trump as the best businessman and deal maker.
Still not an Elon apologist, just so we’re clear.
If it were that easy, why is he the one who’s “done it the best” so far? Definitely speaking loosely here.
The ability to keep and grow money and businesses is not a trait of a stupid man. He did have seed capital from his family, as all these billionaires do, but it seems Elon has been able to do more with it, to the point that he is now acting Emperor. Whatever you think of the finance violations, fraud or sexual favors he did to get there, he has shown an aptitude for consolidating power. He’s going to fuck everything up for us, yes. But he and his friends are going to achieve their goals doing it. We do ourselves a disservice by writing these people off as stupid when they’re calculating and evil.
So there are multiple factors with his rise, which I'll try to list as coherently as possible but my autistic logic doesn't want to accept the irrationallity of a lot of it so if it seems scattered that's why.
So an easy point to start is that I think he was way more functional in the late 90s and early 2000s, looking at what little there is of him he seems a bit more rounded with less random incoherentcy. He seems less impulsive and generally more deliberate, not to say he was great since he still has rich dipshits failson energy but he wasn't the mess he is today.
Secondly I think he has a specific nact for getting money from rich folks, I suspect he learned what made rich folks interested in investing in things growing up. This social intelligence made him great at getting his foot in combine that with him being a decent hype man and ya have an easy way to get money. Theres a story of him shoving a standard computer into a big fancy box then showing it to investors which is rather clever and a good bit of showmanship.
Then theres some incredible luck first PayPal buys his company and he gets a shit tonne of share, then he gets paid to fuck off because he was a liability to PayPal. Then he invests into Tesla really fucking early on and gets a controlling share, then electric cars pop off and oh look Tesla is right fucking there. He got really lucky with the previous points only amplifying his luck.
To summarize musk had the perfect mix of luck, charisma, and just enough intelligence to capitalize on it. But here's the thing the Elon Musk of today ain't the one of 2001 hell it ain't even the one of 2012, he has fried his brain on his own ego and ketamine. Also the very traits that made him successful are the very traits now making folks wish for his death or have outright disappeared.
His showmanship lead him to outright lying to the public which folks remembered. His charisma failed because he forgot how to read a room. His luck may have given him power but now folks may actually kill him. His worst traits like his thrill seeking have taken him from ripping a super car in half to ripping a government in half.
Musk of 2001 was lucky and vaguely intelligent, Musk of 2025 is just lucky and who knows how long that'll last
So the real turning point in his riches to more riches story was Zip2. People have never heard of it because it was never anything even vaguely important, but it was a website in the midst of the dot-com era and Compaq, desperate to be "in" threw a bunch of money at it. Elon basically won a lottery.
His next stop was to roll his winnings to try to get X (not the current one, an online payment platform) going. By all measures, it didn't get anywhere, pretty well stomped by Paypal.
In the midst of that competition, X folded into PayPal. Against all reason, they made Elon the head of the now joined PayPal/X, despite being on what was obviously the losing side of the business. It was a disaster and they ultimately sidelined him to save the company because he was so bad.
Ok, so now he's on the sideline but a large shareholder in PayPal... And there came $1.5 billion from eBay to acquire, and that got him to about a quarter billion, just for being there.
Then the next significant stop was to jump on Tesla, rewrite their history to declare himself founder and largely let them do what they will while he collected the money. Sounds like in recent years he's started to believe his own mega-genius hype, and has been imposing his direction more, and not to Tesla's betterment.
Like every step of the way, he either fell into lucky circumstances and managed to get everyone to feed his ego. I suppose his "skill" was taking credit for Tesla despite only being a source of funding way early on.
"Don't underestimate..." may be the language you are looking for.
There are many types of intelligences. He has a high level in at least one. Quite low in others.
That would have been helpful to include, yes. Thank you. Don’t underestimate the man because that’s how he wins even easier.
He actually is really quite dumb
The thing is, he is a really good liar, and does know how to hype people. Those are just about his only two qualities, but that too is where it ends.
Look at videos from up to a decade ago, it's all lies and hyping but anytime he actually talks about something technical it really shows just how stupid his brain really is.
He's also evil, I won't contest that, but he really isn't intelligent
Recall how Boris Johnson would mess up his hair before going to talk to the general public. I think it's impossible to tell if musk is an idiot or just plays one really effectively.