Why Is Elon Musk Invited to Speak at AI Startup School?

23 points by basementcat 4 months ago | 10 comments
The man is responsible for taking away life saving medication from over 20 million people in the last few weeks. Why does Y Combinator demean itself to the point of associating with this person?
  • bell-cot 4 months ago
    Y Combinator is a business organization, which needs to smoothly interact with a wide variety of VIP's, organizations, and more-ordinary people in order to function.

    Being an individual - you're free to boycott this site, donate 25% of your income to anti-Musk Democrats, take a job with a competitor to Tesla or SpaceX, and otherwise demonstrate your commitment to a far stricter moral code.

    • kccoder 4 months ago
      > needs to smoothly interact with a wide variety of VIP's

      Not needs to, chooses to do so. If the entire business world decided to shutout these sorts of people they would cease to have any influence, power, or wealth, improving the quality of life for the entire human race.

      As as society we've been putting wealth, greed, and power above all else for a very long time, and this is the end result. We can do better, if we simply choose to.

      • archagon 4 months ago
        As an individual, the moral thing to do would be to loudly and aggressively disrupt the event.
      • 4 months ago
        • joker666 4 months ago
          He owns XAI.
          • 4 months ago
          • waonderer 4 months ago
            He owns xAI and runs grok.
            • ddxv 4 months ago
              He's the richest man in the world and probably spent the most on GPUs of anyone in the past 12 months to get Grok 2 and 3 out. In the end, he's too powerful to ignore. On the other side, he wants to be there.
              • archagon 4 months ago
                Seconded. Given Musk's repugnant political activity and outbursts, this should be a non-starter regardless of his influence in the AI scene. Just the other day, he referred to people on benefits as being part of the "parasite class." (I am sure that’s some of us here.) A few weeks ago, he described Hitler as a "communist" to his fascist German buddies. Prior to that, he called for the execution of a federal witness for daring to testify against the president. What would it take to actually make him persona non grata at YC? Open racism? Eugenics? An “I ♡ Nazis” shirt, perhaps? Or is absolutely nothing off the table anymore?

                And this is on top of the abominably illegal and anti-competitive training on private government data that DOGE is (likely) doing as we speak. The future of AI is in the worst hands imaginable and YC is cheering it on. Despicable.

                I hope there's a protest. If he's there in person, I will be more than happy to make him and his kind feel vehemently unwelcome in my city.

                • wozer 4 months ago
                  Y Combinator is mostly ideologically aligned with Musk and the Trump administration. If you don't believe me, look through the tweets of Garry Tan, for example.
                  • sherdil2022 4 months ago
                    [flagged]
                    • andsoitis 4 months ago
                      That's binary thinking.

                      One can recognize someone's accomplishment in one domain even if it means they suck in another, even if they're a jerk.

                      Jobs is one such example. Another would be Bach. Newton, Nikola Tesla, John Lennon, William Golding, Winston Churchill, Einstein, Darwin, Edison, Prince, Henry Ford, Marie Curie, Schrödinger, Picasso, Marconi, etc. all come to mind as being despicable in some (or more) dimensions even though they were geniuses in others and moving humanity forward.

                      • dm270 4 months ago
                        I think people start thinking he’s not just a jerk but his ulterior motives are nothing but despicable. And some people who think he really is a racist from Apartheid Sourh Africa cannot understand how still a big part of technologists are overlooking that fact. I think people are just disappointed in others for sticking with him.