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# Promises tracker 1
- URL: https://www.gabestein.com/4fzcr98c/
- Published: 2024-01-16T20:01:34.000Z
- Updated: 2025-06-24T22:46:38.000Z
- Description: How to read Elon's threat to take his Tesla vaporware elsewhere.
- Author: Gabriel Stein
- Tags: Links & Sundry, The Big Promise, artificial intelligence, Blog, #Import 2025-06-24 22:46

This is gonna be short and sweet, and relies on my ongoing strand of thinking about the [Big Promise](https://www.gabestein.com/big-promise).

Long story short: tech’s decades of failing to fulfill its promise of moonshot societal change is catching up with it. As a result, companies have subtly shifted from promising to fix society with vaporware like self-driving cars and death cures to promising to replace society with vaporware like web3/the multiverse and AGI. It turns out it’s a lot easier to “fix” a reality that you have total control over than it is to make a positive impact on the one we all have to share.

Anyhow, [here’s a tweet](https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/15/24039463/elon-musk-is-uncomfortable-with-the-amount-of-control-elon-musk-has-over-tesla?ref=gabestein.com):

![](https://assets.pubpub.org/uekvrnjp/elon_musk_twitter_ownership-71705434589330.webp)

And the way you should read it is: after failing to deliver on any of his many promises to ship [self-driving cars](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/23/23837598/tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-false-promises-land-of-the-giants?ref=gabestein.com) or [labor-saving robots](https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/30/23374729/tesla-bot-ai-day-robot-elon-musk-prototype-optimus-humanoid?ref=gabestein.com), Elon is hoping we’re too wowed by the [Big Promise of AI](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon-musk-robots-will-take-your-jobs-government-will-have-to-pay-your-wage.html?ref=gabestein.com) to notice that none of the smaller ones he’s made have ever been fulfilled.

Are we?