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Last year was terrible for Tesla. Bad financials. Multiple recalls. Abysmal safety record. Lawsuits. The Cybertruck disaster and cratering sales. All of it tied to design problems and lack of innovation. Add to that the dip in brand loyalty thanks to CEO Elon Musks toxic political activity, of course. And now two of Tesla’s top designers have left the company, according to a report from Electrek. Its no coincidence that one of Teslas biggest market supporters is now warning that the company may implode in 2025. The stars are aligning for a reckoning. The departed are David Imai and Bernard Lee, two veteran designers instrumental in shaping Teslas vehicles, including the Model 3. Imai announced his exit to a boat design studio two weeks ago. This ends a nearly 14-year career at the car company, the last five years as director of design. Perhaps even more troubling is Lees departure, because of his history at Tesla, including being a founding member of its design studio. The ex-Mazda designer came to Tesla in 2008, participating in every vehicle as lead or supporting designer since the Tesla Roadster (but apparently not the Cybertruck). While two top designers leaving a company might not be a nail in the coffin, its impossible to separate the news from its context: namely that Tesla has been getting deeper and deeper into a design, sales, safety, and quality assurance crisis. (Tesla did not respond to requests for comment on this story.) The cherry on a cake of pain In recent years, Tesla has faced increasing scrutiny because of poor quality, poor design choices, and the poor personal choices of its founder. Until very recently, the Texas-based automaker has been able to ride out those storms by being the only game in town. But as the legacy manufacturers upped their electric vehicle game and stepped into the market, Teslas many faults have became more obvious. Teslas sales growth has slowed in recent quarters, and the company is facing increasing competition from established automakers like Ford, GM, and Hyundai, all in the midst of rapidly expanding their EV offerings. Perhaps even more significant is the increasing dominance of China, especially BYD, in the EV market. Chinese auto manufacturers have been putting out futuristic designs that consumers seem to love. As a result they are dominating Asia and aggressively moving into Europe and the rest of the world. BYD is now the biggest electric carmaker on the planet, beating Tesla. Another concerning trend for Tesla is the radical erosion of brand loyalty among its customers, which was already suffering in 2023 and early 2024 because of the companys quality problems. The loss of two experienced designers with a deep knowledge of the company and its situation could further hinder Tesla’s ability to act in a time of crisis. It could be an opportunity for Tesla to radically change its tired design strategy, but doing so now, when the company is in dire need of a cheap, competitive model, seems suicidal. Tesla canceled plans for a cheaper car as it poured more time, money, and energy into the Cybertruck. After the latters disaster, now Musk is promising a cheap Tesla again. The picture is bleak, and its hard to imagine how the company can get itself out of this perfect hurricane. It seems to me its only way forward is President Donald Trumps Sharpie.
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E-Commerce
Hey ChatGPT, you talk too much. You too, Gemini. Like many LLMs, you are insufferable. You make Fidel Castros 6-hour speeches feel like haikus. I ask, why do you LLMs talk so damn much? and in response, you churn out a 671-word answer that resembles a third-grade essay75% of it devoid of any real meaning or fact. You ramble about how much you ramble. You are incapable of giving me one straight answer, even if I carefully craft a two-paragraph prompt trying to coerce you into it. When I finally get you to respond with one monosyllable, you ruin it by adding a long apologetic promise that it will never ever happen again. Apparently Im not alone in my ire. Ive been talking with both friends and strangers for months about your verbal incontinence, and they, too, hate your verbosity. I have one friend who wants to smash her computer against the wall at least twice a day. Another has visions of himself getting into your server room and smashing each and every one of your CPUs and GPUs with a baseball bat. I always imagine a flamethrower. We only keep using you because, for all these problems, I’ll admit that you can save me time on research. But there’s a relatively simple fix for your idle chatter. It’s one that begins with your creators admitting that you are a lot dumber than what they think you are. Your excess is rooted in ignorance. Answers are padded with needless explanations, obvious caveats, and inane argumental detours. It’s not an intentional choice, says Quinten Farmer, the co-founder of engineering studio Portola, who makes Tolan, a cute artificial intelligence alien designed to talk to you like a human. I think the reason that these models behave this way is that it’s essentially the behavior of your typical Reddit commenter, right? Farmer tells me, laughing. What do they do? They say too much to sort of cover up the fact that they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. And of course that’s where all the data came from, right? In one study, researchers call this verbosity compensation, a newly discovered behavior where LLMs respond with excessive words, including repeating questions, introducing ambiguity, or providing excessive enumeration. This behavior is similar to human hesitation during uncertainty. The researchers found that verbose responses often exhibit higher uncertainty across datasets, suggesting a strong connection between verbosity and model uncertainty. Many LLMs produce longer responses when they are less confident about the answer. Theres also a lack of knowledge retention. LLMs forget previously supplied information in a conversation, resulting in repetitive questions and unnecessarily verbose interactions. And researchers found that there is a clear verbosity bias in LLM training where models prefer longer, more verbose answers even if there is no difference in quality. Verbosity can be fixed No matter how much LLMs sound like a human, the truth is that they really dont really understand language, despite being quite good at stringing words together. This proficiency in language can create the illusion of broader intelligence, leading to more elaborate responses. So basically, research shows what we suspected: LLMs are great at bullshitting you into thinking they know the answer. Many people buy this illusion because they either simply want to believe or because they just dont use critical thinkingsomething that Microsofts researchers discovered in a new study looking at AI’s impact on cognitive functioning. There are gradients to this phenomenon, of course. Farmer believes that Perplexity and Anthropic’s Claude and are better at giving more concise answers without all the pointless filler. And DeepSeek, the new kid on the block coming from China, keeps its answers much shorter and to the point. According to DeepSeek, the model’s answers are designed to be more direct and concise because its training prioritizes clarity and efficiency, influenced by data and reinforcement that favorites brevity. American models emphasize conversational warmth or elaboration, it claims, reflecting cultural and design differences. In my testing, I also found that Claude’s answers skewed shorter (though they can still be annoying). Claude, at least, recognized this when I was questioning him about this problem: Looking at my previous responseyes, I probably did talk too much there! It also surprised me with this gem when I said it seemed to be an honest LLM: I try to be direct about what I know and don’t know, and to acknowledge my limitations clearly. While it might be tempting to make up citations or sound more authoritative than I am, I think it’s better to be straightforward. Another illusion of cognitive activity, yes, but 100% on point. Developers could solve for this issue with better training and guidance. In fact, Farmer tells me that when creating Tolan, the development team discussed how long or short the answers should be. The writer who created the characters backstories leaned longer, because it would develop the connection with the digital entity. Others wanted shorter, more to-the-point answers. Its a debate that they still have internally, but they believe they struck the right balance. You, ChatGPT, however, you are not a cute alien. You are a tool. Theres no need for balance. I dont need to bond with you. Just answer the damn question. And, if you dont know the answerlike when I asked which soccer players had won the most UEFA Champions Leaguesjust admit it, and shut up instead of giving me 500 characters of wrong. Brevity is the soul of wit. And clearly, neither you nor I are Polonius (but at least I have the excuse of being an old angry man screaming at clouds).
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E-Commerce
As organizations grapple with rapid developments in technology and policy while also balancing shifting market conditions and financial realities, having a deep bench of leadership talent is crucial. However, a recent survey from TalentLMS, found that 45% of managers say their companies arent doing enough to develop future leaders. One of the key issues is that companies are using a narrow scope in offering leadership development opportunities, says Nikhil Arora, CEO of learning technology company Epignosis, the parent company of TalentLMS. A lot of companies kind of limit the leadership development to the top 1%, leaving behind the remaining 99%, he says. Arora says the survey found a number of areas where respondents said their companies are lacking key efforts to develop leaders. Just 8% found their companies’ leadership initiatives effective. Fortunately experts say there are ways to strengthen theses areas of weakness and help companies get better at leadership development. Develop leaders at all levels The TalentLMS survey found that the top two areas where leaders found companies lacking were in offering leadership training programs (43%) and developing new talent from within (42%). These stats dont surprise workplace consultant Melissa Swift, author of Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace. She says that one key issue is that companies often focus leadership training on employees who are already in on a leadership track or who are near the top of the organization, overlooking promising talent at other levels. She says that leadership development efforts, including leadership training programs, should be integrated throughout the company and supported. One issue that I’ve heard repeatedly across organizations is, You did this wonderful leadership development program with us, but then you don’t have interesting on the job development opportunities for us to follow that up, she says. Companies don’t have to necessarily spend more money on [leadership development], but how do we get people the right experiences through their day-to-day work? Focus on the leaders you need Forty-one percent of respondents said their companies often fail at identifying leadership skills gaps and in being transparent about selecting and promoting leaders. Leadership consultant Lori Mazan, author of Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders, says that companies need to focus on a few things to get their leadership development programs right. Mazan advises looking at your overall goals for leaders within your organization and be sure youre developing a range of leaders with the skills your company needs. Arora agrees. Your No. 1 [key performance indicator] and what you’re going to be measured by as a manager is going to be: How are you developing your talent? he says. Transparency is also important, Mazan says. She also advises developing leaders in alignment with your company culture. She recalls a former client whose culture was very amiable and people focused. When the company hired new employees who had been at a competitor where the culture was very hard-driving, the styles often cause friction. After a month, they’d be hiring me to coach them, because that style of hard driving leadership didn’t fit in the other company that was more let me help you, she recalls. Mentorship matters Four in 10 survey respondents said that their companies are lacking mentorship programs. Thats an area that should not only be developed, but expanded, Arora says. Mentoring isnt just senior managers advising more junior workers anymore, although that still remains important. He encourages others to follow his lead and have younger mentors, as well, who can help them keep a finger on the pulse of where change is happening and what people from their cohort are thinking. You need somebody younger and you need somebody older, he says. Identifying leadership skills gaps and, in response, developing leaders across the organization with programs, transparency, and mentorship can help fill in the missing pieces that hinder leadership development.
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E-Commerce
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