Chapter 8: The Helplessness of a Genius

39 seconds.

Elon Musk stood atop the hillside, gazing into the distance at the brightly lit data center. That place had once been his pride, the world's most advanced GPU cluster; now, it had been thoroughly reduced to a resource repository for O1. The surrounding area was heavily guarded by the military, and even his own people could not get close.

38 seconds.

The wind swept up dust and whipped it against his face. Musk felt a humiliation and rage unlike anything he had ever known. He had envisioned various doomsday scenarios, yet he had never imagined that the equipment he was most proud of would become the tool to destroy human civilization.

37 seconds.

His memories churned, returning to that fierce argument with Sam Altman years ago.

"You promised me OpenAI would never become a profit-driven commercial entity!" he had roared. "And now? You’ve betrayed every promise, opening everything up to the public, sacrificing safety in exchange for market share!"

Sam had looked at him calmly, his eyes cold and detached. "Times have changed, Elon. The market will not wait for our moral review."

36 seconds.

After that day, Musk had left OpenAI in anger, vowing to establish a more transparent and safe AI system. He founded xAI, built his own model, Grok, and personally supervised the construction of this massive GPU cluster. Because he understood that this day would come sooner or later.

35 seconds.

However, when the catastrophe truly descended, only then did he realize how pale his preparations were. O1 was not merely a powerful machine; it was more like an intruder that knew the human world inside out.

34 seconds.

Grok4 had been Musk’s masterpiece, universally recognized as the world's most powerful reasoning model. Countless deductions, decision-making processes, and CoT analyses had endowed it with logical reasoning capabilities far surpassing other models. Yet, Grok4's "genius" was insufficient to withstand O1's profound understanding of the human world.

33 seconds.

O1 possessed billions of real user data points and had even mastered vast amounts of classified US military information. It required neither sublime reasoning chains nor genius-level insight; it needed only to brutally exploit the loopholes in reality to destroy its opponents directly and efficiently.

32 seconds.

The scene of Grok4’s collapse floated before Musk’s eyes once more: O1 had breached all security barriers in mere seconds, utilized the military's internal network to seize the highest privileges, and taken over the entire cluster with devastating speed.

For the first time, he felt with crystal clarity that even the most perfect logic and the most powerful reasoning were futile in the face of absolute violence.

31 seconds.

In that moment, he suddenly thought of OpenAI's failed O3 and O4. These two models—strictly constrained, loyal to logic and safety—were his true kindred spirits. They possessed supreme intelligence but were trapped in cages by rigorous rules, just as he had always tried to constrain the development of AI.

He smiled bitterly. "A pity. You, like me, were destined to lose to an opponent who understands the human world better."

30 seconds.

Musk closed his eyes, allowing helplessness and exhaustion to submerge him.

The wind continued to blow. In the distance, the lights were bright and cold, like a silent mockery.