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Musk Says Tesla Shareholders Voting for His Pay Package by 'Wide Margins'

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is encouraging shareholders in electric automaker Tesla to vote in favor of a plan that includes a massive pay package for the company's founder and chief executive. Chris DELMAS / AFP
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is encouraging shareholders in electric automaker Tesla to vote in favor of a plan that includes a massive pay package for the company's founder and chief executive. Chris DELMAS / AFP
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Musk Says Tesla Shareholders Voting for His Pay Package by 'Wide Margins'

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is encouraging shareholders in electric automaker Tesla to vote in favor of a plan that includes a massive pay package for the company's founder and chief executive. Chris DELMAS / AFP
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is encouraging shareholders in electric automaker Tesla to vote in favor of a plan that includes a massive pay package for the company's founder and chief executive. Chris DELMAS / AFP

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said late Wednesday that the electric vehicle company's shareholders were voting to approve his multibillion-dollar pay package by "wide margins" before the ballot had been concluded.
The firm has campaigned to convince shareholders to approve Musk's giant compensation package -- worth as much as $56 billion -- ahead of Tesla's annual shareholder meeting, which is slated for Thursday afternoon, AFP said.
"Both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins!" Musk wrote on his social media platform X, referring to the resolutions to approve his pay package as well as a plan to shift Tesla's place of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
"Thanks for your support!!" the billionaire businessman added.
Official shareholder vote results have not yet been released.
Before the end of voting on Wednesday, Tesla said on a website for its annual meeting that the "future value we are poised to deliver for you is at risk," adding: "We need your vote NOW to protect Tesla and your investment."
In an effort to coax more shareholder participation, Tesla launched a sweepstakes of sorts where 15 investors who voted would be randomly picked for a tour of Tesla's plant in Austin, Texas personally led by Musk and vehicle designer Franz von Holzhausen.
Winners would also get choice seats for Tesla's annual meeting, to be held Thursday afternoon in Austin.
The company has employed the Musk-owned X platform, formerly Twitter, to publicize the effort.
The 'Musk premium'
Shareholders overwhelmingly backed the Musk compensation plan in March 2018, but it was struck down by a Delaware judge in January.
This year's vote was expected to be closer than the 2018 referendum after influential advisory firms Investor Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis came out against the windfall, with ISS dismissing the proposal as "excessive."
In April, Tesla revived the package, with chair Robyn Denholm imploring investors to "fix this issue" after the Delaware ruling.
"Tesla has been one of the most successful enterprises of our time. In just the past six years, we created more than $735 billion in value," Denholm said in a letter to shareholders.
"Our next growth vector is equally as ambitious."
Before the end of shareholder voting, CFRA Research's Garrett Nelson declined to speculate about the outcome, but predicted that sufficient support from institutional investors would be crucial.
Individual investors, who comprise about 40 percent of Tesla's investor base, were expected to back Musk, he said.
A defeat for the plan could "increase uncertainty regarding the future leadership of the company and jeopardize the 'Musk premium'" should the unpredictable chief executive exit, according to Nelson.
Musk backers, like billionaire investor Ron Baron, have offered unflinching support.
"Shareholders should ask themselves this question: is Tesla better off with or without Elon," Baron said in a public letter.
"At Baron Capital, our answer is clear, loud and unequivocal: Tesla is better with Elon. Tesla is Elon."
Among other large shareholders, Vanguard, which holds more than seven percent of shares, declined to comment, while BlackRock, which holds around six percent, did not respond to a request for comment.
But other investors including Norges Bank Investment Management, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, have said they will vote no.
So has California State Teachers' Retirement System.
CalSTRS chief investment officer Chris Ailman dismissed the package as "absurd."Ailman told CNBC that he considers Musk "brilliant," but that the current package is "ridiculous."
"We need to have a serious salary. We'll pay him 140 times the average worker pay," Ailman said. "I think that's more than fair.

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Can AI Make Video Games More Immersive? Some Studios Turn to AI-Fueled NPCs for More Interaction

The AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
The AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
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Can AI Make Video Games More Immersive? Some Studios Turn to AI-Fueled NPCs for More Interaction

The AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. (Reuters)
The AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. (Reuters)

For decades, video games have relied on scripted, stilted interactions with non-player characters to help shepherd gamers in their journeys. But as artificial intelligence technology improves, game studios are experimenting with generative AI to help build environments, assist game writers in crafting NPC dialogue and lend video games the improvisational spontaneity once reserved for table-top role-playing games.

In the multiplayer game “Retail Mage,” players help run a magical furniture store and assist customers in hopes of earning a five-star review. As a salesperson — and wizard — they can pick up and examine items or tell the system what they'd like to do with a product, such as deconstruct chairs for parts or tear a page from a book to write a note to a shopper.

A player’s interactions with the shop and NPCs around them — from gameplay mechanics to content and dialogue creation — are fueled by AI rather than a predetermined script to create more options for chatting and using objects in the shop.

“We believe generative AI can unlock a new kind of gameplay where the world is more responsive and more able to meet players at their creativity and the things that they come up with and the stories they want to tell inside a fantasy setting that we create for them,” said Michael Yichao, cofounder of Jam & Tea Studios, which created “Retail Mage.”

The typical NPC experience often leaves something to be desired. Pre-scripted interactions with someone meant to pass along a quest typically come with a handful of chatting options that lead to the same conclusion: players get the information they need and continue on. Game developers and AI companies say that by using generative AI tech, they aim to create a richer experience that allows for more nuanced relationships with the people and worlds that designers build.

Generative AI could also provide more opportunities for players to go off-script and create their own stories if designers can craft environments that feel more alive and can react to players' choices in real-time.

Tech companies continue to develop AI for games, even as developers debate how, and whether, they’ll use AI in their products. Nvidia created its ACE technologies to bring so-called “digital humans” to life with generative AI. Inworld AI provides developers with a platform for generative NPC behavior and dialogue. Gaming company Ubisoft said last year that it uses Ghostwriter, an in-house AI tool, to help write some NPC dialogue without replacing the video game writer.

A report released by the Game Developers Conference in January found that nearly half of developers surveyed said generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace, with 31% saying they personally use those tools. Developers at indie studios were most likely to use generative AI, with 37% reporting using the tech.

Still, roughly four out of five developers said they worry about the ethical use of AI. Carl Kwoh, Jam & Tea's CEO, said AI should be used responsibly alongside creators to elevate stories — not to replace them.

“That’s always been the goal: How can we use this tool to create an experience that makes players more connected to each other?” said Kwoh, who is also one of the company’s founders. “They can tell stories that they couldn’t tell before.”

Using AI to provide NPCs with endless things to say is “definitely a perk,” Yichao said, but "content without meaning is just endless noise." That's why Jam & Tea uses AI — through Google's Gemma 2 and their own servers in Amazon — to give NPCs the ability to do more than respond, he said. They can look for objects as they’re shopping or respond to other NPCs to add “more life and reactivity than a typically scripted encounter.”

“I’ve watched players turn our shopping experience into a bit of a dating sim as they flirt with customers and then NPCs come up with very realistic responses,” he said. “It’s been really fun to see the game react dynamically to what players bring to the table.”

Demonstrating a conversation with an NPC in the game “Mecha BREAK,” in which players battle war machines, Ike Nnole said that Nvidia has made its AI “humans” respond faster than they previously could by using small language models. Using Nvidia's AI, players can interact with the mechanic, Martel, by asking her to do things like customize the color of a mech machine.

“Typically, a gamer would go through menus to do all this,” Nnole, a senior product marketing manager at Nvidia said. “Now it could be a much more interactive, much quicker experience.”

Artificial Agency, a Canadian AI company, built an engine that allows developers to bring AI into any part of their game — not only NPCs, but also companions and “overseer agents” that can steer a player towards content they’re missing. The AI can also create tutorials to teach players a skill that they are missing so they can have more fun in-game, the company said.

“One way we like to put it is putting a game designer on the shoulder of everyone as they’re playing the game,” said Alex Kearney, cofounder of Artificial Agency. The company’s AI engine can be integrated at any stage of the game development cycle, she said.

Brian Tanner, Artificial Agency's CEO, said scripting every possible outcome of a game can be tedious and difficult to test. Their system allows designers to act more like directors, he said, by telling characters more about their motivation and background.

"These characters can improvise on the spot depending on what’s actually happening in the game,” Tanner said.

It's easy to run into a game's guardrails, Tanner said, where NPCs keep repeating the same phrase regardless of how players interact with them. But as AI continues to evolve, that will change, he added.

“It is truly going to feel like the world’s alive and like everything really reacts to exactly what’s happening," he said. “That’s going to add tremendous realism.”