Category Archives: Elon Musk

Sunak plays eager chatshow host as Musk discusses AI and politics

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The prime minister flattered the entrepreneur who in turn put aside his abrasive persona for their talk on AI

Earlier this week, Elon Musk was interviewed by the American podcast host Joe Rogan. On Wednesday he was grilled by reporters outside the AI safety summit in Bletchley Park. On Thursday, it was the turn of the British prime minister.

British officials have crowed for days about their success in getting the world’s richest man to attend the summit, which was a pet project for Sunak. So delighted were they at the UK’s pulling power they decided to give the X owner a 40-minute in-person conversation with the prime minister in the glamorous surrounds of Lancaster House, previously used as a set for The Crown.

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‘It’s not clear we can control it’: what they said at the Bletchley Park AI summit

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Elon Musk, the world’s richest man; Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind; and King Charles among those weighing in

The global AI safety summit opened at Bletchley Park on Wednesday with a landmark declaration from countries including the UK, US, EU and China that the technology poses a potentially catastrophic risk to humanity.

The so-called Bletchley declaration said: “There is potential for serious, even catastrophic, harm, either deliberate or unintentional, stemming from the most significant capabilities of these AI models.”

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X, formerly Twitter, rolls out US$1 annual fee for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines

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Platform owned by Elon Musk says subscription trial is aimed at combating bots on the service

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun rolling out a US$1 annual charge to new users in New Zealand and the Philippines in a move the service owned by Elon Musk says is aimed at combating bots.

Fortune first reported the subscription plan, which costs US$1 a year for access to key functions including tweeting, replying, retweeting and liking. After Fortune’s report, X revealed the details.

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X criticised for enabling spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation

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Elon Musk endorsed users who have posted ‘wrong and unverifiable things’ while paid-for accounts spread fake news

X’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict has come under scrutiny after a “deluge” of fake posts and Elon Musk’s recommendation of war coverage from accounts that have made false claims or antisemitic comments.

The owner of X, formerly Twitter, recommended two accounts on Sunday. He wrote: “For following the war in real-time, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender are good. It is also worth following direct sources on the ground. Please add interesting options in the replies below.”

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Elon Musk under investigation by US agency for $44bn takeover of Twitter

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Securities and Exchange Commission inquiring whether Musk broke federal law in 2022 when he bought stock in the platform

Elon Musk is under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission over his $44bn takeover of social media giant Twitter, it was revealed on Thursday.

The investigation concerns whether Musk broke federal securities laws in 2022 when he bought stock in Twitter, which he later renamed X, as well as statements and SEC filings he made about the deal.

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Tesla trial begins over whether ‘experimental’ autopilot caused driver’s death

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Lawsuit claims company knowingly sold defective car that led to Micah Lee’s 2019 death while Tesla blames ‘classic human error’

The lawyer representing victims of a fatal Tesla crash blamed the company’s autopilot driver assistant system, saying that “a car company should never sell consumers experimental vehicles,” in the opening statement of a California trial on Thursday.

The case stems from a civil lawsuit alleging that the autopilot system caused the owner of a Tesla Model 3 car, Micah Lee, to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 mph (105 kph), where his car struck a palm tree and burst into flames.

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EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

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Musk is told his platform, now known as X, must comply with new laws designed to combat fake news and Russian propaganda

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.

The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn.

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Israel’s prime minister urges Elon Musk to curb antisemitism on his platform, X

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Benjamin Netanyahu told the billionaire owner to clamp down on the hate on the site formerly known as Twitter

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, urged Elon Musk to address the proliferation of antisemitism on the billionaire’s social media platform X.

In an in-person meeting in California on Monday, Netanyahu said he hoped Musk would find ways within the confines of the first amendment to clamp down on antisemitism and other forms of hatred on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

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Tech leaders agree on AI regulation but divided on how in Washington forum

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Bill Gates, Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman and others gathered for ‘one of the most important conversations of the year’

A delegation of top tech leaders including Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman convened in Washington on Wednesday for a closed-door meeting with US senators to discuss the rise of artificial intelligence and how it should be regulated.

The discussion, billed as an “AI safety forum”, is one of several meetings between Silicon Valley, researchers, labor leaders and government and is taking on fresh urgency with the US elections looming and the rapid pace of AI advancement already affecting peoples’ lives and work.

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Elon Musk’s X sues California over new social media transparency laws

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The company, formerly known as Twitter, argued an assembly bill violates its free speech rights under the first amendment

Elon Musk’s X sued California on Friday, challenging the constitutionality of a state law establishing new transparency requirements for social media companies, including how they police disinformation, hate speech and extremism.

X, the social media platform once called Twitter, said the law, known as Assembly Bill 587, violates its free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment and California’s state constitution.

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Twitter ‘unfit’ for banking over alleged complicity in Saudi rights abuses

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Lawyers for family say Saudi government took brother’s data in breach and ‘arrested, tortured, and imprisoned’ him and others

The company formerly known as Twitter is “unfit” to hold banking licenses because of its alleged “intentional complicity” with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and treatment of users’ personal data, according to an open letter sent to federal and state banking regulators that was signed by a law firm representing a Saudi victim’s family.

The allegations by lawyers representing Areej al-Sadhan, whose brother Abdulrahman was one of thousands of Saudis whose confidential personal information was obtained by Saudi agents posing as Twitter employees in 2014-15, comes as Twitter Payments LLC, a subsidiary of X (the company formerly known as Twitter), is in the process of applying for money-transmitter licenses across the US.

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Tesla investigated over funds ‘used to build secret Austin house for Elon Musk’

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Reports suggest plans for ‘Project 42’ included a glass structure that contained a residential element for the chief executive

US prosecutors are investigating Tesla over alleged use of company funds for a secret project described internally as a house for Elon Musk, the electric carmaker’s chief executive.

Information sought from Tesla by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York includes personal benefits paid to Musk, how much was spent on the project and its purpose, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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Twitter allows US political candidates and parties to advertise in policy switch

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Announcement by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform has experts concerned over misinformation ahead of 2024 election

The social media company formerly known as Twitter said Tuesday it would now allow political advertising in the US from candidates and political parties, reversing previous policies and raising concerns over misinformation and hate speech ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Before billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company, now called X, in October 2022, Twitter had banned all political ads globally since 2019. In January, the platform lifted the ban and began allowing “cause-based ads” in the US that raise awareness of issues such as voter registration, stating that it planned to expand the types of political ads it would allow on the platform.

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Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants Elon Musk to be his presidential adviser

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Republican candidate and biotech entrepreneur names Twitter CEO when asked about potential advisers should he win election

The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has said that he wants Elon Musk as an adviser if he becomes president.

The billionaire biotech entrepreneur was in Newton, Iowa, campaigning at a town hall on Friday when he was asked about whom he would want as advisers for his potential presidency.

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US sues Elon Musk’s SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees

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Justice department alleges rocket company refused to consider asylum seekers and refugees for jobs because of citizenship status

The US justice department on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the billionaire Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees and asylum seekers.

SpaceX “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status” from at least September 2018 to May 2022, according to the justice department.

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Elon Musk to strip headlines off news links on Twitter in latest overhaul

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Move by the billionaire owner of the social media site may be an attempt to drive up subscription of the app’s premium service

Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, is poised to rework how news links appear on the platform, the latest change spearheaded by owner Elon Musk to impact news publishers on the site.

The news was first reported by Fortune on Monday and confirmed in a post from Musk later in the day: “This is coming from me directly. Will greatly improve the esthetics [sic],” he wrote. The platform will no longer display headlines and other text from news links and show only the main image, limiting a user’s ability to see the contents before clicking.

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Threads app usage plummets despite initial promise as refuge from Twitter

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Social media app, launched in the wake of Twitter chaos, recorded 576,000 active users in August, down 79% from 2.3 million in July

The daily usage of Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter, continues to slump after a strong start in its first weeks of existence.

Engagement with the social media app is down 79% from a high of 2.3m active users in early July to 576,000 as of 7 August, according to Similarweb, a digital intelligence platform.

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Musk says proposed Zuckerberg cage fight to be held at ‘epic location’ in Italy

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X owner in talks with government over historic site for event – though Colosseum and Rome ruled out

Elon Musk is in talks with Italy’s government about hosting his proposed cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg at a historic site in the country, but the Colosseum has been ruled out as a venue.

The owner of X Corp and the chief executive of Facebook-owner Meta first raised the idea of a one-on-one scrap in a series of social media posts back in June. The challenge came as Zuckerberg prepared to launch Threads, a rival microblogging site to Musk’s now rebranded Twitter platform.

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Musk offers to pay legal bills of people ‘unfairly treated’ for posting on platform

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Comment comes as company is going through organizational changes and looking to boost falling advertising revenue

Elon Musk has said his X social media platform will pay the legal bills and sue on the behalf of people who have been treated “unfairly” by employers because of posting or liking something on the site formerly known as Twitter.

“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Musk said in a post on X late on Saturday, adding that there will be no limits to funding the bills.

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Elon Musk reinstates Kanye West’s Twitter account after ban

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Social media platform rebranded as X lifts ban on rapper-producer imposed after swastika tweet

Kanye West’s account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has been reinstated almost eight months after he tweeted an image of a swastika blended with a star of David.

The rapper-producer and designer, legally known as Ye, embarked on a series of antisemitic rants on social media and during interviews towards the end of last year. In October, he tweeted that he would go “death con 3” on Jewish people. His account was subsequently locked but he was soon readmitted.

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