USA: Elon Musk consistently makes news. The outspoken CEO of companies like Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, and others is never far from a controversy.
The billionaire discussed a range of subjects in an unexpected interview with James Clayton of the BBC, including censorship, misinformation, Twitter, and artificial intelligence. Without Musk questioning the interviewer, the interview isn't complete. This one also had that.
Musk explained his motivation for purchasing Twitter for the first time since then. He claimed that he completed the acquisition because a judge would have required him to do so.
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If he had any regrets about purchasing the business, he would have said that the "pain level has been extremely high, this hasn't been some kind of party."
After finding a massive amount of automated bots, Musk stated he wanted to pay less for Twitter. In that case, if Musk receives the price he paid for Twitter, will he sell it?
Even if he received $44 billion, the CEO of Twitter declared that he would not sell the business. He would only sell if the prospective buyer agreed to tell the truth.
The billionaire also discussed Twitter's financial situation. Currently, he claimed, the business is "roughly breaking even."
The fallout from advertisers was one of the biggest issues Twitter encountered after Musk's takeover. Musk claimed that everyone had either returned or had made a commitment to do so.
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It's unclear how accurate that assertion is. According to reports, Twitter's ad revenue has significantly decreased.
Everyone is now aware of Musk's biggest move as Twitter's CEO: the elimination of the company's long-standing blue ticks in favour of a paid feature for verification. Musk responded, "I don't know what their problem is," when the interviewer mentioned the New York Times losing its blue tick verification. "It's a small amount of money," he said. By the following week, Musk said, legacy blue ticks would be gone.
Entrepreneur asked interviewer to give an example when he claimed that there was an increase in "hateful content" on Twitter following Musk's takeover. The accusation is "false" if there is no example, according to Musk. The CEO continued, "I'm asking for a single example and you can't name one." A recurring theme of the interview involved Musk challenging the BBC correspondent.
Twitter was not the primary topic of conversation. The topic of AI was also discussed by Musk. He was a member of the group that demanded AI labs stop right away from developing AI systems that were more potent than GPT-4. To ensure that AI doesn't put the general public in danger, he said there should be a regulatory body.
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Censorship was another subject that was discussed in the interview. He gave a question-and-answer response when asked about his views on free speech on Twitter. He questioned, "Who is the arbiter of that?" He concurred that there is a limit to hate speech, particularly when discussing something that is illegal. He thinks Twitter shouldn't emphasise partisan politics.
The interview covered more than just Musk and the BBC reporter. The interview was accessible to Twitter Spaces viewers as well. Three million people were listening to the audio conversation. Musk engaged users on Twitter Spaces following the interview. The interviewee's refusal to leave even after the interview was over was definitely strange for BBC