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Elon Musk says he is ‘guilty of many self-inflicted wounds’ in defamation lawsuit accusing him of falsely identifying man … – Fortune

Elon Musk said he is guilty of many self-inflicted wounds while being questioned in a lawsuit accusing him of promoting a conspiracy theory falsely identifying a California man as a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi street brawler.

But the billionaire also said he didnt think he had meaningfully harmed the Jewish 22-year-old who sued him for defamation.

Theres some risk that what I say is incorrect, but one has to balance that against having a chilling effect on free speech in general, which would undermine the entire foundation of our democracy, Musk said in a sworn deposition that was made public Monday despite his lawyers request that it remain confidential.

Musk was sued in Texas state court in October by Ben Brody after endorsing a social media post that compared an Instagram profile of Brody to a photo of a White supremacist who violently clashed with the Proud Boys in Portland, Oregon, while both groups were protesting a Pride event in the city.

Internet personalities cited the profile, which identified Brody as a University of California, Riverside, political science major who planned to work for the government, in claiming that the street brawl was engineered by the authorities to discredit right-wing groups. Similar false flag claims have been propagated about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as well as a number of mass shootings.

Brody said in his suit that he and his family suffered a wave of harassment by belligerent strangers apparently motivated by Musks statements. He said he also feared long-term career consequences.

While Musks commentary on social media haslanded him in courtbefore, its the first time hes been sued for defamation since buying Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion and rebranding it as X.

Musk said in the March 27 deposition that he did not know Brody, nor did he have any ill will toward him.

My goal is simply to have the X platform be the best source of truth on the internet, he told Brodys lawyer, Mark Bankston, according to a 115-page transcript. And when you try to figure out the truth of things, you theres a debate. That debate, you know, goes one way or the other, but it is a vigorous debate.

At another point in the questioning, Musk let on that hes sometimes his own worst enemy.

Bankston asked him about telling his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that Ive shot myself in the foot so often, I ought to buy some Kevlar boots.

Would you say that as of last summer that you knew that you had had some difficulties restraining your impulses on Twitter? the lawyer asked.

I would say that I you know, Im guilty of many self-inflicted wounds, Musk said.

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Elon Musk on micromanaging: ‘If you’re trying to make a perfect product, then attention to detail is essential’ – Fortune

Elon Musk is pushing back on his reputation as a micromanager. The best employees, he says, actually need little management.

I wouldnt call it micro management, its just insisting on attention to detail, he said in an interview Monday with Nicolai Tangen, the chief executive of Norways wealth fund, which was streamedon Musks social media site, X. If youre trying to make a perfect product, then attention to detail is essential.

Walter Isaacsons biography on Musk depictedthe billionaire obsessingover the most minute of decisions, from the design of the Cybertruck to where Twitter put itsservers. Musk said on Monday that he hasnt read Isaacsons book about him, despite giving the author a front-row seat to how he simultaneously ran six companies over two years.

While most micro-managing bosses dont consider their actions to be encroaching on employee autonomy, the majority of workers say they have had an overly involved boss during their careers,surveyshave found.And Musk is in good company with other demanding bosses like former Apple CEOSteve Jobs and former Microsoft CEOBill Gates.

When asked about how to manage his best employees, Musk said: Smart people, they manage themselves. Intelligent and talented people can go and work anywhere, he said, so the way to keep them them happy is to set out goals and let people figure out how toachieve them.

So I say, Look, this is the goal were after and this is what were trying to achieve. If you agree with that goal, then lets try to get it done,Musk said, noting that he reserves the right to weigh in and take control when warranted. Once in a while, you have to say, Guys, you have to trust me on this one.

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Elon Musk on micromanaging: 'If you're trying to make a perfect product, then attention to detail is essential' - Fortune

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‘Craziest talent war I’ve ever seen’: Elon Musk says AI is hitting a new frenzyand he helped set it off 9 years ago with … – Fortune

AI talent is hard to come by these days, even for Elon Muskand he knows more than a thing or two about that. The Tesla CEO and OpenAI cofounder has rendered his judgment on the mania in Silicon Valley for AI engineers, responding to a tweet about having to match an offer from OpenAI to keep one of his top AI engineers by describing the race to lock up skilled AI workers as craziest talent war Ive ever seen.

AI is the hottest topic on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, and tech companies are scrambling to fight for the limited pool of workers with high-level AI experience. As Musk seemed to confirm, tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Meta are reportedly offering millions of dollars and juicy benefits packages to stay ahead of their competitors.

And Musk is an authority on the matter, with over a decade of work behind the scenes in the AI sector. If hes not one of AIs founding fathers, he was a major CEO present at the birth of the modern AI scene, and he participated in the talent wars that are still shaping the space. One such famous incident was part of how Musk and his longtime friend, Google cofounder Larry Page, became ex-friendsand involved Sam Altman, to boot.

The driving factor is a severe shortage of high-level AI talent. Naveen Rao, head of generative AI at Databricks, told the Wall Street Journal that there might be only a couple hundred people in the world with high-level qualifications and experience in training large language models and troubleshooting new AI platforms.

The workforce is catching up: Many companies and top universities have recently started offering short-term training programs in AI, with some colleges adding new AI majors. But it could take years for new students to get up to speed, meaning in the short term, AI skill comes at a premium.

According to data sourced from career-services platform Levels.fyi and reported by the Wall Street Journal, the median OpenAI salary came to $925,000, including bonuses and company equity. Meta AI engineers are making around $400,000, according to the platforms database.

Hiring has been most competitive for the most qualified, highest-skilled AI workers. Musks comments were in response to an X thread about Ethan Knight, a Tesla machine learning scientist whom Musk recruited to join xAI, his artificial intelligence company. Musk posted that Knight, the fourth Tesla engineer to join xAI, also got an offer from Sam Altmans OpenAI.

It was either xAI or [OpenAI], Musk wrote. [OpenAI has] been aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers with massive compensation offers and [has] unfortunately been successful in a few cases.

Back in 2015, Musk was involved in another high-profile AI hiring battle when he poached leading researcher Ilya Sutskever from Google Brain, offering him close to $2 million to join OpenAI, which Musk had cofounded as an ethical nonprofit dedicated to developing an AI that would not threaten human civilization.

According to Musks biographer, Walter Isaacson, he was in part motivated by a disagreement with the AI ideology of Google cofounder Larry Page, who led the development of Google Brain and later pivoted with the acquisition of DeepMind, then a leading force in the field. Page reportedly called Musk a speciesist for insisting that humanity should always take precedence over some future, intelligent form of AI.

Musk departed from OpenAI in 2018, leaving CEO Sam Altman in control with Sutskever in charge of research. Sutskever stayed with OpenAI as its chief scientist until last year, when he became one of the OpenAI board members who pushed Altman out as CEO after accusing him of not being fully transparent. Sutskever stepped down once Altman was reinstated, following massive backlash from OpenAI employees.

In other words, if Musk says this talent war is the worst hes ever seen, hes seen a lot.

Tech companies need AI workers badly, and soon. After ditching its initial AI offering, Bard, Google is scaling up its Gemini AI model after stumbles related to historically inaccurate image generation. Apples iOS 18 update is expected to include new AI features once it releases in June. Last month, Musk open-sourced Grok, the AI chatbot developed by his company xAI. As new companies and models continue to proliferate, AI engineer demand will likely continue to track upward.

The AI hiring rush is coinciding with a waning, but still lingering, trend of layoffs in the tech industry. Tech sector downsizing peaked in the first quarter of 2023, when companies laid off around 90,000 employees, according to data from tracker Layoffs.fyi. Cuts last quarter were less severe, but 60,000 tech workers still reported losing their jobs between January and March.

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'Craziest talent war I've ever seen': Elon Musk says AI is hitting a new frenzyand he helped set it off 9 years ago with ... - Fortune

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Disney CEO Bob Iger on Elon Musk: People have been coming after me and the company for years – CNBC

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Disney CEO Bob Iger joins 'Squawk on the Street' to discuss the company's proxy fight win against activist investor Nelson Peltz, takeaways from his engagement with shareholders, the company's top priorities, succession plans, state of the streaming landscape, new sports streaming alliance, future of ESPN, navigating America's culture wars, and more.

03:28

Thu, Apr 4 202410:52 AM EDT

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Disney CEO Bob Iger on Elon Musk: People have been coming after me and the company for years - CNBC

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Elon Musk threatens to out top Brazil judge as alleged traitor – Fortune

Elon Musk has threatened to leak damaging evidence he believes will prove one of Brazils top judges has betrayed the country, escalating a showdown over the censorship of social media in the country.

The owner of X now finds himself squarely in the middle of a political struggle in Latin Americas largest economy, one that pits the forces of former President Jair Bolsonaro against the Lula da Silva government in Brasilia that the ex-president allegedly sought to bring down.

Bolsonaro is accused of hatching a plan in November 2022 to overturn hiselection defeatplans that included the arrest of supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Weeks later, Bolsonaro supportersstormedthe countrys capital of Brasilia, flooding the congress, presidential palace, and supreme court in a Jan. 6style uprising that quickly failed.

Testimony from senior military commanders published last month implicated Bolsonaro, a Donald Trumpstyle populist, in acoup attempt.

One of theleading figuresin this ongoing conflict has been de Moraes. The president of the Superior Electoral Court has sought to clamp down on claims spread online by supporters of Bolsonaro that the October 2022 election was unjustly stolen from him.

In his latest move, de Moraes has opened an inquiry into X after Musk said he would no longer follow an order from the judge to block certain accounts thought to be linked to the pro-Bolosnaro push to overturn the election.

The spat comes after documents published by Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenbergerallegedde Moraes sought to weaponize the platforms content moderation policies against supporters of Bolsonaro, still president at the time.

Following the publication of the documentsand de Moraess order to block certain accountsMusk called de Moraes Brazils Darth Vader on Sunday and said X will publish everything demanded by de Moraes and explicitly detail how those requests violate Brazilian law.

This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil, Musk posted on Sunday.He should resign or be impeached.

This isnt the first time Musk has had to grapple with requests from governments.

He was criticized last year for bowing to requests by the Turkish government to censor content on his platform ahead of Recep Tayyip Erdoans reelection victory.

This time, however, Musk has refused to comply with the demands by de Moraes and warned X would probably have to forfeit all revenue in Brazil and shut down its local operations.

Principles matter more than profit, he posted.

Musk has portrayed himself as a bulwark against the collapse of Western civilization brought on by people like de Moraes.

He argues Americansvery lives are at riskfrom diversity hiring and frets about declining birth rates and female depression fromhormonal birth control.

He also spreads fear of a deep socialist state led by Democrats cementing their control by gifting illegal immigrants a vote.

Most of all, he portrays himself as a crusader for free speech. When the figurehead of Germanys extreme right had to answer in court for deliberately using a forbidden Nazi slogan, he baited Musk into engaging with him online by claiming the government was suppressing his free speech.

The tycoon has received criticism, however, for an inconsistent approach.

He has threatened suspensions that are convenient to him politicallysuch as of X members who post about the decolonization ofPalestine, whose suspension could help end suspicion that Musk may himself beanti-Semiticor that lean heavily toward his values, such as of those X posters who use the term cis in a way Musk deemsoffensive.

Last month, a judgeruledMusks lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate was unabashedly and vociferously obvious about its intention to punish the CCDH for criticizing his management of Xfor using free speech against himas well as to dissuade others from doing so in the future.

Due to Musks uneven application of the term, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, accused him inJanuaryof being the worlds biggest hypocrite on free speech.

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During a deposition his lawyer tried to keep confidential, Elon Musk says ‘people are attacked all the time’ on social … – PC Gamer

A recent court deposition in the case between 22-year-old Ben Brody and the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, has been made publicly available after a transcript was obtained by the Huffington Post.

First, some important context. The lawsuit, filed by Brody, relates to a reply to a since-deleted tweet June 27 of last year. Musk accused a brawl that broke out (between the far-right groups the Proud Boys and a local neo-Nazi organisation) during Pride Night Fest in Oregon City, June 24, as being a "probable false flag situation".

Musk theorised that two members in the footage looked like "a college student (who wants to join the government" and "maybe an Antifa member". This led to Brody being falsely accused of being a federal agent plant in the Rose City Nationalists, the local neo-nazi group in question. After another user falsely identified him as such, Musk responded: "Always remove their masks."

Brody, who wasn't even in the state at the time, is seeking over $1 million in damagesand says that the harassment following Musk's seeming endorsement of Brody's false identification forced his family to move home. As for the deposition itself, it starts as it means to go onthat is to say, disastrously.

"You're aware that Ben Brody is somebody who's sued you, right?" asks Brody's attorney Mark Bankston, to which Musk replies: "I think you're the one suing."

Bankston corrects him, noting: "Actually, Mr. Musk, I'm an attorney. Did you know that? I'm an attorney representing Mr. Brody." Musk nonetheless insists that, in his opinion, Bankston is the one filing the lawsuit, and is "a lawyer seeking money", making him the "real plaintiff". Throughout the deposition itself, Bankston is continually interrupted by Alex Spiro, Musk's lawyer.

"I am going to interrupt again," Spiro announces after several such interruptions, before asking how the tweet Bankston is referencing is relevant to the case. Bankston replies: "This is what he posted on the day of the brawl, and this case is about whether the brawl was being accused to be a psyop Mr. Spiro, I really have to ask you to get yourself up to speed on the facts of this case."

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Mr. Spiro argues: "This isn't a real case, this is just some stupid" Brankston cuts him off. The conversation dovetails, and shortly after both Spiro and Musk ask Brankston why he's yelling.

Later in the deposition, Musk maintains that he hasn't caused Brody any serious harm. When asked if he understands the amount of views his tweet received equal "all 30 major league baseball stadiums filled to capacity", Musk replies:

"That may seem like a large number, but it is not compared to the factI believe there are something on the order of five to eight trillion views per year, so a million is really" Bankston finishes his sentence with a "not a big deal?" to which Musk replies "Hit or miss, yeah."

As for allegations of harm caused, Musk argues that "people are attacked all the time in the media, online media, social media, but it is rare that that actually has a meaningful negative impact on their life."

Regarding the financial implications of his comments, Musk fully admits: "I may have done more to financially impair the company than to help it, but certainly II do not guide my posts by what is financially beneficial but what I believe is interesting or important or entertaining to the public."

Towards the end of the disposition, Spiro replies to a question as to whether he would like a transcript: "Yes, and please mark it confidential." A baffled Bankston, more familiar with Texas law, responds: "What? No. There's no [protective order] in this case."

Bankston concludes shortly after: "If they want to pursue a Rule 76 at a future time, I mean, I guess they're welcome to do that we have no obligation to abide by any confidentiality, and we reject wholeheartedly Mr. Spiro's unilateral attempts to place us under some sort of legal obligation."

Since you're reading this article, Spiro's attempts to keep the deposition quiet have clearly failed. I genuinely, wholeheartedly recommend you read the whole thing for yourself if you have the time to sift through the 108-page transcriptit's a genuinely fascinating window into the case, filled with far more bickering than one might expect.

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During a deposition his lawyer tried to keep confidential, Elon Musk says 'people are attacked all the time' on social ... - PC Gamer

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