After observing his questionable ethics for the past few years, not to mention his obstructive actions in the 2024 election, we can safely say that there is practically nothing Elon Musk won’t do to increase his wealth and influence, even if it means pushing the boundaries of the law or going against the constitution to make sure his voice remains the only one heard in the room where it happens.
While Musk would have us believe his involvement with the current presidential administration is for the right reason, his actions speak otherwise.
The whole business around buying Twitter reads as an attempt to gain control over one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet, one that was used to heavily influence voters in the 2024 election. He claims to use that platform to be a champion of free speech, but then censors anyone who doesn’t agree with him and his view of how this latent technofeudalistic serfdom should push onwards into a glorious age under the leadership of a man who constantly finds himself in the same ideological corner as neo-fascists. He wants to cut government spending, but doesn’t mind that Trump is a spendthrift. And let’s face it — the idea behind a Department of Government Efficiency (aka DOGE) sounds like an elaborate laundering scheme to disrupt the natural order of things in the federal government and further consolidate Trump’s power and reach.
And as if all of this wasn’t problematic enough, Elon Musk is now going after AI. Mind you, this is a man who once said AI could be humanity’s greatest enemy, and it was paramount that we find a way to curb its unrestrained development. But now that he’s behind in the competition, Elon is throwing his weight around, trying to remedy the fact that, while he was busy building electric cars and rockets, or occasionally, launching satellites to monopolize the Earth’s internet, someone else got ahead in the race to make the dystopian possibilities of the ’70s sci-fi novels a reality.
His new brilliant idea was to propose to buy the OpenAI assets (the company that controls ChatGPT) for a whopping $97.3 billion, an offer that was rejected by its CEO, Sam Altman. Altman and Musk have been engaged in a sort of behind-the-scenes battle over the control of OpenAI ever since both of them founded the non-profit company in 2015. Elon left OpenAI after a while, but now that the company and its general purpose AI has dominated the market, the billionaire is pressuring Altman to give him stakes over the emerging for-profit company — much in the same way he managed to buy Twitter.
Altman, for his part, has approached this subject with an air of control, usually mocking or shrugging off Elon when he becomes too insistent. But now, after this ridiculous offer, Altman might have just taken the gloves off to tell us exactly what he thinks of the billionaire CEO of X.
“I wish he would compete by building a better product,” Altman said in a recent interview. “I think there’s been a lot of tactics. All sorts of lawsuits and crazy stuff, and now this. We’ll just try to put our head down and keep working.”
When asked if Musk’s approach is “from a position of insecurity” about his own AI project, known as xAI, Altman decided to say it as he sees it.
“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I feel for the guy. I don’t think he’s a happy person. I do feel for him.”
Well, I guess we’ll just leave it at that. You can watch the interview segment here.
Published: Feb 11, 2025 03:06 pm