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Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks virtually at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
FILE – Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020, in Washington. Musk, Twitter’s new owner, is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AP) — It’s not easy being Elon Musk.
That was the message the new Twitter owner and billionaire head of Tesla and SpaceX had for younger people who might seek to emulate his entrepreneurial success.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Musk told a business forum in Bali on Monday when asked what an up-and-coming “Elon Musk of the East” should focus on.
“I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same,” he continued. “I mean, the amount that I torture myself, is the next level, frankly.”
Musk was speaking at the B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies taking place on the Indonesian resort island. He joined the conference by video link weeks after completing his heavily scrutinized takeover of Twitter.
He had been expected to attend the event in person, but Indonesian government minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who’s responsible for coordinating preparations for the summit, said Musk could not attend because he’s preparing for a court case this week.
Testimony began Monday in a Delaware courtroom where Tesla shareholders are challenging Musk’s compensation plan as CEO, potentially worth more than $55 billion.
He’s got plenty else to keep himself busy.
“My workload has recently increased quite a lot,” he said with a chuckle in an apparent reference to the Twitter deal. “I mean, oh, man. I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure.”
The businessman appeared in a darkened room, saying there had been a power cut just before he connected.
His face, projected on a large screen over the summit hall, appeared to glow red as it was reflected in what he said was candlelight – a visage he noted was “so bizarre.”
While Musk was among the most anticipated speakers at the business forum, his remarks broke little new ground. Only the moderator was able to ask questions.
The Tesla chief executive said the electric carmaker would consider making a much cheaper model when asked about lower-cost options for developing countries like India and G-20 host Indonesia.
“We do think that making a much more affordable vehicle would make a lot of sense and we should do something,” he said.
Musk also reiterated a desire to significantly boost the amount and length of Twitter’s video offerings, and share revenue with people producing the content, though he didn’t provide specifics.
He bought Twitter for $44 billion last month and quickly dismissed the company’s board of directors and top executives.
He laid off much of the rest of the company’s full-time workforce by email on Nov. 4 and is now eliminating the jobs of outsourced contractors who are tasked with fighting misinformation and other harmful content.
Musk has vowed to ease restrictions on what users can say on the platform.
He’s reaped a heap of complaints — much on Twitter itself — and has tried to reassure companies that advertise on the platform and others that it won’t damage their brands by associating them with harmful content.
In his appearance Monday, Musk acknowledged the criticism.
“There’s no way to make everyone happy, that’s for sure,” he said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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California voters have rejected a new tax on the state’s richest residents. Proposition 30 would have boosted the tax on incomes above $2 million to help put more electric cars on the road. Backers of the measure said California badly needs a reliable source of money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. The measure’s defeat marks a win for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who campaigned against it despite his support for electric cars. He called it a corporate giveaway for ridesharing companies like Lyft, which paid for the “yes” campaign.
Collapsed cryptocurrency trading firm FTX is confirming there was unauthorized access to its accounts just hours after the company filed for bankruptcy protection. The embattled company’s new CEO John Ray III said Saturday that FTX is switching off the ability to trade or withdraw funds and taking steps to secure customers’ assets. Analytics firm Elliptic estimates $477 million was missing from the exchange. A debate formed on social media about whether the exchange was hacked or a company insider had stolen funds. That’s a possibility that cryptocurrency analysts couldn’t rule out.
EU lawmakers investigating the use of surveillance spyware by the bloc’s governments have accused the EU’s executive arm and member countries of neglecting the surveillance scandal that targeted opposition politicians and journalists. The committee investigating Pegasus said Tuesday that national governments “are practicing omertà” — or a code of silence. Pegasus was developed by Israel’s NSO Group and is designed to breach mobile phones and extract vast amounts of information from them, including text messages, passwords, locations and microphone and camera recordings. The company markets the technology as a tool to target criminals but many cases have been discovered worldwide of governments using it against dissidents, journalists and political opponents.
A new fully electric vehicle startup in Italy is challenging U.S. and Chinese rivals with “Made in Italy” design. AEHRA is being launched by a former oil trader who hired a former Lamborghini designer to infuse the cars with Italian emotion and is placing emphasis on aerodynamics over performance. Its biggest hurdle to success is an already crowded market of EV startups and traditional carmakers. And AEHRA doesn’t plan to launch its first vehicles until mid-2025. The ultra-premium cars plan to sell for $160,000 to $180,000, rolling out first in the United States and key European markets before expanding to China.
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No digital intrusions are known to have affected the counting of the midterm vote. Officials on Election Day kept close watch for domestic and foreign threats. A few state and local governments appeared to have been hit by a relatively rudimentary form of cyberattack that periodically made public websites unreachable. But U.S. and local officials say none of those attacks breached vote-counting infrastructure. An official at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency says there was no known activity “that should cause anyone to question the security, the integrity or the resilience of the election.”
The possibility of an economically devastating railroad strike has been pushed back into early December to allow time for engineers and conductors to vote on their agreements with the freight railroads and give more opportunity for the industry to renegotiate with two unions that rejected their deals last month. Previously, a Nov. 19 strike deadline hung over the talks, but the union that represents track maintenance workers agreed Wednesday to delay any action until next month. But all 12 rail unions must approve their deals to avoid a strike and so far only seven have ratified the agreements that provide 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses. Rail workers remain concerned about the lack of paid sick time and the demanding schedules in the industry.
Elon Musk is warning Twitter employees to brace for “difficult times ahead” that might end with the collapse of the social media platform if they can’t find new ways of making money. Workers who survived last week’s mass layoffs are facing harsher work conditions and growing uncertainty about their ability to keep Twitter running safely as it continues to lose high-level leaders responsible for data privacy, cybersecurity and complying with regulations. Musk’s first companywide message to employees ordered them to stop working from home and show up in the office Thursday morning.
Elon Musk used his Twitter megaphone to appeal to “independent-minded voters” on Monday, urging them to vote Republican in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, stepping into the country’s political debate that tech company executives have for years worked to stay out of so their platforms wouldn’t be seen as favoring one side over the other. While Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion, has expressed political views in the past, such a direct endorsement of one party over another raises worries about Twitter’s ability to remain neutral under Musk’s rule.
Sam Bankman-Fried received numerous plaudits as he rapidly achieved superstar status as the head of cryptocurrency exchange FTX: the savior of crypto, the newest force in Democratic politics and potentially the world’s first trillionaire. Now the comments about the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried aren’t so kind after FTX filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, leaving his investors and customers feeling duped and many others in the crypto world fearing the repercussions. Bankfried-Fried himself could face civil or criminal charges. The ultimate impact of FTX’s bankruptcy is uncertain, but its failure will likely result in the destruction of billions of dollars of wealth.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk smiles during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a virtual meeting at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks virtually at the B20 Summit ahead of the G20 leaders summit in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
FILE – Elon Musk speaks at the SATELLITE Conference and Exhibition on March 9, 2020, in Washington. Musk, Twitter’s new owner, is further gutting the teams that battle misinformation on the social media platform as outsourced moderators learned over the weekend they were out of a job.
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