WEBVTT - Elon Musk unleashed 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.200 On the twenty twenty five CEO Performance Award to our 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:09.320 founder and CEO Elon Musk, with over seventy five percent 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:10.760 voting in favor. 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:12.840 Approved. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.520 The world's richest man just got the world's biggest pay rise, 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.279 with Tesla shareholders approving a one trillion dollar package for 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:30.000 Elon Musk over the next decade. As he accepted the deal, 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:34.200 Musk danced on stage with Tesla's humanoid robots and thanked 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.040 his supporters, saying he super appreciated it. 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.000 I super appreciate it. Thank you everyone. 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:43.800 But as the company's stock is known to plummet when 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.440 Musk intervenes in politics, questions remain about the damage his 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:54.920 recent maneuverings will do to Tesla's future. I'm Ruby Jones, 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:59.240 and you're listening to seven AM Today Power and Tech 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.240 reporter at the Guy in Us Nick Robins early on 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:04.440 what Mask has been up to since he left the 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.399 White House and how a trillion dollar pay packer will 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:19.399 shape his next moves. It's Tuesday, November eleven, so Nick. 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:24.559 Last week Tesla shareholders approved this one trillion dollar compensation 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:29.399 package for Elon Musk. It'll be the largest corporate payout 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:31.959 in history. If he does manage to deliver on it. 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.200 So to begin with, can you just tell me what 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:36.800 he needs to do to get the trillion. 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:39.760 Yeah, so there's a lot of milestones that he actually 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.520 needs to hit in order to get this pay package 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:48.000 in full. He has to primarily guide Tesla to this 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.840 eight point five trillion dollar market cap, which is about 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.120 eight times what it's worth today. In addition to that, 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.280 he has to get about four hundred billion dollars in 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.560 actual earnings for four consecutive quarters. That's kind of a 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.440 tall order since Tesla's actual earnings for this latest quarter 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.120 were four point two billion in which was actually down 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.040 from last year. So he would really have to turn 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:16.160 things around in a very drastic way. It's going to 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.640 take quite a lot of work to get Tesla to 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:20.840 these marks. 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:23.920 Okay, Well, tell me then a bit more about what 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.640 his vision for Tesla's future is where he wants to 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:28.400 take the company. 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.160 Yeah. So, Musk has laid out this vision of the 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:37.600 future where Tesla's products are basically central to how society runs. 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:42.359 The first car that is specifically built for unsupervisedbul self 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:46.320 driving to be a robotaxis called a cybercap It doesn't 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.400 even have pedals or steering wheel. 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:55.320 Yeah, Tesla's cars would all drive themselves, and they can 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:59.600 turn into autonomous robotaxis when you're not using them. There 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.880 would be millions of these autonomous robotaxis in every city 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.239 around the world. But there's this big other push that 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:11.800 he's been making for Tesla, which is moving into robotics. Specifically, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:16.400 he wants to take the company's Optimus robot. That is 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:21.520 this not yet mass produced, still very much tentative in 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.960 its abilities, humanoid looking robot. 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:27.160 I guess the way to think about it is that 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.320 every human on earth is going to want to have 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.720 their own personal R two D two C three po. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.000 So who wouldn't and he wants basically one of these 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:41.560 in every home. He wants them in every factory. He's 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.280 claimed that this is going to be the biggest product 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:45.120 of all time. 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:49.280 You know, people often talk about like eliminating poverty, giving 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:54.320 everyone amazing medical care. Well, there's actually only one way 0:03:54.320 --> 0:03:57.400 to do that, and that's with the Optimius robot. 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:01.040 He's gotten into some very kind of sign fiction predictions 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:05.920 about how it could replace healthcare workers doctors. During the 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:09.360 shareholder meeting, he said that it could replace prisons by 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.600 having a robot follow people convicted of crimes around twenty 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:17.760 four to seven, which sounded particularly dystopian. And then he 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:20.720 has also even said that you might be able to 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.120 download your consciousness into one of these robots in the future. 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:30.840 Okay. And so this deal, seventy five percent of shareholders 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.560 agree to it. So it seems like there's strong backing 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.679 for Musk at the moment. Why is that, Well. 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.080 Musk does have a huge amount of belief behind him 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:44.760 from Tesla's shareholders and from the people who are involved 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.839 in the companies that he runs. And part of this 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.799 is that he's made a lot of money through these companies. 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:52.960 He's made the people who work at these companies a 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.320 lot of money. He's made a lot of very rich 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.280 people even richer. He had the backing of the board 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.880 as well, which is a board that's pretty personally and 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.840 financially enmeshed in his success, and they lobbied very hard 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.719 for him to get this compensation. By and large, seventy 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:13.360 five percent of shareholders said we want this for him. 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.960 We really want Elon focused specifically on this company and 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:25.760 not on his other SpaceX neuralink x endeavors his political fixations. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:29.360 They wanted him dialed into Tesla specifically. 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.680 And that's interesting because we know Elon Musk has not 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:36.080 been totally focused on Tesla. There's all these other business 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:38.479 interests that you mentioned, and then, of course he has 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:43.840 also been incredibly active politically. So what impacts his political 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:45.760 stance had on Tesla's value. 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:49.400 It's been a challenge for Tesla. There was a Yale 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.599 study published last month that found that between twenty twenty 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:58.080 two and April of this year, Musk's political affiliations, his 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:03.040 far right rhetoric, his backing of Donald Trump along with 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.640 other far right political parties around the world, that had 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:10.880 cost Tesla about a million car sales during that period 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.800 of time. And then if you look at polling from consumers, 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.159 you see that Tesla's brand loyalty just plummeted. Over the 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:18.960 course of this year. 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.680 Dozens of cyber trucks at a parking lot in Fort 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.560 Lauderdale were spray painted with a vulgar term directed at 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:30.160 Tesla owner Elon Musk. Some vandals recorded themselves in the act. 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:33.000 There was a massive backlash that we saw over the 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:35.400 summer and over earlier this year, where you had people 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:39.159 burning Tesla's you had people attaching stickers to their cars 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:41.359 saying I bought this before Elon went crazy. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.480 Tesla's are being torched across the country. 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.120 Dealerships shot up and set on fire. 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.960 There is a real and sizable sea change in the 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.680 way that a lot of people who maybe once viewed 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.720 to him as just sort of this tech entrepreneur, began 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:03.920 to view Musk in recent years. But when he first 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:06.640 stepped away from the White House, a lot of shareholders 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.960 were really optimistic. Tesla's stock rose. They thought that maybe 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.120 he would leave his politics behind and dial in on 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:19.240 the company, and that really hasn't happened. He has been 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:24.680 both very very vocal politically, but he has also been 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:29.400 infusing his companies, especially Xai, with a lot of his 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:33.560 political beliefs. So it seems like as much as he 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.040 promised that maybe he was going to step away from 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:41.200 some of his more divisive political activities, it kind of 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:42.640 seems like he hasn't been able to. 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:47.600 Solve himself coming up the artificial intelligence being shaped in 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:58.280 Musk's image so Nick and April of this year, Elon 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.040 Musk announced that he would be having back his time 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.640 with the Trump administration and the Department of Government efficiency. 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:06.880 That decision did come after the company it had a 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:11.040 huge drop in sales. Tesla stock was pummeting, and at 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:12.760 that moment in time, he said that he was done 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:16.239 with politics, he was done with political spending. So since 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:18.600 then has he stuck to that? 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:23.239 No, I mean not, no, he hasn't. He has maybe 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.120 spent less time physically in the White House, and he's 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:32.640 not running doge anymore. But he's been extremely involved in politics. 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:38.200 He's been very, very vocal about supporting far right causes 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:42.480 around the globe. He tweets constantly about anti immigration views 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:47.040 and election conspiracy is about attacking trans rights. He's been 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:51.200 backing parties like Germany is alternative for deutsch Land, which 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.600 has very explicit history of far right, anti immigration, anti 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:58.920 Islam views. He has even had a kind of more 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.480 ground activist level, been backing people like Tommy Robinson, the 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:08.600 British far right anti immigration activists who claimed this week 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.800 that Musk had bankrolled his entire legal defense over a 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.120 terrorism charge. All you have to do is go on 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.840 his Twitter feed and within seconds you'll see just how 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.240 prominent this is as part of his online persona. 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.079 Yeah, can we talk a little more about that because, 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:29.120 as you are saying, it's really not about Elon Musk 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.439 just sort of, you know, weighing in with his views 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:36.680 on a certain thing. He owns x He's pursuing AI. 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.640 So can we talk a bit more about how his 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.120 businesses are becoming kind of infused with his beliefs. 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:45.880 Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. And 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.840 it's not only x as a social media platform. He's 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:54.240 been working on Xai, which is his artificial intelligence company. 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:58.160 One of the things that Musk has been worried about 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.559 for a very long time is this idea that artificial 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:06.280 intelligence could become too woke, and it's something that he 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:07.480 frequently talks about. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:11.120 Well, like, the problem is essentially the woke mind virus 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:15.680 retreated to Blue Sky. Yeah, but it's where they're just 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:17.480 a self reinforcing lunatic. 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:18.680 As sounds, they're all just triple masked. 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:22.199 He was on Joe Rogan in the last couple of 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:26.559 weeks and he went at length about this idea that 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:32.520 if AI is programmed to think that diversity is more 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:36.600 important than anything else, then there would be the possibility 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.679 that in the future, when AI is more intelligent or 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:45.920 more powerful, that it could decide that straight white men 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:48.720 were just in essential for the world, and that the 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:50.160 AI would then kill them. 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:55.439 Every AI except groc is saying that basically straight white 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.320 male should die and this was a problem and we 0:10:58.320 --> 0:10:58.960 should fix it. 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.240 And one of the things that Musk has been building 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:07.080 as part of his XAI company is this Wikipedia rival, 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.960 which he calls Grockipedia after his chatbot, which is also 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:15.920 called grock And for a long time, Musk has been very, 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:19.480 very vocally opposed to Wikipedia, which he accuses of having 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:24.400 this leftist bias and being too woke. So in building Grokipedia, 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:29.560 he's tried to create this AI driven alternative version of 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:35.760 Wikipedia which is more closely aligned to his views. Immediately, 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.200 researches have said that there is just a whole raft 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:44.120 of falsehoods and misleading information and a bunch of issues 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.280 with it that make it an unreliable source. If you 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.120 look at, for instance, the difference between Wikipedia articles and 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:55.960 Grockipedia articles on some subjects, you can see that there 0:11:56.040 --> 0:12:01.000 are right wing narratives in Grokipedia about the slave trade, 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:06.439 about immigration, about trans writes. One example is that there 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:10.040 was an entry on Britain First, which Wikipedia describes as 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:13.760 a neo fascist party, and Grakipedia refers to it as 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:15.480 a patriotic political party. 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.760 And we've spoken about how at times Musk's beliefs have 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.920 hurt his businesses. We spoke about the impact on Tesla, 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:27.080 but shareholders there they believe in him. They've ultimately chosen 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.640 to reward him with this payout, the biggest payout in 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.200 corporate history. So how do you think that that decision 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:38.360 and that trillion dollars is likely to impact, you know, 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:41.200 how willing he is to keep pursuing influence like this. 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.920 Well, I think to some degree, it shows that he 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.840 can have a very low personal approval rating, he can 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:52.240 face a lot of widespread public backlash, you know. To 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:56.360 put it in context, there's been multiple studies this year 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.319 and surveys that show that he has extremely low favorability 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.040 within the US, which is probably his biggest base of 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:10.080 support out of anywhere. He for instance, in one study 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:16.960 was viewed the lowest favorability out of fourteen major political newsmakers. 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:21.120 And that's including net Yahoo, who's facing war crimes charges. 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.400 It's including Trump, who's a very polarizing figure. It's including 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:27.000 you know, JD Vance, who a lot of people dislike, 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.360 he ranked lower than any of them. There was a 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.280 separate Quinnipiac poll in June that found that only around 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.680 two and ten women in the US had a favorable 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:42.640 view of Musk. In the end, none of that really 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:47.840 mattered over whether he got this money, whether he was 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.880 viewed favorably by shareholders, which is one of the biggest, 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.480 most powerful groups that he actually does need to get 0:13:55.559 --> 0:14:00.839 the approval of. And so if there isn't really any 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.280 consequences to these views and the way that he is 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.440 backing the political far right around the world, then it 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.640 seems like that there's very little reason for him to stop. 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.320 Oh, Nick, thank you so much for your time. 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:20.400 Thank you for having me. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.080 Also in the news, Anthony Alberzi has denied that his 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.240 appointment of former Labor Premier j Weatherall to the position 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.080 of top diplomat in the UK is the reason the 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.120 government has not yet released its Jobs for Mates report 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.880 whether Ull will replace former Labor Minister Stephen Smith as 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.360 High Commissioner, a role he's held since twenty twenty three. 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:56.239 Albernizi said weather All's work as Premier of South Australia 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:01.240 over six years makes him an entirely appropriate appointment. Labor 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.440 is facing pressure from the cross bench to release a 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.920 report into the appropriateness of political appointments, but has so 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:10.640 far failed to do so, and New South Wales Speaker 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.680 Greg Piper says he knew about the weekends Neo Nazi 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.280 rally in Sydney ahead of time and tried to stop it, 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:18.880 only to be told it was not an option to 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:23.280 relocate the protest. His comments come after two female politicians 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.920 revealed they'd been subjected to death threats and threats of 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.560 violence by Neo Nazis after they spoke out against the group. 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:33.120 Both for Close MP Kelly Sloane and Wentworth MP a 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.280 Legraspender have referred the threats to New South Wales Police. 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.080 I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.