Speaker 1: I know your commitment to free speech. I respect that
Speaker 1: because I think it's a integral it's the foundational thing
Speaker 1: of democracies really, But I also know your opposition to
Speaker 1: anti semitism. You've spoken about it and tweeted about it.
Speaker 2: That was Israelly, Prime Minister, bb NET and Yahoo talking
Speaker 2: to Elon Musk at a Tesla factory two months ago.
Speaker 2: A lot has happened since then, and much of it
Speaker 2: has been fairly disastrous for Elon's social media platform of
Speaker 2: choice X. The fallout continues for Elo Musk after the
Speaker 2: billionaire and Dawson anti semitic.
Speaker 3: Post scrative advertisers like Disney, Apple, and IBM have pulled
Speaker 3: their ads from the social media site X.
Speaker 4: Yesterday, Musk and I claims he's anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: He also threatened a Thermo nuclear lawsuit against a media
Speaker 2: watchdog company, Bill.
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: More than half the satellites in space are owned and
Speaker 2: controlled by one man.
Speaker 3: Starting his own artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 2: Well, he's a legitimate, super genius and legitimate. He says
Speaker 2: He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
Speaker 2: be different.
Speaker 5: He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 3: There is a reason the US government is so reliant
Speaker 3: on him.
Speaker 6: Alon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 1: Anything he does, He's fascinating people.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Elan, Inc. Where we discuss Elon Musk's vast
Speaker 2: corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how to
Speaker 2: make sense of it all. I'm your host, David Papodopolis.
Speaker 2: Last Thursday night, we released an emergency podcast after Musk
Speaker 2: went further in amplifying and agreeing with anti Semitic ideas
Speaker 2: than he ever had before. The fallout from those posts
Speaker 2: is ongoing. Musk has rejected accusations of bigotry, but advertisers
Speaker 2: are still fleeing the site, and his CEO, Linda Yakarino,
Speaker 2: is feeling the heat. Here with the Today to discuss
Speaker 2: the latest in all things acts and another wild development
Speaker 2: in the tech world, the power Struggle. At OpenAI. Are
Speaker 2: our regular muscologists, Sarah Friar, who oversees our coverage of
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley's biggest companies. Hello, Max Chafkin, senior reporter at
Speaker 2: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Hey, Hey Max. And Danahull, who covers Tesla
Speaker 2: and has also been writing about the reaction to Elon's
Speaker 2: controversial comments.
Speaker 5: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, Sarah, the past few days have been action packed.
Speaker 2: Give us a bit of a refresher on what Elon
Speaker 2: said last week that people found so objectionable.
Speaker 6: Well, he was responding to a tweet that espoused of
Speaker 6: a very racist theory about Jewish people that was actually
Speaker 6: tied to I'm not going to repeat it again. You
Speaker 6: can listen to our emergency episode. But he said that
Speaker 6: is the actual truth, and then it caused this, this
Speaker 6: backlash and really shock from all of his his supporters
Speaker 6: and also his advertisers. Even the White House put out
Speaker 6: of statement saying that this wasn't something that they were
Speaker 6: aligned with. And furthermore, Linda Yakarino, who is the CEO
Speaker 6: of X and who is supposed to be in this
Speaker 6: job to bring back advertisers to the platform, basically had
Speaker 6: to ignore it. Had to ignore what he said and
Speaker 6: change the subjects to retaliation against a research group. So
Speaker 6: that's where we are today, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Max, So in the last few days now, what
Speaker 2: has Elon's response been. Well, so, the.
Speaker 3: Most interesting thing about this to me is that Elon
Speaker 3: Musk typically in these situations. Somebody says a racist thing,
Speaker 3: they apologize, and Elon Musk has not apologized, which is
Speaker 3: very much in character for Elon Musk. He's very much
Speaker 3: a you know, never back down kind of fellow. What
Speaker 3: he's done is, as Sarah said, denied the sort of
Speaker 3: central allegation. He's deny that he's anti Semitic, and he's
Speaker 3: had some sort of help from some of his buddies.
Speaker 3: But what he's largely tried to do is sort of
Speaker 3: changed the subject. He's attacked Media Matters.
Speaker 2: And what has Media Matters done here?
Speaker 3: Media Matters, before this tweet, had put out a report
Speaker 3: alleging that X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, was
Speaker 3: showing ads next to anti Semitic content, and then Elon
Speaker 3: Musk tweets this thing, which really I would say reinforces
Speaker 3: the problem that Media Matters is counting out because it's
Speaker 3: not just like as Media Matters saying there were some
Speaker 3: anti Semites on this platform. The call is coming from
Speaker 3: inside the house, So that totally reinforces the problem with
Speaker 3: Media Matters is report and I think is part of
Speaker 3: what kind of kicked off the cascade of essentially advertiser boycott.
Speaker 2: This cuts it just before we go through the media
Speaker 2: matter Lawsuitdan give us the exact lineup in the exact
Speaker 2: rundown who has broken now and called off advertising with
Speaker 2: X Well, I just want.
Speaker 5: To back up for one moment and make the point
Speaker 5: that Musk is blaming this on the media, that you know,
Speaker 5: media matters, this research group and journalists like us have
Speaker 5: made this into a Maelstrom. But I want to be
Speaker 5: very clear that pretty quickly after Musk did this tweet,
Speaker 5: the American Jewish community came out with a very strong
Speaker 5: statement that said elon Musk's agreement agreement with the user
Speaker 5: promoting elements of the Great Replacement theory isn't the truth.
Speaker 5: It is the deadliest anti Semitic conspiracy theory in modern
Speaker 5: US history and motivated the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. Like he
Speaker 5: was called out by pretty significant organizations, then the media
Speaker 5: wrote about it, Then the advertiser boycott started happening, and
Speaker 5: so that's where we are today. But I just think
Speaker 5: it's disingenuous to sort of blame this on reporters when
Speaker 5: you have some pretty large and significant organizations calling him
Speaker 5: out for the tweet in the first place.
Speaker 3: One other thing, which is that he one way he
Speaker 3: tried to cover up the damage, or to do a
Speaker 3: little bit of damage control was by sort of redirecting
Speaker 3: this to the Israeli Palestinian crisis. So he's essentially trying
Speaker 3: to say I could not be an anti Semite because
Speaker 3: I'm incredibly pro Israel, which just to say that is
Speaker 3: not those two things are not necessarily are not necessarily
Speaker 3: mutually exclusives.
Speaker 6: And also we haven't seen him enforced that. And also
Speaker 6: it was this moment where you saw a lot of
Speaker 6: Jewish leaders who normally would probably have criticized him, say hey,
Speaker 6: that's great that you're doing that, and they sort of
Speaker 6: seem to prioritize Elon Must's power and influence over the conversation,
Speaker 6: over any personal anti Semitism or racism he may be espousing.
Speaker 6: And that just goes to show how much control this
Speaker 6: man has and how it's very difficult for people to
Speaker 6: make an enemy of him.
Speaker 3: For all.
Speaker 2: Right, but Dan, can you give me that rundown of
Speaker 2: companies that have pulled advertising for Max Pause?
Speaker 5: This is what I believe they're calling it. Sarah backed
Speaker 5: me up here. I believe it's Apple, Disney, IBM are
Speaker 5: the big three.
Speaker 6: Those are the big ones. There are a few banks,
Speaker 6: a few communications companies, a lot of companies that already
Speaker 6: had a pause in place that are just continuing that pause.
Speaker 6: The sixty percent drop in advertising revenue that Musk has
Speaker 6: talked about, it doesn't seem to be reversing, all right.
Speaker 2: So now let's get into this. You know, must describe
Speaker 2: that I believe as a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters.
Speaker 2: It that the lawsuit has dropped Max.
Speaker 3: And it says what the lawsuit says that Media Matters
Speaker 3: report was contrived.
Speaker 2: It doesn't stipulated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It doesn't say that Media Matters made up these adjacencies.
Speaker 3: It says that Media Matters refreshed their Twitter feeds.
Speaker 2: So many times.
Speaker 3: They are they cherry they cherry picked? Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 3: not sure. Look, I'm not a legal scholar. I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is gonna hold up in court or not.
Speaker 3: But I would say that the goal here, I don't
Speaker 3: think is to extract a settlement from Media Matters. It's
Speaker 3: to basically respond to this general swirl of allegations in
Speaker 3: the most aggressive way possible. And also, you know, I think, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: to kind of create a chilling effect, to make it
Speaker 3: more difficult for nonprofits and yes, journalists.
Speaker 6: By the way, the Center for Countering Digital Hate was
Speaker 6: already facing legal complaints from X earlier this year. This
Speaker 6: is a pattern. He said he would go after the
Speaker 6: ADL of the Anti Defamation League as well. They ended
Speaker 6: up having a somewhat of a truce. And this is
Speaker 6: just a company that has made their API, which researchers
Speaker 6: used to that's an application programming interface. But what it
Speaker 6: means is that the way that researchers used to look
Speaker 6: at the content on X to figure out if there
Speaker 6: was misinformation spreading ahead of an election, to figure out
Speaker 6: what was going viral, what was happening in global conversation,
Speaker 6: Now that costs at a minimum forty two thousand dollars
Speaker 6: a month, which is incredibly unaffordable for any nonprofit to
Speaker 6: even hold X accountable in the way that they used to.
Speaker 6: So all of this to say, X would prefer that
Speaker 6: the only data that we believe about that company comes
Speaker 6: from the company itself.
Speaker 2: So we believe that this attempt to essentially enforce them
Speaker 2: or have something of a chilling effect on the media
Speaker 2: will be successful.
Speaker 4: Max.
Speaker 3: I think the way that media chilling effects worth it's
Speaker 3: not like a one to one thing. No, I don't
Speaker 3: think it's going to be successful because in certain ways,
Speaker 3: the lawsuit actually confirms certain aspects of the Media Matters port.
Speaker 2: I mean, he doesn't.
Speaker 3: The lawsuit doesn't dispute that these were real so greenshots.
Speaker 3: It doesn't dispute that there were, you know, anti Semites
Speaker 3: on this platform. It disputes that Media Matters was overstating
Speaker 3: the likelihood that you would see an anti Semitic ad
Speaker 3: next to that. And I don't think it's going to
Speaker 3: have an immediate chilling effect. But when you see like
Speaker 3: a cascade of things like this, you know it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make people more anxious to call out discrimination
Speaker 3: and so on. And honestly, I think it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of a clever way for him to respond to these
Speaker 3: allegations without apologizing for them, because he almost can't apologize
Speaker 3: for them because this is sort of important to his
Speaker 3: like right wing persona, like a lot of his fans
Speaker 3: would be really disappointed if he said, no, I totally misspoke.
Speaker 3: I need a moment of reflection. He doesn't want to
Speaker 3: do that, so this is a way to kind of zig.
Speaker 5: What strikes me is that it's kind of like with politics,
Speaker 5: you know how, like the politician does something bad and
Speaker 5: then the surrogates rally to the defense. You're seeing that
Speaker 5: play at now, Like so Elon creates this horrific news
Speaker 5: cycle last week, never apologizes, the board doesn't apologize, and
Speaker 5: believe me, like they had ample opportunity to. No one
Speaker 5: puts out a statement. But then you see like Bill
Speaker 5: Eckman ride to the rescue over the weekend, and then
Speaker 5: yesterday Sam Teller, elunch chief former chief of staff, puts
Speaker 5: out a tweet. I spent nearly five years as Elunch
Speaker 5: chief of staff, and that time I never observed a
Speaker 5: trace of anti Semitism. He goes on, and then, like
Speaker 5: you know, Elon responds thanks Sam with a heart emoji.
Speaker 6: This is all a distraction from what's actually happening at
Speaker 6: this company, which is that they've really reduced their content
Speaker 6: moderation rules because Elon Musk says he wants anyone to
Speaker 6: speak freely, and in order to fix it, they're relying
Speaker 6: on this community notes.
Speaker 2: Tool, which citizen journalists basically thousands.
Speaker 6: Of people who just rate tweets and explain why they're
Speaker 6: wrong or add context where needed and Bloomberg actually has
Speaker 6: an investigation out today showing that this system is incredibly slow.
Speaker 6: It can take hours for viral misinformation to get a
Speaker 6: label put on it because it's this voting process that
Speaker 6: takes place. And then it's also really inconsistent, and it
Speaker 6: allows for repeat offenders who would have been banned under
Speaker 6: the prior Twitter regime to continue to post at their pleasure.
Speaker 2: Okay, Sarah, So earlier on you reminded us that X's revenue,
Speaker 2: its advertising revenue is down roughly sixty percent since Elon
Speaker 2: took over the company. We've had additional advertisers pull out.
Speaker 2: Now you know how much damage has been done and
Speaker 2: how existential is this? I mean listen, Elon himself in
Speaker 2: the recent past has thrown out the word bankruptcy. Those
Speaker 2: are his words. And how does Linda Yakarino turn this around?
Speaker 6: Well, a lot of damage has been done to the
Speaker 6: revenue model. That said, they think that they can eventually
Speaker 6: replace it with the subscription business of paying for ex
Speaker 6: premium that is still not reaching even a fraction of
Speaker 6: the users that they would need for it to reach,
Speaker 6: or to replace the revenues that they've lost from advertisers.
Speaker 6: Linda Yakarino. Oh my goodness, I don't know where where
Speaker 6: I start. I thought that she would last a few weeks,
Speaker 6: maybe before she realized.
Speaker 2: Oh wrong, Sarah, I was so wrong.
Speaker 6: She's in it to win it. She's in it for
Speaker 6: the long haul. I am. I'm actually, you know, impressed
Speaker 6: with her ability to withstand, you know, all the pressures
Speaker 6: of this job and still survive in the role. Her
Speaker 6: main goal seems to be to not get fired. She's
Speaker 6: she is incredibly devoted to espousing whatever Musk wants her to.
Speaker 6: So she was also part of this weekend spin of
Speaker 6: turning this anti semitic tweet backlash into a backlash over
Speaker 6: the media matters and bogus reports from journalist.
Speaker 3: What I love about this, though, is honestly she is trying.
Speaker 3: Her plan as far as I can tell, which Sarah
Speaker 3: was alluding to, is that they're going to just tack right.
Speaker 3: They see twenty twenty four election is coming. You got
Speaker 3: a nice size conservative audience on X right now. I
Speaker 3: mean you know that we can we could have a
Speaker 3: debate about how big the audience is overall and what
Speaker 3: engagement is like, but it's definitely clear that you've got
Speaker 3: a lot of right wingers are spending a lot of
Speaker 3: time there, and so her plan seems to be to
Speaker 3: use this and to and to sell advertisements to you know,
Speaker 3: political action committees and I guess candidates and nonprofits. Again,
Speaker 3: this is not a huge market, and Apple and these
Speaker 3: advertisers that are pulling out are huge advertisers, and it
Speaker 3: seems exceedingly unlikely that you would actually you would actually
Speaker 3: be able to make up the difference. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: maybe they don't need to because it's a much smaller company.
Speaker 3: They've laid off, you know, a huge amount of the
Speaker 3: staff costs the lower and you know you have this
Speaker 3: like trickle of the debt of subscribers. I'm just trying
Speaker 3: to give you the Linda, you know, the best case
Speaker 3: scenario from Linda's pot of view.
Speaker 5: Andrew Tate is going to like is going to advertise
Speaker 5: right like these right wing influencers are offering to sort
Speaker 5: of pay money.
Speaker 6: Okay, but two things right wing influencers hate being on
Speaker 6: a platform where there are no left wing woke people
Speaker 6: to troll, and if there aren't any then they'll be bored.
Speaker 6: And the other thing is all of these advertisers who
Speaker 6: are pulling out and making this big statement of you know,
Speaker 6: we don't endorse anti Semitism. It's not that big of
Speaker 6: a deal for their balance sheets to pull out of
Speaker 6: Twitter advertising. It's not that effective. They have Meta, they
Speaker 6: have Google, they have these other places to advertise. They
Speaker 6: don't need to be on Twitter. They were on Twitter
Speaker 6: because of the relationships and where it counts for Elon
Speaker 6: Musk in his government contracts, in his relationships with bankers.
Speaker 6: People aren't pulling up.
Speaker 2: Okay, welcome back. So somehow X isn't even the biggest
Speaker 2: news story in the tech world right now. Open Ai
Speaker 2: a company that Elon started with Sam Altman before he
Speaker 2: would leave in a twenty eighteen power struggle Max, what
Speaker 2: exactly has it been facing? For the love of god,
Speaker 2: what is going on here?
Speaker 3: Open ai is pretty much the hottest thing, or was
Speaker 3: until a few days ago, pretty much the hottest.
Speaker 2: Thing in tech.
Speaker 3: Open Ai created chat GPT, the the chatbot that that
Speaker 3: many people are very excited about, many companies are very
Speaker 3: excited about. And Microsoft, you know, one of the world's
Speaker 3: largest companies, has essentially put at the center of its
Speaker 3: of an entire like.
Speaker 2: Corporate overhaul effort.
Speaker 3: We should say, first of all, open Ai was co
Speaker 3: founded by Elon Musk or Elon Musk played a key
Speaker 3: role in the creation of the of this startup, was
Speaker 3: the main funder early on, and for years open AI's
Speaker 3: CEO Sam Altman, who was kind of Musk's partner in
Speaker 3: the in the creation of the of the entity, was
Speaker 3: going around saying this technology is so amazing, it could
Speaker 3: end the world, Like we really need to be careful
Speaker 3: here because Ai could take over and the robots could
Speaker 3: somehow decide to annihilate the human race. And Elon Musk
Speaker 3: actually played a big role in kind of pumping.
Speaker 4: Up this idea.
Speaker 3: Now, I don't think that open AI's senior management, I
Speaker 3: don't think Microsoft, I don't think Sam Altman ever really
Speaker 3: took seriously the idea that open Ai was its little
Speaker 3: chatbot that can write an email for you, was going
Speaker 3: to turn around and annihilate the whole human race.
Speaker 2: But that is the very argument that they apparently made here.
Speaker 3: But crucially, unfortunately for Sam Altman, some open ai board members,
Speaker 3: I think, do really buy into that idea. And we
Speaker 3: had this amazingly sudden coup that happened on Friday where
Speaker 3: a number of open ai board members. Open ai was
Speaker 3: governed by a nonprofit. It's kind of a weird structure.
Speaker 3: Voted Sam Altman off the island, fired him, and they
Speaker 3: were able to do so, strangely, without consulting any of
Speaker 3: the venture capitalists who I invested in this thing, and
Speaker 3: without consulting with Microsoft, which had put thirteen billion dollars
Speaker 3: into this thing.
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny because I grew up journalistically in
Speaker 2: Latin America and I witnessed a lot of coups. Some worked,
Speaker 2: some didn't. This has got to be the worst coup
Speaker 2: I've seen since the two thousand and two attempt to
Speaker 2: ousto Goo jobs. It's been pretty bad. And right now
Speaker 2: as we speak, Sarah Friar, there's a mutiny going on
Speaker 2: inside open a open ai correct.
Speaker 6: Yes, About ninety percent or above of the existing employees
Speaker 6: that open ai have signed a petition, by the way,
Speaker 6: including the chief scientist who is on the board, pushing
Speaker 6: out Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. These people have all
Speaker 6: signed this memo saying that if they aren't reinstated, they're
Speaker 6: out of there. Which is it? It's wild? Right?
Speaker 2: Are all?
Speaker 6: Is Microsoft going to end up acquiring open ai for
Speaker 6: like zero dollars, and you know the rest of this
Speaker 6: is in their hands. Are these leaders who were ousted
Speaker 6: going to come back and try to say businesses running
Speaker 6: as usual?
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 6: One of the craziest, Like people have compared it to
Speaker 6: like Steve Jobs getting kicked out of Apple and brought back,
Speaker 6: or Jack Dorsy is getting kicked out of Twitter and
Speaker 6: brought back. Those two situations happened over a matter of years.
Speaker 6: This is happening in a matter of days. So we're
Speaker 6: all not sleeping that much.
Speaker 7: But I do think he played some role, right, which
Speaker 7: is what I want to get at, because you know,
Speaker 7: we don't ultimately know all should be revealed at some point,
Speaker 7: but you know, to a certain degree, Yeah, it is
Speaker 7: interesting without really knowing anything.
Speaker 2: God, it seems like his fingerprints would be all over this.
Speaker 2: I mean, you told us the other day, Max that
Speaker 2: they Musk that Elon Musk Samultman rivalry was a top
Speaker 2: twenty Musk rub I had it. I think I.
Speaker 3: Underrated it, right, I mean, clearly this was a bigger,
Speaker 3: more consequential rivalry than I had even at Yeah, last
Speaker 3: week we talked about Elon Musk going on the Lex
Speaker 3: Friedman podcast and he said a few things that kind
Speaker 3: of anticipated this. He brought up ilias suit Skiver, the
Speaker 3: chief scientist uh and and basically took credit for hiring him,
Speaker 3: and heaped a lot of praise on him, and and
Speaker 3: also made a kind of complaint about Sam Altman open AI.
Speaker 3: He said, open a I was supposed to be open source,
Speaker 3: and now it's profitable. He's been complaining for years that
Speaker 3: this is like a startup worth billions of dollars that
Speaker 3: he founded as a nonprofit. And what we saw with
Speaker 3: the board, right was this effort to take this startup,
Speaker 3: take this thing that Microsoft is so excited about, that
Speaker 3: venture capitalists are so excited about, and wrestle it back
Speaker 3: to its nonprofit roots, which you know, does two things
Speaker 3: for for Elon Musk. One is it validates this thing
Speaker 3: that he's been saying he can he can claim to
Speaker 3: be right, which he loves to do. And also it
Speaker 3: kind of does him a favor because Elon Musk just
Speaker 3: launched this kind of haphazard chant of Rock. Yes, I'm saying,
Speaker 3: and I regret to say, I know that Grock has
Speaker 3: its defenders and everything like that, but basically this thing
Speaker 3: Rock was assembled in a matter of months, there's Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'd say there's a little excitement among Elon's fans, but
Speaker 3: I don't think it's exactly caught fire. But now all
Speaker 3: of a sudden you have this utter crisis at the
Speaker 3: leading player. I mean, I think that could only help
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, either in terms of recruiting or just in
Speaker 3: terms of getting people to try a different chatbox.
Speaker 2: Right now, one other thing on this, Sarah, do we
Speaker 2: have any sense right because indeed, as maxis said here,
Speaker 2: Elon played a role in the founding of open Ai.
Speaker 6: He was the co founder. He put one hundred million
Speaker 6: of his own money into it. He tried to take
Speaker 6: full control at some point and that didn't work out.
Speaker 6: But he was very passionate about trying to prevent AI
Speaker 6: from getting out of control. And of course this narrative
Speaker 6: of like, we've got to prevent AI from taking over
Speaker 6: is also somewhat self serving because it's like the only
Speaker 6: one who can save you from it is me.
Speaker 3: We should also say, for future feud watching potential Musk
Speaker 3: weighing in here, Musk, you know, hinting darkly that there
Speaker 3: must have been something going on that the public needs
Speaker 3: to know about. That is a big problem for Microsoft,
Speaker 3: which is like really trying to just clean up this mess,
Speaker 3: and it's a big problem for the venture capitalists who
Speaker 3: invested in open Ai. I mean, part of what makes
Speaker 3: this whole thing so wild is that is that, like overnight,
Speaker 3: this incredibly valuable startup that all of these very powerful
Speaker 3: people were sort of banking on is getting taken apart.
Speaker 2: Right, It's amazing, Max, this thing went from apparently a
Speaker 2: value of eighty six billion dollars to perhaps zero in seconds.
Speaker 2: It's one hundred percent, right, It's a staggering if it
Speaker 2: really goes down this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not going to go down to zero, but
Speaker 3: at least I don't think it will.
Speaker 6: That's the thing, Max, This tension, these relationships, they all
Speaker 6: go way back. Elon Musk has known Sam Altman forever.
Speaker 6: Sam Altman, by the way, was in the first Y
Speaker 6: Combinator class with Emmett Sheer, who's now the CEO taking
Speaker 6: over maybe on an interim basis, we don't know for
Speaker 6: open Ai.
Speaker 2: All these here, Sarah Emmit, Sarah Sheer is just simply
Speaker 2: sitting in that position, keeping it warm until I think,
Speaker 2: as you once said, until Elon Musk takes that seat.
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, Yeah, Thanksgivings coming up. One thing I'm grateful
Speaker 6: for is that that Elon Musk didn't end up getting
Speaker 6: that CEO role over the weekend.
Speaker 2: Hey, note that we're recording this on Tuesday afternoon, and
Speaker 2: this is a very quickly developing story. The latest here
Speaker 2: is that Altman is apparently now in talks to return
Speaker 2: to open Ai Crazy times. So before we head into
Speaker 2: our final segment here, we should mention that the SpaceX
Speaker 2: starship launch that we previewed last week did indeed happen
Speaker 2: on Saturday, and alas ended in flames. The flames, though,
Speaker 2: came a little later than the last time on these
Speaker 2: things went up in space, so Elon is a touch
Speaker 2: closer to that Mars colony he's dreaming of. If you
Speaker 2: want to know what's at stake with the launch and
Speaker 2: all those going forward, picture to check out last week's spot.
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving is just two days away, everyone, and our thoughts
Speaker 2: here at least as always turned to the Musk family table.
Speaker 2: In the past, it's been a pretty raucous and wild event. Max.
Speaker 2: Paint us a picture here. What's it going to be
Speaker 2: like this year?
Speaker 3: I feel like all Thanksgiving dinners to some extent are
Speaker 3: exercises in like avoiding politics, and you're just trying to
Speaker 3: like sit there with your family just.
Speaker 4: Like hoping head down, just can't avoid it. And so
Speaker 4: I mean, I imagine it's kind of the same situation,
Speaker 4: except it's all of them just hoping that Elon will,
Speaker 4: like you do, not go on a wokeness rant, which
Speaker 4: I again like that feels like a common Thanksgiving tableau
Speaker 4: kind of brings everyone down, And I imagine that could
Speaker 4: that's you know, almost inevitability, and the real the only
Speaker 4: question is how do they kind of steer away from it?
Speaker 2: Well, listen, the one thing that I'm hoping for this
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving is so that Sarah Friar can get some rest
Speaker 2: and that there isn't some like enormous open ai slash
Speaker 2: x news on Thursday morning.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's help.
Speaker 2: All Right, that's it. Thanks for listening to Elon, Inc.
Speaker 2: And thanks to our panel Sarah, Dana Max.
Speaker 3: Great to be here, have a great week.
Speaker 6: Thanks all.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Stacy Wong, Naomi Shaven and
Speaker 2: Rayhan Harmancia are senior editors. The idea for this very
Speaker 2: show also came from Rayhon Blake Maples handles engineering, and
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Speaker 2: us happy Thanksgiving all. See you next week.