Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Admiral Yi]

Very nice. 

[crazy canuck]

Brilliant JR - Post of the month!

[The Larch]

We know who to blame when Skynet ineviably arises from this.

Fighting 'Woke AI,' Musk Recruits Team to Develop OpenAI Rival

Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the effort and a third person briefed on the conversations.

In recent months Musk has repeatedly criticized OpenAI for installing safeguards that prevent ChatGPT from producing text that might offend users. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but has since cut ties with the startup, suggested last year that OpenAI's technology was an example of "training AI to be woke." His comments imply that a rival chatbot would have fewer restrictions on divisive subjects compared to ChatGPT and a related chatbot Microsoft recently launched.

To spearhead the effort, Musk has been recruiting Igor Babuschkin, a researcher who recently left Alphabet's DeepMind AI unit and specializes in the kind of machine-learning models that power chatbots like ChatGPT. In an interview, Babuschkin said building a chatbot with fewer content safeguards is not Musk's objective.

[Josquius]

Oh dear

[Jacob]

Why, though? If we're looking for that kind of functionality, we can just read Musk's tweets.

[The Brain]

Why, though? If we're looking for that kind of functionality, we can just read Musk's tweets.

Neither artifical nor intelligent.

[Razgovory]

That's what the internet needs: racist AI.

[The Larch]

Elon Musk presents his candidacy for Boss of the Year, 2023 edition, by firing and mocking a high ranking handicapped employee with a massive severance package.

Worker asks Elon Musk on Twitter: Have I been fired?

A Twitter employee has appealed to Elon Musk on the platform to ask whether he had been sacked.

In a tweet to the firm's chief executive, Halli Thorleifsson said: "Your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am employed or not".

Mr Musk responded by asking: "What work have you been doing?"

Mr Thorleifsson told the BBC that nine days after being frozen out of Twitter's accounts he did not know whether he had been fired or not.

After a series of follow up questions and answers with Mr Musk, that read like a live interview for his job, Mr Thorleifsson said he received an email confirming that he had been sacked.

Twitter did not immediately respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Mr Thorleifsson, 45, was a senior director in product design for Twitter. He told the BBC the ambiguity around his job was "strange" and "extremely stressful".

"I opened my computer on Sunday morning nine days ago and saw that the screen was grey and locked, indicating that I had been locked out of my Twitter accounts", he said.

"After a few days had passed I started reaching out to people, including Elon and the head of HR to ask about my situation.

"The head of HR has since twice emailed me and has not been able to answer whether or not I am an employee at Twitter."

Frustrated, he tweeted his top boss, Elon Musk.

Halli@iamharaldur

Dear @elonmusk  👋

9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees.

However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here?

"Maybe if enough people retweet you'll answer me here", Mr Thorleifsson said.

Mr Musk responded:

Elon Musk @elonmusk

What work have you been doing?

After several follow up questions Mr Thorleifsson supplied a list of things he had done at the company. The exchange ended with Mr Musk posting two laughing emojis.

Shortly after that exchange Mr Thorleifsson said that Twitter's Human Resources department had contacted him and said that he had been fired.

The exchange was widely shared on Twitter, with Mr Musk wading in with some replies.

He went on to further criticise Mr Thorleifsson saying: "The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was simultaneously tweeting up a storm.

"Can't say I have a lot of respect for that."

The Iceland-based entrepreneur had sold his company, Ueno, a creative design agency, to Twitter in early 2021 - after founding the firm in Reykjavik in 2014.

As part of the acquisition he became a full-time employee at Twitter.

"I decided to sell for a few reasons but one of them is that I have muscular dystrophy and my body is slowly but surely failing me," he told the BBC.

"I have a few good work years left in me so this was a way to wrap up my company, and set up myself and my family for years when I won't be able to do as much."

Mr Thorleifsson is worried that Mr Musk will not honour the contract he signed with Twitter when he sold them his company.

"This is extremely stressful. This is my retirement fund, a way to take care of myself and my family as my disease progresses. Having the richest man in the world on the other end of this, potentially refusing to stand by contracts is not easy for me to accept," he said.

Last month, Elon Musk appeared to fire another 200 Twitter employees. It means that Twitter now has just over 2,000 workers - down from approximately 7,500 in October.

"Companies let people go, that's within their rights," Mr Thorleifsson said. "They usually tell people about it but that's seemingly the optional part at Twitter now".

[The Larch]

It also seems that Musk not only thinks that rent contracts don't apply to him, but neither do Amazon's cloud services. Bezos disagreed with that.

Twitter refused to pay AWS bill, so Amazon refused to pay for ads
Musk's Twitter is still $70m behind on payments

Since Elon Musk acquired the company, Twitter has begun to not pay landlords, cleaners, and software companies for services rendered.

Now, The Information reports that the company has for months refused to pay its Amazon Web Services bills, despite using the cloud service for key aspects of the social media platform.

This lack of payment caused Amazon to threaten retaliation, with the corporation saying that it would not pay for the advertising it runs on Twitter - thought to be around $1 million in the first quarter for retail, and more when Amazon Studios is taken into account. This may have had some impact, with Twitter paying $10m in AWS costs a few weeks ago.

But The Information reports that there is at least $70 million still outstanding, and AWS is not willing to renegotiate the five-and-a-half year contract it signed with Twitter in 2020.

That contract required Twitter to pay $510m over that period. It was signed when Twitter was expecting to move its main timeline over to AWS, but that never occurred (instead it hosts Twitter Spaces and other services), meaning that Twitter is not fully making use of the contract.

Twitter uses Google Cloud to a greater degree, with its own five-year contract worth $1bn. While Twitter is also looking to reduce its Google Cloud costs, Twitter is up to date on payments - perhaps because it is a larger advertiser, and pays to license Twitter's data so that it shows up in Google Search.

Google has not agreed to any contract renegotiations.

At the same time, Musk has closed one of Twitter's three US data centers, cut back on server capacity, and fired IT and software workers that kept the service online. It has experienced a number of major outages since he took over.

[DGuller]

I'm starting to wonder if Musk is just an even luckier version of Trump.  There are probably hundreds of people out there just like them who have predictably blown up and no one who knows them suspects that any other outcome was even possible for them.

[Jacob]

So apparently Musk "apologized" to Haraldur Þorleifsson whom he "fired" and mocked. That may or may not be because Twitter bought Þorleifsson's company a year or two ago and apparently will have to pay him about $100 million or so if terminated early and without grounds.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1633261069534724096/photo/2

[Jacob]

Here's  Þorleifsson's response to Musk. It's a really enjoyable read:

[garbon]

So apparently Musk "apologized" to Haraldur Þorleifsson whom he "fired" and mocked. That may or may not be because Twitter bought Þorleifsson's company a year or two ago and apparently will have to pay him about $100 million or so if terminated early and without grounds.

https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1633261069534724096/photo/2

Yeah what a pitiful apology.

[The Brain]

Here's  Þorleifsson's response to Musk. It's a really enjoyable read:

Has Musk inherited an emerald mine? I thought it was his dad's, but I haven't paid much attention.

[Josquius]

I notice for the first time "context" attached to musks tweet. Is that new?
Doubtless open for abuse but interesting.

Love the bit in the reply about his family. "I have two kids. I see them every day. I recommend that."