Monthly Archives: May 2023

JPMorgan global market strategist Jack Manley and The Fitz-Gerald Group principal Keith Fitz-Gerald discuss Tesla's investor day and if now is the time for investors to get off the sidelines on 'The Claman Countdown.'

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday that working from home is "morally wrong" when others in the service industry still have to show up in person.

"There are some exceptions, but I think that the whole notion of work from home is a bit like the fake Marie Antoinette quote, Let them eat cake,' Musk told CNBC.

"It's like, really, youre going to work from home and you're going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory? You're going to make the people who make your food that they can't work from home? The people that fix your house they can't work from home? But, you can? Does that seem morally right?" the billionaire asked. "That's messed up."

Musk said he saw it as both a productivity issue and a moral issue.

ELON MUSK TELLS TESLA EXECUTIVES HE MUST PERSONALLY APPROVE ALL HIRING IN NEW MEMO: REPORT

Elon Musk walks in the Paddock prior to final practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome in Miami on May 6, 2023. (Clive Mason - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Musk said that workers need to get off their "moral high horse" with their "work from home bulls---."

He added that he is a big believer that employees are more productive when they are in person.

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The "laptop class," Musk noted, is living in "la-la land."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)

"I'm saying like, look, put 40 hours in," Musk said. "And, frankly, it doesn't even need to be Monday through Friday. You could work Monday through Thursday. And, also, I think people should take vacations."

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks in Los Angeles on June 13, 2019. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo / Reuters Photos)

Musk said there are probably two or three days annually that he does not put in a full day's work.

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Many companies have reversed pandemic work-from-home rules, with others operating remotely or in a hybrid setting permanently.

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Elon Musk slams working from home as 'morally wrong,' says 'laptop class' living in 'la-la land' - Fox Business

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced changes to the platform's direct messages feature including the introduction of encryption.

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Twitter's power users are still coming to the app, but fewer are posting on it since Elon Musk's acquisition late last year, according to a survey from Pew Research Center.

"The Center's new analysis of actual behavior on the site finds that the most active users before Musk's acquisition defined as the top 20% by tweet volume have seen a noticeable posting decline in the months after," the survey's authors wrote on Wednesday. "These users' average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition."

Additionally, about six in ten U.S. adults who have used Twitter in the past year said they've recently taken breaks from the service, and a quarter of the group indicated they will not use Twitter a year from now, the survey said.

The new data underscore the challenges facing Twitter's incoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino, who will replace Musk. She'll be taking over the ailing social media service, which has lost a number of advertisers over the past few months on concerns that racist and otherwise inappropriate content has flourished since Musk's takeover.

Yaccarino, who recently resigned from her position as NBCUniversal global advertising chief, will need to repair relationships with Twitter's advertisers and get a grasp on content moderation. Musk has slashed the company's workforce by about 80% to roughly 1,500 employees, getting rid of some people that he should've kept, he acknowledged in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Musk said. "So there's no question that some of the people who were let go probably shouldn't have been let go."

The Pew survey also showed most of Twitter's content is produced by a small group of power users.

"Since Musk's acquisition, 20% of U.S. adults on the site have produced 98% of all tweets by this group," the survey said.

Upon request for comment, Twitter responded with its now customary poop emoji.

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Twitter's top users are posting less since Musk takeover last year, Pew Survey shows - CNBC

Tech billionaire Elon Musk defended his promotion of conspiracy theories, called the work-from-home trend morally wrong and criticized the direction of tech startup OpenAI in a wide-ranging and at times combative interview Tuesday with CNBC.

The hourlong interview touched on subjects from autonomous vehicles and online free speech to how much sleep Musk gets and whether some of his tweets are antisemitic a reflection of his broad interests and influence as one of the worlds richest people.

Musk said he wouldnt stop sharing extremist views, even after a tweet hours earlier about fellow billionaire George Soros was widely condemned, including by the Israeli government.

Ill say what I want to say, and if the consequence of doing that is losing money, so be it, Musk told CNBC anchor David Faber in the interview, broadcast live from a Tesla facility in Texas.

Musks public statements, especially on Twitter, which he owns, have increasingly veered into online conspiracy theories in recent weeks.

He attacked Soros in several tweets Monday, saying that Soros wants to erode the very fabric of civilization and that he hates humanity. Musk compared Soros, who is a frequent target of anti-Jewish hatred, to Magneto, a fictional Jewish supervillain.

Some Twitter users offered a theory for Musks motivation: Hours before the attacks, a fund Soros controls reported selling its shares in Tesla, of which Musk is CEO.

The attack on Soros drew a swift and pointed denunciation from an official at Israels Foreign Affairs Ministry, David Saranga, who tweeted that Twitter was filled with AntiSemitic conspiracies and hate speech targeting Jews around the world.

Unfortunately Twitter does nothing to address this problem, Saranga wrote.

Musk alleged in other recent tweets that elites were falsifying examples of racial prejudice and that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg bought the 2020 election. Another tweet used a meme popular with white supremacists to try to explain the first two amendments to the Constitution.

Musk told Faber that he stood by his tweets and that he is a prosemite, not an antisemite.

I think thats true. Thats my opinion, he said of his attack on Soros.

Musk continued to insert himself into a discussion of the motives of a gunman who killed at least eight people at a mall in Texas this month. Although law enforcement officials have said the gunman was a suspected neo-Nazi sympathizer, Musk second-guessed them.

It should not be ascribed to white supremacy if its false, he said.

The interview occurred at a whirlwind time for Musk, one of the richest people in the world.

On a business level, he recently hired a new CEO for Twitter, and his company SpaceX tested the most powerful rocket ever created. Tuesday was also the day of Teslas annual shareholder meeting, where he promised to deliver the long-delayed Cybertruck.

On a geopolitical level, he met Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron. Over the weekend, he waded into Turkish national elections when he complied with a government order there to censor the tweets of opponents to President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

And on a personal level, authorities in the U.S. Virgin Islands said in a court filing Monday that they are seeking documents from Musk in connection with a lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase of having helped to enable the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

All the while, Musk keeps popping up in celebrity news, with tabloid coverage of his visits to a Formula 1 race in Miami and a music festival in Cabo San Lucas on Mexicos Pacific coast.

Musk, asked about the upheaval at Twitter since he bought it for $44 billion last year, said some of his layoffs may have gone too far by cutting people he shouldnt have.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, he said. Were not quite at break-even yet, but were close. We need to do it fast. And if you do it fast, unfortunately, theres gonna be some babies thrown out with the bathwater.

Faber asked Musk about an issue the tech industry and other office-based businesses are still wrestling with: how much flexibility there should be to work remotely. He said software engineers and others who have traditionally worked from offices should continue to do so, in part because blue-collar workers cant work from home.

People who make your food that gets delivered they cant work from home. The people that come fix your house, they can't work from home, but you can? Does that seem morally right? Thats messed up, he said.

You see it as a moral issue? Faber asked.

Yes. Its a productivity issue, but its also a moral issue, Musk said.

Musk said he remained upset about the direction of OpenAI, a company he helped to start as a nonprofit, open-source organization in 2015. Musk said he was instrumental in recruiting key scientists and even came up with the name.

It wouldnt exist without me, he said. OpenAI was meant to be open, as in open-source.

Now, however, OpenAI is partly for-profit, and it closely guards much of its work, a shift that began in 2019 as it tried to compete with Google and other companies for talent.

It would be as if you started a nonprofit to save the Amazon rainforest and they transformed themselves into a lumber company, he said.

The interview was unusual in part because Musk rarely grants time to large news outlets, which he frequently criticizes as biased.

Musk said he granted the interview at the recommendation of talent agent and public relations executive Ari Emanuel.

Im not doing an interview with CNBC, the organization, Im doing an interview with David Faber at Ari Emanuels recommendation, Musk tweeted. If David was at another news org, I would still do it.

CNBC is a part of NBCUniversal News Group, which also includes NBC News.

David Ingram covers tech for NBC News.

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Elon Musk defends his tweets, bashes work-from-home in CNBC interview - NBC News

Barrons senior writer Al Root discusses how Elon Musk has revitalized the space industry and weighs in on his Mars ambitions on Barrons Roundtable.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned on Tuesday that the economy is in for a challenging year ahead and said the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates as economic conditions worsen.

Musk was interviewed by CNBC's David Faber following Teslas annual meeting and asked Musk about how the Feds policy will make it a tough year for Tesla. Musk responded that it will be a tough year "for everyone, not just Tesla" and attributed it to the Feds recent rate hikes to tamp down stubbornly high inflation.

"You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly. It makes a lot of things more expensive certainly things that are bought with credit," Musk said. "But then it has downstream effects even on things that arent bought with credit."

ELON MUSK TELLS TESLA EXECUTIVES HE MUST PERSONALLY APPROVE ALL HIRING IN NEW MEMO: REPORT

Billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX, warned that the Federal Reserve will be too slow to lower interest rates, just as it was slow to raise rates as inflation spiked. ((AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) / AP Newsroom)

Musk explained that "if the car payments or your home mortgage payment is absorbing more of your monthly budget, then you have less money to buy other things. So actually, it affects everything, even those that arent bought on a line of credit."

"My concern with the way the Federal Reserve is making decisions is theyre just operating with too much latency," Musk continued. "Basically, the data is somewhat stale. The Federal Reserve was slow to raise interest rates, and now I think theyre going be slow to lower them."

INVESTORS ARE THE MOST PESSIMISTIC THIS YEAR AMID CREDIT CRUNCH, RECESSION FEARS

Musk said that economic conditions will be challenging "for everyone, not just Tesla" this year. ((Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the Fed raised interest rates for the 10th consecutive time and the benchmark federal funds rate is now at the highest levels in 16 years.

But the central bank signaled that may pause further rate hikes and future monetary policy moves will hinge on "incoming information."

INFLATION JUMPED 0.4% IN APRIL AS PRICES REMAIN STUBBORNLY HIGH

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has signaled the Fed may pause interest rate hikes as early as the Fed's next meeting depending on economic data. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Feds post-meeting statement noted, "In determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate to return inflation to 2% over time, the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments."

The statement omitted a phrase that had been included in the prior statement announcing a rate hike, in which the central bank indicated that "some additional policy firming may be appropriate" to bring inflation to the 2% target.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a post-meeting press conference that, "A decision on a pause was not made today," but emphasized that, "Were no longer saying that we anticipate," and reiterated that the Feds future policy decisions will "be driven by incoming data, meeting to meeting."

FOX Business Megan Henney contributed to this report.

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Musk warns of economic headwinds, says Fed will be slow to lower rates - Fox Business

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

Getty Images | Diego Donamaria

Elon Musk is concerned about his eight children's future careers especially if his kids have to compete with artificial intelligence for their dream jobs.

"How do we actually find fulfillment, how do we find meaning in life, if AI can do your job better than you can?" Musk wondered aloud in an interview with CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday.

Even as the world's second-richest person expressed a desire to help lead the coming AI charge his automaker Tesla is attempting to create fully self-driving cars, and he's previously discussed using Twitter to build AI tools he expressed concerns about the technology's future implications.

It's not the first time: In March, Musk signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development to ensure that the systems are ethically implemented, given the"profound risks to society and humanity."

On Tuesday, he struggled to articulate how the next generation might find value in a world where AI can do everything. "This question is a tough question to answer," Musk said.

Here are the two pieces of advice he said he'd give his own children:

In a way, Musk's top piece of advice is the same as it would have been pre-AI: Follow your passions in a way that can benefit other people.

"I would just say, you know, to sort of follow their heart in terms of what they find interesting to do, or fulfilling to do," Musk said. "And try to be as useful as possible to the rest of society."

The definition of "being useful to society" is rapidly changing. Even before ChatGPT's popularity exploded, people wondered how AI would replace human jobs.

Office and administrative roles could be at risk. So could content-creating jobs, from designers to software engineers though new opportunities could involve training and maintaining quality control for the AI systems that create such content.

For jobs that require uniquely human skills, AI may simply become a tool that makes work easier. Those could range from physically demanding roles like construction to communication-centric jobs like therapists.

"Jobs that emphasize interpersonal skills are much harder to be replaced by an AI," Dimitris Papanikloaou, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, told CNBC Make It in February.

Musk sleeps six hours per night, works seven days per week and only takes two or three vacation days annually, he said.

Apparently, that's what it takes for Musk to simultaneously run Tesla, SpaceX and for now, Twitter while also owning ventures like Neuralink and The Boring Company. On Tuesday, he questioned whether it's all worth it, especially if machines can eventually do the most tedious parts of those jobs for him.

"I've put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into building the companies," said Musk. "And then I'm like, 'Well, should I be doing this?' Because if I'm sacrificing time with friends and family but then ultimately, the AI can do all these things, does that make sense? I don't know."

That uncertainty may grow as AI becomes more and more complex. Even now, Musk sometimes adopts a "deliberate suspension of disbelief," finding a way to ignore the "dispiriting and demotivating" aspects of the technology he's helping build to get through his workdays, he said.

Not knowing what the future holds makes advice for the next generation difficult to give. The only wisdom Musk can reliably pass on, he said: "Work on things that you find interesting and fulfilling, and that contribute some good to the rest of society."

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Elon Musk on the future of work: 'How do we find meaning in life if A.I. can do your job better?' - CNBC

Ghislaine Maxwell and Elon Musk attend the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, California.

Kevin Mazur | vf14 | Wireimage | Getty Images

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Virgin Islands can serve a subpoena for Elon Musk to his electric car company Tesla, as part of the government's lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank's ties to dead sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

The ruling came days after lawyers for the USVI government told Judge Jed Rakoff they had been unable to serve the Tesla CEO personally with the subpoena demanding documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan.

The Virgin Islands is suing JPMorgan in U.S. District Court in Manhattan for allegedly enabling and financially benefiting from Epstein's sex trafficking of young women. The late financier and sex criminal had been a customer of the bank from 1998 through 2013. JPMorgan denies any wrongdoing.

On April 28, the USVI issued a subpoena to Musk because of suspicion that Epstein "may have referred or attempted to refer" Musk as a client to JPMorgan, according to a court filing Monday.

That subpoena demands that Musk turn over any documents showing communication involving him, JPMorgan and Epstein, as well as "all Documents reflecting or regarding Epstein's involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex."

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The USVI said in a court filing Monday that an investigative firm it had retained had been unable to locate Musk to serve him in person with the subpoena, as is the norm.

The filing also said that a lawyer for Musk did not reply to a request that the attorney accept the subpoena for his client.

Rakoff, in his order Wednesday, authorized the USVI to "arrange alternative service of its Subpoena to Produce Documents by serving Elon Musk via service upon Tesla Inc.'s registered agent."

Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The USVI also has issued similar subpoenas for documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is scheduled to be deposed on May 26 for the lawsuit and for a related suit against the bank by a woman who says Epstein sexually abused her.

Muks in a tweet Monday night had blasted the idea of that he be given a subpoena in the case.

"This is idiotic on so many levels," Musk wrote on Twitter, which he bought and took private last year.

"That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever," he wrote, referring to Epstein.

"The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd," Musk added. "JPM let Tesla down ten years ago, despite having Tesla's global commercial banking business, which we then withdrew. I have never forgiven them."

In 2018, Epstein told The New York Times he had been advising Musk after the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe into Musk's comments about taking Tesla private. A Tesla spokesperson told The Times, "It is incorrect to say that Epstein ever advised Elon on anything."

Epstein killed himself in August 2019, a month after federal authorities arrested him on an indictment charging him with child sex trafficking. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state charge of soliciting sex from an underage girl.

Before his fall from grace, Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, socialized with many rich and powerful people, among them former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Britain's Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III.

Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in late 2021 in federal court in Manhattan of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Maxwell was sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years in prison.

Musk in July 2020 replied to a Twitter post that showed him posing for a photo next to a smiling Maxwell.

"Don't know Ghislaine at all," Musk wrote. "She photobombed me once at a Vanity Fair party several years ago. Real question is why VF invited her in the first place."

The New York Times, in a 2022 article detailing that photo, reported that a Vanity Fair staff member who had stood next to both Maxwell and Musk at the party said that "the pair chatted."

"Ms. Maxwell asked Mr. Musk if there were a way to remove oneself from the internet and encouraged Mr. Musk to destroy the internet; Mr. Musk demurred," The Times reported, citing the staffer, who shared contemporaneous notes of the encounter.

"Ms. Maxwell then asked Mr. Musk why aliens hadn't yet made contact with humanity, to which Mr. Musk replied that all civilizations eventually end including Maxwell's hypothetical alien one and raised the possibility that humans are living in a simulation."

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Elon Musk subpoena in Epstein-JPMorgan lawsuit can be served to Tesla, judge rules - CNBC

Elon Musk told CNBC's David Faber on Tuesday that he doesn't care if his inflammatory tweets scare away potential Tesla buyers or Twitter advertisers.

"I'll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it," said Musk, who owns Twitter.

Musk has for years tweeted controversial items, including conspiracy theories and comments his critics have called broadly discriminatory.

His defense came after Musk caught renewed criticism for a tweet in which he likened liberal billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros to X-Men villain Magneto, a Jewish Holocaust survivor.

"He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity," Musk tweeted Monday.

Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund Management, recently cut its stake in Tesla. Soros, who is also Jewish, is a favorite target of right wing pundits and politicians and often the subject of anti-Semitic attacks. Soros and his family escaped the Nazis during World War II.

Critics said Musk's tweets about Soros fit a larger pattern of attacks on the 92-year-old investor and Democratic donor. "Musk's likening Soros to Magneto isn't casual; it's a nod to harmful antisemitic tropes of Jewish global control," tweeted Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Israel's Foreign Ministry, likewise, said Musk's tweets had "anti-Semitic overtones."

Musk on Tuesday denied he's an anti-Semite. "I'm a pro-Semite, if anything," he said when Faber asked him about the criticism. Musk has also previously tweeted and removed memes using Hitler.

Faber on Tuesday also asked Musk why he tweeted a link to someone who said a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this month might be part of "a bad psyop," or "psychological operation."

Investigators have probed whether the shooter, whom police killed, had expressed white supremacist views since he wore a "RWDS" patch, a reference to the phrase "Right Wing Death Squad," which is used by extremists. He also had Nazi tattoos, including a swastika.

"I thought this ascribing it to white supremacy was bulls---," Musk said, adding that he thinks there's no proof the shooter was a white supremacist. "We should not be ascribing things to white supremacy if they're if it's false."

Since Musk took over Twitter last fall, the social media network has experienced a sharp decline in advertising revenue as brands and companies assessed changes to the platform and some called out its outspoken new owner.

Last week, Musk hired former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino to replace him as Twitter's CEO, a move widely seen as a way to jumpstart Twitter's ad business. She started Sunday.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

CNBC's Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Elon Musk: 'I'll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it' - CNBC