Source- Analytics India Magazine
‘‘World War III’, a major threat, makes the Tesla CEO Elon Musk delay a whopping $44 billion Twitter buyout deal. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk in his private texts revealed the anxieties over future plans and said it wouldn’t make sense to buy Twitter “if we are heading into World War III.” As a precaution, the billionaire wanted to ‘slow down’ the acquisition of Twitter.
This piece of information was produced during a hearing regarding pushing back a trial in October over Musk’s deal to buy Twitter. However, it must be kept in mind that this is not the first time Musk has allegedly tried to back-out of the deal, with previous instances including where he accused Twitter of extending a multi million severance package that had been extended to Peiter Zaiko, departing security chief of the company.
The Tesla CEO who had aimed to buy Twitter in April and hassled to make it private has accused Twitter of concealing information about bots and spam accounts on their platform and had informed Twitter regarding this official backout in July.
With regards to the trial, a heated debate seems to be eminent among the two groups where Twitter has claimed ‘personal financial concerns’ on Musk’s side as the main reason for the backout. This theory has been completely disregarded by Musk’s lawyers since there was no evidence to support it. According to Insider, his lawyer stated that “their theory about what really happened isn’t what actually happened.” Peiter Zaiko had also been brought in during the trial, who had disclosed that Twitter had been inadequately dealing with security issues.
The receiver of these texts had been a Morgan Stanley Banker, holding a financing part in the world-famous ‘Twitter Deal.’ A reference to the Russian President Putin had also been brought into the series of conversations, where Putin had stated that Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine was “the only right decision” along with a baseless claim that West was “preparing for invasion of Russia”
Musk gives significant importance to AI, with a claim that AI would soon ignite World War III and affirmed with Putin that the country which holds the lead over AI would “be the ruler of the world.” Citing examples from movies like ‘Terminator’, a possible destruction by AI is very much viable. Being an ardent user of Twitter, Musk in 2017 had brought into light the possibility of “competition between AI superiority at national level a possible cause of WW III”
China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017
Elon Musk had been skeptical of possibilities of a possible take over by AI. In a documentary by American filmmaker Chris Paine, Musk dove into how the development of AI by a company or a group of people could result in the type of superintelligence that would eventually govern the world.
