DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday he plans to find a CEO for Twitter “probably towards the end of this year.”
Speaking via video call to the World Government Summit in Dubai, Musk said making sure the platform could work remained the most important thing to him.
“I think I need to stabilize the organization and make sure it’s in good financial shape,” Musk said when asked when he would appoint a CEO. “I guess towards the end of this year would be a good time to find someone else to run the business.”
Musk, 51, first made his fortune on the financial site PayPal, then founded the spacecraft company SpaceX and the electric car company Tesla. In recent months, however, more attention has been paid to the chaos surrounding its $44 billion purchase of microblogging site Twitter.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military’s use of Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink, as it defends against the ongoing invasion of Russia put Musk intermittently at the center of the war.
Musk offered an extensive 35-minute chat that touched on the billionaire’s fears about artificial intelligence, the collapse of civilization and the possibility of aliens. But questions on Twitter kept coming up as Musk described Tesla and SpaceX as capable of operating without his direct, day-to-day involvement.
“Twitter is still a bit of a backwards startup,” he said. “There’s work to be done here to get Twitter to some kind of stable position and to really build the software engineering engine.”
Musk has also sought to portray his takeover of San Francisco-based Twitter as cultural correction.
“I think the general idea is just to reflect people’s values rather than imposing the values of San Francisco and Berkeley, which is kind of a niche ideology compared to the rest of the world,” he said. -he declares. “And, you know, Twitter was doing, I think, a little too much to impose a niche.”
Musk’s takeover of Twitter has led to mass layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. Musk, who has to pay around $1 billion in annual interest for his purchase, has been trying to find a way to maximize the company’s profits.
However, some of Musk’s decisions conflict with why journalists, governments and others rely on Twitter as a platform for sharing information.
Musk on Wednesday described the need for users to rely on Twitter for reliable information from verified accounts. However, a confusing rollout to a paid verified account system has seen some famous companies impersonating them, resulting in a further withdrawal of needed advertising money from the site.
“Twitter is definitely a roller coaster,” he acknowledged.
Forbes estimates Musk’s wealth at just under $200 billion. Forbes analysis ranks Musk as the second richest person on the planet, just behind French luxury brand tycoon Bernard Arnault.
But Musk has also become a thought leader to some, even if he’s an oracle who tries to get six hours of sleep a night despite challenges from Twitter.
Musk described his children as being “programmed by Reddit and YouTube”. He warned that artificial intelligence should be regulated “very carefully”, describing it as akin to the promise of nuclear power but the danger of atomic bombs. He also warned against having one civilization or “too much cooperation” on Earth, saying it could “collapse” a society that looks like a “little candle in a vast darkness”.
And when asked about the existence of extraterrestrials, Musk had a firm answer.
“What’s crazy is that I haven’t seen any evidence of extraterrestrial technology or extraterrestrial life. And I think I would know because of SpaceX,” he said. anyone who knows more about space, you know, than me.”
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.