‘Twitter is quite the roller coaster’: Elon Musk tells Dubai World Government Summit

Billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk said “Twitter is quite the rollercoaster” at Dubai’s World Government Summit (WGS) on Wednesday as he explained his reasoning behind the $44billion buyout deal.

“If you think I was a little worried about the direction about the effect of social media on the world, and especially Twitter, and I thought it was very important for there to be a maximally trusted, sort of digital public square, where people work within countries and internationally to communicate with the least amount of censorship allowed by law,” he said.

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“But I think in general, social media companies should adhere to the laws of our countries and not try to put a thumb on the scale beyond the laws of countries…and more accurately reflect the (needs of) the people.”

Addressing if he would hire a new CEO to take over Twitter, he said he “needs to stabilize the organization’ but probably towards the end of the year would “find someone else to run the company.”

The founder of Tesla and Space X said he has a long-term vision for the social media platform.

“Be as useful as possible and be as entertaining as possible and also be a source of truth,” he said. “Twitter is an acceleration of that maximally useful app.”

Musk continued that Twitter is working on something called ‘community notes’ to access the truth of information on the social media platform.

“I think trying to have any many organizations and people who are legitimate,” he added.

Musk said his focus was on having as many companies and people who are legitimate as possible to ensure Twitter is a platform of trust and credibility.

He said Twitter was good for allowing people “to speak in their voice” as opposed to how they should.

“So, I would like encourage CEOs and companies and legislators and ministers and so forth to speak (on Twitter) authentically.”

He said while this might invite criticism, he acknowledge that “I am constantly attacked on Twitter and frankly I don’t mind.”

“AI has great, great promise…but also with that comes danger. The challenge here is that the government regulatory authorities tend to be set up in reaction to something bad that happened.”

“So, I think we should be quite concerned about it, and we should have some regulation of what it is fundamentally of the interests of the public Because think of any technology which is potentially a risk to people like if it's an aircraft or cars or medicine, we have regulatory bodies that oversee the public safety of cars and planes and medicines.”

Musk was speaking Wednesday at Dubai’s World Government Summit (WGS) in the session ‘A Conversation with Elon Musk 2.0’, which was moderated by Mohammed Abdullah al-Gergawi, the UAE’s Minister of Cabinet Affairs and WGS chairman.

It was almost six years after he first spoke at Dubai’s World Government Summit

About 20 heads of state, ministers, CEOs, thought leaders and celebrities have addressed this year’s World Government Summit in Dubai.
Among them were presidents, government officials, ministers, heads of international organizations and companies, thought leaders, global experts and prominent business leaders from the private sector
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They included Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.
The World Government Summit 2023 – held from February 13 – 15, under the slogan ‘Shaping Future Governments’ has had global policy, the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change, the future of jobs, future of society and city design up for debate.

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