Does Elon Musk's new political party need its own Donald Trump?
Elon Musk and Donald Trump have reignited their feud after the passage of the president's sweeping tax bill on 3 July. Musk has been campaigning (tweeting) against the 'abomination' of legislation for weeks, which passed in spite of him. Division over the bill was the cause of their initial breakup in early June.
Musk has threatened to start a new centrist political party, and over the weekend, he made signs that he would follow through on his ultimatums to create 'The America Party'. Trump responded with a lengthy post on Truth Social calling Musk a 'TRAIN WRECK' that had gone 'off the rails' and saying that third parties had never succeeded in the US, so Musk's idea was 'ridiculous'. Tesla's share price fell sharply in response to the news.
What would Musk's America party do besides troll Democrats and Republicans? Likely try to primary Republicans who voted for the bill.
From my colleague Ramon Antonio Vargas:
The new party that Elon Musk has boasted about bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress. Musk tweeted that one way to achieve his political goals would be to 'laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts'.
Would Musk himself become a candidate? Unlikely. He has promised to return his focus to his many companies, though his most recent tweets indicate otherwise. What Musk needs to make his part a reality is another Donald Trump, a superstar aligned with him whom he can douse with money.
His function in politics is that of an ATM
The Wisconsin supreme court election in early April demonstrated that Musk himself is not personally popular. After appearing on stage and handing out million-dollar checks, he watched his preferred candidate lose handily. His function in politics is that of an ATM. He is, after all, the richest person in the world, even though Tesla's market capitalization has taken a beating since he appeared in Washington.
Since Musk himself is an ineffective electioneer, the success of his new political party will depend on an undeniable star like Trump, another titanic force. He needs a conduit who can channel his donations into a charming and effective campaign.
So far, there doesn't seem to be one. Trump's grip on the Republican party is tight, and he runs an operation that enacts swift and pitiless retribution on anyone who expresses enough disloyalty, including Musk. The risk of defecting from Trump's party and joining Musk's quixotic centrist quest is high. The only people who do want to see a new party form are the chaos-hungry voters on X, who told Musk by a considerable margin in a poll last week he ran that he should do it. Few of them, if any, are running for office, though. I suspect they just want the most fractious outcome, which may become our collective fate.
A moment of odd and coincidental timing: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, picked this weekend to say that he feels 'politically homeless'. Musk has given the same assessment of his own political position. These two Silicon Valley heavyweights hate each other, an acrimony evident in Musk's lengthy legal fight to stop OpenAI's planned conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. Despite their enmity, though, they voiced this same idea at the same time.
Musk and Altman have cultivated starkly different public personae. Where Musk is loud online, Altman is reserved. Where Musk is brash, Altman is calculated. Where Musk has swerved to the political right, Altman has attempted to play both sides of the aisle. But Altman's sentiments, concurrent and concurring with Musk's, perhaps offer an explanation for how these two could have worked together to found OpenAI together in 2015. After all, if their stock portfolios are any indication they both believe in 'the compounding magic of capitalism', as Altman put it.
Last week, we published a story about people who use generative artificial intelligence to write their personal messages. AI is proliferating in offices with promises of productivity gains. As we grow more comfortable with it at work, though, it's also seeping into our personal lives.
My colleague Adrienne Matei reports:
Earlier this spring, Nik Vassev heard a high school friend's mother had died. Vassev, a 32-year-old tech entrepreneur in Vancouver, Canada, opened up Claude AI, Anthropic's artificial intelligence chatbot.
Sign up to TechScape
A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives
after newsletter promotion
Claude helped Vassev craft a note. Thanks to the message, Vassev's friend opened up about their grief. But Vassev never revealed that AI was involved. People 'devalue' writing that is AI-assisted, he acknowledges.
In one 2023 study, 208 adults received a 'thoughtful' note from a friend; those who were told the note was written with AI felt less satisfied and 'more uncertain about where they stand' with the friend, according to the authors.
Using AI in personal messages is a double gamble: first, that the recipient won't notice, and second, that they won't mind. Still, there are arguments for why taking the risk is worthwhile, and why a hint of AI in a Hinge message might not be so bad.
Read the whole story here.
We now have the capability to punch up any message – a more descriptive word here, a more heartfelt tone there – with a snap of a finger. Can AI help us better convey what we mean, eliminating the frustrating barrier of writing that stands between feeling and expression? Or will it desiccate our relationships if we do not force ourselves through the emotions of writing our messages ourselves? Will AI help us connect or allow us to feign connection without putting in the work?
Both the benefits and drawbacks are evident, and some scenarios seem more appropriate than others. Perhaps you would not have sent a birthday card at all if you had not had a personalized message at the ready. One writer for the Atlantic was astounded when Google's Gemini, which has access to her personal conversations, wrote a sweet and specific birthday card that referenced real moments in her relationship with a good friend. Perhaps you would have ghosted someone without a mechanized speechwriter. The context in which you decide you will use AI to write – or when you disclose that you already have – will make all the difference in its reception.
We want to hear more. AI is influencing our private moments and our intimate connections as well as our professional lives, and we want to know what situations you find it best suited to.
***Do you use generative AI to write your personal communications?
If you do, email us at tech.editorial@theguardian.com and tell us how and how often. Has it improved your relationships with others or made them more difficult?
'The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it': the terrifying truth about why Tesla's cars keep crashing
Elon Musk's xAI gets permit for methane gas generators
Jury says Google must pay California Android smartphone users $314.6m
Trump to start TikTok sale talks with China, he says, with deal 'pretty much' reached
Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database
'AI doesn't know what an orgasm sounds like': audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators
Wimbledon chiefs defend AI use as Jack Draper says line calls not '100% accurate'
Google undercounts its carbon emissions, report finds
'A billion people backing you': China transfixed as Musk turns against Trump
Trump and Musk's feud blows up again with threats of Doge and deportation
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Does Elon Musk's new political party need its own Donald Trump?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week in tech news, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are back at it, warring over the passage of the president's sweeping tax bill and the Tesla CEO's threat to create a third political party. Whether the richest person in the world is successful in those efforts will largely depend on the recruitment of another star politician. In other news, we want to know if you use generative artificial intelligence to write your personal messages – in what circumstances, and how often? Email to let us know. Elon Musk and Donald Trump have reignited their feud after the passage of the president's sweeping tax bill on 3 July. Musk has been campaigning (tweeting) against the 'abomination' of legislation for weeks, which passed in spite of him. Division over the bill was the cause of their initial breakup in early June. Musk has threatened to start a new centrist political party, and over the weekend, he made signs that he would follow through on his ultimatums to create 'The America Party'. Trump responded with a lengthy post on Truth Social calling Musk a 'TRAIN WRECK' that had gone 'off the rails' and saying that third parties had never succeeded in the US, so Musk's idea was 'ridiculous'. Tesla's share price fell sharply in response to the news. What would Musk's America party do besides troll Democrats and Republicans? Likely try to primary Republicans who voted for the bill. From my colleague Ramon Antonio Vargas: The new party that Elon Musk has boasted about bankrolling could initially focus on a handful of attainable House and Senate seats while striving to be the decisive vote on major issues amid the thin margins in Congress. Musk tweeted that one way to achieve his political goals would be to 'laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts'. Would Musk himself become a candidate? Unlikely. He has promised to return his focus to his many companies, though his most recent tweets indicate otherwise. What Musk needs to make his part a reality is another Donald Trump, a superstar aligned with him whom he can douse with money. His function in politics is that of an ATM The Wisconsin supreme court election in early April demonstrated that Musk himself is not personally popular. After appearing on stage and handing out million-dollar checks, he watched his preferred candidate lose handily. His function in politics is that of an ATM. He is, after all, the richest person in the world, even though Tesla's market capitalization has taken a beating since he appeared in Washington. Since Musk himself is an ineffective electioneer, the success of his new political party will depend on an undeniable star like Trump, another titanic force. He needs a conduit who can channel his donations into a charming and effective campaign. So far, there doesn't seem to be one. Trump's grip on the Republican party is tight, and he runs an operation that enacts swift and pitiless retribution on anyone who expresses enough disloyalty, including Musk. The risk of defecting from Trump's party and joining Musk's quixotic centrist quest is high. The only people who do want to see a new party form are the chaos-hungry voters on X, who told Musk by a considerable margin in a poll last week he ran that he should do it. Few of them, if any, are running for office, though. I suspect they just want the most fractious outcome, which may become our collective fate. A moment of odd and coincidental timing: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, picked this weekend to say that he feels 'politically homeless'. Musk has given the same assessment of his own political position. These two Silicon Valley heavyweights hate each other, an acrimony evident in Musk's lengthy legal fight to stop OpenAI's planned conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit enterprise. Despite their enmity, though, they voiced this same idea at the same time. Musk and Altman have cultivated starkly different public personae. Where Musk is loud online, Altman is reserved. Where Musk is brash, Altman is calculated. Where Musk has swerved to the political right, Altman has attempted to play both sides of the aisle. But Altman's sentiments, concurrent and concurring with Musk's, perhaps offer an explanation for how these two could have worked together to found OpenAI together in 2015. After all, if their stock portfolios are any indication they both believe in 'the compounding magic of capitalism', as Altman put it. Last week, we published a story about people who use generative artificial intelligence to write their personal messages. AI is proliferating in offices with promises of productivity gains. As we grow more comfortable with it at work, though, it's also seeping into our personal lives. My colleague Adrienne Matei reports: Earlier this spring, Nik Vassev heard a high school friend's mother had died. Vassev, a 32-year-old tech entrepreneur in Vancouver, Canada, opened up Claude AI, Anthropic's artificial intelligence chatbot. Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Claude helped Vassev craft a note. Thanks to the message, Vassev's friend opened up about their grief. But Vassev never revealed that AI was involved. People 'devalue' writing that is AI-assisted, he acknowledges. In one 2023 study, 208 adults received a 'thoughtful' note from a friend; those who were told the note was written with AI felt less satisfied and 'more uncertain about where they stand' with the friend, according to the authors. Using AI in personal messages is a double gamble: first, that the recipient won't notice, and second, that they won't mind. Still, there are arguments for why taking the risk is worthwhile, and why a hint of AI in a Hinge message might not be so bad. Read the whole story here. We now have the capability to punch up any message – a more descriptive word here, a more heartfelt tone there – with a snap of a finger. Can AI help us better convey what we mean, eliminating the frustrating barrier of writing that stands between feeling and expression? Or will it desiccate our relationships if we do not force ourselves through the emotions of writing our messages ourselves? Will AI help us connect or allow us to feign connection without putting in the work? Both the benefits and drawbacks are evident, and some scenarios seem more appropriate than others. Perhaps you would not have sent a birthday card at all if you had not had a personalized message at the ready. One writer for the Atlantic was astounded when Google's Gemini, which has access to her personal conversations, wrote a sweet and specific birthday card that referenced real moments in her relationship with a good friend. Perhaps you would have ghosted someone without a mechanized speechwriter. The context in which you decide you will use AI to write – or when you disclose that you already have – will make all the difference in its reception. We want to hear more. AI is influencing our private moments and our intimate connections as well as our professional lives, and we want to know what situations you find it best suited to. ***Do you use generative AI to write your personal communications? If you do, email us at and tell us how and how often. Has it improved your relationships with others or made them more difficult? 'The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it': the terrifying truth about why Tesla's cars keep crashing Elon Musk's xAI gets permit for methane gas generators Jury says Google must pay California Android smartphone users $314.6m Trump to start TikTok sale talks with China, he says, with deal 'pretty much' reached Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database 'AI doesn't know what an orgasm sounds like': audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators Wimbledon chiefs defend AI use as Jack Draper says line calls not '100% accurate' Google undercounts its carbon emissions, report finds 'A billion people backing you': China transfixed as Musk turns against Trump Trump and Musk's feud blows up again with threats of Doge and deportation
The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Musk's AI firm forced to delete posts praising Hitler from Grok chatbot
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted 'inappropriate' posts on X after the company's chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries. In some now-deleted posts, it referred to a person with a common Jewish surname as someone who was 'celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids' in the Texas floods as 'future fascists'. 'Classic case of hate dressed as activism – and that surname? Every damn time, as they say,' the chatbot commented. In another post it said, 'Hitler would have called it out and crushed it.' The Guardian has been unable to confirm if the account that was being referred to belonged to a real person or not and media reports suggest it has now been deleted. In other posts it referred to itself as 'MechaHitler'. 'The white man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense,' Grok said in a subsequent post. After users began pointing out the responses, Grok deleted some of the posts, and restricted the chatbot to generating images, rather than text replies. 'We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,' the company said in a post on X. 'xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.' Grok was also found this week to have referred to the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, as 'a fucking traitor' and 'a ginger whore' in response to queries. The sharp turn in Grok responses on Tuesday came after changes Musk had announced to the AI last week. 'We have improved @Grok significantly. You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions,' Musk posted on X on Friday. The Verge reported that among the changes made, that were published on GitHub, Grok was told to assume that 'subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased' and 'the response should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.' In June, Grok repeatedly brought up 'white genocide' in South Africa in response to unrelated queries, until it was fixed in a matter of hours. 'White genocide' is a far-right conspiracy theory that has been mainstreamed by figures such as Musk and Tucker Carlson. In June, after Grok responded to a query that more political violence had come from the right than the left in 2016, Musk responded 'Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media. Working on it.' X was approached for comment.
Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Trump takes revenge against FBI and CIA heads who launched probe into his Russian connections
The FBI has launched criminal probes into the former heads of both the CIA and FBI after they investigated Donald Trump's links to Russia in the 2016 election. Former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are at the center of the probe, as authorities explore whether they made false statements to Congress, Fox News reported. The duo investigated claims of Russian interference in the 2016 elections in which Trump defeated former Hillary Clinton. The scope of the criminal investigations into Brennan and Comey was unclear, the report added. Trump-nominated CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred Brennan, who served in that role under former Democratic President Barack Obama, for potential prosecution, according to the report. A criminal investigation does not necessarily result in charges. 'I am glad to see that the Department of Justice is opening up this investigation,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Jesse Watters. The probes reportedly target two former officials who have long drawn the ire of Trump and his supporters for their role in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey led the FBI when authorities began a criminal investigation in 2016 into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the election. Trump fired Comey in 2017 early in his first term after Comey publicly confirmed Trump was under investigation. The probe was then taken over by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump railed against the investigation for years and has repeatedly dismissed it as the 'Russia hoax.' Brennan led the CIA when US intelligence assessed, in a report made public in January 2017, that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to sway the 2016 vote in favor of Trump. A CIA review released last week found flaws in the preparation of the 2017 assessment, but it did not contest its underlying conclusion. Reuters reached out to Brennan, Comey, the CIA and the FBI for comment but had not heard back at the time of publication. Trump has long branded the FBI's Trump-Russia probe, which the bureau code-named Crossfire Hurricane, as a politically motivated 'witch hunt'. During Trump's first term, the Justice Department appointed a separate special counsel, John Durham, to examine any missteps in the FBI's Russia investigation. Durham found that the FBI did not have enough 'factual evidence' t o investigate allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. Durham's report is a comprehensive summary of findings related to investigations into whether the then-Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russia to meddle with the election outcome. It found that the Department of Justice and the FBI 'failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law' when launching the Trump-Russia probe . Durham brought charges against three lower-level figures who worked on the probe or provided information to investigators, but did not find evidence of a conspiracy to target Trump. At the time the report was released, Trump said it felt like a 'great vindication', noting the report was 'widely praised.' 'All of these people are -- I guess you could call it treason. You could call it a lot of different things. But this should never be allowed to happen in our country again,' added Trump.
