In an interview, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said that the US government had “full access” to users’ private direct messages. Musk told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson in an excerpt from his interview that he was astonished to learn about the government’s capacity to read users’ direct conversations on his platform.
“The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind,” Musk, who recently founded an artificial intelligence company called X.AI, told Carlson in the interview set to air on Tuesday. “I was not aware of that.”
“Would that include people’s DMs?” Carlson asked Musk.
“Yes,” Musk replied to Carlson.
Musk also expressed alarm about the latest wave of artificial intelligence, or A.I., warning Carlson that the technology has the potential to destroy society.
“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential — however, small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial — it has the potential for civilizational destruction,” Musk said.
Musk’s comments came after he was mired in another fight with National Public Radio (NPR), an independent news institution. Musk formally purchased the social media site last month.
NPR deactivates Twitter accounts over the “state-affiliated media” label, which is later changed to “government-funded”
In response to Twitter’s addition of a “state-affiliated media” label to several media sites that get some public support, NPR said last week that it will deactivate its Twitter accounts and no longer publish on the social media platform.
Twitter then removed the “state-affiliated” label and changed it to say “government funded,” after receiving substantial criticism for the decision.
NPR is an independent news institution, according to White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, who stated in a statement, “If anyone were to follow their coverage, it is clear that they are indeed an independent news organization.”