Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off a U.S. trip in California to talk to billionaire businessman Elon Musk about antisemitism on his social media platform X — while Musk asked him to address his judicial overhaul in Israel. The two also discussed artificial intelligence in a sparsely attended livestream event Monday.
Netanyahu’s high-profile visit to the San Francisco Bay Area comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform, while Netanyahu is confronting political opposition at home and abroad. Protesters gathered early Monday outside the Fremont, California factory where Tesla makes its cars.
The video livestream kicked off shortly before 9:30 a.m. with Netanyahu and the Tesla CEO. Netanyahu’s official X account posted that he is holding a “one on one conversation” with Musk. The number of viewers hovered around 700-800 people.
The two kicked off with a joke about deepfakes and quickly launched into a discussion of artificial intelligence as both a blessing and a curse for humanity.
Netanyahu said an important question about more advanced AI is: “How do you get the international regime to control this thing?”
He said it starts by getting like-minded states to agree to a code of ethics and code of conduct to foster the benefits and “curb the curses” but said there will still be a need to “police the planet” against rogue actors.
The freestyle conversation, which included jokes from both men, soon turned to free speech and antisemitism, with Netanyahu telling Musk he hopes that within the confines of the First Amendment he can find a way to clamp down on antisemitism and other forms of hatred on his social media platform.
“I encourage you and urge you to find the balance. It’s a tough one,” Netanyahu said.
Musk said that with 100 million to 200 million posts on X in a day, “some of those are gonna be bad.” He then reiterated the platform’s policy to not promote or amplify hate speech. Under Musk, the former Twitter changed its rules so that objectionable posts are not usually removed, but instead their visibility is limited so people have to seek it out if they want to see it. Musk calls this “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”
Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform. The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil-rights organization, has accused…
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