Tesla shares rise as Politico reports Musk-White House to hold call
Trump threatened to cut off government contracts to Musk's companies, while Musk suggested Trump should be impeached, turning their relationship into an all-out brawl on social media.
Tesla shares closed down 14.3% on Thursday in New York, losing about $150 billion in market value.
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Trump can't stop using false and misleading data to make his case for DC takeover
President Donald Trump has exaggerated and, at times, misstated statistics and facts about crime in Washington, D.C., to justify his decision to deploy the National Guard in the city. Despite violent crime rates falling in the nation's capital over the last two years, Trump asserted, on Monday, that the city 'has been taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people.' For that reason, the president has directed approximately 800 National Guard members to D.C. to help local law enforcement take control of what the president claims is uncontrollable crime. A portion of those National Guard members began patrolling the city on Tuesday. But Trump's depiction of D.C. as lawless and filled with violent criminals is inaccurate. Violent crime rates in D.C. peaked in 2023 post-pandemic, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. The number of homicides that year was 274, the highest since the late 1990s. 'Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate, probably ever,' Trump said on Monday. 'They say 25 years, but they don't know what that means because it just goes back 25 years, can't be worse.' The 2023 homicide rate was not the highest the city has ever experienced – data, which goes back to 1960, indicates homicides peaked in the nation's capital in 1991. The 2023 rate has declined by 63 percent since 1991. Overall, violent crime has gone down by 35 percent since 2023. Sex abuse rates have gone down 71 percent, and assaults with a dangerous weapon have dropped 62 percent. The White House released a fact sheet as part of Trump's announcement, citing D.C.'s homicide rate in 2024 as the fourth highest in the country, with 27.3 per 100,000 residents. However, the fact sheet appeared to incorrectly summarize information from a preliminary crime data report that exclusively used Washington Post reporting, which found D.C.'s 2023 murder rate to be the fifth highest among the largest cities. But that the homicide rate dropped in 2024 and was not ranked in the top four cities, according to the Post. Trump also compared D.C. homicide rates to those of 'the worst places on Earth,' claiming murders are higher in the U.S. city than Bogotá, Colombia, or Mexico City, Mexico. Data indicates that Washington, D.C. has a higher homicide rate than Mexico City, which recorded approximately 10 per 100,000 residents, or Bogotá, which recorded 15.2 per every 100,000 in 2024. But neither Mexico City nor Bogotá were ranked in the top 50 global cities with the highest homicide rates, according to the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank. Washington, D.C., was ranked 50 in 2023 – meaning there are at least 49 other cities with higher homicide rates.
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Sam Altman and Elon Musk face off in race to link our brains with AI
The rivalry between two of the world's most powerful technology billionaires is moving into a new arena — the race to link human minds directly with machines. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was once an ally of Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX boss. Now the former partners are preparing to face off in the fast-developing field of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). These systems typically use artificial intelligence to translate brain activity into commands a computer can follow. They have enabled people with paralysis to control devices using only their thoughts. Advocates believe BCIs will one day allow humans to merge with advanced AI. Musk's company, Neuralink, began testing its technology on patients in the US last year and recently gained approval for a trial in Britain, its first in Europe. Altman is now backing a rival, Merge Labs, which aims to harness recent advances in AI to make BCIs faster and more capable, according to the Financial Times. In 2015 the pair launched OpenAI together when Musk provided much of the capital to launch the venture. They fell out three years later when Musk quit the board after disputes over how it would operate. Since then, they have built competing AI empires while publicly trading barbs Musk attempted to block OpenAI's transformation from a non-profit entity to a profit-seeking business. BCIs are drawing interest from governments as well as tech moguls. In the UK, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), a government body, is exploring their potential as part of a broader mission to fund science that could change the world. In China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has unveiled its own BCI device, Neo, intended to restore hand movement in paralysed patients. Neuralink is widely seen as being at the forefront of the field. Its coin-sized implant is designed to sit inside a small opening in the skull, with flexible electrode 'threads' extending into the brain to monitor the electrical activity of cells. An AI system then decodes those signals into information that can be used to control external devices. The company is also developing a surgical robot to carry out the procedure. Last year it implanted a device in its first human volunteer, Noland Arbaugh, who was paralysed from the shoulders down in a diving accident. Using the implant, he was able to move a computer cursor and play video games, an experience he likened to 'using the force' in a nod to Star Wars. While striking, this was not the first demonstration of a mind-driven technology. In the early 2000s, American scientists showed that monkeys implanted with neural interfaces could control robotic limbs through their thoughts. Human trials since then have allowed paralysed people to send emails, make purchases online and operate robotic devices — all without physical movement. In some cases, BCIs have been used to send information back towards the brain — allowing, for instance, a paralysed person to regain a sense of touch through a robotic hand. Musk said he wanted to go much further, including restoring sight to the blind and enabling quadriplegics to regain 'full-body functionality' — goals many researchers say could be decades away, if they are achievable at all. His ultimate ambition is a mass-market 'general population device' linking human minds directly to powerful computers, allowing 'symbiosis with artificial intelligence'. One industry figure who has discussed the matter with Musk said he viewed this as necessary to prevent superhuman AI from running out of control. Altman seems to share a similar long-term vision. In a blog post this year he wrote that 'high-bandwidth brain–computer interfaces' were on the horizon. Neuralink, which was founded in 2016, recently raised $650 million in a deal that valued the company at $9 billion. Altman, who had previously invested in the company, now appears to be positioning Merge Labs to challenge it directly. According to the Financial Times, Merge Labs is seeking funding at a valuation of about $850 million, with OpenAI's ventures arm expected to provide a large portion of an initial $250 million round. Altman is expected to help launch the project alongside Alex Blania, who runs Worldcoin, an eyeball-scanning digital ID project also backed by the OpenAI chief Neuralink said last month that it had received regulatory and ethics approvals to begin its first clinical study in the UK. The GB-Prime trial will be run at University College London Hospitals and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It will test the company's BCI in people with severe paralysis. The trial will involve patients with conditions such as motor neurone disease, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders, assessing whether they can use the device to control computers and other digital systems by thought alone.
