CNN
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to fulfill with X proprietor Elon Musk on Monday, the place he’s broadly anticipated to confront Musk on his social media platform’s dealing with of antisemitism.
The go to in California, forward of Netanyahu’s conferences in New York with world leaders on the United Nations Basic Meeting, might give Musk a chance to deflect claims that X — previously often known as Twitter — has allowed hate speech to proliferate on the platform.
However Netanyahu, one of many world’s most distinguished Jewish leaders who has styled himself as a vocal critic of antisemitism, could stress Musk to do extra.
“If Elon Musk is the owner of Twitter, and Twitter is also a platform where antisemitic content is shared, I am sure the prime minister will also bring up in the meeting the need for Elon Musk to ensure that Twitter stops being an arena for antisemitic content,” mentioned Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, in an interview Monday with Israel’s Military Radio forward of the assembly.
Netanyahu and Musk are anticipated to take part in a stay dialog to be streamed on X at 12:15 pm ET.
Since buying the corporate final yr, Musk has laid off greater than 80% of X’s workers, together with many on its belief and security groups charged with designing and imposing the platform’s content material guidelines.
Along with upsetting claims he has weakened X’s enforcement in opposition to hate speech, Musk has stoked tensions with civil society teams and particularly the Anti-Defamation League, which he has threatened to sue over its critiques about X. In August, X sued one other hate speech watchdog group, the Middle for Countering Digital Hate, over the nonprofit’s analysis displaying that X has didn’t take away content material that violates its personal guidelines.
Netanyahu and Musk may also focus on synthetic intelligence, Netanyahu mentioned in remarks to the press earlier than his departure from Israel, including that he plans to ask Musk to spend money on Israel’s AI trade. The dialogue comes every week after Musk traveled to Washington and met with greater than 60 US senators, together with different tech CEOs and civil society leaders, to deal with the dangers and advantages of AI.
Praising him as “the current leader of the most dramatic development in the new age and perhaps in general,” Netanyahu mentioned in his remarks that Musk “is, to a large degree, paving the way that will change the face of humanity and also the face of the State of Israel.”
Whereas Musk this yr introduced the creation of a brand new AI firm, xAI, whose purpose is to “understand the true nature of the universe,” it’s eclipsed by trade giants together with Google, OpenAI, IBM and different established companies with entry to large quantities of cloud computing infrastructure and processing {hardware}, in addition to armies of AI expertise.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s remarks spotlight how, for his administration, the assembly with Musk carries large political and financial stakes and the chance to model Israel as a pacesetter within the fast-growing AI sector.
Within the Military Radio interview, Erdan foreshadowed the potential tensions between Musk and Netanyahu over antisemitic content material on X.
“Does meeting with Elon Musk mean he identifies with everything and every position of Elon Musk? Of course not, just like when he meets with Erdogan he doesn’t agree with everything Erdogan says or does,” Erdan mentioned, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
