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Monday, February 10, 2025

They were fierce enemies. Now they play in the same team. Donald Trump brought them together

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Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have never had anything on the road, but there is a conflict between two billionaires began for good in mid-2023when the founder of Facebook announced the launch of the Facebook Threads platform, a direct rival to Musk's website X (formerly Twitter).

The head of Tesla and SpaceX then stated that after launching a new project related to Facebook, “the whole world will be under Zuck's thumb, with no alternatives.” Musk didn't stop there, as he decided to challenge his business rival to a fight. And it wasn't about a clash of words.

Mark Zuckerberg's post on Instagram photo: Instagram

“I'm ready for a cage fight if he agrees,” wrote Elon Musk at the end of June last year. Zuckerberg, who has been training jujitsu for many years, accepted the challenge. “Text me the location,” he shot back. Over the following weeks, billionaires exchanged “niceties” on the Internet, and their entourage looked for a date and place for the “fight of the century.” One of the proposals was even the Roman Colosseum. However, the fist fight awaited by the whole world did not take place. and Musk himself at one point stated that he was ready to enter the cage with his rival, but not to fight, but to debate.

Now dreams of billionaire fighting can finally be put aside. In recent weeks, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg formed a surprising alliance, and the person who reconciled them turned out to be Donald Trump.

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg goes to Mar-a-Lago

While Elon Musk joined Trump's team many months ago and contributed significantly (among other things, thanks to the propaganda leaked from the X platform) to the victory of the Republican candidate in the presidential elections, for years Zuckerberg was associated with the liberal side of the American political scene. .

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After the last elections However, “Zuck” decided to completely distance himself from the Joe Biden administration. At the beginning of January, the billionaire appeared on Joe Rogan's popular podcast, where he did not spare words of criticism towards the outgoing candidate president and his political environment.

“The American government should defend its companies, not be the tip of the spear aimed at them,” he explained in an interview with Rogan, referring to his company's problems during Joe Biden's government. The head of Meta recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration “screamed” and “scared” his company's employees, trying to force them to censor content posted on Facebook.

The billionaire admitted that as a result of pressure, fact-checking conducted by Meta's moderators resembled “something straight from 1984”, leading to the belief that his company's content reviewers “were too biased.”

At the same time, he said he was “optimistic” about Trump's return to the White House. “I think he wants America to win,” he noted. He also announced a number of changes on Facebook, including “relaxing moderation” and completely abandoning fact-checking on Facebook. thing “community notes” known from site X.

Earlier, Meta announced that Dana White, head of UFC, the largest mixed martial arts (MMA) organization and a long-time friend of Donald Trump, will join the company's management board. In December last year, the American company transferred PLN 1 million dollars for the president-elect's inaugural fund.

Zuckerberg's turn towards Donald Trump and the Republican Party environment was, of course, met with sharp criticism from political commentators, who accuse him of having a “lack of moral backbone” and being a “political flagbearer”.

Four years ago, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg blocked Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts, saying the risks of allowing him to continue using those platforms were “too great.” This came after Trump repeatedly used the sites to spread election lies. […] Now Zuckerberg is making it clear that Meta and MAGA can get along

reminds CNN.

The only values ​​that Zuckerberg's recent decisions serve are Meta's profits and his ability to adapt to prevailing political trends

Austin Sarat from the Salon portal commented on Zuckerberg's recent actions.

Donald Trump himself has no problem with the sudden “conversion” of the Facebook CEO. Although in September 2024 the former and future president claimed that Zuckerberg might “spend the rest of his life in prison”, after winning the elections he hosted him twice for a private audience at his famous residence in Mar-a-Lago, where they talked about future cooperation.

You can easily guess what Donald Trump wants from Mark Zuckerberg. The head of Meta is – like Elon Musk – helping him dismantle the “woke ideology”, which, according to Trump, is one of the greatest threats to humanity today.

What is Zuckerberg counting on? He sort of revealed this during a visit to Joe Rogan's podcast. The head of Meta wants Trump's help in the fight against the European Union, which has repeatedly hit his business in recent years. However, at the top of Facebook's creator's wish list are issues related to the further development of the industry artificial intelligence.

The war for AI continues. Musk and “Zuck” have a common enemy

Musk and Zuckerberg were reconciled not only by a common ally, but also by a common enemy. It is Sam Altman, co-founder and head of OpenAI, a company that still deals the cards in the race for the future of generative artificial intelligence.

Elon Musk was one of the first OpenAI investors. However, in 2018, he left the organization's management board, explaining it by a conflict of interests. He has since become one of the most outspoken critics of Sam Altman and the direction OpenAI is heading.

This criticism intensified when Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019. Musk has filed a number of lawsuits against the organization in recent years. In one of them, he stated that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the other founder of OpenAI, “manipulated him” and then betrayed the vision of OpenAI as a non-profit organization.

In response to the lawsuit, Altman said Musk repeatedly urged him to turn OpenAI into a for-profit business. “Elon not only wanted but actually created a for-profit new structure. When he didn't get majority ownership and full control, he walked away and said we would fail.” – Altman emphasized.

It is worth recalling that in March 2023 Musk founded the xAI company, whose key product is the AI ​​chatbot Grok, a direct rival of ChataGPT, which has been developed by OpenAI for years.

Zuckerberg also has a hard time with OpenAI. Although Meta has invested billions in the development of its Meta AI project, it is still losing to OpenAI in the race for the future of artificial intelligence. The company itself admitted this. In an email sent in October 2023, Meta's vice president of generative AI, Ahmad Al-Dahle, stated that the company needed “its GPT-4″referring to the large language model announced by OpenAI in March of the same year. He also added that Meta must learn “how to push the limit to win this race.”

Zuckerberg, likewise Elon Musk does not want to allow OpenAI to be transformed into a for-profit organization at all costs. In October, he sent a letter to the prosecutor general on this matter California Rob Bonta.

In the letter, Meta argues that OpenAI “We should not be allowed to break the law by seizing and misappropriating assets accumulated as a nonprofit organization and using them for potentially enormous private gain.” In the document, the company also expresses full support for Elon Musk in his court fight against Open AI. It says Musk is “qualified and well-prepared to represent the interests of Californians in this matter.”

Zuckerberg and Musk count that with the ear of the US president, they will finally be able to stop OpenAI from turning into a commercial business. At the same time, they will encourage Donald Trump to loosen legal restrictions related to artificial intelligence.

Altman himself is by no means indifferent to the attempts of his business rivals. At the end of December, in an interview with The Free Press, he expressed hope that his personal quarrels with Elon Musk would not influence his opponent's political activities.

I guess you can act like a jerk on Twitter but still not abuse the system of the country in which you currently hold an important political role. These are two different issues

he stated. At the same time, Altman declared his willingness to cooperate closely with the Donald Trump administration and emphasized that he counts on his actions to revitalize the AI ​​industry. Like Zuckerberg, he also supported the new president's inauguration fund with $1 million.

Today, it is difficult to say which billionaire will ultimately win in the fight for primacy in the generative artificial intelligence industry. But no matter what, the biggest winner will still be Donald Trump. “During my first term, everyone wanted to fight me. Now everyone wants to be my friend,” said the 47th US president right after winning the election.



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