UNBIASED - DOJ Revokes Trump's Presidential Immunity, $90M Twitter Lawsuit, Synagogue Shooter Eligible for Death, CA Lawmakers Block Human Trafficking Bill, and More.

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Deep Dive:1. Twitter Goes on the Offensive: Following a Recent Lawsuit Against It Alleging $500M in Unpaid Severance Pay, Twitter Filed Some Lawsuits of Its Own. One Against a Law Firm Over $90M and Another Against Data Scraping Entities in Texas (1:54)2. Pennsylvania Jury Finds Synagogue Shooter Eligible for Death Penalty; How This Trial Differs From Most (9:28)3. DOJ Revokes Presidential Immunity for Trump in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Suit. Why Now? (15:07)Notable Mentions:1. Jury Says Aretha Franklin's 2014 Handwritten Notes Found in Couch Cushions Constitute a Valid Will (20:55)2. Bank of America Agrees to Pay $250M in Fines and Compensation for Overcharging Customers, Opening Accounts Without Consent, and Withholding Credit Card Rewards (22:45)3. Hackers Linked to the Chinese-State Accessed Email Accounts Within the U.S. Government (24:40)4. FDA Approves First Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill (26:01)5. California Lawmakers Block Measure Which Would Have Made Human Trafficking of a Minor a "Serious Felony" (27:11)6. FTC Sends OpenAI a 20-Page Investigative Demand (29:07)7. Elon Musk Announces Launch of AI Company With Goal of Creating "Safer AI" (30:54)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Friday. I have a jam packed episode for you today as I usually do on Fridays. So let's get into it. I'm going to split this episode up into so the first half is going to be what I'm going to call deep dives. So it's three stories that we dive into in a bit more detail as compared to the second half of the episode, which is going to be notable mentions where I cover headlines in under two minutes. So the first half of the episode is going to be three stories, one about recent Twitter lawsuits. Obviously, we know that Twitter has seen a lot of lawsuits in recent months, especially since Elon took over. But

Twitter is actually filing some lawsuits of its own now. So I want to talk about those. The second deep dive we'll do is about Robert Bowers and how a jury just found him eligible for the death penalty. And the third deep dive we'll get into about Robert Bowers and how a jury just found him eligible for the death penalty. And the third deep dive we'll get into is about the DOJ revoking Donald Trump's presidential immunity when it comes to that E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. And of course, the second half of the episode will be those notable mentions. I have seven for you today, so we'll get into that a little bit later. Please don't forget to leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps support my show, lets other people know why they should be listening to my show.

And another way you can really help me is by sharing my show with your family or your friends, whoever you feel will also appreciate nonpartisan news. Before we get into the stories, let me give you a quick reminder that yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Lawsuits are nothing new for Twitter. We know this. Since Elon took over in October of last year, Twitter has faced accusations of failing to pay vendors, failing to pay bonuses, targeting female employees for layoffs, discriminating against employees with disabilities. The list goes on. Notably, though, those lawsuits alleging targeting of female employees and discrimination against employees with disabilities have both been dismissed. But the most recent lawsuit that

Twitter saw, it was actually filed on Wednesday, and it's in regard to severance pay. So what the lawsuit says is that Twitter owes its laid off employees at least $500 million under a severance plan that was created by Twitter in 2019. Now, the plan promised two months of base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service if the employee was laid off. More senior employees were allegedly owed six months of base pay, but instead the lawsuit says that Twitter gave its laid off employees at most one month of severance pay and some people allegedly didn't receive any severance pay. So the thing is, is that earlier this year, a very similar lawsuit was brought alleging failure to pay severance, but it was dropped because the judge had ordered the matter to be handled through

arbitration rather than litigation. The judge's reasoning was that all of these employees had signed arbitration agreements when they took employment with Twitter. And while the arbitration wasn't mandatory and employees were given an opportunity to opt out of it, none of them did. And therefore, all of these matters regarding severance pay had to be handled through arbitration. So the suit filed on Wednesday didn't mention arbitration at all. So it's unclear whether this lawsuit is going to end the same way that the other lawsuit did in the beginning of this year. But nonetheless, that's what's going on with these former employees alleging that Twitter hasn't paid them severance pay and owes at least $500 million. But I also want to talk about Twitter and Elon and X Corp, which is Twitter's parent company, going on the offensive because this is something we haven't

heard much of. Two lawsuits specifically, both were filed last week. One of them was filed against the law firm that helped Twitter and the deal between Twitter and Elon. The other lawsuit was filed against four different entities in Texas, accusing them of data scraping and kind of giving us some context as to why Twitter just implemented that daily limit on the number of tweets that could be read. But we'll get into that in a minute. So the first of the two that I want to talk about was filed by XCorp, and it's against Wachtel, which is the law firm that represented Twitter in the deal between Twitter and Elon. And what the lawsuit says is, quote, Wachtel exploited a corporate client left unprotected by lame duck fiduciaries who had lost their motivation to act in Twitter's

best interest pending its sale to Elon Musk and his entities. In the days leading up to the closing of the sale, Wachtel and its litigation department were at the center of a spending spree by Twitter's departing executives who ran up the tab at Twitter by designating tens of millions of dollars in handouts to the firms as quote-unquote success fees or quote-unquote project fees, totaling $90 million. The lawsuit goes on to say, fully aware that nobody with an economic interest in Twitter's financial well-being was minding the store, Wachtell arranged to effectively line its pockets with funds from the company cash register while the keys were being handed over to the Musk parties, end quote. So let's break this

down. Twitter was represented by Wachtel in the acquisition when Elon wanted to back out of the deal. Twitter had agreed to pay Wachtel on an hourly basis. However, on top of that hourly basis, Twitter ends up paying this crazy success fee. And in total, Twitter owed Wachtell $90 million. Now, this amount was solidified in what was called a closing day letter agreement that was drafted just mere hours before the closing, according to the complaint. And XCorp's position is that the twitter executives that were in charge at the time and agreed to this crazy amount had no interest or didn't care at all about the financial repercussions for the deal because they were handing over the keys to twitter anyway so it didn't really matter to them how much money they were spending or how much money they were agreeing

to spend so now x-corp says because these fees are so unconscionable and because Wachtell violated its fiduciary duties of looking out for Twitter's best interest, Xcorp wants this closing day letter agreement declared void and unenforceable, which means that that $90 million would not have to be paid. So that's one of the lawsuits that Twitter went on the offensive with. The second lawsuit was also filed by Xcorp last week, and it was against four unnamed Texas entities for data scraping. You may remember in the beginning of the month, Twitter announced a temporary limit on the number of tweets that a user could read

each day. So verified accounts could read 6,000 tweets a day, unverified accounts could read 600 tweets a day, and newer unverified accounts could only read 300 tweets a day, unverified accounts could read 600 tweets a day, and newer unverified accounts could only read 300 tweets a day. Elon said that that limit would soon increase, but said that the limit was put in place to, quote, address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, end quote. And while we didn't have a ton of context then, we now have more, thanks to this lawsuit. So the lawsuit, which was filed in the District Court of Dallas and actually only identifies these four Texas entities by their IP addresses, says that these entities were flooding Twitter's signup page with

automated requests, which far exceeded what any single individual could send to a server at one time, which indicated that these requests were aimed at data scraping from Twitter. Data scraping is basically where a bot goes in to collect data from a website or an app and then resells it. And this can include personal data of Twitter's users. But not only are these entities unlawfully collecting all of this data by data scraping, they're also at the same time hindering the capacity of Twitter's servers, which then allows for actual Twitter users to have issues with the platform. The platform is no longer as stable. The platform experiences issues,

things like that. So XCorp is alleging that these entities have been unjustly enriched. Unjust enrichment is when one person benefits from the detriment of another. So what they're saying is these four entities have benefited from our detriment by going in data scraping and causing our servers and platforms issues and then reselling and profiting off of this data that it scraped. So that's the second lawsuit that Twitter has filed. I just wanted to catch you guys up to speed on the second lawsuit that Twitter has filed. I just wanted to catch you guys up to speed on some recent litigation that Twitter is involved in because I felt that that was not only interesting, but also kind of gives context to that story. Like I said,

that we heard earlier in the week that Twitter was limiting this, this, uh, the amount of tweets that users could read in a day. But at the same time, that whole event kind of coincided with Threads, which is Meta's new app that looks and acts just like Twitter. And so a lot of people were saying, you know, Twitter is dying basically because they're implementing all of these restrictions while Threads is over here not implementing restrictions. So I just felt that that story not only informed you guys about the litigation happening, but also gave context to that limit that Twitter imposed. That takes us into the second story, which is about Robert Bowers, the man I spoke about a couple of weeks ago who carried out the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in United States history. He was just found by the Pennsylvania

jury to be eligible for the death penalty. And the reason I thought that this was important to talk about was because this was kind of a unique situation in that this trial was actually split into three parts when trials like this are typically only split into two. Typically, you see a guilt phase and then a sentencing phase. So at the guilt phase is obviously where the defendant is deemed to be guilty or not guilty. where the defendant is deemed to be guilty or not guilty. If the defendant is deemed to be guilty, they then move on to the sentencing phase, which is where they are sentenced for their convictions. In this case, though, there was a guilt phase, an eligibility phase, and then a sentencing phase. And the deviation

from the standard protocol came after the judge in the case actually granted the defense's request to split this trial into three parts. Each of these three parts has opening statements and closing statements. The jury hears evidence and information, and then the jury goes and deliberates and makes their decision. So we know that in the guilt phase, the jury found Robert Bowers was guilty. But at the eligibility phase, prosecutors were trying to get the jury to declare Bowers eligible for the death penalty, whereas the defense was obviously trying to get the jury to declare Bowers ineligible for the death penalty. In order for him to be eligible for the death penalty, prosecutors had to prove that Bowers had an intentional mental state when

he carried out these crimes, and at least one of four aggravating factors applied to the shooting. If the prosecution could not prove intent and that at least one aggravating factor applied, the jury would have had to deem him ineligible for the death penalty. That's not what happened here. The jury did find he was eligible for the death penalty, but we'll get into that in a minute. The defense tried to spare Bowers the death penalty by arguing that he had this long history of mental illness, and he only acted out delusions without any intent to commit murder. So more specifically, his attorneys argue that he has suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, and also this delusional belief that he was trying to stop a genocide of white people

by killing Jewish people. So that was the defense's argument. He lacked intent because he was acting on his delusions. Prosecutors, on the other hand, argued that Bowers had meticulously planned out this attack for six months and deliberately chose vulnerable victims when he walked into that synagogue. So to give an example, what they said is, look, you have this 97-year-old woman named Rose Ballinger who was shot dead right next to her daughter. Bowers didn't kill her daughter, but he chose to kill Rose, who was 97

years old and vulnerable. And they highlighted on Bowers' own words. So after Bowers was arrested, he said that all Jews had to die. And the prosecutors really hinged on this to kind of illustrate his intent. Now, the second question the jury had to answer was, is there an aggravating factor present? So when you look at aggravating factors versus mitigating factors, aggravating factors speak to the heinousness of the crime. So in this case, the four aggravating factors presented were one, he created this grave risk of death to others. Two, the crime involved substantial planning and premeditation. Three, those killed were particularly vulnerable,

whether that be because of age, physical stature, or intellectual disabilities. And four, there were multiple killings or attempted killings. Mitigating factors, on the other hand, are things that make the crime, I'm hesitant to say less heinous, but that's kind of what they are. Things like mental health disorders, childhood and adulthood trauma, things that make the defendant seem like not such a monster. But anyway, that's the difference between aggravating and mitigating factors. So the jury had to find that at least one of those four aggravating factors were present and find that he had intent.

When it came time for the jury to deliberate, the jury took roughly two hours and unanimously answered both of these questions in the affirmative, which means that he is eligible for the death penalty. And by the way, a unanimous verdict is required. So if even one of those jurors couldn't answer both of those questions in the affirmative, he wouldn't have been eligible for the death penalty. But in this case, all jurors answered in the affirmative, yes, he had intent, and yes, one or more of those four aggravating factors were present. This means that the case will proceed to the sentencing phase, where the jury will determine whether he gets life or death. This phase will likely focus on victim impact statements, because through the guilt phase and this eligibility phase,

they've run through those aggravating and mitigating factors and intent. The jury has already determined that those things exist. So at the sentencing phase, it will likely focus, as I said, on these victim impact statements. The prosecution is going to want to show that this this crime was just so, so awful. These are how many people are affected. This is why he should get death. So if he's ultimately sentenced to death, it will mark the first federal death sentence imposed since President Biden took office. At the federal level, inmates are executed by way of the lethal injection, but federal executions are rarely carried out and they take a very, very long time if they are carried out from the time

of sentencing. Our third and final deep dive is about the DOJ revoking Trump's presidential immunity. So what's the deal with the DOJ revoking the presidential immunity? We've seen this in the news. Let's talk about it. If you've listened to my past episodes, you've probably heard me talk about this, how E. Jean Carroll had two lawsuits against Donald Trump, because this can be kind of confusing. So she had her original lawsuit in 2019, which was a defamation suit. That defamation suit was based on statements he made denying the rape. And this was when he was president, when she first came forward with her story. Then in 2021, after the New York Adult Survivors Act was enacted, which allowed victims of sexual assault to bring civil litigation against their abusers where the statute of

limitations had otherwise expired, she filed another lawsuit. And in that lawsuit, there was a defamation claim and a battery claim. And that defamation claim stemmed from separate statements he made, not the statements at issue in the 2019 case. So the 2021 case is the one where the jury just found Trump was liable for both sexual assault and defamation. That case, it went to trial, the jury reached its verdict, and Donald Trump is appealing that case. But this case that we're talking about, where the DOJ revoked President Trump's presidential immunity, was stemming from the 2019 case. The 2019 case is also the case where she just asked for $5 million more in damages following the Trump town hall when he kind of doubled down on his claims. And it's also the same case where Trump just countersued her for comments that she made in a CNN interview. So

again, the 2019 case is the one we're talking about here. When the 2019 lawsuit was filed, Donald Trump was president. At that time, the DOJ had said that Trump had acted within the scope of his office and employment as president when he made the statement denying the rape, and therefore he was granted presidential immunity. Presidential immunity says that the statement denying the rape, and therefore he was granted presidential immunity. Presidential immunity says that the president of the United States has this absolute immunity and actions seeking civil damages. This isn't something that's granted in the Constitution, but rather something the Supreme Court first decided in 1982 in Nixon versus Fitzgerald, as far as the president's immunity goes.

And then Congress further expanded this so-called immunity when it enacted the Westfall Act in 1988. The Westfall Act protects all federal employees from common law tort lawsuits while they're acting in the course of their employment duties for the government. So the Westfall Act allows the attorney general to certify that the defendant employee was acting within the scope of his office, his or her office or employment at the time of the incident. And this is exactly what the DOJ invoked when Carroll's 2019 lawsuit was filed. Even after President Biden took office, Biden's administration adopted that finding by the DOJ that Trump had acted in the scope of his employment when he made those statements. Now,

granting Trump that presidential immunity meant that the DOJ would be essentially substituted as a defendant in the lawsuit. So instead of E. Jean Carroll suing Trump, she'd be suing the Justice Department. And if that were to have happened, the case would have likely been dismissed. But after the DOJ invoked this Westfall Act, E. Jean Carroll asked the court to answer the question of what constitutes within the scope of employment, like define that. So the D.C. Appellate Court just recently gave some guidance, and it was after that guidance that the DOJ changed its course. Here's what the D.C. Appellate Court said. They basically said, we're not going to answer the question as it pertains specifically to the president. That's a fact-intensive question for the fact finder to determine, and it can't be resolved based on the

information we have. But what we can say is that one has to at least determine that an employee's partial purpose to serve their employer was more than an insignificant interest. And what they said is it's a balancing and weighing of the evidence to determine whether the quantum of purpose is more than insignificant. Now, this language is exactly why the DOJ used in its rationale as to why it changed its mind. The DOJ said, quote, evidence of Mr. Trump's state of mind, some of which has come to light only after the department last made a certification decision surrounding presidential immunity, does not establish that he made the statements at issue with a more than insignificant purpose to serve the U.S. government. So you can see how following

that appellate court guidance, the DOJ kind of reframed its take based on their language and what one has to find in order to find that he doesn't qualify for presidential immunity. So the DOJ said in making this decision, they took into consideration Trump's deposition that was played at the recent trial, as well as the October 2022 statement that was at the heart of the most recent trial. And the DOJ said that these things together indicated that Trump was not motivated to protect and serve when he first made the comments in 2019. Trump responded to the DOJ's reversal, calling it, quote, all part of the political witch hunt, end quote. What the DOJ's decision means is that this case can now go to trial after years of

appeals. Currently, that trial is set for January, but that could change. That's just a tentative date. So we will see what happens. Let's dive into some notable mentions. I have seven notable mentions for you today, and we're going to start off with the story about Aretha Franklin's will. On Tuesday, a Michigan jury decided a dispute between Aretha Franklin's children. Her sons were fighting over which of her wills was valid. And this is a fight that's been going on for five years. It's a pretty sad story. It's obviously always sad whenever siblings and family members are going at each other following a death in the family. But there were two wills in question. And really, they were just these handwritten notes. It wasn't a formal will. It was more so handwritten notes. But one was from 2010. The other was from 2014. The 2010 will was a handwritten document that

was locked away in a cabinet in Aretha's home. The 2014 will was written in a notebook in like almost like note format found in couch cushions. Both were found around the same time after her death. And both of the wills indicate that all four of her children are to share income from music and copyrights. So what are the differences? What are they fighting over? Under the 2010 document, two of her sons must, quote, take business classes and get a certificate or degree to benefit from the estate. So this provision wasn't included in the 2014 document, which is why her two sons were

arguing that the 2014 document should override the 2010 document because they don't want this provision to be a part of their inheritance, right? So the jury deliberated for less than an hour and found that the 2014 will, the will without the degree provision, can override the 2010 will because it did have her name signed at the bottom, which was just an A with a smiley face written inside of the letter A. So it wasn't even actually her signature. But nonetheless, the jury found that the 2014 will can override the 2010 will. Notable mention number two is that Bank of America has agreed to pay $250 million in

fines and compensation to settle claims that it had systematically double charged customer fees, withheld promised credit card perks, and opened accounts without customer authorization. $100 million of that $250 million is restitution. The other $150 million is civil penalties. What's the difference? Restitution is going to be paid to the bank's customers, whereas civil penalties are paid to government agencies. Specifically, $90 out of the $150 million that is civil penalties will be paid to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The remainder of that $60 million will be paid to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. What exactly did the bank do wrong? According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,

from February 2018 to February 2022, the bank was charging customers a $35 fee each time the bank declined to pay a transaction when the customer didn't have the funds to cover it. So if the customer had a zero balance or a negative balance, every time that card was swiped, they'd be charged a new $35 fee. The bank allegedly made hundreds of millions of dollars by doing this. Moreover, beginning in at least 2012, bank employees were illegally applying customers for or enrolling customers in credit card accounts. They were apparently doing this because they were under sales pressure and had to meet their quotas. One of the bank's branches in Charlotte, North Carolina

was failing to follow through on cash rewards and bonus points promised to tens of thousands of credit card customers. So as you can see, there's just a lot going on, a lot of violations here. In a statement, Bank of America said it had voluntarily reduced overdraft fees and eliminated all non-sufficient fund fees last year. It also said that the revenue from those fees had dropped more than 90%. Notable mention number three is this Chinese hack that you may or may not have heard of because it seems it's being kept a bit quiet. But U.S. officials announced on Wednesday that hackers accessed email accounts at roughly 25 organizations around the United States, including at least two government agencies. Microsoft is the one that identified the hackers as linked to the Chinese state.

And the two affected agencies were the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commerce Department. Microsoft says that the hacking began in mid-May when the Chinese hackers used a stolen sign-in key to burrow their way into email accounts. Microsoft has since blocked the hackers from accessing customer emails using that technique. Considering Microsoft said this hacking began in mid-May, it seems the government was trying to keep this one under wraps a bit, but the government did say it has been attempting to assess the impact of the hack for weeks and said that the attack was very narrow and that the number of U.S. organizations impacted by the hack is in the single digits. As stated, Microsoft is the one that deemed the hackers to be from China,

saying in a statement on a blog that the hackers were based in China and focused on espionage. The government has not yet confirmed this. China, of course, denied the accusations, instead calling the U.S. government, quote, the world's biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief, end quote. Notable mention number four. On Thursday, the FDA approved Opil, the first non-prescription birth control in the United States. Opil is an oral contraceptive. It needs to be taken at the same time every day, according to the FDA. And along with its list of side effects, the FDA also says it should not be taken by anyone who has ever had or has breast cancer. Though it's not clear when Opal will be available

at stores, the FDA said it's up to the pill manufacturer to determine the timeline as well as the price. The FDA did also clarify what needs to be shown in order to approve a product for over-the-counter use. So on its website, it said that for approval of the product for use as a non-prescription, the FDA requires that the applicant show that the product can be used by consumers safely and effectively, relying only on the non-prescription drug labeling without any assistance from a healthcare professional. According to the FDA, studies showed that consumer understanding of information on the Opal drug facts label was high overall,

and that a high proportion of consumers understood the label instructions. Notable mention number five. One of you guys asked me to cover this story. So here we go. On Tuesday, some California lawmakers and the assembly public safety committee blocked a bill that would have classified human trafficking of a minor a serious felony under state law. California has this three strikes law, which imposes a prison sentence of 25 years to life on defendants convicted of a violent or serious crime and have had at least two prior convictions for violent or serious crimes. And the California penal code specifically lists the crimes that constitute these violent or serious offenses. So the purpose of this bill was to add human trafficking of a minor to this list of serious offenses and therefore invoke the three strikes

law. The measure had previously passed the state Senate with unanimous bipartisan support, but didn't make it past this assembly in the House. The Assembly Public Safety Committee is made up of eight members, six Democrats and two Republicans. The two Republicans were the only two members to vote yes on the bill, with all six Democrats declining to cast a vote. So why would people be against a bill like this? According to opponents, there are already state laws in place to keep traffickers in prison for a significant amount of time and that more prison time won't address the root of the problem. One of the assemblymen that declined to vote on the measure said he still promises to work on the legislation, saying, I think there's a lane we can get to. I get where you are coming from. Senator Shannon Grove, who was the one that introduced the measure, said in a statement, quote, I am profoundly disappointed that committee Democrats couldn't bring themselves to support

the bill with their stubborn and misguided objection to any penalty, regardless of how heinous the crime. You can pass a note to a bank and rob a bank. You can commit arson, and that's considered a serious felony. But to traffic a minor child in the state of California is not. That's wrong, end quote. The sixth notable mention is that the FTC has sent a 20-page investigative demand to OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, asking it to provide certain answers. For those not familiar, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, and it's capable of having these conversations with users based on information it's been trained on from elsewhere on the internet. So you can go to this chatbot, ask it a question, it'll spit out an answer. So some of these answers that the FTC is wanting OpenAI to provide is how it obtains the data that it uses to quote-unquote train

these large language models, how it handles personal information data that it uses to quote unquote train these large language models, how it handles personal information, its potential to give users inaccurate information, information about any complaints it has received from the public, a list of lawsuits it's involved in, and the risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm. And we have already seen some issues in the real world. So if you are a subscriber to my weekly newsletter, you may have seen this lawsuit recently that I reported on where a journalist was reporting on a lawsuit and decided to ask ChatGPT about it. He wanted ChatGPT to spit out a summary. And ChatGPT totally threw some random guy under the bus,

accusing him of embezzling and all these things. He wasn't even involved in the lawsuit that the journalist was inquiring about. So even though the story was never published to the public by this journalist, the guy that ChatGPT said had embezzled money and all this stuff sued ChatGPT, alleging defamation. So this FTC probe into OpenAI and its demand for these answers is really an attempt at government regulation because the US's regulation of AI is kind of lagging behind other global policymakers. Keeping in line with AI news for our seventh and final notable mention, Elon Musk announced a new AI company of his own this week called XAI. Its goal is to, quote,

understand the true nature of the universe, end quote. According to the company's website, the team is led by Elon, but also has members that have worked with other AI companies like DeepMind and OpenAI. Elon was actually a co-founder of OpenAI back in 2015, but he has recently criticized the company really after he left the board in 2018. But he's called for developers to pause the training of powerful AI models due to the risks of it being developed too quickly. And he says that the sector is in need of regulation. So in a Twitter Spaces event on Wednesday, Elon explained his plan for building a safer AI, explaining that rather than explicitly programming morality into its AI, XAI will seek to create a maximally curious AI. And Elon said, quote,

if it tried to understand the true nature of the universe, that's actually the best thing that I can come up with from an AI safety standpoint. I think it's going to be pro-humanity from the standpoint that humanity is just much more interesting than not humanity, end quote. XAI's website says that it will be holding another Twitter Spaces event on Friday, so the day that this episode releases, where users can actually meet the XAI team and ask questions of their own. That concludes this episode. Don't forget to leave me a review, share the show with your friends, and don't forget that my free weekly newsletter is going out tomorrow morning. So make sure to subscribe if you are not already at jordanismylawyer.com

slash subscribe. Have a great weekend and I will talk to you next week. Bye.