Elon Musk Calls for Regulation of Social Media and AI to Stop ‘Fake News’

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has called for greater regulation of Silicon Valley companies and particularly artificial intelligence, to stop the spread of “fake news.”

The Daily Mail reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a recent interview that social media requires regulation in the near future despite its impact on “the public good.” In an interview with CBS, Musk stated; “I think whenever there’s something that affects the public good, then there does need to be some form of public oversight.” He went on to say; “I do think there should be regulations on AI. I think there some should be some regulations on social media, to the degree that it negatively affects the public good.”

Musk also called for some form of solution to “fake news,” across social media platforms saying; “We can’t have willy-nilly proliferation of fake news. That’s crazy. We can’t have more clicks on fake news than real news. That’s allowing public deception to go unchecked.” Musk’s comments come just as Facebook CEO began two days of questioning before Congress in Washington DC about the social media platforms handling of private user data.

Elon Musk has long been a skeptic of artificial intelligence which has led to some other tech moguls such as Zuckerberg referring to Musk as a “naysayer” and accusing the SpaceX CEO of promoting unnecessary negativity around new technology. “In some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible,” said Mark Zuckerberg of Musk’s comments. Musk replied via a tweet saying; “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.”

Musk also deleted the Facebook pages of both SpaceX and Tesla following the site’s latest user data scandal:

Musk also stated that this act was not a political one but just that Facebook gives him “the willies.”