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Since the moment the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was first proposed, Elon Musks critics have warned that the worlds richest man was at risk of making decisions that could be a conflict of interest, given his multiple business operations. With recent cuts at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), those fears are increasing. Roughly 20 employees of the FDAs office of neurological and physical medicine devices were let go over the weekend, part of a larger series of cuts. Among those were workers overseeing the review of Musks Neuralink brain implant company (as well as its competitors). Reuters, which first reported the layoffs, says its sources do not believe the employees were specifically targeted due to their work on Neuralink. The FDA and Neuralink did not reply to a request from Fast Company for comment about the layoffs. The layoffs at the FDA were overseen by DOGE, Reuters reports. Reviewers who were terminated received letters saying they were being let go for performance reasons, though many had just received high rankings in the past several weeks. Supervisors of the cut employees were reportedly not consulted before the layoffs and found out about them when their direct reports contacted them. Musk announced the first brain implant, which enables paralyzed people to access digital devices via thought, in a human subject about a year ago. Earlier this month, he said the company has upgraded the devices with more electrodes, higher bandwidth, and longer battery life. Additionally, Neuralink is working on a separate implant, which it hopes will restore vision for sight-impaired people. To date, Neuralink has announced three patients who have received the brain implant and said the company hopes to implant the devices in as many as 30 more people this year. The loss of review workers could slow that larger rollout, however. (Neuralink also did not comment on whether the staff reductions at the FDA office would impact its timeline.) Industry watchdogs warn that the cuts to the FDA staff could lessen oversight of such devices, which could potentially put patients at risk. Thats particularly worrisome given the early controversy with Neuralink implants, where monkeys used in trials have reportedly died grisly deaths. Neuralink has a well-documented history of conducting unnecessary, sloppy experiments in monkeys, pigs, sheep, and other animals that raise serious concerns about the safety of its device, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine told Fast Company. A significant number of medical devices approved for clinical trials fail to ever make it to the market. As such, the public should continue to be skeptical of the safety and functionality of any device produced by Neuralink. The group instead suggested Musk explore noninvasive methods. Musk denied that any monkeys died due the implants, saying instead that they were terminally ill.” That prompted lawmakers to ask the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether those statements constituted securities fraud by misleading investors about the safety of the implants. The SEC has not brought any charges against Musk for the statement but did send him a letter last December saying the Commission had reopened an investigation into the company. With the resignation of former SEC head Gary Gensler and Trump assuming office, its unclear if the investigation will yield any penalties for Musk, if it’s even still open. This is not the first time DOGE actions have an impact that some might consider a potential conflict of interest (although the White House, on Tuesday, claimed Musk is not the administrator for DOGE, contradicting public evidence to the contrary). On Monday, Musk said SpaceX would review the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)s systems following job cuts at the FAA. And on February 7, Musk celebrated the all-but-complete shutdown of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, posting, CFPB RIP on X. That came as X is working to roll out a financial services unit that would have been regulated by the CFPB under expanded oversight powers over mobile payment apps, which were finalized last year. The Trump administration has since agreed to pause layoffs and funding cuts at the CFPB, following a federal judges order last Friday.
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A painting by street artist Banksy with an environmental message and an estimate of up to 5 million pounds ($6.3 million) is going up for auction, with some of the proceeds helping victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. Sothebys auction house said Tuesday that Crude Oil (Vettriano) is being sold in London next month from the collection of Mark Hoppus, bassist with California skate-punk band Blink-182, who sees Banksy as a kindred spirit. Hoppus said he was drawn to the subversion, humor and intelligence of Banksys work and the similarities between skateboarding, punk rock and art. I feel like street art and punk rock have the same core, Hoppus said. The left-out and overlooked making their own reality. Just go make art. Its the same spirit. And Ive loved art and especially street art ever since realizing that. Crude Oil (Vettriano) is part of a 2005 series of works in which Banksy put a satirical spin on famous paintings withering Vincent van Goghs Sunflowers and smashing the diner window in Edward Hoppers Nighthawks. The artist said his aim was to show that the real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business. The work going under the hammer is based on The Singing Butler, a painting by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano showing a couple in evening dress dancing on a beach as servants proffer sheltering umbrellas. Banksy has added a sinking oil liner and two figures lugging a barrel of toxic waste. We loved this painting since the moment we saw it, said Hoppus, who bought the artwork with his wife, Skye Everly, in 2011. He said the painting unmistakably Banksy, but different has hung in the familys homes in London and Los Angeles. Hoppus said he would use the proceeds of the sale to buy work by upcoming artists. Some will go to the California Fire Foundation, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research. Banksy, who has never confirmed his full identity, began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the worlds best-known artists. His mischievous and often satirical images include two male police officers kissing, armed riot police with yellow smiley faces and a chimpanzee with a sign bearing the words, Laugh now, but one day Ill be in charge. Several of his works have sold for multiple millions at auction. The record is almost 18.6 million pounds ($25.4 million at the time) paid at Sothebys in October 2021 for Love is in the Bin an image of a girl with a balloon that partially self-destructed during an auction three years earlier thanks to a shredder hidden in the frame. Crude Oil (Vettriano) is on display at Sothebys in New York until Thursday and in London Feb. 26-March 4. Jill Lawless, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
A new artificial intelligence company from one of the cofounders of OpenAI is quickly becoming one of the most highly valued AI firms in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Ilya Sutskevers Safe Superintelligence (SSI) is in the process of raising in excess of $1 billion with a valuation topping $30 billion. Bloomberg reports San Francisco-based Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the deal and plans to invest $500 million itself. Greenoaks did not reply to a request for comment about the investment. $30 billion might be well short of the $340 billion valuation OpenAI boasts, but its still well above many others in the space, including Perplexity, which has a $9 billion valuation. The new figure is significantly higher than SSIs $5 billion valuation in its last round, held this past September, when it raised $1 billion from investors including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. SSI was founded by Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy last June, just one month after Sutskever departed OpenAI. Very little is known about the company so far, aside from its stated goal of building . . . well, a safe superintelligent AI system. The company does not yet have a product on the market. We approach safety and capabilities in tandem as technical problems to be solved through revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs, the companys website reads. We plan to advance capabilities as fast as possible while making sure our safety always remains ahead. . . . We have started the worlds first straight-shot SSI lab, with one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence. Ilya Sutskever, born in Russia but raised in Jerusalem, studied with AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who has warned about the dangers of AI. A short stint at Google led to his meeting and ultimately working with cofounders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Elon Musk, on the organization that would become OpenAI. (Musk would later call Sutskever the linchpin to OpenAIs success.) Sutskever was one of the board members who led the push to remove Altman from the CEO role at OpenAI for a short period at the end of 2023. Sutskever and Altman reportedly clashed over the pace at which generative AI is being commercialized. Days after helping orchestrate the coup, Sutskever reversed course, signing onto an employee letter demanding Altmans return and expressing regret for his participation in the boards actions. He was removed from the board after Altman returned. (Sutskever isn’t the only OpenAI alum working on his own AI project. On Tuesday, former chief technology officer Mira Murati officially announced Thinking Machines Lab, her AI startup.) When Sutskever left OpenAI, he posted on X that he was working on a new project that is very personally meaningful to me about which I will share details in due time. Even with the subsequent announcement about SSIs creation last June, those details remain scant. SSI and Sutskever have dropped a few hints, however, saying that they plan on creating a single product with one focus and one goal. And SSI has made it clear that it plans to ignore pressure from markets or investors to release its product. Our singular focus means no distraction by management overhead or product cycles, and our business model means safety, security, and progress are all insulated from short-term commercial pressures, the website reads. Sutskever is widely respected as one of the worlds top AI researchers, which makes this possible funding round less surprising (even if the companys valuation is higher than expected). Despite that, he has eschewed the spotlight for much of his career, not doing many interviews, but speaking about AIs potential for both good and bad when he does. AI is a great thing. It will solve all the problems that we have today. It will solve unemployment . . . disease . . . poverty, he said in a documentary titled, iHuman, from filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei, which came out in 2020. But it will also create new problems,” Sutskever continued. “The problem of fake news is going to be a million times worse. Cyberattacks will become much more extreme. We will have totally automated AI weapons. I think AI has the potential to create infinitely stable dictatorships.”
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