‘A total, miserable, self-loathing poser’: The neuroscientist taking on Elon Musk

From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Elon Musk has no shortage of critics, but earlier this year one of them stood out. Philip Loow isn't a journalist, his neuroscientist, inventor, and once a close friend of Musk. That was until he published a scathing post accusing the world's richest man of manipulation, narcissism, and a dangerous obsession with power. The post exploded online before vanishing almost entirely. Today.

I think I was insomniac early in January when this whole thing happened, and I was doom scrolling and I read this extraordinary essay by this man that I'd never heard of, and literally after reading it, I sent a message via Facebook saying, if you ever want to be interviewed by some unknown journalist in London, I'd love to talk to you, and months later it happened.

As a neuroscientists, I believe that my core of responsibility is to produce the data.

But as a technologist, I.

Believe that I have a responsibility to follow my work into the world and make sure there's used properly.

Lo is a bit of a wonder kind. He's now forty five.

He was mentored by the late great molecular biologists USCRIC and he earned his PhD in an error called computational neurobiology and presented a mathematical technique which basically allows the mapping of easy mapping of brain waves his eyebrain probe again to read sleep and brain waves.

Launched a couple of years ago in four American states.

One point four percent of AT stock was sold for eighty five million, So that value the company it's six billion, And if you think back to the same point of raising a venture capital for Facebook, that valuation is twelve

Tell me about the essa, About what it was he was saying exactly, and what was your immediate reaction to it.

Look, it was quite long, you know, it was about nineteen hundred words when I finally sort of transferred it onto a word document. And he effectively established his long friendship with Masks, So you knew that it was somebody that wasn't just whistling out of their bottoms if you liked. They'd met in Paris a long time before they then

But the essay itself was a takedown.

He was being aggressive with people who had his best interest at height, not with me. But I noticed them do that with a number of people, and I felt that as a friend, I wouldn't be in his corner if I didn't call him out on it, so I did.

Lo didn't hold back.

I mean, he used words like, you know that Musk is a narcissist with an obsessive lust for power. He called him a total, miserable, self loathing poser. He accused him of going for the most vulnerable in US society and using his role with DOGE to attack the very organizations and you know that were looking at his own businesses. He described him as a man who in fact didn't really understand technology, didn't really understand algorithms.

Respectful the ICAI, that's bullshit. And just like when he calls himself a free speech absolutist when he clearly is boosting certain voices on excluding his own, and shotow banning others relatively speaking. So I know him too well to understand that this is a charade.

I mean, I think all this came from the fact that Lowe himself's father is a Holocaust survivor.

And obviously what I.

Think sparked his theory was the the Nazi salute. All right, so we just we just showed that right, it's worth it was quick.

I think our viewers are smart, and.

That musk, then later denied was a Nazi salute.

Just this is the most This is the biggest, This is the biggest, and.

So yeah, he demanded an apology.

He described a musk slow sort of deterioration, you know, the way they fell out as friends.

It was quite the read.

I'm sure well millions of people have read it since, but it really surprised low I think he really seemed quite shell shot steel that had gone so viral. I remember that night just thinking, wow, passed the popcorn. This is amazing. Low has since accused Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook of suppressing his posts. At the time, he published an abridged version of this essay on LinkedIn, and that disappeared straight away. Apparently had to take legual action to get

So I was alleging that the post was removed and the ability to share it was suppressed. So how is he planning to prosecute that argument? How's he fighting back?

Well, it's interesting because you know, one of the things that Lowe told me during this interview is that he's set aside two hundred and fifty million US to start testing freedom of speech in various states in the US where consumer law is particularly strong and.

Carries with it criminal penalties.

It's interesting that they've chosen a couple of states in the US, particularly California, where the pledge to promise something even if it is free, even if it's a product that has produced free and not delivering carries with it

You mentioned freedom of speech does load basically see this as a test of the various social media platforms commitment to free speech, something meta Facebook and X talk about a lot.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think that's one of his driving moments or driving forces.

Is that you go and test this.

You say you are platforms of freedom of speech. You've removed your teams that were checking posts. As Zuckerberg announced earlier this year, We're going to.

Get rid of fact checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to acts starting in the US.

You promise this as your brand, Let's test it again. He gets very passionate about this is a promise. You've made your life on this, your money on this, and you're failing to do it. You can see if you look at both particularly Facebook and LinkedIn. He continues to test, so he'll put something up and then clearly the teams are watching what happens and analyzing what happens. He's really very very vocal about Europe really turning its attention to

After the break, Low makes it personal.

Palla.

One of the more incendiary parts of Low's post is that he goes after Elon Musk's character and credibility. When you met with him, what did he tell you about the man himself?

Well, there's no doubt that these are two men that were friends. I remember looking at a really interesting video which is still up on YouTube.

I just want to thank you Elon and Philip for joining me here and sharing your thoughts about consciousness and enlightenment and technology.

A young scientist interviewing the two when they were very young Musk and Low.

Yeah, it was just when I was in college. I mean, I think, what are the things that are most can affect the future humanity? And oring to be involved in at least some of those things.

You know, you could tell our friends they were sort of talking about how they were going to change the world, you know, their bright, brilliant young minds that were sort of taking on the tech world.

I'm an accidental entrepreneur, and before that, I was an accidental neuroscientist. And before that I was a mathematician. And then it wasn't until Stephen Hawkin asked me to help him with his last that I became really involved in trying to access consciousness in humans.

But it's fairly obvious that over a period of time there was business clashes as well, clearly sort of rivalry at some point. And then if you look at the neurovidual Lowe's website, you see that Musk is still an advisor, but it's clear that he has no sort of financial interests, no advisory in etcetera, etcetera. So there was a big sort of behind the scenes breakup of a business friendship as well.

I suspect did he speak to you at all about Musk's involvement in politics and had did he view his growing influence with things like Doze and his closeness with Donald Trump.

Well, it's interesting because by the time we spoke, you know, Musk has he's not quite on the stage with his chainsaws and sort of breastfeeding as he was. And I think one of the things that Lowe was unable to kind of quell was his true joy at the fact that you know, Tesla and his stock had gotten down. He talked about great worries about these platforms, you know, meta as well influence in Europe and sort of bolstering right wing governments.

In December, Musk waded into Germany's election campaign, calling the far right anti immigration Alternative for Germany Party or AfD, the country's savior.

It's proud, it's okay, it's good to be proud of German culture, German.

Values, and not to lose that in some.

Sort of multiculturalism that that lodes everything. You know, he clearly has a great fear that these platforms are being harnessed in a way to open the door to kind of discourse that occurred, you know, as we saw pre World War two and which resulted in the horrors that we thought we'd never see again. So I think he's very motivated by history too.

I think has low paid any costs for speaking out.

Well. I asked him about that. The first thing.

I asked him, you know, how are you because you know, he spent months in battle with this man, and he said, well, I'm not actually, you know, I'm not in Ol Salvador yet and laughed. But then when I asked him later about how he felt, he does. He now employs security and he says that he's had death threats some many not credible, but some credible enough for him to need to hire armed security while he's in a America. So he didn't dwell on it. He says he's fearless. He

And finally, Palla, what's Phillip's end goal here when it comes to his activism and the money that he's putting forward. What kind of world does you want to see?

You know?

For some reason, I'd stumbled on an ad and an old Apple ab that had flashes of sort of Martin Luther King, great people of history, and this kind of sense that Silicon Valley at the time was for diverse people, people that thought differently.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs and the square halls.

You know what's happened?

I asked him, you know, why is it that these technocrats are now shutting down free speech and they're beside people like Trump? And he was remarkably optimistic. He said, Look, actually, we still believe that most of us do. We still think that freedom of speech is important. We still think that We're in the world of ideas, and I think that's his sort of ultimate aim is to bring back a spotlight to science and the things that are being attacked in America and bring them back to where they belong,

Palla, thank you so much for your time, absolute pleasure. You can read Power's full reporting in this week's edition of the Saturday paper. Also in the news, Opposition leader Susan Lee has announced her new shadow cabinet. The new economic term will be led by Deputy Leader Ted O'Brien as Shadow treasurer. Former Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has been