Neuralink co-founder and co-CEO Elon Musk had twins with Neuralink chief executive Siobhan Zilis last year, and the decision may have violated the corporate policy of the brain computer interface company. Reuters reports – in addition to being an ethically dubious and inappropriate breach of professional conduct.
Babies found in court documents received insider earlier this year created a problem for Musk: According to experts, the rules set out in Neuralink’s 62-page employee handbook cannot fully explain the unusual relationship between Zeelis and Musk.
“Whichever lawyer wrote that language didn’t look at this situation,” said Nell Minow, vice chairman of corporate governance consulting firm ValueEdge Advisors. Reutersreviewing the manual, adding that the arrangement fell “between the cracks”.
While experts disagree on whether the relationship violates any company rules, one fact remains: Musk impregnated one of his closest advisers and executive reports, a generator of conflicts of interest that undermines the credibility of his judgment.
Additionally, there is evidence that the two were or are in a romantic relationship, although Neuralink and Zilis state that the twins were conceived with the BMP and that their relationship is not romantic.
But how insider Found last month, they both listed the same address on paperwork for a multimillion-dollar mansion in Austin, Texas.
Zilis then publicly adores Musk. AT tweet back in May 2020Zilis said she “never met anyone who goes through more personal pain to fight for an inspiring future for humanity – and has done so relentlessly for decades.”
Zilis was also the head of several Musk ventures, serving as a project director at Tesla before joining the board of directors of OpenAI and then Neuralink, pushing the professional boundaries even further.
Despite weeks of public outrage over the news of Zilis and Musk’s relationship and the birth of their twins, Zilis continues to work for Musk. According to ReutersSources, they continued to hold internal and external meetings of the company together.
In short, calling a relationship unromantic or something that doesn’t fall under the headings of “personal relationship” or “close friendship” as outlined in Neuralink’s code of conduct is a stretch.
Of course, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Zilis and Musk’s relationship. But it is nonetheless a situation that should cause one to worry about other instances of high-level executives using corporate power structures to establish relationships, let alone children, with their subordinates.
So Musk plans to populate the Earth? The CEO claims that population decline is the biggest crisis humanity faces to this day – even more than global warminghe said this week.
This is yet another example of Musk setting a controversial new standard when it comes to professional conduct. And that should be someone’s concern. As the richest man in the world, Musk has a huge impact on corporate culture.
His decision to have children with one of his closest advisers is another step down an already slippery slope.
READ MORE: Analysis: Musk tests the limits of control by having children with an assistant [Reuters]