Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and tech giant Elon Musk sat down to discuss the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at this week’s summit.
Musk is a fan of AI, with Tesla investing heavily in the technology, envisioning it as a significant catalyst for not only autonomous vehicles but also humanoid robots.
Tesla’s stock boasts an impressive 96% increase year-to-date, but its stock performance has seen a decline in recent months despite its large AI investment, according to new data from industry data platform AltIndex.
Using its AI score, an indicator of stock performance, Tesla shows a nearly 50% decline since June, now sitting at 33 out of 100. AltIndex predicts the dip is a result of a decline in app downloads, social media engagement compared to its competitors and a minor decline in employee satisfaction and business outlook ratings.
Despite the findings, Musk was as calm as ever during his meeting with Sunak. Taking a look at the exchange, body language expert Darren Stanton revealed that Sunak was ‘behaving like a fan’, as though he was ‘initiated’ by Musk and he is ‘someone he has admired for many years’, while Musk didn’t defer from his usual self.
Darren also shared that Sunak appeared to display ‘fake smiles’ indicating he might not have agreed with everything Musk was saying during their exchange, but ‘went along with it anyway and the one gesture that ‘gave the power’ to Musk.
Speaking on behalf of Alt Index, body language expert Darren Stanton said, “I think Rishi Sunak was behaving like he was a fan, he feels out of his depth. He was showing lots of nervous expressions at times, it comes over as a fear microexpression.
“Not fear because he is afraid of Elon, but because of nervousness, like somebody meeting somebody they have admired for many years. Elon is always himself wherever he goes, regardless of where he goes or who he is with, he is always completely baseline – he is what he is and doesn’t defer.
“It’s very rare that he shows emotion, we have never seen him get emotional, we have only seen him for what we know him for. Rishi, meanwhile, was trying to come over as cool and calm but a lot of his gestures instead displayed that he was in awe of talking to Elon.
“There are a number of key things that show Rishi is intimidated. There is a gesture that men can do with their tie, every now and then Rishi strokes his tie, this is a self-reassurance gesture. Even though Rishi comes over quite confident, there was a slight intimidation there and he was getting quite hot under the collar. We can see him begin to sweat, there will have been lights but Elon wasn’t affected and also Rishi was seen taking several drinks of water to calm himself.
Rishi often does this thing where he takes his jacket off and rolls up his sleeves, this is a subservience roll. It’s as though he was saying ‘I’m just like you’, which gave the power to Elon. During the meeting, Rishi began matching and mirroring Elon. When he changed his posture, the normal response would be pace and lead, meaning Elon would match his. But this didn’t happen and Elon didn’t reciprocate Rishi’s movement.
“There is often a contradiction with Rishi Sunak; he has to portray this balance of being in touch with the people and also being on a similar level to Elon. I think there are a number of contradictory gestures, he did appear to be a little bit out of his depth and I think that’s where the fear comes from.”
Rishi trying to ‘impress’ ‘robotic’ Elon who is a ‘difficult man to read’
“Elon is a very difficult man to read, his baseline behavior that we look for is always consistent no matter where he is. It is almost robotic, he never deviates from the norm, remains composed and never displays much emotion. In contrast, we saw Rishi being nervous and displaying fake smiles, which indicates there might have been a few things he didn’t agree with Elon on, but went along with it anyway.
“Rishi’s shoulders were very shrugged up and he looked very uncomfortable. When Elon makes a joke about ‘not having to have a joke unless you want to’, you’ll notice Rishi lets out a very forced laugh. This came over as though he was trying to impress Elon and masking the nerves he is really feeling.”
Leave a Comment