Musk Lays off Tesla Senior Executives in Fresh Job Cuts

(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
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Musk Lays off Tesla Senior Executives in Fresh Job Cuts

(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)
(FILES) A Tesla Model Y car stands in front of the company's plant as Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the company's electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024, as employees resumed work after production had to be halted due to a suspected arson attack that caused a power outage. (Photo by Odd ANDERSEN / AFP)

Elon Musk has dismissed two Tesla senior executives and plans to lay off hundreds more employees, frustrated by falling sales and the pace of job cuts so far, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing the CEO's email to senior managers.
Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the electric vehicle maker's Supercharger business, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program, will leave on Tuesday morning, the report said.
Musk also plans to dismiss everyone working for Tinucci and Ho, including the roughly 500 employees who work in the Supercharger group, The Information said. It was not clear how many employees worked for Ho.
Tesla's public policy team, which was led by former executive Rohan Patel, will also be dissolved, the report said.
"Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction," Musk wrote in the email, the report said. "While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so."
Tesla, which had 140,473 employees globally as of end-2023, did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.
Ho joined Tesla in 2013 and was a program manager in the development of the Model S, the 3, and the Y before being put in charge of all new vehicles, while Tinucci joined in 2018 as a senior product manager, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Two other senior leaders -- Patel and battery development chief Drew Baglino -- announced their departures earlier this month, when Tesla also ordered the layoffs of more than 10% of its workforce.
Tesla is grappling with falling sales and an intensifying price war, which led to its quarterly revenue falling for the first time since 2020, the company reported last week.
Musk made progress towards rolling out Tesla's advanced driver-assistance package in China, the epicenter of the EV price war, during a surprise visit to Beijing on Sunday.
That trip came just over a week after he scrapped a planned trip to India, where Tesla has long sought to start operations, due to "very heavy Tesla obligations."



AI Tool Uses Selfies to Predict Biological Age and Cancer Survival

Three pedestrians take a selfie on the picturesque alleyway at the end of Rue de l'Universite, Paris. Ian LANGSDON / AFP/File
Three pedestrians take a selfie on the picturesque alleyway at the end of Rue de l'Universite, Paris. Ian LANGSDON / AFP/File
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AI Tool Uses Selfies to Predict Biological Age and Cancer Survival

Three pedestrians take a selfie on the picturesque alleyway at the end of Rue de l'Universite, Paris. Ian LANGSDON / AFP/File
Three pedestrians take a selfie on the picturesque alleyway at the end of Rue de l'Universite, Paris. Ian LANGSDON / AFP/File

Doctors often start exams with the so-called "eyeball test" -- a snap judgment about whether the patient appears older or younger than their age, which can influence key medical decisions.

That intuitive assessment may soon get an AI upgrade.

FaceAge, a deep learning algorithm described Thursday in The  Lancet Digital Health, converts a simple headshot into a number that more accurately reflects a person's biological age rather than the birthday on their chart.

Trained on tens of thousands of photographs, it pegged cancer patients on average as biologically five years older than healthy peers. The study's authors say it could help doctors decide who can safely tolerate punishing treatments, and who might fare better with a gentler approach.

"We hypothesize that FaceAge could be used as a biomarker in cancer care to quantify a patient's biological age and help a doctor make these tough decisions," said co-senior author Raymond Mak, an oncologist at Mass Brigham Health, a Harvard-affiliated health system in Boston.

Consider two hypothetical patients: a spry 75‑year‑old whose biological age clocks in at 65, and a frail 60‑year‑old whose biology reads 70. Aggressive radiation might be appropriate for the former but risky for the latter.

The same logic could help guide decisions about heart surgery, hip replacements or end-of-life care.

Sharper lens on frailty

Growing evidence shows humans age at different rates, shaped by genes, stress, exercise, and habits like smoking or drinking. While pricey genetic tests can reveal how DNA wears over time, FaceAge promises insight using only a selfie.

The model was trained on 58,851 portraits of presumed-healthy adults over 60, culled from public datasets.

It was then tested on 6,196 cancer patients treated in the United States and the Netherlands, using photos snapped just before radiotherapy. Patients with malignancies looked on average 4.79 years older biologically than their chronological age.

Among cancer patients, a higher FaceAge score strongly predicted worse survival -- even after accounting for actual age, sex, and tumor type -- and the hazard rose steeply for anyone whose biological reading tipped past 85.

Intriguingly, FaceAge appears to weigh the signs of aging differently than humans do. For example, being gray-haired or balding matters less than subtle changes in facial muscle tone.

FaceAge boosted doctors' accuracy, too. Eight physicians were asked to examine headshots of terminal cancer patients and guess who would die within six months. Their success rate barely beat chance; with FaceAge data in hand, predictions improved sharply.

The model even affirmed a favorite internet meme, estimating actor Paul Rudd's biological age as 43 in a photo taken when he was 50.

Bias and ethics guardrails

AI tools have faced scrutiny for under‑serving non-white people. Mak said preliminary checks revealed no significant racial bias in FaceAge's predictions, but the group is training a second‑generation model on 20,000 patients.

They're also probing how factors like makeup, cosmetic surgery or room lighting variations could fool the system.

Ethics debates loom large. An AI that can read biological age from a selfie could prove a boon for clinicians, but also tempting for life insurers or employers seeking to gauge risk.

"It is for sure something that needs attention, to assure that these technologies are used only in the benefit for the patient," said Hugo Aerts, the study's co-lead who directs MGB's AI in medicine program.

Another dilemma: What happens when the mirror talks back? Learning that your body is biologically older than you thought may spur healthy changes -- or sow anxiety.

The researchers are planning to open a public-facing FaceAge portal where people can upload their own pictures to enroll in a research study to further validate the algorithm. Commercial versions aimed at clinicians may follow, but only after more validation.