Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

399 points by merksittich 15 hours ago

https://archive.ph/rP4cb (text at bottom)

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2032201568335044978, https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2032201568335044978

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelli...

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/elon-musk-screw...

All: please stick to thoughtful, substantive discussion. You may not owe you-know-whom better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you don't have a thoughtful, substantive comment to add, not commenting is also a good option. There are quite a few interesting submissions to talk about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Imnimo - 10 hours ago

I think the problem for xAI is that it can really only hire two types of researchers - people who are philosophically aligned with Elon, and people who are solely money-motivated (not a judgment). But frontier AI research is a field with a lot of top talent who have strong philosophical motivation for their work, and those philosophies are often completely at odds with Elon. OpenAI and Anthropic have philosophical niches that are much better at attracting the current cream of the crop, and I don't really see how xAI can compete with that.

jazzpush2 - 9 hours ago

In an interview with xAI I was literally told that certain parts of the model have to align with Elon, and that Elon can call us and demand anything at anytime. No thanks!
- jarrettcoggin - 9 hours ago
  
  From my time at Tesla, this is 100% the case. When Elon asked for something, it was “drop what you are doing and deliver it”, then you got pressed to still deliver the thing you were already working on against the original timeline before the interrupt.
  - dgxyz - 8 hours ago
    
    Oh I worked at one of them.
    I found the best thing to do was to ignore the interrupts and carry on until they kick you on the street. Then watch from a safe distance as all the stuff you were holding together shits the bed.
    
    jarrettcoggin - 8 hours ago
    
    Definitely one approach to the circumstances. I tried some variation of this and it blew up in my face (as I expected ).
    Towards the end of my time there, a “fixer” was brought in to shore up the team that I was working on. The “fixer” also became my manager when they were brought on.
    The “fixer” proceeded to fire 70+% of the team over the course of 6-8 months and install a bunch of yes people, in addition to wasting about $2,000,000 on a subscription to rebuild our core product with a framework product no one on the team knew. I was told to deploy said framework product on top of Kubernetes (which not a single person on my team had any experience with) while delivering on other in-flight projects. I ignored the whole thing.
    I ended up deciding I was done with Tesla and went into a regularly scheduled 1:1 with my manager (the “fixer”) with a written two-weeks notice in hand, only to be fired (with 6-weeks severance, thankfully) before I was able to say anything about giving notice.
    One of the best ways to get fired in my opinion.
    
    pm90 - 7 hours ago
    
    Out of curiosity, it sounds like you're the kind of person that could easily find another job. Why slog it out until the end rather than quit/find a better gig? Genuinely interested because every time I've ended up with a manager like that my mental health has suffered so now I generally start planning my exit as soon as I'm stuck with a bad manager.
    
    hananova - 7 hours ago
    
    Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job.
    I have been in such a situation before, and while I was not able to coast along until the company went under, the time delta between me getting fired and the company going under was measured in weeks.
    In hindsight I'd probably not do it again, it was hugely mentally taxing, and knowingly performing work in such a way that it provides negative value to the company (remember, the goal is to make it go under) is in my experience actually harder than just doing a good job... Especially if being covert is a goal.
    
    jkubicek - 6 hours ago
    
    Have you read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual?
    https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
    
    MengerSponge - 5 hours ago
    
    I've seen it, but I think it's got some places that it would benefit from more clarity. Can we put together a committee to improve and protect our processes from it? We could call it a task force if that's easier to sell to management.
    
    malikolivier - 5 hours ago
    
    I did not know the existence of this manual. It was a very interesting read! Especially after page 28 (General Interference with Organizations and Production).
    
    lithocarpus - 5 hours ago
    
    Yeah, I could see this being true if there was really _nothing else_ I could possibly be doing with my time that is worthy. But there are a lot of worthy things I could be doing with my time.
    
    lesuorac - 6 hours ago
    
    Ethically perhaps but financially and mentally its surely better to start looking for a new role (at a different company) that is more in alignment with you, no?
    
    d0odk - 6 hours ago
    
    Ethically, if you extend this reasoning, are we not obligated to find a position in the most morally repulsive organization we are aware of, and then coast?
    
    _bent - 5 hours ago
    
    yes, this is called 'effective altruism'
    
    RobRivera - 6 hours ago
    
    I think there is an implied "given the company you joined turns out to be nonethically aligned"