Musk's xAI lays off 500 employees in massive downsizing move
What's the story
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) company, xAI, has laid off over 500 employees from its data annotation team. The decision was communicated through emails sent out on Friday night, as per Business Insider. The layoffs primarily affect generalist AI tutors, with the company now focusing on expanding its team of specialist AI tutors.
Strategic pivot
Layoff emails detail new strategy
The layoff emails explained the company's new strategy: "After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we've decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritization of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles." The data annotation team, xAI's largest, plays a crucial role in developing Grok by teaching the chatbot to contextualize and categorize raw data. The number of members in the team has now dropped from over 1,500 to just above 1,000.
Hiring spree
xAI to expand its team of specialist AI tutors
Despite the massive layoffs, xAI announced on X that it is looking to expand its team of specialist AI tutors by "10X." The company is hiring across various domains such as STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and more. The announcement comes just days after several senior-level employees were let go from their positions at the company.
Reorganization
Tests conducted to sort annotators and supervisors by strengths
Just days after the layoffs, xAI asked its employees to prepare for a reorganization of the data annotation team. The company also conducted tests to determine their roles going forward. These tests were aimed at sorting annotators and their supervisors based on their strengths and interests in different domains like STEM, coding, finance, medicine, Grok's "personality and model behavior," etc.