&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Elon Musk’s xAI fires 500 workers training Grok AI, says generalist tutors no longer needed")
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI, as per reports, has laid off at least 500 workers from its data annotation team, the company's largest workforce, which was tasked with training Grok AI - the chatbot that in recent days has been a near-constant subject of controversies. As per the news report, the employees received emails saying most "general AI tutor" roles were being cut as part of a shift toward "specialist AI tutors."
"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. This strategic pivot will take effect immediately," stated the email, adding that in line with this shift, the company no longer needs generalist AI tutor positions. Thus "your employment with xAI will conclude," it read as reported by Business Insider.
Also read | Forget introvert or extrovert — are you secretly an overlooked personality type called ‘otrovert’?
What is xAI's annotation team?
The annotation team has been central to training Grok, xAI's chatbot, by labelling and contextualising raw data. The main Slack channel for annotators shrank from 1,500 members to just over 1,000 within hours of the layoffs.
In a post on X, the company said it would "surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x". "We are hiring across domains like STEM, finance, medicine, safety, and many more. Come join us to help build truth-seeking AGI!" reads the post which has a link to the new job openings.
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The cuts came just days after senior leaders on the annotation team had their Slack accounts deactivated. Workers were also pulled into one-on-one reviews and asked to take tests to determine whether they could transition into specialist roles.
The tests, overseen by new team leader Diego Pasini, covered domains like STEM, coding, finance, medicine, chatbot behaviour, and even quirky specialities like "personality and model behaviour" and "shitposters and doomscrollers." Some were conducted on CodeSignal, others on Google Forms.
Frustration mounted over the short notice. One worker who complained in Slack about the timing – "Doing this after people have gone home for the day is pretty shady" – had their account deactivated soon after, colleagues said.
