Elon Musk hits out at xAI employee over one word in job ad

If, for some inexplicable reason, you fancied working for Elon Musk and his artificial intelligence company xAI, then you may be interested to know that they’re currently recruiting for an AI engineer - just don’t call it a ‘researcher’ role.

The billionaire and former aide to Donald Trump ended up publicly chastising one of his own employees for using the word on Tuesday, after they said they were “looking for researchers and engineers for scaling up our rl [reinforcement learning] environments with user feedback and preference in the loop”.

Quote tweeting the job advert posted by Aditya Gupta, Musk fumed that “there are only engineers” and that “researcher is a relic term from academia”.

He also said: “This false nomenclature of ‘researcher’ and ‘engineer’, which is a thinly-masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system, is being deleted from @xAI today.

“SpaceX does more meaningful, cutting-edge “research” on the advancement of rockets and satellites than all the academic university labs on Earth combined. But we don’t use the pretentious, low-accountability term ‘researcher’.”

Gupta acknowledged the criticism with a quote tweet of his own, writing: “Correction: looking for solid engineers.”

In fact, Musk’s dislike of the word ‘researcher’ in the context of engineering can be traced all the way back to his purchasing of Twitter back in October 2022, with the social media platform’s ethical AI research team among those hit by the subsequent mass firings and layoffs carried out by the businessman.

Other researchers at the company were also laid-off:

Based in Palo Alto in California, the salary for the AI engineer job ranges from $180,000 to $440,000 - and if the company likes your CV and “statement of exceptional work”, then you’ll have a 15-minute phone interview.

Clear that, and you go on to the “main process” comprising four tests concerning coding, an interview with a “small audience” of xAI employees, and “training data for post-training” (you do two versions of the last one).

The job description reads: “As an AI Engineer & Researcher - Reasoning Post-training at xAI, you will drive the evolution of our AI models' reasoning capabilities through inventive post-training approaches, embracing a broad scope that spans from conceptual exploration to practical implementation.

“This role demands a blend of technical depth and boundless creativity, where you'll refine pre-trained models to excel in logical inference, multi-step problem-solving, and adaptive thinking—without delving into initial training phases.

“By devising unconventional techniques and fostering creative breakthroughs, you'll help our AI systems tackle complex, real-world challenges with unprecedented intelligence and reliability, collaborating across teams to turn bold ideas into transformative enhancements.”

Anyone else have a headache after reading all that?

Musk’s very public reprimanding of one of his own staff members has since seen him accused of ‘throwing people under the bus’:

One even made the point by sharing a relevant South Park GIF:

How topical.

And it’s not the first time that Musk has come under fire for how he’s interacted with people who work for him. He apologised to one former Twitter/X employee after mocking him when he asked if he still had a job at the company.

Indy100 has reached out to Musk’s representatives for comment.

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