Elon Musk’s xAI laid off 500 workers from its data annotation team on Friday night. The data annotation team was tasked with training xAI’s generative AI chatbot, Grok.
According to a Business Insider report, an email sent to affected employees on Friday night informed them that the AI company was scaling back its focus on general AI tutors, while prioritizing and expanding its focus on specialist AI tutors.
What the layoff email said
"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," the email read. "As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude."
Workers were told that their access to the company systems would be cut off immediately. However, they would receive their salary till either the end of their contract or November 30.
Specialist AI tutors
xAI, while scaling down its general AI tutors team, is simultaneously increasing its focus on specialist AI tutors.
A post by xAI on September 13 said it would increase its specialist AI team by 10 times. “Specialist AI tutors at xAI are adding huge value. We will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x!” the post said.
{{/usCountry}}A post by xAI on September 13 said it would increase its specialist AI team by 10 times. “Specialist AI tutors at xAI are adding huge value. We will immediately surge our Specialist AI tutor team by 10x!” the post said.
{{/usCountry}}On the company’s website, openings include Specialist AI tutors for fields like video games, web design, data science, medicine, STEM and more.
Last week, Business Insider had also reported how many senior xAI employees of the data annotation team had their Slack accounts deactivated.