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4 months ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has laid off around 500 employees from its data annotation team, according to a report by Business Insider. The move, communicated late on Friday evening, affects workers who were responsible for training the company’s generative AI chatbot, Grok.
xAI lays off 500 data annotation staff
As per the report, in an email sent to staff, xAI said it was reducing its focus on developing general AI tutors and would instead concentrate resources on specialist AI tutors. “After a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we’ve decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritisation of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles,” the message stated. “As part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.”
Employees were told their system access would be revoked immediately. However, salaries would continue to be paid until the end of their contracts or until 30 November, adds the report.
Expansion of specialist AI roles
The company has reportedly made clear it is ramping up investment in specialist AI tutors across fields such as video games, web design, data science, medicine, and STEM. On 13 September, xAI announced plans to expand this team tenfold, saying the roles were “adding huge value”.
Notably, the layoffs follow recent reports that senior members of the data annotation team had their Slack accounts deactivated before the formal announcement was made.
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