Elon Musk\u2019s 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\u2019s generative AI chatbot, Grok.<\/p>\n
xAI lays off 500 data annotation staff<\/p>\n
As per the report, in an email sent to staff, xAI<\/a> said it was reducing its focus on developing general AI tutors and would instead concentrate resources on specialist AI tutors. \u201cAfter a thorough review of our Human Data efforts, we\u2019ve decided to accelerate the expansion and prioritisation of our specialist AI tutors, while scaling back our focus on general AI tutor roles,\u201d the message stated. \u201cAs part of this shift in focus, we no longer need most generalist AI tutor positions and your employment with xAI will conclude.\u201d<\/p>\n Employees <\/a>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.<\/p>\n Expansion of specialist AI roles<\/p>\n 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.<\/a> On 13 September, xAI announced plans to expand this team tenfold, saying the roles were \u201cadding huge value\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In other news, earlier this month, Musk<\/a> once again put the spotlight on artificial intelligence, as he highlighted the predictive abilities of X\u2019s AI chatbot, Grok. On his official X account, the billionaire shared a link to a live benchmark platform, urging users to test Grok\u2019s forecasting prowess.<\/p>\n In his first tweet, Musk wrote, \u201cDownload the @Grok app <\/a>and try Grok Expert mode. For serious predictions, Grok Heavy is the best.\u201d He followed up with, \u201cThe ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n