Is Sam Altman’s OpenAI, the world leader in generative artificial intelligence, poaching staff from Tesla’s Autopilot team?
Elon Musk certainly wants people to think that way. After news broke Wednesday that Tesla’s Ethan Knight has become president of the automaker. 4th engineer To join Musk’s latest startup, xAI, the centbillionaire claimed his employees were going to defect to OpenAI anyway.
“It was either xAI or them.” I have written The man who seduced the first AI director from Altman in 2017 added that he was boost AI engineer salary. “[OpenAI has] They are actively recruiting Tesla engineers by offering huge rewards. [has] Unfortunately, in some cases it was successful. ”
Musk, who co-founded OpenAI more than eight years ago, has an ongoing feud with Altman and is actively suing his former partner for alleged breach of contract. OpenAI did not respond to your request. luck For comments.
Knight’s departure has raised concerns. With growth in Tesla’s core auto business coming to a complete halt, investors are wary of unconventional management techniques such as Mr. Musk moving employees between businesses as he sees fit.
Ethan is extremely talented, but calling him a “vision chief” would be an overstatement.
The Tesla AI/Autonomy team has over 200 talented engineers. The pace of Tesla’s self-driving progress is accelerating.
The talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024
Recent testimony in Musk’s pay package lawsuit revealed that board members had little oversight and even gave a rough estimate of how many staffers Musk redeployed from Tesla to support the Twitter acquisition. It became clear that it could not be done. “Mr. Musk regularly uses Tesla’s resources to work on projects for other companies he owns,” the court ruled, and no one on the board of directors objected to such decisions. He added that he did not chant.
Concerns Mr. Musk has threatened to develop AI technology outside of Tesla unless he approves a compensation package that would give him 25% control over the company, or else Mr. It is treated like a territory, but it is constantly expanding.
Relatedly, news that more Tesla engineers are leaving Musk’s xAI startup has caused anxiety among some of Tesla’s smaller shareholders.
“Is there any precedent for a CEO from a public company poaching talent to go to a private company? Is he acting in the best interests of shareholders?” Tesla Investor Club Writer subreddit I wondered on Wednesday. Another question asked: “Is this OK with the board?” Meanwhile, a third joked: “Hahaha Elon is draining Tesla’s brain.”
Tesla staff needed to close the gap between xAI and OpenAI
One of Musk’s main objectives over the past 12 months has been to rebrand Tesla as a leader in AI, now that investors are willing to pay higher multiples for such stocks. In this view, investors see Tesla not as a maker of EVs or energy storage, but rather as a manufacturer of machines that walk on two metal legs, like Optimus, or roll on four wheels. We need to think like a robot company.
Claiming that Altman is trying to steal employees not only provides a convenient excuse for why Knight and other former Tesla employees end up working for Altman at xAI, but also provides a convenient excuse for why Altman’s company It will also improve its reputation. If breakthrough industry leaders like ChatGPT and Sora are desperate to get Musk’s employees, Tesla must be at the forefront.
But ironically, it was Musk who argued that investors shouldn’t compare companies working on generative AI to companies solving “real-world AI” like Tesla.
Tesla is increasing compensation (based on progress milestones) for its AI engineering team
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2024
He argued that the technology to power large language models is nothing compared to developing self-driving cars. Tesla employees assigned to Autopilot, fully self-driving, or AI inference training computer Dojo do not process simple text like GPT-4, but highly complex systems that capture objects in three-dimensional space. manipulate camera data.
In fact, xAI requires Tesla employees far more than OpenAI. His new startup is behind the Grok chatbot that it sells to X’s premium social media customers, but it’s far behind Altman’s company in posing a legitimate threat, making it less competitive. He needs all the brainpower he can get to close the gap.
Drafting them from Tesla, where he employs more than 200 engineers on his AI and autonomy team, was a natural move, especially since they are already familiar with his management style and engineering-driven culture. is.
“The talent war over AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!” Musk wrote on Wednesday.
Especially if his companies are in competition with each other.
