After refusing to remove a post that ranked AI models, including the impending Grok 3, an AI engineer at xAI quit, igniting a controversy about free expression.
After refusing to remove a social media post that ranked AI models, including xAI’s upcoming Grok 3, an AI developer has quit xAI, the AI business that Elon Musk created.
After six months of working with the Human Data team to develop Grok models, Benjamin DeKraker abruptly resigned from xAI on February 12.
His choice came after a disagreement over an X post in which he ranked AI models according to their coding skills.
xAI assertions A post by Grok 3 breached confidentiality.
Benjamin DeKraker graded the unreleased Grok 3 lower than the number of OpenAI ChatGPT models in the post. According to reports, XAI requested that he take down the article since it included private information.
“I had to remove either the post quoted below or risk being fired,” DeKraker stated.
“After reviewing everything and thinking a lot, I’ve decided that I’m not going to delete the post—which is very clearly a harmless personal opinion.”
Elon Musk had pushed Grok 3, saying on January 3 that the model’s pretraining had been finished using “10X more compute than Grok 2.”
DeKraker claims that the Musk-founded AI business claimed that writing “Grok 3-to be determined (TBD)” amounted to “confidential information leakage.”
Musk had already advertised Grok 3’s capabilities.
When asked why he resigned rather than remove a post on X, DeKraker responded, “The post they wanted me to remove is 100% just my personal opinion.” Since Musk acquired the social media network in 2022, it has gained a reputation for promoting free speech.
Some community members, however, supported xAI, contending that internal staff members shouldn’t jeopardize a business’s unannounced goods.
Amid a power dispute between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, XAI issued an ultimatum to its employees for an X job.
According to reports, a group of investors led by Musk offered $97.4 billion to purchase OpenAI on February 10. Altman responded by declining and making a counter bid of $9.74 billion to buy X, which Musk had purchased for $44 billion in 2022.
