Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#801

Post by tremon » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

47282847 wrote: post #663

jstummbillig wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job. What...? In what way is it anything other than highly unethical to sabotage someone you have a contract with, because you disagree with them?

Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.

the psychological cost of such sabotage

Of course. One always needs to weigh it against the psychological cost of complying with unethical directions.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#802

Post by bdangubic » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:34 PM UTC

dmarcos wrote: post #612

bdangubic wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

look around your house and see how much shit you got that you really want(ed). great salesman (and elon is the best in the history of the civilization) will sell you shit you never thought you wanted :)

The motivation to buy something is always because you want it. That a product doesn’t meet your needs or expectations later is a different story. What’s your evidence to claim that people spending 60k in a cybertruck don’t want it? What’s your evidence to make a similar claim or the opposite for any other purchase? Without evidence it feels you are making baseless claims about peoples motivations.

> The motivation to buy something is always because you want it

salesman make you want stuff you didn’t know you want it but now you do. entire world economy is built on this

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#803

Post by lenkite » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #600

w0m wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did Tesla work initially? Becaues they were ~first to market - and honestly, as a tesla driver for the last 6 years - It's the best car I ever owned (including Toyota, Mazda, and domestics). 6 years ago, for the effective price of a Honda Accord, I was able to get a car with excellent AWD for NorEast winters, perfect weight distribution (previously drove a Miata for comparison), could beat ~95% 'super cars' in…

Not even Tesla fans claim that Tesla is reliable. https://www.motor1.com/news/781164/tesla-used-car-reliabilit... For a year when we were doing the digital nomad thing, my wife and I didn’t own a car and we rented plenty of EVs. Tesla was by far our least favorite. Not having CarPlay alone is dealbreaker

It is well known that Tesla went cheapo (in quality) after a while as Elon got greedier

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#804

Post by vharuck » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #470

ryandrake wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, is there a specific example on either the Biden or Gamergate page that is factually incorrect? Or are you saying the entire pages are false?

Wiki's Gamergate opening paragraph: > Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign motivated by a right-wing backlash against feminism, diversity, and progressivism in video game culture. It was conducted using the hashtag "#Gamergate" primarily in 2014 and 2015. Gamergate targeted women in the video game industry, most notably feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and…

As somebody who supported GG for the first month or so, Wikipedia has the better intro from where things stand in 2026. GG started by piggybacking on general distrust of gaming journalists, but was quickly consumed by misogyny.

An article doesn't avoid bias by avoiding unpleasant facts.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#805

Post by lenkite » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #445

mlinhares wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla won because Elon is a great seller, the product is mediocre at best but I’ve heard many times from friends that it was the same quality as a Mercedes Benz, so the reality distortion field is very real. And Americans in general don’t want electric cars for some reason. I’m happily driving my Buzz and charging on my solar panels instead of paying 5 bucks a gallon on diesel. The propaganda here is strong and peopl…

I think you are simplifying a little. Musk had the courage to go against the big manufacturers and build the charger network which at the same a lot of smart people would never work. Same with SpaceX. They did something most people thought could never work. I don't like Musk politically but that doesn't mean we can't acknowledge that he transformed 2 industries by sheer willpower and stubbornness.

Yes, Original Musk was a good innovator. Alas, his brain has rotted - maybe not in IQ, but in execution and quality as he fossilized into a narcissist.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#806

Post by bwfan123 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

tim-tday wrote: post #763

There should be a social theory study of jerks and people who continue to work for them. I’d imagine there’s a sort of logarithmic drop off. It takes time for the knowledge of terrible bosses to work through the labor force, but tech is a small community (of hopefully smart people) and people start to catch on. A story I heard from a Tesla employee was that it’s impossible to hire because musk is mercurial and every…

> After a while smart people will simply decline to work for him no matter the compensation. Not everyone, but enough to start to matter.

Among people there are 2 types:

1) Those that gain self-esteem by associating themselves with leader-like figures who project visions of the future. This explains cults, religious and political groups and the like. This comes from our ape-dna where the alphas are blindly worshipped.

2) Those with enough cognitive development and independent thinking who can avoid their ape-brain getting short-circuited into worshipping the alphas.

Majority of people are in group 1) and my hypothesis is that they form a vast-majority of the customer and employee base of musk cos.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#807

Post by tzs » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #797

tzs wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s cheaper and quicker to permit a launch than permit, zone and interconnect a datacenter There's plenty of empty land sufficiently far from cities and not being used for anything else and that shouldn't have permitting or zoning problems. For interconnect do that via satellite.

> plenty of empty land sufficiently far from cities Which means interconnect permitting. > For interconnect do that via satellite As in power.

Ah, I was unclear. I meant build in empty land far from cities where you also have room to put in enough solar panels and batteries to power the data center.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#808

Post by vharuck » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:47 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #779

freehorse wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not liking something does not imply liking any possible alternative. Which one is the "undesirable part changed" here? Wikipedia is written by humans, it has a not-for-profit governance model, it encompasses a large, international community of authors/editors that attempt to operate democratically, it has an investment/commitment in being an openly available and public source of information. Grokipedia, on th…

I'll spell out the argument: Wikipedia is fine for uncontroversial facts. The obscure ones can have individual mistakes but it's generally correct. For controversial topics, it's an eternal battle between factions of "volunteers" trying to present their view of a conflict. The articles reflect which side has the best organized influencer operations. Factual truth may or may not shine through, but as a side effect, no…

>Grokipedia operates by Grok writing what it considers the true and interesting facts. That doesn't mean it's always right, but it's a model far less influenced by influencer operations.

If Grok is trained on a corpus of information written by humans trying to influence other humans, and it has no ability to perform its own original investigation in the real world, then how can it be anything but the product of influence?

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#809

Post by 47282847 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #766

mcherm wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A specific example will help. Imagine I am working for a company and I discover they are engaged in capturing and transporting human slaves. Furthermore, the government where they operate in fully aware and supportive of their actions so denouncing them publicly is unlikely to help. This is a real situation that has happened to real people at points in history in my own country. I believe that one ethical response wo…

I have no clue why people are so confused here. a) I understand the very few and specific examples, that would justify and require disobedience. In those cases just doing a "bad job" seems super lame and inconsequential. I would ask more of anyone, including myself. b) all other examples, the category that parent opened so broadly, are simply completely silly, is what I take offensive with. If you think simply disagr…

Some people in this thread seem to come from a place of morality where some “higher truth” exists outside of the sphere of the individual to guide one’s actions, and yet others even seem to weakly disguise their own ethics and beliefs behind a framework of alleged “rationality”, as if there was mathematical precision behind what is the “right” action and which is clearly wrong — and anybody that just doesn’t get it must be either an idiot or clinically insane. By which I completely dismiss not only opinion but also individual circumstances.

In reality, which actions a person considers ethical and in coherence with their own values is highly individual. I can be friends or colleague with somebody who has a different set of ethics and circumstances than me. If I were to turn this into a conflict that needs resolution each time it shows, I would set myself up for eternal (life long) war with my social environment. Some will certainly enjoy that, and get a sense of purpose and orientation from it! I prefer not to, and I can find totally valid and consistent arguments for each side. No need to agree to reach understanding, and respect our differences.

Typically, people value belonging over morality: they adapt to whatever morality guarantees their own survival. The need to belong is a fundamental need; we are social animals not made to survive on our own.

The moment I am puzzled about another persons reasoning I can ask and if they are willing they will teach me why their actions make sense to them. If I come from a place of curiosity and sincere interest, people will be happy to help me get over my confusion. If I approach that conversation from some higher ground, as some kind of missionary, I might succeed sometimes, but fail most times, as I would pose a threat to their coherence, which they will remove one way or another.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#810

Post by keeda » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #774

keeda wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not just content moderators, but he gutted Trust and Safety and the content moderation function of the company, which is surprisingly larger than the moderators themselves. Having worked peripherally with similar departments that had multiple teams, even though a lot of it comes down to human moderators, there is a ton of technology around the moderators, and even more keeping the content getting to them in the…

I get that he shredded trust & safety, and that Twitter got way worse afterwards in that regard. But he fired more than half the workforce, and they were not mostly T&S people.

I dunno, most reports from the time (and a quick Google AI overview just now) mentioned the cuts largely focused on T&S and moderation teams. Even the ML teams he cut reprotedly were working more on safety and integrity issues. Many who worked on "woke" issues were also cut, but the line between T&S and "woke" gets blurry quickly.

To be fair, this could be due to the bias in reporting, as media outlets may have had incentives for over-emphasizing the T&S angle.

I do not deny there was bloat. There was bloat in most tech firms at the time. But I don't think it was 80% bloat. My post was to explain how, even if T&S / moderation seems like a small function, it can require an unexpectedly large headcount -- probably even more for a pure-UGC company like Twitter -- and so could realistically account for the bulk of the cuts.