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

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

#851

Post by jazzpush2 »

SouthSeaDude wrote: post #315
kvetching wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem with this. The chatbot is the most important part of Grok, so it makes sense Elon would be dogfooding it then providing suggestions.. He wants it to be truthful... It was shown on benchmarks recently that it hallucinates the least...

I totally agree, it's his company 100%, why would you even apply for a job in a company where you don't agree with the owner or his vision.

Do you think the investors of xAI want this behavior baked into the model? Do you think other frontier labs enforce their models to praise their CEO and never insult them?

And, how does this fit into a vision, exactly? What vision might that be beyond "I am only to be praised?"

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

#852

Post by candu »

jarrettcoggin wrote: post #378
dgxyz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I worked at one of them. I found the best thing to do was to ignore the interrupts and carry on until they kick you on the street. Then watch from a safe distance as all the stuff you were holding together shits the bed.

Definitely one approach to the circumstances. I tried some variation of this and it blew up in my face (as I expected ). Towards the end of my time there, a “fixer” was brought in to shore up the team that I was working on. The “fixer” also became my manager when they were brought on. The “fixer” proceeded to fire 70+% of the team over the course of 6-8 months and install a bunch of yes people, in addition to wasting…

As someone who now lives and works in Denmark: it's sad that so many of us have been conditioned to think 6 weeks severance is generous.

Here, labor unions are quite widespread, and very effective at negotiating reasonably but firmly. As a result, I can depend on 3 months severance _guaranteed under law_ after 6 months at a job. (After 3 years, it goes up to 4 months, and then from there up to a max of 6 months.)

It puts the responsibility for risk of instability, errors in planning hiring / capacity, etc. firmly where it belongs: with the employer.

(And no, the economic sky is not falling here as a result. Quite the opposite.)

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

#853

Post by AlexeyBelov »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #710
zimpenfish wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That wasn’t the first time that sort of deal happened where we found out about a feature because of one of his tweets. Thankfully I've never (yet) had to experience "planning by management tweet". That does sound like absolute bullshit to deal with.

Still better than jira.

In what way?!

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

#854

Post by AlexeyBelov »

thordenmark wrote: post #733
jarrettcoggin wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my time at Tesla, this is 100% the case. When Elon asked for something, it was “drop what you are doing and deliver it”, then you got pressed to still deliver the thing you were already working on against the original timeline before the interrupt.

This is the case at every company I've worked at. When the CEO says jump, the response is to jump or pack your stuff. What's special about xAI/Tesla/SpaceX?

Neither me nor my friends ever worked at such companies. C-suite sets direction in a stategic way, department heads (or whatever, managers between C-suite and you) set tactical goals, product managers think up "things we should do", and product teams deliver those things (and manage this delivery together, e.g. timelines and such).

It would be ridiculous for a CEO, or really anyone who's not my manager, to ask the team personally to do anything. If they had an important task they'd have to trade-off something else from the immediate backlog, by going through the product manager.

Even in small companies you generally have a PM in front of a team.

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

#855

Post by general1465 »

jesterson wrote: post #702
general1465 wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am calling my approach to these tasks to make them rot away. If CEO/customer wants something, I will ignore it until he will start demanding it repeatedly then I will start thinking like working on it. Because it can also happen that CEO/customer will want shiny thing you will deliver the shiny thing and he will have no clue why did you do that, because he forgot that he wanted that - the task has rot away.

I wish i could have a machine to detect workforce like you and not to hire those people.

Consider it self-regulating system. If task can't survive in a mind of a wisher for more then few days, it was not needed from the start. Now you are saving resources and time to company which you can redirect to actually required tasks instead of some silly whims.

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

#856

Post by bravetraveler »

alberth wrote: post #817
jazzpush2 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an interview with xAI I was literally told that certain parts of the model have to align with Elon, and that Elon can call us and demand anything at anytime. No thanks!

Let’s restate this another way: “ In an interview with {COMPANY} I was literally told that … {COMPANY-OWNER} can call us and demand anything at anytime. “ Doesn’t sound so crazy when Elon name is removed from it. Note: I’m no Elon fan, but do think sometimes HN overreacts when his name is mentioned.

Sounds pretty crazy to me, bud. I keep landing on 'servitude with extra steps'. Owner should have better things to do/people to bother, I should have space. Boundaries, etc. Yeah yeah, I'll never make a bazillion dollars. I'll know freedom.

Even an executive assistant, which I would never apply for, has off hours.

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

#857

Post by mbrochh »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #483
Sol- wrote: post #134

I don't use it myself, but I feel like the way Grok is integrated into Twitter is a pretty good thing for discussions, as it is certainly a more objective and rational voice than most human participants. I think it's good that people tag @grok if they don't understand something or want an opinion, even if it looks pretty silly to see "@grok is this true" repeated multiple times in replies. That said, Musk's attempts…

I’m really, really uninterested in reading AI content that other people have generated. If I’m on Twitter, I’m looking for what humans have to say.

I'm afraid that ship has long sailed. The humans left on Twitter are all just copy pasting AI slop now...

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

#859

Post by LtWorf »

softwaredoug wrote: post #726
moogly wrote: post #234

I feel xAI is just a very big version of the Boring Co. "flamethrower": an unserious endeavor which is just a reskinned existing tool (it was a reskinned weed burner), but people were wowed by it anyway, since Musk was behind it, and they all pretended it was something new and notable. The burning (heh) question is which SpaceX subsidiary will fail first, xAI or Tesla (not yet a subsidiary, but it's written in the st…

Crazy thing is if Hormuz stays closed, Tesla could theoretically be positioned to reap massive benefits. But they seem to be moving away from consumer electric cars as their focus.

With rolling blackouts and rationed fuel?

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

#860

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

MengerSponge wrote: post #532
jkubicek wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual? https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

I've seen it, but I think it's got some places that it would benefit from more clarity. Can we put together a committee to improve and protect our processes from it? We could call it a task force if that's easier to sell to management.

This demands a tiger team.
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