AI Engineer Resigns From xAI Over Social Media Dispute

According to Cointelegraph, an AI engineer has resigned from xAI, the artificial intelligence startup founded by Elon Musk, following a disagreement over a social media post. Benjamin DeKraker, who worked on the Human Data team developing Grok models, announced his resignation on February 12 after six months with the company. The conflict arose from a post on the social media platform X, where DeKraker shared his personal ranking of AI models, including xAI's upcoming Grok 3, based on their coding capabilities. xAI claimed that DeKraker's post violated confidentiality agreements, as it ranked the unreleased Grok 3 below several models from OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company reportedly asked DeKraker to remove the post, citing it contained confidential information. DeKraker stated, "I either had to delete the post quoted below or face being fired," but he chose to resign instead, asserting that his post was merely a harmless personal opinion. Elon Musk had previously promoted Grok 3, noting on January 3 that its pretraining had been completed with significantly more computational power than its predecessor, Grok 2. DeKraker explained his decision to leave rather than delete the post, emphasizing that it was purely his personal opinion. The social media platform X, known for its emphasis on free speech since Musk's acquisition in 2022, became the center of this dispute. While some community members supported xAI's stance, arguing that employees should not undermine a company's unreleased products, others sided with DeKraker's right to express his opinion. This incident occurs amid a broader power struggle between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk. On February 10, a group of investors led by Musk reportedly offered $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI. In response, Altman countered with an offer of $9.74 billion to purchase X, which Musk had bought in 2022 for $44 billion. The ongoing tensions highlight the competitive landscape in the AI industry, as major players vie for dominance and influence.