xAI engineer resigns following post about Grok 3 AI ranking.
An AI engineer has stepped down from xAI, the AI startup founded by Elon Musk, after refusing to delete a social media post where he ranked AI models, including xAI’s upcoming Grok 3.
On February 12, Benjamin DeKraker announced his resignation from xAI after six months of working on the Human Data team responsible for developing Grok models. His decision came after a disagreement regarding an X post in which he shared his personal ranking of AI models based on their coding capabilities.
xAI claims Grok 3 post violated confidentiality
In the post, DeKraker ranked the yet-to-be-released Grok 3 below several versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT models. According to reports, xAI told him the post contained confidential information and requested that he remove it.
“I was told I either had to delete the post quoted below, or face being fired,” DeKraker wrote, adding, “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 previously promoted Grok 3, announcing on January 3 that pretraining for the model had been completed with “10X more compute than Grok 2.”
DeKraker stated that xAI considered writing “Grok 3 – to be determined (TBD)” as leaking “confidential information.”
Musk previously marketed Grok 3 capabilities
Musk had earlier marketed Grok 3’s capabilities, with a detailed guide on Cointelegraph explaining Grok AI, Musk’s answer to ChatGPT.
“The post they wanted me to remove is 100% just my personal opinion,” DeKraker said, explaining why he chose resignation over deleting the post. Since Musk’s acquisition of the platform in 2022, X has become known for its advocacy of free speech.
However, some members of the community sided with xAI, arguing that employees should not undermine the company’s unreleased products.
xAI’s ultimatum to its employee over the X post comes amid a growing power struggle between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk. On February 10, a Musk-led group of investors reportedly offered $97.4 billion to acquire OpenAI. In response, Altman rejected the offer and proposed a counteroffer of $9.74 billion to buy X, which Musk had purchased in 2022 for $44 billion.
