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Meta’s AI Chief, Yann LeCun, has publicly mocked Elon Musk for his attempt to recruit workers to join his start-up, xAI.
Fresh off the back of announcing a $6million funding round for the artificial intelligence company on Sunday, Musk took to X earlier on Monday in a bid to recruit new talent.
"Join xAI if you believe in our mission of understanding the universe, which requires maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth, without regard to popularity or political correctness,” Musk wrote.
The tech mogul’s statement was in response to a post from Igor Babushkin, a member of technical staff at xAI, who shared a link to the start-up’s careers page.
LeCun, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, hit back at Musk's plea to tech workers in a reply to the post, criticizing the culture Musk has created at xAI and his other start-ups.
The post from LeCun read:
"Join xAI if you can stand a boss who: - claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure). - claims that what you are working on will kill everyone and must be stopped or paused (yay, vacation for 6 months!). - claims to want a 'maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth' but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform."
In April, Musk stated his belief that artificial general intelligence, a level of AI that can match or surpass human capabilities, would be a reality by 2025.
Musk doubled down on his comments while speaking virtually at VivaTech 2024 on May 23, predicting in the future that “probably none of us will have a job.”
LeCun has previously been dubbed a “Godfather of AI,” and has previously stated his belief that AI won't take over the world or permanently destroy jobs. In 2023, he described those suggesting AI poses a threat to humanity as “preposterously ridiculous.”
The pair have feuded online periodically since 2017, with LeCun slamming Musk in March for his claim that AI would “probably be smarter than any single human next year.”
Musk has previously posted on X about his current challenges of recruiting AI talent. “The talent war for AI is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen!” he wrote in April.
Meta’s CEO & Founder Mark Zuckerberg has made a similar claim, telling the Verge that compared to past talent wars, “there are different dynamics here with multiple companies going for the same profile.”
Tech giants including Tesla, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have all made unusual attempts to recruit or retain talent including massive compensation offers, direct phone calls from company founders to workers at rival companies, and unprecedented counter offers.
