Delete or get fired – xAI engineer quits after post on Grok 3 AI ranking

An engineer at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has resigned after being asked to delete a social media post ranking AI models, including the upcoming Grok 3.

In a January 12 X post, Benjamin De Kraker, an AI developer at xAI, announced his resignation after the company reportedly gave him an ultimatum to take down the post, or leave the company.

“xAI told me I either had to delete the post quoted below or face being fired,” De Kraker wrote.

The post in question had De Kraker’s personal ranking of AI chatbots based on their coding capabilities. 

The ranking currently (my opinion), for code:

ChatGPT o1-pro
o1
o3-mini
(all kind of tied)

Grok 3 (expected, tbd)

Claude 3.5 Sonnet

DeepSeek

GPT-4o

Grok 2

Gemini 2.0 Pro Series (might be higher, will probably move up)

— Benjamin De Kraker (@BenjaminDEKR) February 8, 2025

He placed OpenAI’s models GPT o1-pro, o1 and o3-mini first, xAI’s unreleased Grok 3 second, then Claude 3.5 Sonnet and DeepSeek as third and fourth respectively. 

AI developer in disbelief after ultimatum

In his resignation post, De Kraker said he couldn’t believe the company reacted to his “ harmless personal opinion.” 

“After reviewing everything and thinking a lot, I’ve decided that I’m not going to delete the post…But once you start caving and giving up holding mild personal opinions, the slope becomes very slippery. I’ll keep my speech and dignity and get another job, or build one,” he reckoned.

The engineer claimed xAI objected to his acknowledgment from his previous post that Grok 3 existed, despite the company having publicly discussed the model.

“But wait, hasn’t Grok 3 been officially acknowledged by xAI? Yes. Yes, it has,” De Kraker added, “I’ll post below the official xAI blog post talking about Grok 3, along with many public Elon posts and video where it is repeatedly acknowledged.”

De Kraker then went on to explain how his post contained no proprietary information and was clearly labeled as an opinion. “The specific feature of Grok I spent the majority of my time working on with a really hard-working team is very cool, and I hope it works extremely well for everyone. I won’t say what it is because that would be actual confidential information.“

While he wished xAI success, he criticized its leadership for stifling free speech. “It’s very disappointing to me that a company and leaders who supposedly champion free speech and openness would try to fire a low-level employee over a clearly-labeled opinion that contains absolutely nothing controversial.“

xAI expands hiring as AI race intensifies

De Kraker’s resignation comes as xAI ramps up hiring in an effort to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Meta in the AI arms race. Sources familiar with the matter told Business Insider that the company plans to hire thousands of workers this year to help train its chatbot, Grok.

xAI is seeking bilingual workers and specialists in law and STEM fields, according to job listings. Employees said managers had informed them about a significant hiring push.

The company currently employs over 900 “AI tutors,” its term for data annotators, according to internal Slack records. Hundreds were recruited ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, six current and former employees said.

Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, has long positioned xAI as a challenger to OpenAI, an entity he helped create and was once part of. xAI raised $6 billion in its latest funding round and built what Musk called the “world’s largest supercomputer” in Memphis, Tennessee. 

On Monday, the Tesla CEO and a group of investors submitted a $97.4 billion offer to buy the nonprofit that controls the ChatGPT maker.

Musk framed the bid as an effort to return OpenAI to an “open-source, safety-focused force for good.” However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed the offer, stating the company was “not for sale.”

Altman suggested Musk’s move was an attempt to hinder OpenAI rather than a genuine acquisition effort.

“I think he’s probably just trying to slow us down,” Altman told Bloomberg. “He’s obviously a competitor. He’s working hard, and he’s raised a lot of money for xAI.”

In a separate interview at the Paris AI Action Summit, Altman took a personal jab at Musk, questioning his motivations.

“Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity,” Altman said. “I feel for the guy. I really do. Actually, I don’t think he’s a happy person.”

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