--- title: "Elon Musk’s AI Company Just Sacked an Engineer for Posting About Its Upcoming AI Model" description: "An \"anti-woke\" AI company founded by self-attested poop-poster Elon Musk has forced one of its engineers to resign for, essentially, posting. " date: "2025-02-14" modified: "2025-02-14" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/elon-musk-xai-sacks-engineer" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "anti-woke" - "elon musk" - "grok" - "xai" --- # Elon Musk’s AI Company Just Sacked an Engineer for Posting About Its Upcoming AI Model ![An "anti-woke" AI company founded by self-attested poop-poster Elon Musk has forced one of its engineers to resign for, essentially, posting. ]() *\Image: Jim Watson / AFP via Getty / Futurism\* ## Broke or Woke? An "[anti-woke]()" AI company founded by chronic poster Elon Musk has forced one of its engineers to resign for, essentially, posting. That engineer, Benjamin De Kraker, said in a lengthy X post that he'd been told he needed to either delete a [post ranking the still-unreleased model]() lower than OpenAI's offering for writing code — or face termination. "After reviewing everything and thinking a lot, I've decided that I'm not going to delete the post," the [longtime AI dev]() said, "which is very clearly a harmless personal opinion." As De Kraker explained, xAI claimed that it asked the engineer to delete his post because he'd publicly referenced the forthcoming model — despite [Musk announcing it]() on the same platform more than a month prior. "Their official demand said that even writing 'Grok 3 - TBD' is somehow 'confidential information,'" he wrote. "This is absolutely absurd, since it's repeatedly been acknowledged by the company and its famous CEO." Reading between the lines, however, it seems the firing threat may have been leveled because he had been honest about Grok 3's current capabilities when stacking it up against OpenAI and others. "Are they mad that my clearly-labeled opinion didn't guess that the still-unreleased Grok 3 will be higher? Maybe. Probably," he wrote. "Again, maybe it is at the top, I genuinely don't know. That's why it says 'to be determined.'" Despite still hoping the [poster-in-chief]() and his AI company "win," De Kraker said it was "very disappointing" that a company [purporting to champion free speech]() "would try to fire a low-level employee over a clearly-labeled opinion that contains absolutely nothing controversial." "But here we are," he wrote. As if the situation wasn't already bizarre enough, Musk made it all the stranger by wading into the debate himself. "That's weird," the [X owner replied](). In response, De Kraker agreed that it was, indeed, "[pretty weird]()." Despite that acknowledgment from the [world's richest poster](), there has been no further update about De Kraker's case, suggesting that Musk didn't maneuver to get him his job back (or, perhaps, that the engineer refused). We can't say we're exactly surprised, but it's definitely another bit of evidence that the [gastrointestinally-challenged]() billionaire's avowed "[free speech absolutism]()" seldom holds up in practice. **More on posting:** [*Elon Musk Calls for Firing of Wall Street Journal Reporter Who Found His DOGE Boy's Racist Tweets*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()