Tesla fires almost 200 Autopilot AI system employees

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
29 Jun 2022 14:47

Most of the workers are tasked with labeling data to help train the Autopilot AI system.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive. (Reuters)

Tesla has fired almost 200 workers, most of whom are tasked with labeling data to help train the Autopilot AI system. This comes as the latest job losses at Tesla, as reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by TechCrunch, after CEO Elon Musk announced that there will be a headcount reduction of 10%.

Employees concentrated in San Mateo, California, officers were working on the Autopilot driver-assistance feature. Many of those laid off were workers that worked by the hour, and they were tasked with labeling training data - a task important for the development of AI systems. The workers are low-skilled and low-paid.

In the past few years, several companies have turned to labor exploitation in developing countries to attain this service.

Tesla's San Mateo office, initially, had 276 employees. According to TechCrunch, around 195 employees were fired, including data labelers, analysts, and supervisors, which leaves only 81 employees that will be moving to another office.

As of the end of 2021, Tesla had 99,290 employees worldwide.

At the beginning of June, Musk revealed that the company's employee count will increase over the next 12 months. However, the number of salaried staff should be little changed (recalling an email sent two days ago indicating that the company will cut jobs by 10%).

"Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat," Musk tweeted in a reply to an unverified Twitter account, which stated a prediction of an increase in corporate headcount.

Musk said that he had a "super bad feeling" about the US economy, rationalizing his cutting jobs by 10% in his electric vehicle company.

In another email to employees, he confirmed that he will be cutting salaried employees by 10%, arguing that the company had become "overstaffed in many areas." But, "hourly headcount will increase."