Elon Musk emphasized skills and not degrees were important for those interested in apply for Tesla’s AI/Autopilot team. He invited talented coders to test their skills and see if they could get into Tesla's AI/Autopilot team. Candidates who pass Musk's test will be working on Tesla's Full Self-Driving suite and Autopilot driver-assist/safety systems. All they have to do is prove their muster.
Coders who want to apply to Tesla's AI/Autopilot team can do so on the official website for the project. Those interested in taking Musk up on his offer will have to pass a "hardcore coding test" before they can genuinely call themselves part of the Tesla AI/Autopilot team. Candidates who pass the test will be working directly with Elon Musk on projects and communicating with him daily.
Tesla will soon have over a million connected vehicles worldwide with sensors & compute needed for full self-driving, which is orders of magnitude more than everyone else combined, giving you the best possible dataset to work with
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
Musk's invitation for coders to apply to the Tesla AI/Autopilot team came after he announced a hackathon party at his house. "Tesla will hold a super fun AI party/hackathon at my house with the Tesla AI/autopilot team in about four weeks. Invitations going out soon," he tweeted.
Of course, almost everyone in the Tesla community wanted an invitation. Many people wondered if they could get an invite even if their background in coding were not backed by traditional education or experience.
One Tesla supporter @SamTalkTesla asked if a PhD was required for an invite to the party. The Tesla CEO said that a person's educational attainment didn't matter to him. He extended his offer to anyone with enough knowledge of AI and the ability to implement NNs.
Dojo, our training supercomputer, will be able to process vast amounts of video training data & efficiently run hypersparce arrays with a vast number of parameters, plenty of memory & ultra-high bandwidth between cores. More on this later.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
"A PhD is definitely not required. All that matters is a deep understanding of AI & ability to implement NNs in a way that is actually useful (latter point is what's truly hard). Don't care if you even graduated high school," he replied to @SameTalkTesla.
Based on Elon Musk's response, the Tesla AI/Autopilot team will be accepting candidates who are skilled and have worked hard at their craft—regardless of their educational background. Musk's approach to hiring Tesla personnel may be why the company's technology is so far ahead of the curve, specifically with AI/Autopilot and battery development.
Musk looks past people's backgrounds and strips them down, asking one question: "can they do it?" With this approach, Tesla opens its doors to anyone with potential, which may be why the EV automaker continues to innovate.
A PhD is definitely not required. All that matters is a deep understanding of AI & ability to implement NNs in a way that is actually useful (latter point is what’s truly hard). Don’t care if you even graduated high school.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020
Elon Musk's invitation to coders everywhere was sent via Twitter—the Tesla CEO's primary way of communicating with the world. Usually, Musk's tweets are light, quirky, and funny, earning him the title of the Twitterverse's undisputed Memelord.
There are occasions when Musk gets serious on Twitter, and this would be one of those times. The words Musk writes on his Tweet about the subject speaks volumes about how important he thinks AI/Autopilot will be in Tesla's future. "My actions, not just words, show how critically I view (benign) AI," Musk wrote.
Apply for the Tesla AI/Autopilot Team here: https://www.tesla.com/autopilotAI
Featured Image Credit: Tesla
Follow me on Twitter: @PurplePanda88
About the Author
Claribelle Deveza
Longtime writer and news/book editor. Writing about Tesla allows me to contribute something good to the world, while doing something I love.
