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| Scale AI CEO explains why his company will hire for MEI, not DEI: 'Merit, excellence and intelligence' |
| 2024-06-17 |
| [FoxBusiness] CEO Alexandr Wang said Scale AI is a meritocracy and will remain so The CEO of a hot artificial intelligence startup won praise from other chief executives, including Elon Musk, after he announced a hiring policy that focuses on merit. Alexandr Wang, who founded Scale AI in 2016, shared on social media that his company has formalized an MEI hiring policy. That is, "merit, excellence and intelligence," in apparent contrast to DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion policies popular at other companies. "Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one," Wang wrote in an X post on Thursday. "Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale." Scale AI helps other businesses that want to deploy AI models by providing human workers and software services that label and test the data used to train those models. Without good data, generative AI will fail to deliver accurate responses to user queries — and Scale AI is a pioneer in the field of delivering good data. The six-year-old startup, currently worth $14 billion, has partnered with OpenAI to develop GPT-2 with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), won government contracts with the Department of Defense and every major AI lab, and powered breakthroughs in self-driving technologies, according to Wang. Scale AI generated buzz last month after securing $1 billion in funding from longtime investors including Wellington Management, Y Combinator, Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Greenoaks and Tiger Global Management. New investors include DFJ Growth, Elad Gil, Amazon, ServiceNow Ventures, Intel Capital and AMD Ventures, Fortune reported. On the heels of this success, Wang said he's received several questions about talent at Scale AI. He shared that he personally interviews every hire or signs off on every candidate packet at his company because, "Talent is our #1 input metric." "It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence," he wrote. "That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart." The CEO emphasized that Scale AI treats candidates as individuals, not representatives of groups. "We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual. "We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic." Widespread campaigns for social justice following the death of George Floyd in 2020 led to a boom in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the U.S. Supporters praise these initiatives as a means of ensuring representation of groups historically discriminated against in the workforce, though critics say hiring for diversity necessarily discriminates against other qualified candidates. DEI-related job postings have recently fallen out of favor, declining by 44% in 2023, according to data from the job site Indeed. The decline has been attributed to a shift in priorities amid layoffs and the threat of discrimination lawsuits. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 If you want to be the best and produce the best. It is simple, you need to hire the best people able to do the best job. Taking this one step further. Would anyone want a US DOD based on DEI practices? Imagine DEI Officers & Generals, vs. the abilities of General Colin Powell, or Gen. Schwarzkopf. |
| Posted by: NN2N1 2024-06-17 07:09 |
| #1 Would they let him? |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-06-17 00:39 |