The narrative that all tech jobs in the US are going to Indians resurfaced on social media after Devendra Chaplot announced that he was joining SpaceX and xAI, working closely with Elon Musk and team to build superintelligence. The announcement came with a photo of him with Musk that drew flak for Musk as he once again hired an Indian. Social media users mocked Elon Musk, saying that he speaks about protecting against multiculturalism and mass migration and then hired an Indian two minutes later. Elon Musk has been a strong advocate of the H-1B visa program on which the Silicon Valley companies are largely dependent. “Together SpaceX and xAI combine physical and digital intelligence under a leader who understands hardware at the deepest level. Add a high-agency culture with frontier-scale resources, and you get the possibility to achieve something truly unique,” Chaplot wrote in his announcement.“I’m excited to advance the fields I’ve obsessed over for years, from robotics research to building AI models on the founding teams of Mistral and TML. Both were extraordinary journeys with extraordinary people that shaped how I think about building intelligence from the ground up. Grateful for everything that brought me here and can’t wait to get started,” the announcement added. Chaplot graduated from IIT-Bombay in 2014 with B. Tech in Computer Science and Engineering and a minor in Applied Statistics. He did his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department. He worked at Samsung Electronics in South Korea. His AI work includes his position at Facebook AI Research, at Mistral AI, and at Thinking Machine Labs. He won multiple awards for his AI research. Given his extensive work in the field of AI, many social media users defended the hiring and said Elon knows talent. “The guy is an Indian to you but to Elon he’s talent,” one wrote, reacting to the hate post. “He is from IIT Bombay you know how to get admission in that college you have crack the 2 toughest exam in world jee main and jee advance there are 1.3 million students every year who compete for these exam and there are only 1300 seats in IIt bombay they study like 10 hour a day,” another wrote about Chaplot. “It’s all about hiring the very best people for their outstanding abilities, nothing to do with where they originate,” a third wrote.
