'I don't care if you even graduated high school', says Elon Musk on recruitment for Tesla's AI team

Elon Musk on February 2 said that a PhD, or even graduating high school, is not mandatory for working with the company's artificial intelligence (AI) team. The Tesla CEO said that a deep understanding of AI is more useful.

Musk said the automaker has vacancies in the AI team, which reports directly to him.

“At Tesla, using AI to solve self-driving isn’t just icing on the cake, it the cake” - @lexfridman

Join AI at Tesla! It reports directly to me & we meet/email/text almost every day. My actions, not just words, show how critically I view (benign) AI.https://t.co/iF97zvYZRz — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2020

Musk also said he is hosting a party, or "hackathon", with Tesla's AI/autopilot team in four weeks.

To this, one user asked if he has time to complete a PhD, to which Musk said it isn't necessary.

Have I got time to get a quick PHD in AI in to secure an invite? — Sam

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

This is not the first time Musk has expressed his views on the necessity of college degrees.

“If somebody graduated from a great university, that may be an indication that they will be capable of great things, but it’s not necessarily the case. If you look at, say, people like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, these guys didn’t graduate from college, but if you had a chance to hire them, of course, that would be a good idea,” Musk said in 2014 interview with German publication Auto Bild.