Elon Musk says ‘researcher’ is a pretentious, outdated job title, xAI to use only ‘engineer’ now

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has once again sparked debate online, this time over something as simple as a job title.

In a reply to one of his employees’ hiring posts on X (formerly Twitter), Musk said that his AI company, xAI, will no longer use the term “researcher”. Instead, everyone will simply be called an “engineer.”

Why the change? Musk believes the term “researcher” is outdated and even pretentious. “We will not use the title 'researcher' at xAI, only 'engineer',” he wrote. “'Researcher' is a relic term from academia and a thinly-masked way of describing a two-tier engineering system. It is both pretentious and low accountability.”

He went on to say that companies like SpaceX do more meaningful research than most academic labs but don’t use such titles. The focus, according to Musk, should be on building things that work, not creating divisions between those who theorize and those who implement.

The statement has received mixed reactions online. Some agreed with Musk’s no-nonsense approach, while others said the distinction between researchers and engineers exists for a reason, especially in fields like AI where both theoretical and practical work are crucial.