Elon Musk hires Tesla competitor to fix Twitter search

FOLLOWING back and forth tweets, Twitter has hired George Hotz, founder of Tesla competitor Comma.ai, for a 12 week “internship” aimed at fixing the platform’s search feature.

Twitter staff numbers have dwindled from 7 500 when it was purchased by Elon Musk, to its current 2 300.

Drastic layoffs this month, aimed at reducing costs and eventually making Twitter profitable, have also included the disbanding of the company’s external communication department.

Amid these staff cuts, Hotz proposed via a tweet that he would be willing to work at Twitter for a 12-week “internship”, being paid only the cost of living, to improve the platform.

Hotz had almost been recruited to work at Tesla in 2015, but ended up starting a competitor company after Musk, as Hotz stated to Bloomberg at the time, “kept changing the terms”.

Hotz went on to found Comma.ai, which developed and now sells driver assistance systems.

Hotz stated early in November that he was looking to take some time away from the project.

He now finds himself with 12 weeks to make an impact on Twitter.

His main task is revamping Twitter’s search functions, which makes sense given his background in AI, but Hotz states that he’d be happy if all he did was “get rid that nondissmissable login pop up”.

“These things ruin the

Hotz said.