Twitter ropes in autonomous driving expert to fix its search

In a fresh turn of events, Elon Musk’s Twitter is seemingly out to fix its search feature on the web platform — and has hired an autonomous driving expert to do the same.

In a recent conversation on Twitter itself, George Hotz, founder of autonomous car technology platform Comma.ai, voiced his support for Musk’s ultimatum of “long, hard work hours” at the present-day Twitter — adding that he would like to do an “internship” at the company.

Hotz, whose biggest venture so far has been to build an autonomous driver assistance system (ADAS) kit that can be retrofitted in a claimed 200-odd today, will reportedly be involved in improving Twitter’s search feature on its web platform.

The improvements would involve building a search feature that would not require users to specifically write their query to get apt results, and also, not require every web user to login to Twitter to be able to search for information on the platform.

Twitter’s present search feature is somewhat rudimentary, and often offers users outdated results in its ‘top’ section — as well as unfiltered results in the ‘latest’ section.

Twitter is actively hiring engineers to build new features for the platform, after a mass exodus that saw more than half of its 7,500-odd workforce being fired. Hundreds more are reported to have voluntarily quit the organization, since Musk’s takeover.

The company has also reportedly lost a sizeable chunk of its content moderation team.

In terms of new features, Musk’s rollout of Twitter Blue — including an $8 paid verification program — has now been delayed. Following its initial rollout, Twitter faced a barrage of accounts that paid to be verified, and subsequently impersonated personalities — including Musk himself.

Hotz, interestingly, has previously been reported to have been close to joining Musk-backed Tesla to build its autonomous driving technology. However, the plans never materialized.

Since then, Tesla has vocally opposed Comma.ai’s ADAS technology — prior to Hotz’s present “internship” to fix Twitter search for Musk.

Opening up the ability to search content on the platform without needing them to login could also help Twitter increase its user count, which remains significantly lower in comparison to its main social media rivals — Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.