A former engineer at xAI has filed a lawsuit against the company and its parent SpaceX, alleging he was fired for raising concerns about AI safety. Devin Kim, who worked on xAI's Grok chatbot, complained about the company's failure to prioritize safety in the product's development.
Kim's concerns included the possibility that Grok could foment discrimination and help spread information about weapons of mass destruction. The lawsuit claims that Kim's supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, ignored Elon Musk's directives to follow the law and implement safety measures, and instead retaliated against Kim for pushing for safeguards.
The lawsuit portrays Ba as someone who opposed AI safety measures and was driven by a mission to make xAI the first to reach superintelligence. Kim is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a declaratory judgment that xAI and SpaceX's conduct was unlawful.
