June 10 (Reuters) - A former engineer at Elon Musk's xAI who now heads a think tank focused on AI safety filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired from the SpaceX subsidiary for raising concerns about the risks artificial intelligence poses to humanity.
Devin Kim claims in the lawsuit filed in California state court on Tuesday that his efforts to place guardrails on the development of the chatbot Grok made him a target for company leadership.
The lawsuit comes ahead of SpaceX's planned initial public offering, the largest ever, on Friday.
"Mr. Kim repeatedly complained that xAI’s failure to prioritize AI safety, particularly with respect to Grok, virtually guaranteed that the Company would commit unlawful acts, from fomenting discrimination to proliferating weapons of mass destruction," the lawsuit says.
xAI and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Kim's lawsuit.
The nonprofit Center for AI Safety, which focuses on the risks potentially posed by AI, announced last week that it had named Kim as its president.
Musk, the world's richest person, established xAI in 2023 as what he said would be a safer alternative to OpenAI, which he had helped found more than a decade ago. A jury last month rejected Musk's lawsuit claiming that OpenAI had strayed from its original mission to benefit humanity.
According to the new lawsuit, Kim was one of the initial hires at xAI in 2024 and was promoted to a key leadership position months after joining the company.
Kim said Musk expected xAI to implement appropriate safety testing and processes. But Kim's supervisor, xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, flouted those directives and rejected Kim's insistence on implementing safety mechanisms, the lawsuit claims.
Kim says Ba abruptly fired him last September just before Kim was set to give a presentation on AI safety to company leadership.
The lawsuit accuses xAI and SpaceX of retaliation and wrongful discharge in violation of California law, and seeks unspecified monetary damages.
SpaceX and Musk's other ventures, including EV maker Tesla, have been dogged by alleged safety issues, from hazards posed to company employees to concerns about self-driving technology.
In 2023, Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at SpaceX including crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions and one death. Some employees attributed the issues to a lax safety culture and Musk's belief that SpaceX is on an urgent quest to create a refuge in space from a dying Earth.
SpaceX did not comment at the time, but in court filings and elsewhere the company has defended its safety record and said it provides extensive safety training.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
