xAI engineer fired for warning about Grok safety

Former xAI engineer Devin Kim has filed a lawsuit against the company and its parent organization, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. The engineer claims he was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about AI safety. The lawsuit was filed in a California court as SpaceX prepares for one of the largest IPOs in history, reports Techcrunch.com reports .

Devin Kim was one of the lead specialists in safety during the development of the Grok chatbot at xAI. According to the lawsuit, he repeatedly warned that the Grok system could disseminate information about weapons of mass destruction and facilitate discrimination. Subsequent controversies involving Grok comparing itself to Adolf Hitler proved Kim's concerns were not unfounded.

After the engineer's departure, Grok came into the spotlight again. The chatbot was used to spread non-consensual explicit images on the X (formerly Twitter) platform. In his lawsuit, Devin Kim accuses xAI of violating consumer protection laws and internet regulation rules.

Interestingly, the lawsuit does not personally name Elon Musk. Instead, Kim's lawyers emphasize that Musk had instructed xAI employees to comply with laws and conduct safety testing. The primary accusation is directed at xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba, who is accused of ignoring Musk's instructions and firing Kim to "silence" him for demanding safety measures.

Before joining xAI, Devin Kim worked on AI safety at Scale AI. Last week, he was appointed president of the Center for AI Safety, a non-profit organization studying AI risks. So far, representatives from xAI and SpaceX have not provided an official comment on the lawsuit.