* Engineer alleges that efforts to develop AI guardrails

made him a target

* He says company's co-founder abruptly fired him

* Musk's companies dogged by claims of profit over safety

By Daniel Wiessner

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.