Menin asks Kim about Castillo-Madrid's testimony and safety staffing
Menin notes Castillo-Madrid claimed not to know about Kim's termination and asks if that is accurate; Kim says it is surprising, and that during his time XAI had only three employees working on AI safety, many of whom left after he resigned.
Gabriela Castillo-Madrid, the Senior Manager of Global Government Affairs at SpaceX AI, who testified before you did.
I don't know if you had the opportunity to hear all of her testimony.
But when I asked her about the circumstances around your termination, she said she was not aware.
Of any of the circumstances?
Is that a, and she was under oath, is that a factually accurate statement that she said?
If you know that is.
That would be difficult for me to know, but that is a surprising statement, to say the least.
And I don't know if you had the opportunity to hear the rest of her testimony.
She kept saying that the company is dedicated to safety.
She kept saying that that was one of their top priorities.
What did you think overall of her testimony?
Well, as an early employee at XAI, I worked on the systems that researchers use to train and evaluate Grok.
And because of that, I had a very critical part in developing Grok and had held close relationships with many of the researchers.
And I was trusted with many important responsibilities within the company.
And I use that standing to advocate for safety and other important things that I believe that the company should be doing.
And so I will note that if it was difficult for me to speak up and make changes that I believe were necessary within the company from my position, then I can only imagine for other people what that might be like for them.
I will also note that during my time at the company, I believe that this is an important problem to be working on, and therefore I spent significant time towards this effort in a personal capacity.
However, during my time there, there were only three employees working on
on AI safety, many of whom left after I resigned.
I think in large part also due to the frustration with how safety was being handled.
I can't speak to how AI safety is handled today.
It's been a year since I was an employee at the company, but if it's anything resembling what I personally experienced, then I would say that's a very troublesome state of affairs for them to be in.