Police in northern California last month arrested Igor Babuschkin, Elon Musk’s first known hire for a new company that aims to compete with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, for domestic battery, public records show. A representative for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, Lisa Buuck, said the office had reviewed the case and had no plans to charge Babuschkin with a crime.
The arrest, which took place in Palo Alto, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, could complicate Babuschkin’s efforts to get the company off the ground and recruit talent. Babuschkin was an AI researcher at OpenAI as well as Alphabet’s DeepMind unit before joining Musk to create what Musk has referred to as a chatbot stripped of political correctness—an “anti-woke” version of OpenAI’s trailblazing ChatGPT, The Information reported in February.
