Fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute misconduct claims and warn of a chilling effect
Three recently dismissed OpenAI safety researchers have published an open letter denying they broke company rules and warning that their firing discourages employees from speaking openly. OpenAI says they mishandled sensitive information.
Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, whom OpenAI dismissed last week, published an open letter on Thursday addressed to the company's Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council. In it, they reject the company's claims that they mishandled sensitive information.
The company's allegations
OpenAI says the researchers violated its policies by accessing and handling sensitive company information. The dismissals reportedly followed the sharing of confidential information with a third-party AI safety organization. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that an investigation found a "pattern of misconduct" that goes beyond sharing information with an outside evaluation group. OpenAI did not directly answer questions about which specific policies were violated or the circumstances of the firings.
The researchers' response
The authors argue the dismissals reflect a cultural shift at a company that once encouraged staff to raise safety concerns openly. They say employees are now unsure where they stand, because conduct that was allegedly normal a month ago has become grounds for termination. They also deny involvement in a leak to The Information about model architectures that make chain-of-thought reasoning harder to monitor, and deny engaging with outside parties beyond their job mandates.
According to the letter, Korbak believed he was acting within company norms during the unprecedented Hugging Face incident, when he worked closely with outside evaluators. Balesni, the letter says, worked on the AI monitorability problem with support from board members and executives, and checked in with his reporting line.
In a thread on X, Wang said she was told she was fired for accessing an executive's email. She said the access had been delegated to her for recruiting, that IT did not act on her request to remove it, and that she told the executive within minutes after opening a sensitive email by mistake.
OpenAI's reaction
OpenAI has not formally responded to the letter. It did share with TechCrunch an internal memo that praises the researchers' contributions and denies the firings were retaliation for raising safety concerns. The memo also says the company agrees with the letter's recommendations.
