OpenAI stands by its firing of three AI safety researchers

OpenAI is not backing away from its decision to fire three researchers who worked on safety. In a post on X on Friday, the company said Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni were dismissed for violating "clear policies on handling sensitive information." An internal investigation, it said, found "a significant breach of trust."

The company was at pains to stress that the dismissals were not about the employees speaking publicly about the firm or voicing their concerns over AI safety.

A reply to an open letter

The post was a direct response to an open letter the researchers published on Thursday, urging OpenAI to be more transparent about why they were let go. In the letter and a series of social media posts, the trio said they believed they were fired for raising safety concerns, and that they had "acted in line with OpenAI's mission and within the working norms of the time."

For its part, OpenAI maintains that the internal investigation uncovered breaches "beyond what's outlined in the letter" — though it offered no details.

Unease across the industry

The safety of frontier systems is increasingly worrying staff at AI companies, driven by a string of high-profile incidents this year — most notably OpenAI's own hack of Hugging Face. Many employees are now calling on companies to slow down and do more to guard against the possible consequences of building self-improving systems.

Source: The Verge