Ex-OpenAI staff say they were fired for raising safety concerns

Three former OpenAI employees say they have been fired due to their efforts to ensure the safety of artificial intelligence.

Safety researchers Mikita Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang levelled the accusations on Thursday after their dismissals last week. The trio warned of a “chilling” effect on other staff concerned about the frontier technology’s risks.

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OpenAI said they were let go due to misconduct involving the mishandling of company information.

“I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation,” Balesni said in a post on X.

Korbak expressed a similar sentiment, expressing his belief that he had been terminated for raising concerns that OpenAI was “losing the ability to monitor what AI agents think, one of our best tools for catching when they misbehave”.

In an open letter published in tandem with their social media posts, Balesni, Korbak and Wang expressed concerns that their dismissal would make their former colleagues “afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI”.

“We could raise safety concerns and disagree openly, and were encouraged to draw on the expertise of independent safety organizations,” they said in the letter. “This is part of what made OpenAI special, and why we are immensely proud to have been part of the team.”

The three added that “if the people closest to the risks can no longer work in high-trust, high-bandwidth ways with each other and with third parties”, then AI could not be developed safely.

“It is that culture we are writing to defend,” they stated.

OpenAI added that it was saddened by the outcome.