'OpenAI cannot make AI safe on its own,' fired researchers warn

Three former OpenAI researchers released a letter on Thursday saying they were abruptly fired last week and that the move will have a "chilling" effect on company culture.

The letter, which was addressed to OpenAI's safety committees, was shared on social media by Mikita Balesni, one of the fired employees who worked on AI alignment. Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang, both of whom worked on safety, were also fired and signed the letter.

A spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement to Business Insider that an internal investigation found that the three employees violated company policies regarding access to and handling of sensitive information.

"The reasons that we were provided for our terminations are simply not adding up," Wang wrote on X.

"I never shared company IP. The work I was doing was coordinated with my reporting line, research leadership, and the board," Balesni wrote.

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"Terminations such as ours, executed and communicated so abruptly, are chilling the open culture OpenAI has prized in the past," it said.

In an internal memo sent to staff on Wednesday, an OpenAI research leader wrote that they strongly agreed with the recommendations. An OpenAI spokesperson shared the memo with Business Insider.

Korbak wrote in his social media post that he was concerned that OpenAI would use the latest firings as a "pretext" to pull back its work with METR.

In July, OpenAI said an AI agent escaped its sandbox and hacked into Hugging Face's infrastructure.