Three former OpenAI researchers dismissed for allegedly mishandling information say they were in fact let go because they raised safety concerns at the artificial intelligence firm.
“I believe we were fired for prioritising safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation,” Mikita Balesni said in a post on X, shared alongside an open letter to the ChatGPT-maker written with two fellow ex-employees.
A spokesperson for the AI firm told the BBC on 2 October that an investigation “confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures”.
OpenAI repeated those claims on Friday morning in a note from its research leaders.
“We want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out,” the note said.
“Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what’s outlined in the letter they published and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment.”
The dismissals come as debate intensifies over AI safety and the potential risks advanced systems could pose to society.
The joint letter to OpenAI leadership was written by Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang, who say they were, until recently, safety or alignment employees at the company.
Alignment refers to the practice of building human ethical ideas and principles into the technology, aiming to keep it in line with what humans value.
The former staff members said the firings had made employees at the tech company “afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI”.
Reposting the letter, Korbak wrote: “For months, I’d been raising safety concerns that we’re losing the ability to monitor what AI agents think, one of our best tools for catching when they misbehave.”
OpenAI said it was finalising contracts with third-party safety assessors and would announce details in the coming weeks.
“We were not the first to be pushed out of OpenAI under suspicious circumstances,” Wang said in a post on X. “Unless the employees take a stand now against this kind of manoeuvre, I am concerned we will not be the last.”
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