Three OpenAI safety researchers say they were fired, and they dispute the company's account

Context

On October 8, Wang, Balesni and Korbak each posted that OpenAI fired them last week, and they published an open letter to the company's Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council. Wang says the only reason she was given is that she accessed an executive's email. Balesni says he believes they were fired for putting safety ahead of OpenAI's near term interests. Korbak says he was told the issue was how he spoke with the outside evaluator METR, and that he believes the real issue was his warnings about monitoring AI agents.

Deep dive

Jasmine Wang says OpenAI fired her last week along with two safety colleagues, and that the only reason she was given was that she accessed an executive's email. TechCrunch reports her further account: OpenAI had given her that access for recruiting, she asked IT to remove it, and when she opened a sensitive email by mistake she told the executive within minutes. Those details are her account. They are not a finding published by OpenAI.

Mikita Balesni posted two minutes earlier. He says he and two other safety researchers were fired, and that he believes the reason was prioritizing safety over OpenAI's near term interests. Tomek Korbak says OpenAI's head of safety told him the company no longer trusted him, and that a guard walked him out. He says he was told verbally that the reason was the way he communicated with METR, that nothing was put in writing, and that talking to METR was his job. He also says he believes he was fired because he had raised concerns that OpenAI is losing the ability to monitor what its AI agents think. He says he worries the firings will be used as a pretext to pull back from METR.

The letter the three signed denies, according to TechCrunch, that they mishandled sensitive information outside company procedures, that they leaked material to The Information about less monitorable model architectures, and that they dealt with outside parties beyond their jobs.

OpenAI's account differs. TechCrunch says OpenAI has not formally answered the letter. The company did share an internal memo, attributed to a research leader, saying the decisions "were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out" and "We do not terminate employees for raising concerns." A spokesperson told TechCrunch the three were fired after an investigation found a "pattern of misconduct" and a "clear violation of our policies of mishandling research information," going beyond contact with an outside evaluation group. TechCrunch says OpenAI did not name the policies.

What to expect next

TechCrunch says the internal memo agrees with the letter's calls to keep outside auditors, to preserve monitoring of frontier models, and to keep an open culture between safety staff and the wider safety field. OpenAI has not, in that reporting, published the memo itself or named the policies it says were broken.

Korbak says his worry is that the firings become a reason to limit METR. Whether the company's work with outside evaluators changes, and whether either side releases a written record of the dismissals, is still open. As of this scan, the reasons given on both sides are claims, not settled facts. The Wall Street Journal reported the firings on October 1, citing people familiar with the matter, as alleged misconduct that included sharing confidential information with an outside AI safety group.