Safety & Ethics•3h AI-generated

Fired OpenAI safety researchers deny misconduct, warn of chilling effect

Three safety researchers fired by OpenAI last week—Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni—published an open letter on Thursday to the company’s Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council, denying they mishandled sensitive company information. "I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation," Balesni wrote. The researchers said their abrupt dismissal is chilling internal culture, leaving colleagues afraid to speak, and said their past collaboration with outside safety evaluators had been sanctioned by executives and board members. All three also denied leaking to The Information about reduced chain-of-thought monitorability in OpenAI’s newest models. Why it matters: The dispute sharpens the question of where confidentiality ends and independent safety auditing begins at frontier labs, and may make safety staff warier of working with outside experts. What do you think?