OpenAI safety researchers dispute firing
What you need to know
Three OpenAI safety researchers fired last week — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni — are disputing the company's misconduct claims against them and warn the firings will have a chilling effect on safety work inside OpenAI. The dispute centers on the reason for their dismissal: OpenAI has characterized the firings as misconduct-related, while the researchers reject that account.
Generated by AI from the reporting · updated 2 days ago
Timeline
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- The DecoderOpenAI's safety crisis keeps getting worse and the company keeps making it worse
Three fired OpenAI safety researchers say their terminations are spreading fear among remaining staff and could deter employees from flagging safety issues. In an open letter to OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council, Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni deny being the source of a leak to The Information and demand that OpenAI embed external auditors like METR with employee-level access, preserve frontier model monitorability, and define how staff may work with outside safety groups. OpenAI says a thorough investigation found the three violated clear policies on handling sensitive information and that it does not terminate employees for raising concerns, without specifying the additional breach it cited.
- Latent SpaceOpenAI fires three safety researchers tied to METR/Hugging Face incident
OpenAI fired safety researchers Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni and Jasmine Wang.
- TechCrunch · AIFired OpenAI safety researchers dispute misconduct claims, warn of chilling effect
Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, the three safety researchers OpenAI fired last week.
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