Three safety researchers fired by OpenAI last week have published an open letter challenging the company's account of their dismissals. They warned that the episode could discourage employees from speaking openly about AI risks. Tomek Korbak, Jasmine Wang and Mikita Balesni addressed the letter to OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group and Mission Advisory Council.
The trio wrote that they were concerned that communications around their firing had made former colleagues "afraid to speak." They added that safety researchers need to be able to challenge decisions and work with outside experts. Korbak, Wang and Balesni said: "AI is not a normal technology, and OpenAI is not a normal company." OpenAI has rejected the suggestion that their dismissals were connected to speaking out about safety. The company said a "thorough investigation" found the trio had violated policies governing sensitive information.
Newsweek has contacted OpenAI, Korbak, Wang and Balesni for further comment and is awaiting further responses. The letter, titled "OpenAI cannot make AI safe on its own," was published publicly by the three former employees. It opens with a warning about the effect their dismissals may have on other employees.
"We have become concerned that internal and external communications around our firing have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI," the former employees wrote. The researchers argue that OpenAI has historically encouraged employees to "raise safety concerns and disagree openly," but say staff are now "unclear on where they stand." The trio added: "Given the significant safety concerns surrounding the development of AI, employees must not be left working in an environment where fear and unclear rules stymie AI safety work and weaken third-party accountability." Korbak, Wang and Balesni used the letter to dispute claims surrounding what led to their terminations. They denied being responsible for a leak about work on AI architectures that may make models' internal reasoning more difficult to monitor.
"We were not the source of the leak," they wrote. They also denied improperly communicating with outside organizations, saying they did not believe they had engaged with external parties beyond what their jobs required. Korbak said separately that he was told verbally that he had been fired because of the way he communicated with Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, an independent organization that evaluates advanced AI systems.
"No details on what I said or did or when," Korbak wrote on X. "No other reasons were given and nothing was put in writing." He added: "To be clear, talking to METR was my job." Korbak said he had spent months raising concerns about what he described as a declining ability to monitor how AI agents reason. "I believe that was why I was fired," he said.
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