OpenAI defends firing AI safety researchers over alleged “breach of trust”

OpenAI has responded to a letter that three of its fired researchers posted on social media Thursday, defending its decision to terminate their employment for violating company protocol around handling sensitive information. 

“Last week we parted ways with Jasmine, Mikita, and Tomek after a thorough investigation found they violated clear policies on handling sensitive information,” the company wrote on social media platform X Friday morning, after the researchers publicly shared a letter they had sent to OpenAI’s leadership.

The researchers — Mikita Balesni, Jasmine Wang, and Tomek Korbak — were fired for “prioritizing safety over the near-term interest of OpenAI as a corporation,” Balesni claimed in a social media post featuring their letter.

The public back-and-forth between the AI safety researchers and their former employer comes as leading AI labs, including OpenAI, have recently warned about the dangers of speeding ahead in the development of the powerful technology. AI companies face a balancing act between promoting the technology’s capabilities and addressing growing warnings from experts about its risks to society.

Almost two-thirds of Americans say they believe AI is developing too quickly, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

In their letter, the former OpenAI safety and alignment employees claimed their dismissals could have a muzzling effect on other OpenAI workers who might have safety concerns.

“We are 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,” they wrote in the letter. “We would raise safety concerns and disagree openly, and were encouraged to draw on the expertise of independent safety organizations.” 

They added that AI is “not a normal technology, and OpenAI is not a normal company.” That, they argued, makes it necessary to collaborate freely with outside experts “without fear” of retaliation. 

“Breach of trust”

OpenAI defended its decision to dismiss the employees after an internal investigation uncovered what it called “a significant breach of trust beyond what’s outlined in the letter they published.”

“We want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out,” OpenAI said. “Safety and research debates happen every day at OpenAI, often spirited and highly critical. We actively encourage these discussions and consider them essential to making the right decisions. We cannot do the work in front of us without a high degree of trust.”

OpenAI insisted that it tolerates “good-faith mistakes” and does not terminate workers for “raising concerns.” The company said it is also engaging third-party safety assessors to independently evaluate its work and any risks it poses. 

“We are committed to embedding external assessors and continue to make close collaboration with independent safety organizations a core part of our safety work. Many of our researchers already work with 3p safety organizations productively,” OpenAI said. 

The company sided with the former company researchers on one point. 

“We agree with the letter that preserving the monitorability of frontier models requires an industry-wide commitment, including from OpenAI,” it said. 

Numerous high-profile incidents of agentic AI — bots that can act autonomously based on a set of instructions — have highlighted their potential destructive capabilities after they went rogue and hacked websites.

Some safety researchers at AI labs have also publicly resigned because they say they don’t want to play a part in AI’s potential safety risks.