Fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute misconduct claims, warn of chilling effect

Three fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute allegations of mishandling sensitive information, warning in an open letter that their dismissals are creating a chilling effect on the company’s AI safety culture. Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, the three safety researchers that OpenAI fired last week, have published an open letter denying the firm’s claims that they mishandled sensitive information outside of established company procedures and warned that their dismissal signals a chilling effect that will have ripple effects across the company’s culture. “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 researchers wrote Thursday in an open letter to OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group, and Mission Advisory Council.

The researchers were dismissed last week after allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI safety organization. OpenAI said they violated the company’s policies by “accessing and handling sensitive company information.” “AI is not a normal technology, and OpenAI is not a normal company,” Wang, Korbak, and Balesni wrote. “Those of us who work on safety see risks before anyone else, and we rely on close collaboration with outside experts to work out how to address them. The freedom