Three Fired OpenAI Researchers Say They Were Punished for Speaking Up on Safety
Three former OpenAI safety researchers say they were fired for being outspoken about safety or working with outside evaluators, while OpenAI denies this and says they violated policies on handling sensitive information. Neither side's account has been independently verified.
A dispute over three firings has put OpenAI's safety culture under a harsh spotlight. Mikita Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang say the company dismissed them last week over pretexts, and NPR reports they believe they were punished for being outspoken about safety or for working with outside researchers. OpenAI rejects that account.
The company's position is that the three were fired for mishandling sensitive information, not for raising concerns. An internal memo stated plainly: "We do not terminate employees for raising concerns." The two sides diverge sharply on the details:
- OpenAI told TechCrunch an investigation found a "pattern of misconduct" that went beyond sharing information with an outside evaluation group, but it did not say which policies were broken
- The researchers wrote in an open letter that the reasons given "simply are not adding up," and warned the firings are chilling those who remain at the company
- Korbak had been the technical contact for the METR and Redwood Research investigation into the Hugging Face incident, which the authors of that report called "brief"
The timing matters. Sam Altman promised on September 12 that OpenAI would expand access for third-party evaluators, and the fired researchers' letter urges the company to keep that commitment.
Wang, who coined the term "pacing" for slowing frontier development so safety can catch up, wrote on X after leadership said it agreed with the letter: "Let's see how that pans out." OpenAI says it remains committed to outside evaluators.
An AI watchdog group has since used the episode to call for mandatory safety testing and protections for internal critics. With no independent finding on why these three were let go, the open question is whether the dispute will be settled by evidence or simply by which account the public and regulators find more credible.
