Three former OpenAI security researchers on Thursday accused the ChatGPT-maker of firing them for warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence, reigniting the debate over safety at a company whose software has been involved in security breaches.
Balesni and the two other fired employees, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang, publicly shared a letter to OpenAI on Thursday.
“I believe we were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of OpenAI as a corporation,” one of the fired staffers, Mikita Balesni, wrote on X, breaking a weeklong silence since their very public dismissal. “Our firing leaves us worried that the norms inside OpenAI are shifting,” the letter says, and continues that “terminations such as ours, executed and communicated so abruptly, are chilling the open culture OpenAI has prized in the past. OpenAI, for its part, said it fired them for allegedly violating company rules. “Our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work,” OpenAI told AFP in a statement on October 1.
