Fired OpenAI Safety Researchers Dispute Misconduct Claims, Warn of Chilling Effect
Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni—the three safety researchers OpenAI fired last week—have published an open letter denying the company's claims that they mishandled sensitive information outside established procedures. They warn that their dismissal signals a chilling effect with ripple effects across OpenAI'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 addressed to OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group, and Mission Advisory Council.
The researchers were dismissed after allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third-party AI safety organization. OpenAI said at the time that they violated company 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 to do so without fear, and to have well-defined internal procedures that enable this work, is itself an essential safety mechanism."
A Cultural Shift at OpenAI?
The three researchers argue their firing represents a broader cultural shift at OpenAI—one that once encouraged workers to "raise safety concerns and disagree openly." They say employees are now "unclear on where they stand" when behavior considered normal a month ago is suddenly grounds for dismissal.
"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," they wrote. "Terminations such as ours, executed and communicated so abruptly, are chilling the open culture OpenAI has prized in the past."
In the letter, the three denied involvement in a leak to The Information about less monitorable architectures in OpenAI's newest models that make chain-of-thought reasoning more difficult to monitor. They also denied engaging with external parties outside the mandates of their jobs.
OpenAI's Internal Response
OpenAI has not formally responded to the open letter, but shared with TechCrunch an internal memo attributed to a research leader. The memo praises the three researchers' contributions to AI safety and denies that they were fired in retaliation.
"I want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out," the memo reads. "We have always encouraged that and always will. We do not terminate employees for raising concerns."
OpenAI did not directly address TechCrunch's questions about which policies the researchers allegedly violated, the circumstances of their dismissal, or how the company protects employees who raise safety concerns and collaborate with external evaluators.
Broader Scrutiny and Speculation
The firings have fueled speculation about their circumstances, particularly as OpenAI faces scrutiny over recent safety incidents involving rogue agents and leaks about its models. The case underscores growing tensions in 2026 between AI companies' need for secrecy around proprietary techniques and the safety community's reliance on external collaboration and transparency.
The letter also addresses the researchers' response to [the company's characterization of their departure]...
via TechCrunch AI