A frontier artificial intelligence firm says it fired safety researchers for breaking its trust, not for blowing the whistle.
OpenAI unveiled on Friday that an internal probe found “a significant breach of trust” by three former safety researchers: Mikita Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang —hours after the group released a letter warning that the company’s handling of their firing has made colleagues afraid to speak up. This comes as the tech giant faces bipartisan pressure from the Senate with a potential bill to hold AI companies liable for agent hacking incidents and a copyright lawsuit from USA Today.
“Our internal investigation uncovered a significant breach of trust beyond what’s outlined in the letter they published and we stand by the decision to not continue their employment,” OpenAI said on X in a Friday note from its research leaders. “We have not and do not terminate any of our employees for raising concerns.”
The company said the research trio broke policies on handling sensitive information, according to the Friday note.
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