The Wall Street Journal first reported on October 1 that OpenAI had dismissed three members of its safety team. Fortune's Emily Forlini followed up on October 9 with the former employees' own account, which conflicts with the company's. Much of what each side says remains unverified.
Who was dismissed
The three are Tomek Korbak, the technical point of contact for METR, the third-party firm OpenAI asked to audit the Hugging Face incident; Mikita Balesni, who worked on OpenAI's investigation of that incident; and Jasmine Wang, a program manager on the safety team. OpenAI said they mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures.
The employees' letter
On October 8, the three published a four-page joint letter. They deny leaking concerns about monitoring OpenAI's Astra model to The Information and deny any misconduct in their communications with METR. They warn that their firings may be used to justify ending OpenAI's work with METR. Korbak says OpenAI told him verbally he was fired because of the way he communicated with METR. Wang says she was cited for accessing an unnamed executive's email, which she says was granted for recruiting and which she asked IT to remove. Balesni says they were fired for prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of the company.
OpenAI's position
OpenAI has not disclosed specific reasons. It told Fortune it found a pattern of misconduct, including policy violations, and did not link the firings to METR or the Hugging Face incident. It said publicly that its investigation found a significant breach of trust beyond what the letter describes, and an internal memo said the decisions were not about raising safety concerns. The company says it will announce new third-party assessor contracts in the coming weeks.
Outside reaction
Neel Nanda, a Google DeepMind employee, called the firings a sign of a highly unhealthy culture. David Robinson, a former safety transparency lead at OpenAI, writing in The Atlantic, called its safety culture broken. METR did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.
What remains unverified
What the employees shared with METR, and the true reason for the dismissals, are not confirmed by any independent party in the report.
Source: Fortune. This is an AI Business Watch summary of the original report.