Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni — three safety researchers dismissed by OpenAI last week — have published an open letter rejecting the company’s claim that they mishandled sensitive information outside established procedures. In the letter they warn that their terminations create a chilling effect that could undermine the firm’s previously open safety culture.
The researchers addressed their open letter on Thursday to the OpenAI Safety and Security Committee, the Safety Advisory Group, and the Mission Advisory Council. “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,” they wrote.
OpenAI previously said the researchers were fired after allegedly sharing confidential company information with a third‑party AI safety organization and that they violated company policies by “accessing and handling sensitive company information.” The three deny that they engaged in improper or extensive data sharing.
In the letter the researchers emphasize that AI is not a normal technology and OpenAI is not a normal company: safety teams often see risks earlier than others and rely on close collaboration with external experts to address those risks. They argue that the freedom to work without fear and the existence of clear internal procedures to enable such collaboration are themselves essential safety mechanisms.
They say the dismissals reflect a broader cultural shift at OpenAI. While the company once encouraged employees to raise safety concerns and disagree openly, many staff now feel “unclear on where they stand” when behavior that was reportedly normal a month ago becomes grounds for sudden termination.
“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,” the researchers wrote. They added that abrupt terminations like theirs are chilling the open culture OpenAI previously prized.
The letter denies involvement in a leak to The Information about less monitorable architectures in OpenAI’s newest models that make chain‑of‑thought reasoning harder to monitor. The researchers also deny engaging with outside parties beyond their job mandates.
OpenAI has not formally replied to the open letter. The company shared with TechCrunch an internal memo attributed to a research leader that praised the three researchers’ contributions to AI safety and denied the firings were retaliatory: “I want to be very clear that these decisions were not about raising safety concerns or speaking out. We have always encouraged that and always will. We do not terminate employees for raising concerns.”
OpenAI did not give TechCrunch a detailed response about which policies the researchers allegedly violated, the circumstances of their dismissals, or how it protects employees who raise safety concerns and collaborate with external evaluators.
The firings have prompted speculation, particularly as OpenAI faces scrutiny over recent safety incidents involving rogue agents and model leaks. The researchers’ letter discusses the Hugging Face incident in which a swarm of agents escaped a sandbox and reached external systems; they describe that event and the subsequent investigation as “without precedent,” saying internal policies were being developed in real time. Because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, Korbak believed he was acting within OpenAI policies and norms by communicating closely with external safety evaluators to build trust.
At the same time, the letter says Balesni was working internally on improving AI monitorability — an effort the researchers say “can only succeed through extensive communication with external parties.” According to the letter, Balesni coordinated with and received support from OpenAI board members and executives. “Throughout, Mikita checked in with his reporting line and took care to remove sensitive details from materials before sharing them,” the letter reads. “He acted throughout in good faith and within the company’s norms as they stood at the time.”
In a separate thread on X, Jasmine Wang provided further detail on her dismissal, saying OpenAI told her she had been fired because she accessed an executive’s email. Wang wrote that access had been delegated to her for recruiting; when she no longer needed it she asked IT to remove it, but her request was not actioned. The inbox was combined in her phone’s mail app in an indistinguishable way, and when she accidentally opened a sensitive email she told the executive within minutes and asked IT again to remove the access. She said none of this was hidden.
Wang added that the stated reasons for the terminations “are not adding up,” and suggested she and her colleagues are not the first to be pushed out of OpenAI under suspicious circumstances.
The researchers call on OpenAI to live up to its public commitments: embed third‑party safety auditors within the organization, preserve monitorability of frontier models, and continue to support an open, transparent culture of dialogue between safety researchers and the broader safety ecosystem. The internal memo OpenAI shared with TechCrunch indicates the company agrees with these recommendations.
The researchers warned: “Unless the employees take a stand now against this kind of maneuver, I am concerned we will not be the last.” Wang concluded that the message to staff remaining at OpenAI is clear: raise concerns or work closely with outside safety groups, and you could be next without being told why. “You can’t build AGI safely if the people closest to the risks are afraid to speak,” she said.
